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TL;DR - Key takeaways:
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You published the press release. It went live. The CEO liked it. The internal team signed it off. WOOHOO!
Then…nothing.
No journalist picked it up, search barely noticed and AI systems couldn’t care less. Even though release technically said everything it needed to say, nobody used it.
That is where a lot of PR content lands now. Not bad per se, just kind of…there. And painfully easy to ignore.
The way people find, scan, and reuse press releases has changed. There’s more content available than ever, journalists are busier, and releases are often read in pieces rather than from top to bottom. As well as that, you have SEO and GEO with search engines looking for structure and authority and AI systems pulling facts, summaries, and context, often without giving readers the ‘full page’ experience.
Which is all to say that in 2026, your release has to do several jobs at once.
It needs to:
During Presspage’s recent PR Content Roast webinar, we looked at real press release examples with writer and former PR Newswire press release editor Tom Clarke. The same issues kept coming up: vague headlines, buried proof, empty quotes, hype language, and first paragraphs packed with internal detail.
Here are the 6 biggest mistakes, plus practical ways to fix them.
Tom Clarke has seen press releases from both sides: first as a press release editor, then as the person writing them for clients. His biggest point from the webinar was practical: a press release usually speaks to people who do not know your company yet.
That means the release has to explain the story fast, in language a smart outsider can understand.
“They don’t know you from Adam. That’s why you’re writing a press release.”
This is a good gut check for every announcement. If the first paragraph only makes sense to people inside the business, the release is doing internal comms in public.
A press release can have a real story buried inside it and still fail.
That often happens when the headline and lead focus on the company action, rather than the reason anyone else should care.
For example:
Company A announces partnership with Company B.
Technically, that may be accurate. But it leaves the reader with a very obvious question: so what?
A partnership, product launch, or research report only becomes news when the release explains what changes because of it. Will customers get faster access to something? Will patients receive better care? Will a city reduce water waste? Will a market gain capacity? Will a business problem become less painful?
That information needs to appear early.
A weak release says:
Torch Dental expands offering with Young Innovations Partnership.
A stronger version would move the real-world outcome closer to the top:
Torch Dental partnership gives dental practices faster access to essential supplies.
That version isn’t flashy, but it doesn’t need to be. It tells the reader who is involved, what is happening, and why the story matters outside the company.
The fix: before writing the headline, answer this question in one sentence:
What changes for the audience because this happened?
Then build the headline and lead around that answer.
Use the “elderly grandmother” test. Could you explain the story to someone outside your industry in one clear sentence? If not, the release probably needs a sharper lead.
A lot of press releases are written from the inside out.
They use the company’s language, reflect the company’s internal priorities, and include the details every department wanted to see. They make perfect sense to the people who spent six months working on the project.
Then a journalist reads it and has no idea what is going on.
This is one of the most common PR content problems. The release might be accurate, but it’s not accessible. It assumes the reader already understands the company, the product, the market, the acronyms, and the reason the announcement matters.
And that is a risky assumption.
A press release is usually designed for people who do not know your company well yet. That could be a journalist, stakeholder, or customer. OR it could be an AI system trying to understand what your company does and how this announcement fits into the bigger picture.
So the first job of the release is to help outsiders understand the story quickly (not to impress company insiders).
That means cutting back on internal phrasing like:
Some of these phrases may feel normal inside the business, but for Joe Public, they slow everything down.
Try this structure:
The fix: Ensure your first paragraph answers at least the first three line items above. If not, keep working.
Quotes are one of the biggest missed opportunities in press releases.
Too often, they repeat what the release already said:
“We are excited to partner with Company B as we continue strengthening our commitment to delivering high-quality solutions for our customers.”
Nobody talks like that, and more importantly, if they did, you wouldn’t bother quoting it.
A good quote should earn its place and add something the body copy cannot. A point of view! An insight only someone close to the work can give.
The body copy can explain the facts but the quote is where you can breath some emotion into the piece and explain the behind-the-scenes thinking.
That is especially important now because so much content sounds polished to the point of emptiness. A quote gives you a chance to bring back the human voice.
The fastest way to improve quotes is also the most obvious: speak to the person being quoted.
Ask them:
We get it, there people can be hard to get in touch with, so you might have to get creative. A voice note can work. A five-minute call can work. Even a few rough bullet points can work better than a quote written entirely in approval-language.
Then clean it up. Lightly! Resist the urge to sand away the human edge.
Ask for a voice note instead of writing the quote from scratch. A busy CEO may not have time for a full interview, but a rough 60-second answer often gives you more usable language than three rounds of polished approval copy.
A weak quote says:
“This partnership reflects our continued commitment to strengthening and evolving our offering.”
A stronger quote says:
“Dental teams do not have time to chase supplies across multiple systems. This partnership helps practices get the products they need faster, so they can spend less time on purchasing and more time with patients.”
