Why Most Press Releases Fail (And How to Fix Yours in 2026)

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Founder Fortuna shares real examples from running It Really Works Vitamins, explains why PR doesn’t land, and how founders can get coverage that actually works, without a PR agency. Why Most Press Releases Fail (And How to Fix Yours in 2026) Excerpt: Most press releases don’t fail loudly, they just disappear. Fortuna, founder of It Really Works Vitamins, shares what actually went wrong, why PR feels so frustrating for founders, and how to start getting real coverage without wasting time or money. TL;DR (for busy founders) Most press releases fail and it’s not because PR “doesn’t work.” It’s because they’re written in absolutely the wrong way. Read this carefully because this could apply to you if your press releases are going nowhere. Here’s some questions to ask of your press release. Is your press release written for the business, not the journalist? Does it announce things instead of actually saying anything interesting? Does it lead with sheer founder excitement instead of actual relevance? And then your gorgeous pitch gets sent to the wrong people, at the wrong time, with no real angle. I’ve one million per cent been there with my first business, ItReallyWorksVitamins.com. When I first tried PR with my own business, I thought I was doing everything right. I wrote what felt like a “serious” press release, sent it out, and couldn’t help refreshing my email inbox. Nothing. Not even a polite no. Just silence. And it’s frustrating, because you start thinking… is it me? Is it the product? Does PR just not work? But the truth is, PR does work. Most of us are just following a totally outdated playbook. When press releases actually land, it’s because they lead with a real story, insight, or problem, they’re written for one specific journalist, not “the media”, they plug into something already being talked about, and they respect how journalists actually work today. This article breaks down exactly why most press releases fall flat, the mistakes founders keep repeating without even realising, and what actually works instead, based on real experience, not theory. Because once it clicks, PR stops feeling confusing… and starts feeling like a serious growth channel. Where ContactJournalists.com fits in PR gets much easier when you stop guessing. ContactJournalists.com helps founders and small teams find journalists who actually cover their space, respond to real, live journalist requests, pitch relevant stories instead of sending generic press releases, save time by focusing only on angles journalists want right now, and build consistent press coverage without hiring a PR agency. No fluff. No mass blasting. No burnout for you, the founder. 👉 Start your 7-day free trial of ContactJournalists.com and see how different PR feels when relevance comes first. Contents What this guide covers A proper founder-friendly breakdown of why press releases get ignored, what journalists actually care about, and how to start writing PR that feels relevant instead of random. 1 Why press releases die a miserable death Why most pitches disappear quietly instead of getting rejected. 2 The announcement trap Why “we’re excited to announce” usually gets ignored. 3 How journalists actually read your email What happens inside a busy journalist inbox. 4 Bad press release examples The common founder mistakes that kill coverage. 5 Good press release examples How better framing can completely change the outcome. 6 The angle problem How to find a story without forcing one. 7 Why “professional” writing hurts PR Why clear, human writing beats corporate polish. 8 Mass blasting vs targeted pitching Why one relevant email beats fifty generic ones. 9 Subject lines that actually get opened How to make your pitch feel like a story, not admin. 10 Timing, trends, and why “now” matters Why timing can make or break a perfectly good story. 11 What actually worked for me as a founder Real lessons from running It Really Works Vitamins. 12 Why press still matters for SEO How coverage builds trust, backlinks and visibility. 13 Why ContactJournalists.com was built The founder-friendly PR system behind the platform. 14 Final takeaway Especially if PR has ever felt like shouting into the void. Most press releases fail because they’re written from inside the business, not from the journalist’s point of view. 1. Why press releases die a miserable death Most press releases don’t fail in a dramatic, obvious way. You don’t get a rejection, you don’t get feedback, and you definitely don’t get a polite “not for us.” They just disappear, which is arguably worse, because you’re left wondering whether anyone even got the chance to read it. In most cases, the issue isn’t the product, the business, or even the writing. It’s the perspective. Press releases are usually written from inside the business looking out, rather than from the outside looking in. And when you’re a founder, that’s completely understandable. You’re sitting on months or years of context. You know the backstory, the problem you’re solving, how long everything has taken, and why this moment feels significant. So when you write it all down, it feels obvious that someone should care. But a journalist doesn’t have any of that context. They’re opening emails in between deadlines, edits, meetings, Slack notifications, and whatever article they’re trying to finish that day. According to research from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism , newsroom workloads have increased significantly in recent years, with journalists producing more content, faster, often across multiple