Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

Ed Byrne has an interesting blog entry on why blog post titles are important. It got me thinking that the same is true for press release headlines.

Ed says:

“I know I miss a certain amount of good articles everyday, simply because the headlines are not descriptive enough. When your flying through a couple of hundred posts, headlines are all you really have time to read, otherwise it would take twice as long, or longer, to get through them.”

The same is true for any journalist who is working in a newsroom. With so many press releases to trawl through, it’s no wonder that many of them are being deleted without being opened and why sending them in by fax can lead to them having a higher chance of being read in some cases.

People have a number of different opinions on press release headlines. Some people include ‘PR:’ at the start of the subject line and others advise not to write a flashy headline because that’s what journalists are paid to do. In my opinion, I think that you should focus on two of the fives W’s (who, what, where, when and why): who and what. A short and informative headline should do the trick.

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