Distribution is effectively permanent. Wires cannot recall a release once it's in the feed, and syndicated copies live on sites with no support team. A wrong funding figure or a misspelled executive name is published forever, and fixing it means paying to distribute a correction that nobody reads.
So: ten minutes of checking, before you click. Here's the run-through.
1. The news test
Answer honestly. If any of these fail, stop. No distribution tier fixes a release with no news in it.
- Would someone outside the company find this useful or interesting? Not impressive. Useful or interesting.
- Can I state the news in one sentence with a verb and a number? If it takes three sentences, there may not be news.
- Is anything actually new, or is this a restatement? Repackaged old facts get ignored and erode your credibility for the next release.
- Is there a reason it's today? A date, a launch, an event, a decision. "We finished the copy" is not a news peg.
- Would we still do this if the placement report came back blank? If yes, that's fine. You're buying the record, which is legitimate. Just know that's what you're buying.
2. Structure
- Headline states the news, not the theme. Under about 100 characters. Company name in it.
- Subhead adds the second most important fact, not a restatement of the headline.
- Dateline has the correct city and today's date (or the embargo date).
- Lede carries who, what, when, where, why in one or two sentences. If a reader stops after the first paragraph, do they have the news? They should.
- Inverted pyramid holds. Every paragraph is less essential than the one above it. An editor should be able to cut from the bottom without breaking anything.
- Paragraphs are short. Two to four sentences. Wire formatting is unforgiving.
- Length is 400 to 600 words. Over 800 and you're paying per word for material nobody reads.
- Boilerplate is present and identical to your last release. Same description, spelling, location, founding year. Consistency is what builds the entity record.
- No marketing adjectives doing load-bearing work. Delete "revolutionary," "game-changing," "innovative." If the fact isn't impressive without them, they won't help.
Full mechanics in press release format.
3. Facts
This is the section where mistakes become permanent.
- Every number verified against a source document. Funding amounts, employee counts, customer counts, percentages, dates, dollar figures.
- Every name spelled correctly, checked against LinkedIn or an ID, including your own executives. Name misspellings are the single most embarrassing and most common error.
- Every title exact and current. Someone's promotion three weeks ago will be noticed.
- Company names formatted the way those companies format them. Capitalization, spacing, Inc. vs. LLC.
- Dates are real dates and the days of the week match.
- Claims are substantiated. "First," "only," "largest," "leading" all invite challenge. Either you can prove it or you cut it. Regulated industries (healthcare, finance) need legal review of every claim, and that review takes longer than you think.
- Superlatives about competitors removed. They create legal exposure and add nothing.
- Partner and customer mentions are approved in writing. Never name another company without explicit sign-off.
4. Quotes
- Two quotes maximum, from two different people. More than that and the release becomes a panel discussion.
- Each quote says one thing, and says something a human would actually say out loud.
- No quote restates the lede. If the quote and the first paragraph say the same thing, delete the quote.
- Every quoted person has approved their exact words. In writing. This prevents the worst kind of post-publication conversation.
- Titles attached to every attribution.
- At least one quote comes from outside the company if you can get it, whether that's a customer, a partner, or a local official. Third-party voices carry weight executives can't.
5. Links and contact
- Every link tested by clicking it. Not scanned. Clicked.
- Links point to the specific relevant page, not the homepage. If you announced a product, link the product page.
- The destination page exists and is live now. Publishing a release before the landing page ships is a classic self-inflicted wound.
- Anchor text is your brand name or plain language. Keyword-optimized anchors in nofollow wire placements help nothing and look manipulative. (Why wire links don't pass PageRank.)
- Media contact block includes a real name, title, email, and phone number.
- That person knows the release is going out and will actually answer. A contact who's on vacation is worse than no contact.
- Email address is monitored, not a role alias nobody reads.
6. Timing
- Day of week: Tuesday through Thursday, mornings, for most business news. Friday afternoon is where news goes to die unless that's the point.
- Nothing collides with it. Check that you're not distributing against a major industry event or an obvious bigger story.
- Internal notification happened first. Employees should not learn company news from a wire. Neither should your biggest customers.
- Embargo, if any, is stated clearly at the top with a date and time zone, and only if you actually pre-briefed journalists. An embargo on a wire distribution alone is meaningless.
- Lead times respected for anyone you pitched directly: weeklies need 7 to 10 days, dailies 2 to 3, monthlies much longer.
7. Distribution settings
The settings screen is where money gets wasted quietly.
- Geography matches the audience. Paying for national distribution on a local story is a common and expensive habit.
- Industry categories selected accurately. These determine which affiliates and aggregators pick it up. Wrong categories produce irrelevant placements.
- Tier matches the job. Mid-tier for the record and index presence, legacy wire only for regulated disclosure or genuinely major news. Real pricing here.
- Scheduled time is in the right time zone.
- Multimedia attached if you have it, and captioned, credited, and cleared for use.
- Contact email on the submission is one you'll monitor, since vendor notifications and any pickup alerts go there.
8. The last two minutes
- Read it aloud. Every awkward sentence announces itself.
- Have someone who wasn't involved read it. Ask them one question: what's the news? If they hesitate, the lede is broken.
- Proofread like it's permanent, because it is.
Then distribute, and do the part that actually produces coverage: send it directly to the handful of journalists who cover your beat, with a short personal note. The wire creates the record. The email creates the story.
Common errors worth reviewing before you start: press release mistakes.
Run your release through a guided build that enforces most of this automatically. [See how it works](/how-it-works).