formats. That means they’re not sitting there carefully reading every pitch. They’re scanning quickly, making snap decisions, and moving on. Your email isn’t being read in isolation, it’s being compared, instantly, to dozens of other pitches that landed in their inbox that same morning. If the relevance isn’t immediately clear, your pitch just doesn’t get chosen. This is the bit that almost no one tells founders. Press releases don’t usually fail because they’re “wrong,” they fail because they assume the reader already understands the significance. Journalists don’t, and realistically, they’re not going to dig for it. Industry advice from Cision consistently highlights that relevance, timing, and clarity in the first few seconds are what determine whether a pitch gets opened, read, or ignored. That gap, between how important something feels internally and how it lands cold in someone else’s inbox, is where most press releases quietly die. Once you see that clearly, PR stops feeling random. You stop taking the silence personally, and you start writing in a completely different way, with the reader in mind first, not the business. 👉 This is exactly why ContactJournalists.com exists, to help founders see what journalists actually care about before they pitch, instead of guessing and hoping for the best. 2. The announcement trap (and why it kills coverage) One of the biggest mistakes I made early on, and one I see constantly now, is confusing announcements with news. It feels logical at first. You launch something, you tell the press. So you write a press release announcing it. Subject: Press Release: New Product Launch We’re excited to announce the launch of our new vitamin supplement, designed to support everyday health and wellbeing using premium ingredients… I sent versions of this. Many times. The problem isn’t grammar or effort. It’s perspective. This kind of press release only works if the reader already cares about the brand. Journalists don’t. They care about stories their audience will engage with, not company updates. An announcement answers the question: what did we do? A story answers the question: why does this matter right now? That distinction is everything. Here’s what changed things for me. I stopped starting with the product or the launch, and started with the issue around it. Subject: Why one-third of women taking supplements are still deficient Data from a UK supplement brand shows that despite daily vitamin use, a significant number of women aged 25–45 are still showing signs of deficiency, raising questions about formulation and absorption. Same business and product, but a much more interesting starting point. One is an announcement that only matters to you, and obviously you and your brand matter, but you know what I mean. The other is a story a journalist can immediately place in a wider conversation about health, nutrition, and consumer behaviour. This is where most founders get stuck. They assume the press release is the story. It isn’t. It’s just the vehicle. The story sits outside the business, not inside it. Once I understood that, coverage stopped feeling like luck. 👉 If reframing like this feels difficult, you’re not doing anything wrong. Most founders struggle here. Start your 7-day free trial of ContactJournalists.com and see the kinds of angles journalists are already actively looking for. We’ve made sure that we’re affordable for solopreneurs, with prices starting at a cute £14 per month. Just what you need to get started :) Good PR starts to feel calmer when you stop mass blasting and start looking for relevance first. 3. How journalists actually read your email This is the part most founders never really see, and once you understand it, everything about PR starts to make a lot more sense. Journalists are not sitting there with a coffee, carefully reading press releases from top to bottom. They’re busy, usually juggling multiple deadlines, editing pieces, responding to messages, and trying to get something filed on time. Your email lands in that environment, and if it gets opened at all, it’s not being read slowly, it’s being scanned in seconds. That isn’t just a theory either. Research from the Nielsen Norman Group shows that people rarely read content word for word online and instead scan quickly for relevant information. Journalists operate in an even more intense version of that behaviour because of the sheer volume of emails they receive. Industry analysis from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism also highlights how newsroom workloads have increased significantly, with journalists expected to produce more content, faster, often across multiple platforms. So when your email is opened, what’s happening is a rapid filtering process. The journalist is quickly trying to work out whether this is relevant to what they cover, whether there is an actual story here rather than just a company update, whether the importance is immediately clear, and whether it’s something their editor or audience would care about. If that relevance doesn’t land within the first few lines, they move on. Not because they’re dismissive or uninterested, but because they simply don’t have the time to figure it out. This is where a lot of founders get tripped up. You can write something that is clear, well-structured, and genuinely explains your business properly, and it still won’t get picked up. The issue is not clarity, it’s expectation. Most press releases assume the reader will take a moment to understand why something matters, when in reality, that judgement is being made almost instantly. What journalists are really looking for are immediate cues that your story connects