That version gives the reader context, names the problem, and connects the announcement to a real-world outcome.
The fix: Use quotes to move the story forward. If you can delete the quote and the release still says the same thing, rewrite it.
Some press releases try to generate excitement by turning the volume up.
Everything is game-changing. Revolutionary. Cutting-edge. Future-ready. First-class. Seamless. Unparalleled. Next-generation.
Now these words aren’t necessarily wrong, but they often arrive before the proof.
If you call something game-changing, the next sentence needs to prove it.
What changes? For whom? By how much? Compared to what? Why now? What evidence supports the claim?
Without that context, hype language weakens the release, ensuring the story sounds bigger, but less credible.
In the webinar, one product launch example packed several of these buzzwords into the opening paragraph: revolutionary, engineered from the ground up, unparalleled scalability, security, flexibility, seamless, reliable, cutting-edge experiences.
That is a lot for one paragraph to carry…
The fix: Replace hype with proof.
Instead of:
“A revolutionary platform designed to transform retail lottery operations at scale.”
Try:
“The platform lets lottery operators manage retail systems through Google Cloud, giving teams a central way to handle deployment, security, and updates across multiple locations.”
That may be less dramatic, but it gives the reader something to understand, check, and reuse.
You can still use strong language, but it needs to earn its place.
If you use a phrase like “game-changing,” prove it immediately. What changes? For whom? By how much? Compared to what? Big claims need evidence close by, or they start to weaken the story.
Many weak releases have a lot of potential…buried below a lot of fluff.
The real outcome sits at the bottom of the quote; the strongest proof point makes its grand entrance in paragraph six; and the most human detail is taking a sabbatical under product terminology.
That creates work for the reader - most readers will not do that work.
Press releases need to follow the logic of the inverted pyramid: the most important information goes first, then the supporting detail, then the background, technical, legal, and company information.
You don’t have to go to war with legal to remove that detail; it simply needs to live in the right spot.
One example from the webinar was heavy detail: satellite data, AI, water leakage detection, software licensing, blah blah blah. Somewhere inside that detail was a far more interesting story: better leak detection and water conservation for a city’s water network.
That story should have been near the top.
A weak opening says:
Company A announced a strategic software licence agreement with Company B for deployment of its AI-powered platform in a long-term water service operation project.
A stronger opening says:
A new AI and satellite data partnership will help detect water leaks earlier across the city’s water network, supporting faster repairs and better water conservation.
The story comes first. The technical details can live at the bottom of the pyramid.
The fix: After drafting the release, look for the strongest sentence. The one that explains why the announcement matters. If it appears below paragraph three, move it up.
Press releases often go through a lot of hands before publication.
PR writes the draft, product adds detail, legal adds caveats, and the list goes on. By the end, the release may be accurate, but the story has been sucked dry (along with your patience).
That is a real challenge. PR teams cannot always ignore internal feedback and technical details often need to be there.
But (and it’s a big but) every stakeholder does not need equal space in the opening section.
The first job of the release is to communicate the story. If the first paragraph tries to satisfy every internal concern at once, you’ll probably lose the reader.
The fix is partly structural and partly internal.
Structurally, separate the story from the supporting detail:
Internally, PR teams need to communicate that the goal is not to remove detail, but to make sure people read far enough to reach it.
A good line to use with stakeholders:
“We have included the detail, but moved it lower so the release opens with the story journalists are most likely to use.”
That frames structure as a distribution decision rather than a style preference.
Keep the legal, technical, and stakeholder detail in the release, but move it to the right place. The exciting part belongs at the top. The terms, caveats, and mechanics can sit lower down.
If you only have time for one more pass before publishing, focus on these three areas:
A strong press release gives journalists, search engines, and AI systems enough to work with.
Presspage’s framework breaks that down into nine parts:
Say what happened clearly. Avoid vague announcement language. Add the real-world angle where possible.
Use the opening paragraph to answer the basics: who, what, where, when, and why it matters.
Give readers the information they need to understand the story without digging.
Explain why this announcement matters now. Connect it to a market shift, customer need, public issue, or practical outcome.
Use the quote to add perspective, not repetition. Make it sound like a person with something to say.
Include numbers, dates, examples, customer details, market data, or concrete results where you can.
Use clear headings, clean formatting, and extractable facts. Make the page easy to parse.
Make media contact details easy to find. Do not make journalists hunt.
Write in a way that allows journalists to quote, cite, summarise, and repurpose the story without needing to decode it first.
Before the next release goes live, ask:
If the answer is no, the release probably needs another pass.
Most press releases fail because the story is hard to find.
So improving PR content starts with a question:
What does the reader need to understand, use, and care about in this story?
Answer that early and back it up with proof.
That is how you turn a press release from something that gets approved into something that gets used.
Want to publish press releases that journalists, search engines, and AI systems will use?
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