This week Canada Newswire Group sent out an email headlined: “News Release Writing – Best Practices from CNW.”

It’s a good piece, full of information like:
• Build out any necessary context in your subhead;
• Best practice is to include stock symbols;
• Write for optimum social sharing: 80-100 characters is ideal; and
• Never repeat a previously used headline word-for-word or nearly so, as search engines will mark the document as duplicate content and push it down in search results.

I did stumble on the advice in the lead to “(b)e as interesting as you can with your headline”.  Not exactly breaking news. “Eschew CP style” bothered me. Eschew is a word that loses a lot of people and one I deliberately avoid using. While it’s true news releases speak in the voice of the brand, the Canadian Press Stylebook remains an important guide to good writing period.

CNW says: “Releases which include images receive 40% more views than those with text-only. Video can increase your views by 70%! … Limit yourself to 1-3 links per news release. Too many links makes search engines think spam.”

J. Goss + Associates has been a CNW client since the early days of the Internet. Once a Canadian company CNW was absorbed by PR Newswire several years ago. In June PR Newswire was acquired by Chicago-based Cision Inc.

We highly value the services of Canada Newswire Group. CNW gets us to the journalists we want to reach, quickly and economically.

If you need to make news anywhere in Canada (or the world) contact, J. Goss + Associates jgossassociates at gmail com.

News Release Writing – Best Practices from CNW

September 23, 2016