This could be important for another reason: journalists are busy. If it’s three in the morning and they need to get in contact with you about a question on your press release, an email isn’t going to work. So if there’s no phone number, they will more than likely just skip over your story and run something else.

4. You Don’t Include an About Section

If you read the same type of document over and over every day, you would want a section that gives you a quick rundown of who sent it. Perhaps this section could be called an “About” section. Too bad there’s not something like this for press releases…

Wait, there is! It has fallen out of vogue for some reason, but I argue that isn’t very important. Keep the poor reader in mind at all times. Any excuse to not run your story and they absolutely won’t. One reason could be having to do extra work to find out about your company. Write up a short bio and you’ll save time and headache.

5. You Didn’t Put an “End of Content” Marker

Back in the day, wire services would use special characters to mark where the end of the release was. Often, this was “###.” There were others, but this is the one most press release writers learned in school. Of course in today’s world there’s no reason to include it – except that some journalists and scanner software look for this. I know for me, a press release doesn’t look “complete” unless those three little pound signs are down at the bottom. Go ahead and include them to forego any unforeseen problems!

This article is written by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases (https://www.ereleases.com), the online leader in affordable press release distribution. Download a free copy of the PR Checklist – a 24 point list of Press Release Dos and Don’ts here: https://www.ereleases.com/free-offer/pr-checklist/^[3][4]