to something bigger than just your company, that it sits within a wider conversation people are already having, and that it would feel relevant and interesting to their audience right now. If they have to work to uncover that, the opportunity is usually gone. Anything that slows that decision down works against you. Long introductions, company histories, mission statements, and “about us” sections all add friction at exactly the wrong moment. They ask the journalist to invest time and attention before they’ve decided whether the story is worth it, which, in a fast-moving inbox, is a losing strategy. That’s why opening lines matter so much. They’re not just a warm-up, they’re the entire decision point. If you compare something like “Founded in 2018, our company has always believed in transparency, quality, and innovation” with “Customers are quietly abandoning daily supplements due to side effects, according to new data from a UK brand,” the difference is immediate. One asks the reader to be patient and piece things together, while the other gives them a clear reason to pay attention straight away. This isn’t about being dramatic or turning everything into clickbait. It’s about understanding how journalists actually work and respecting the pace at which they have to make decisions. Once I stopped writing press releases as if someone was going to read every word and started writing them with the expectation that they’d be skimmed in seconds, everything changed. The way I structured ideas, the way I opened emails, and the way I thought about relevance all shifted, and the results followed. This is also why responding to live journalist requests works so much better than cold pitching. When you’re replying to someone who is already actively looking for a story, you’re no longer trying to create interest from scratch, you’re stepping into something that already exists. That’s exactly the gap ContactJournalists.com is designed to close, helping founders see what journalists actually want before they pitch, instead of guessing and hoping it lands. 4. Bad press release examples (and exactly why they fail) Ok lets dive real-world examples of the kind of press releases founders send all the time, followed by why they don’t work. Example 1: The generic launch announcement Subject: Press Release – New Platform Launch We’re excited to announce the launch of our new platform, designed to revolutionise the way businesses manage their operations. With cutting-edge features and an intuitive interface, our solution empowers users to streamline workflows and increase efficiency. Why this fails: Nothing here is wrong. But nothing here is specific either. “Excited to announce” is meaningless to a journalist, “revolutionise” tells them nothing, there’s no problem, no tension, no wider relevance, and it could be sent by any company in any industry. A journalist can’t tell who this is for, why it matters now, or how it fits into anything they’re already covering. So they skip it. Example 2: The brand-heavy, buzzword-filled release Our brand is committed to innovation, excellence, and delivering premium solutions that help customers unlock their full potential in today’s fast-paced digital landscape. This one usually comes from a well-meaning attempt to sound polished. Why it fails: It’s vague, interchangeable, doesn’t say anything concrete, and gives the journalist no story to extract. Journalists don’t quote this kind of language. They don’t build stories around it. It’s filler. Example 3: The “about us” opener Founded by experienced entrepreneurs, our company was created with the mission of solving common challenges faced by modern businesses… Why it fails: Founders care about the origin story. Journalists usually don’t, at least not at the start. This kind of opening assumes the reader is already invested. They aren’t. You haven’t earned their attention yet. Example 4: The mass-blast email Hi, Please see our press release below and let us know if you would be interested in covering it. Kind regards, Why it fails: This tells the journalist everything they need to know. It wasn’t written for them, no thought went into whether it fits their beat, and they’re being asked to do the work. It’s not offensive. It’s just very easy to ignore. The common thread in all of these examples is the same. They’re written from the business’s point of view and they explain what the company did. These press releases also assume the reader will join the dots. The journalists won’t. In the next section, we’re going to flip this on its head and look at what actually works, using the same types of businesses but showing how small shifts in framing can completely change the outcome. 👉 And if you read those examples and think, “oh God… I’ve sent something like that before,” you’re not alone. That’s exactly why ContactJournalists.com exists, to help founders avoid these traps and focus on stories journalists actually want. We’ve got you so you can explore it properly, and pricing starts at just £14 per month, which is ideal if you’re a solopreneur doing all of this yourself and just want something that actually works without the agency price tag. Press angles usually come from behaviour, timing, data or tension, not from simply announcing that your company exists. 