A study of email pitches sent to journalists found that less than half were opened. More alarmingly, only 3% received a response of any kind.
To be one of them, your press release headline has to be strong. If it doesn’t capture their attention, the harsh reality is that in most cases they won’t read on.
Here are some tips for achieving the delicate balance that it is a press release title:
- Don’t start with your company name – in fact, better still, leave it out entirely. A journalist has to think about what’s interesting to their readers, who won’t be clicking on a story because it’s about your company (unless maybe they work for you). While there are some situations, when the news is directly about you, when it makes sense to include your company name, in many cases (especially new research for example), it’s better to leave it out, or have it closer to the end of your heading.
- Include numbers or stats if possible – if, as per the above example, your press release contains research (whether that’s a survey, desk research or company data), make sure you use your best stat in the title. If I was promoting the aforementioned journalist study, the title “Only 3% of pitches read by journalists” is more compelling than “New research into the success of journalist pitches”. I may even choose to flip it and say “97% of journalist pitches get ignored”.
- Make it interesting – this goes without saying, but it’s important to get in the mindset of what’s interesting to a journalist, not what’s interesting to your company. Your title needs to encapsulate what stands out about this particular news, and if you’re struggling to identify that, the bigger question might be, should this actually be a press release?
- But not misleading – avoid clickbait. Journalists don’t take kindly to having their time wasted. While your headline needs to be engaging and get across your most newsworthy element, don’t exaggerate or mislead because any journalist worth their salt will see through it.
- Remember that a journalist will usually write their own heading – don’t shy away from being creative, as you do need to capture their attention, however concentrate more on getting the key information across, and less on trying to be clever. Most journalists won’t copy and paste, but write their own headline anyway, so start looking at it less as a finished piece and more as a tool for getting your story read.
- Get a second opinion – if you do decide to go down a more creative route, get a second, if not third pair of eyes on it. It might not read the way you intended so it always helps to get other opinions.
- Keep your email subject line in mind – your email subject line absolutely doesn’t have to be the same as your press release headline, in fact, I’m a big fan of altering it as needed, but at the same time, issuing press releases is time consuming. If, like us, you issue it individually to each journalist (which in my opinion gets the best results), being able to copy and paste the heading into your subject line can save you time, so if it’s possible, consider writing one that works for both.
- Write it last – a bit like writing your home page after your website, writing your headline after the bulk of your release helps to keep all the key information front of mind.
- Write different versions – the importance of your title can’t be stressed enough, so it’s worth writing a few different versions, before settling on a final one (or a combination). This is where second opinions can come in handy. It’s also not a bad idea to use AI tools for inspiration here, even if it’s just to get the ideas flowing.
- Keep it brief – it might seem like a tall order to ask for all of the above and to keep it as short as possible, and that’s because it is. But as we’ve touched on, journalists are time poor, so your headline needs to be as concise as possible. See how much you can trim it down without losing anything.
If you’re still not feeling confident in your ability to craft the right press release title, why not get in touch. Or for more tips on writing press releases, check out this blog.
