I’ve been a huge proponent of\u00a0PRWeb, the press release distribution service, because of its great customer service and the rave reviews from publicists\u00a0whose\u00a0press releases get fabulous\u00a0pick-up.<\/p>\n
But\u00a0I don’t like what I’m hearing about the company’s\u00a0Press Release Police who are hassling writers like BL Ochman<\/a>, one of my favorite press release writers of all time, and\u00a0award-winning\u00a0publicist Sharon Dotson<\/a>\u00a0of Houston, whose\u00a0releases I feature in my press release writing workshops as well as my\u00a0free tutorial “89 Ways to Write Powerful Press Releases.” <\/a><\/p>\n When BL\u00a0wanted to distribute a release through PRWeb,\u00a0she got a call from a rep telling her that because the release wasn’t\u00a0written\u00a0entirely\u00a0in third person, it was “too much like an ad.”\u00a0They reached a compromise, and she ended up removing the word\u00a0“your” and “our” in several places.<\/p>\n “I wrote the release exactly as I think it might run in a blog post or in mainstream media. It’s a casual topic, and it’s a casual release.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n You can read BL’s account of it\u00a0here.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n If the Press Release Police\u00a0are worried about\u00a0copy that sounds too promotional, they should also worry about many of the releases they distribute that include\u00a0copy\u00a0more potent than sleeping pills,\u00a0pompous boilerplate and\u00a0bunches of\u00a0mind-numbing acronyms.<\/p>\n Particularly bothersome was\u00a0Sharon Dotson’s comment at BL’s blog that\u00a0the Press Release Police have slapped her hands for using, of all things,\u00a0humor!<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n This is just a guess.\u00a0But are PRWeb’s police\u00a0actually sales reps disguised as wordsmiths?<\/p>\n The slap on the wrist they’re giving to writers like BL and Sharon, who have long track records of success,\u00a0will come back to bite them once the\u00a0PR community\u00a0gets wind of this.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Have any of you press release writers\u00a0experienced this same nonsense?\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been a huge proponent of\u00a0PRWeb, the press release distribution service, because of its great customer service and the rave reviews from publicists\u00a0whose\u00a0press releases get fabulous\u00a0pick-up. But\u00a0I don’t like what I’m hearing about the company’s\u00a0Press Release Police who are hassling writers like BL Ochman, one of my favorite press release writers of all time, and\u00a0award-winning\u00a0publicist\u2026 Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","iawp_total_views":3,"wds_primary_category":612,"footnotes":""},"categories":[612],"tags":[29,636,13,610],"class_list":{"0":"post-2089","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-online-marketing","7":"tag-media-relations","8":"tag-online-media","9":"tag-press-releases","10":"tag-publicist","11":"entry"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Joan Stewart","author_link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/author\/jstewart\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41631,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089\/revisions\/41631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n