5. Good press release examples (and why they actually work) This is the part I wish I’d been shown earlier. Because once you see why good press releases work, it becomes obvious that most bad ones never stood a chance. What’s important to understand is that good press releases don’t feel like press releases at all. They feel like the start of a story. Example 1: Turning a product into a story What I used to send: Subject: New Vitamin Supplement Launch We’re launching a new daily vitamin designed to support women’s health using premium ingredients. This went nowhere. What started getting traction: Subject: Why women are quietly stopping daily supplements After analysing customer feedback, a UK supplement brand found that many women were abandoning daily vitamins due to digestive side effects, raising questions about how most formulas are designed. Why this works: It starts with behaviour, not a product. It highlights a problem journalists recognise, invites questions instead of answering everything, and fits into wider conversations around health and consumer trust. Example 2: Data-led, not brand-led Another thing that worked far better for me was leading with data or observation, even if it came from a small business. Weak version: Our brand has seen significant growth over the past year as more customers choose our products. Stronger version: A small UK supplement brand noticed a sharp increase in repeat purchases during periods of economic uncertainty, suggesting customers are prioritising products they already trust. Why this works: It’s not bragging, it’s observational, it gives journalists something to explore, and it taps into a wider economic narrative. Journalists don’t need your growth story. They need insight they can place in context. Example 3: Founder story, used at the right moment Founder stories can work, but timing matters. What didn’t work for me: Founded by a female entrepreneur passionate about health and wellbeing… What did: After years of reacting badly to common supplements, a founder began questioning whether daily vitamins were actually designed for long-term use. Why this works: The problem comes first, the founder appears naturally rather than as a headline, and it feels relevant instead of promotional. This mirrors advice from PR educators like Prowly , who explain that journalists respond better when founders are introduced through context, not credentials. The common thread in good press releases is that they start with something bigger than the business, make the relevance obvious, let the brand appear naturally, and give the journalist space to shape the story. Once I stopped trying to “sell” the business and started trying to contribute to a conversation, PR became far less frustrating. 👉 This is exactly the shift ContactJournalists.com is built around, helping founders spot and pitch stories journalists already care about, instead of forcing announcements into inboxes. 6. The angle problem (and how to find one without forcing it) When founders say “I don’t think I have an angle”, what they usually mean is “I’m too close to this to see it”. I felt this constantly. You’re living inside the business. Everything feels normal to you. That makes it hard to spot what’s actually interesting from the outside. An angle isn’t something you invent. It’s something you notice. Angles naturally come from things like customer behaviour changes, friction, frustration, data you already have, timing, and wider context. Journalists love behaviour shifts, so if customers are buying less but more often, delaying purchases, switching brands for unexpected reasons, or asking the same question again and again, that can be the beginning of a story. When I noticed customers spacing out their supplement purchases during certain periods, that wasn’t a brand story. It was a consumer behaviour story. That’s the difference. Any recurring problem is a potential angle. If customers keep asking the same question, if people misunderstand something about your industry, or if there’s a gap between expectation and reality, those moments are gold because they signal confusion, and confusion is often newsworthy. Founders also underestimate how useful their own data is. You don’t need a massive survey. Patterns in orders, enquiries, returns, and feedback can all form the basis of a story. Journalists regularly cite small datasets when they illustrate a wider trend. It’s the insight that matters, not the scale. The same story can also succeed or fail depending on when you send it. Economic pressure, seasonal shifts, regulatory changes, and cultural moments all affect whether something lands. Understanding timing is something journalists talk about openly, and Nieman Lab has written about how generic PR emails get ignored when they don’t connect to the journalist’s work or the moment. The test I now use Whenever I’m not quite sure if something is actually a strong angle, I run a really simple check in my head. I ask myself whether this would still be interesting if my company name wasn’t attached to it at all. If the honest answer is no, then it’s usually not there yet. And to be fair, this is the hard part. When you’re deep in the day-to-day of running a business, everything feels important because you’ve lived it. You know the effort behind it, the stress, the time, the why. But that doesn’t automatically make it interesting to someone on the outside. Finding good angles does get easier the more you do it, but it still takes a bit of stepping back, which isn’t always easy when you’re in the middle of everything. That’s exactly why responding to live journalist requests tends to work so much better than cold pitching. You’re not trying to force an angle out of your own business, you’re stepping into something where the angle already exists. 