Crafting exciting, intriguing press releases that tell a story is one key element of marketing today, but many times companies mess up by becoming too personal, trying to express their feelings, and that leads to press releases written in first-person vs third-person.

Rule number one: Whether you are writing press releases internally or hiring an outside PR firm, all language must be in third-person. And yes, that includes the About section describing all parties involved.

Secondly, you have to think about a press release as an official announcement that represents you or your company and it’s going out to the world. What you deliver must be truly newsworthy, well-written and most importantly conform to the basic press release writing standards. And if it doesn’t, you’ll be blacklisted out of the gate.

The moral of the story is that writing press releases is an art that requires a blend of creativity, deep knowledge of a company’s goals/plans, foresight, and ultimately true experience in writing thousands of press releases for a variety of industries to know what works and doesn’t work.

And if you ever write a press release in first-person we just can’t be friends.