Want to get your news releases used more, with happier recipients? Here’s some little ways to do just that, courtesy of what sticks in my brain from the past week of releases:

—Don’t write in the first person. Save “our,” “we” and “us” for your flyers and newsletters. The world, for better or worse, is frantic for content, and so editors do a lot more cutting and pasting. If you make them change “we” to “they” and reconstruct your verbiage, they may decide it’s not worth the time and hassle. So please, use third person.

—Don’t put things in a headline you leave out of the body of your release. Don’t put “sixth annual” event in the headline, just as an example, and never repeat that little fact anywhere in the body of your release. It’s very likely to get lost – or again, require an editor to insert that valuable point, which you surely can’t count on happening.

—Don’t use two spaces between sentences. Maybe they taught that in typing class, but it’s not how newspapers, magazines or Web texts read these days. One space is fine. Oh and on a related note, please don’t double-space your releases, or feel the need to indent paragraphs. Quite old school, as few folks mark up printed news releases any more.

You might also make sure to made a Word .doc attachment of your release, not just a PDF (dang those Adobe Acrobat hard right margins) and not just an in-line release – our company has quite a corporate spam filter, which turns every Web link into spaghetti. You can imagine the hassle that causes when one just wants to cut, paste, tweak and post a release.

So please, make it easier on us, and there’s a far greater likelihood your message will get picked up as you hoped, and without errors or headaches you end up having to deal with. Win-win!;-)