👉 Start your 7-day free trial of ContactJournalists.com and see what journalists are actively asking for, instead of guessing what might land. Plans start at just £14 per month, which makes it a really solid option if you’re a solopreneur trying to make PR work without burning time or money. Clear, human writing beats corporate polish because journalists need something concrete they can actually use. 7. Why “professional” writing quietly kills press coverage This one took me years to unlearn. When I was running It Really Works Vitamins, I thought the key to getting press was sounding credible. Grown up. Polished. Like a “proper company”. So I wrote press releases the way I thought businesses were supposed to write. They were neat. They were professional. They were also completely forgettable. At the time, I didn’t realise I was writing for myself, not for the person reading it. A lot of founders fall into this trap. You assume journalists expect formal language, brand values, carefully worded statements, and corporate-sounding quotes. In reality, most journalists are actively turned off by that style. They’re not looking for marketing copy. They’re looking for something concrete they can work with. A problem. An observation. A moment of tension. A human experience. This isn’t just my opinion looking back. PR educators like Prowly make this point when breaking down common press release mistakes, especially the tendency to over-polish at the expense of clarity. When I finally stripped my writing back and started using plain language, responses improved. Instead of: Our brand is committed to delivering premium quality health solutions through innovation and excellence… I started writing things like: After reacting badly to most supplements I tried, I realised many formulas weren’t designed for everyday use. That sentence isn’t clever. It isn’t polished. But it’s usable. Journalists can quote it. Build around it. Ask follow-up questions. That’s the difference. If you’re a founder, this can feel uncomfortable at first. It feels like you’re being “less professional”. You’re not. You’re being clearer. And clarity is what journalists respond to. 👉 This is one of the reasons I built ContactJournalists.com , to help founders stop second-guessing how they “should” sound, and focus on what journalists actually use. 8. Mass blasting vs targeted pitching (and how I burned time without realising it) This is another area where I wasted a huge amount of energy early on. When you’re running a business and stretched thin, mass blasting feels efficient. You write one press release, build a list, and send it out. I did this. Repeatedly. At the time, it felt logical. Surely one of them would bite. What I didn’t realise was that this approach was actively working against me. Journalists can spot a mass email instantly. The tone is generic, the opening is vague, and there’s no indication you know what they actually cover. So the email gets skimmed, clocked as irrelevant, and ignored. This is something journalists complain about publicly all the time. Nieman Lab has written about why generic PR emails go straight to the bin, especially when it’s obvious the sender hasn’t researched the journalist’s beat. Cision has also published advice explaining that relevance, not volume, is one of the biggest factors in whether a pitch gets opened. Once I understood this, I changed how I approached pitching. Instead of asking, “Who can I send this to?”, I started asking, “Who would this actually be useful for?” That shift alone saved me time. A targeted pitch doesn’t need to be long. It just needs to be specific. Hi Anna, I saw you recently covered digestive health and supplements. We’ve noticed a spike in customers stopping daily vitamins due to side effects and would be happy to share anonymised data if useful. That’s it. No attachment. No long intro. No brand waffle. Just 100% relevance. One email like that is worth more than fifty generic ones. This is also why responding to journalist requests works so well. The relevance problem is already solved. The journalist has told you exactly what they’re working on. 👉 ContactJournalists.com is built around this principle. Instead of mass blasting and hoping, you respond to real requests or pitch journalists who are already a natural fit. 👉 Start your 7-day free trial of ContactJournalists.com and see how much calmer PR feels when you stop shouting into the void. Subject lines matter because the best press release in the world cannot work if it never gets opened. 9. Subject lines that actually get opened (what finally clicked for me) For a long time, I completely underestimated subject lines. When I was running my supplement brand, I’d spend ages getting the press release itself “right”. I’d tweak the wording, rewrite the quote three times, think about the structure, make sure everything sounded polished… and then I’d throw a safe, slightly boring subject line on top and hit send. Things like “Press Release”, “New Product Launch”, “Company Announcement”. It felt professional. It felt sensible. It also got ignored. It took me far longer than it should have to realise that none of the work inside the email matters if the email isn’t opened in the first place. Journalists aren’t opening things out of politeness, they’re scanning quickly, often on their phones, making fast decisions about what’s worth their attention and what isn’t. The shift happened when I stopped treating subject lines like admin labels and started treating them like headlines. Not in a dramatic, clickbait way, but in a way that actually gave the reader a reason to care. I remember the difference really clearly. I used to send: New Supplement Launch What started getting opened: Why customers are quietly stopping daily supplements Same product, same business, same story underneath it all, but a completely different outcome. The second version hints at behaviour, creates a bit of curiosity, and suggests there’s something going on that might be worth looking into. It feels like the beginning of a story, not a notification. There’s a simple rule I use now which has saved me a lot of time. If the subject line wouldn’t work as a headline, it probably won’t work in someone’s inbox either. And importantly, that doesn’t mean being dramatic for the sake of it, it just means making the relevance clear upfront. 10. Timing, trends, and why “now” matters more than you think This was another lesson that only really landed after a lot of frustration. I’ve sent genuinely strong stories at the wrong time and watched them go nowhere. I’ve also sent fairly average ideas at exactly the right moment and seen them get picked up. When you’re inside your own business, it’s very easy to think a story exists on its own. In reality, timing is often the thing that gives it meaning. Journalists are always working within a wider context. That might be economic pressure, seasonal behaviour, regulatory changes, or just conversations that are already happening in the background. A story about supplement costs, for example, lands very differently when people are already talking about inflation and household spending compared to when those topics aren’t front of mind. The exact same email sent six months earlier might have been ignored completely. This isn’t guesswork either. Research from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism regularly highlights how newsroom priorities shift depending on the wider news cycle, and how relevance to the moment often matters more than how “good” a story is in isolation. Understanding that changed how I approached PR. Instead of asking whether something was a good story, I started asking whether it was a good story right now. That one shift alone saves a huge amount of wasted effort. It’s also why responding to live journalist requests works so well. You’re not guessing the timing, you’re stepping into something that already exists, where the journalist is actively looking for input that day. 11. What actually worked for me over time, as a founder Looking back at my time building my supplement brand, the biggest change wasn’t one tactic or one clever trick. It was how I thought about PR as a whole. What worked consistently wasn’t sending more press releases, sounding more impressive, or writing longer explanations. In fact, those things often made it harder. What made the difference was paying attention to what journalists were already covering, framing ideas around behaviour rather than products, and focusing on being clear rather than polished. I also found that pitching fewer people, but doing it more thoughtfully, led to far better results than trying to reach everyone at once. Once I stopped treating PR like something I had to push out into the world and started treating it like something I could step into and contribute to, it became a lot less draining. And that matters more than people realise. When you’re running a business, your energy is limited. Every ignored email chips away at your motivation. Every silent inbox makes PR feel like something that just doesn’t work. That’s a big part of why I ended up building ContactJournalists.com . Not because I love PR tools, but because I’d been through that exact cycle of effort, silence, and second-guessing myself, and I knew there had to be a better way to approach it. Press coverage can keep working long after the email is sent, building trust, backlinks and visibility over time. 12. Why press still matters for SEO, backlinks, and long-term growth This is the part I massively underestimated at the time. When I was running my brand, I initially saw press as a visibility play. Something that might drive a spike in traffic or give a bit of credibility. What I didn’t fully appreciate was how powerful it is from an SEO perspective, and how long the impact can last. A good piece of coverage doesn’t just send traffic for a day or two. It strengthens your presence over time in a way that compounds quietly in the background. One of the main reasons for that is backlinks. When a reputable publication links to your site, it sends a strong signal to Google that your business is trustworthy. These aren’t low-quality links or something you’ve placed yourself, they’re editorial references, which carry a lot more weight. Moz has explained for years that backlinks from authoritative sites remain one of the strongest ranking signals. In practical terms, that means your domain becomes more trusted, your pages have a better chance of ranking, and your overall visibility improves. I saw this happen first-hand. After a few solid pieces of coverage, pages that had struggled to rank suddenly started moving, even though nothing else had changed. There’s also a more subtle effect, which is trust. When your brand starts appearing alongside established publications, it builds credibility not just with search engines, but with people. Someone landing on your site and seeing references or coverage from known outlets immediately feels more confident in what you’re offering. Research from Nielsen has consistently shown that people trust editorial content far more than traditional advertising, which explains why this effect is so powerful. Even when a link isn’t included, press can still support SEO indirectly. It can increase branded searches, lead to other websites referencing you, and create a ripple effect where your name starts appearing in more places. SEO platforms like Ahrefs have written about how brand mentions and wider visibility contribute to how search engines understand authority. I noticed this pattern clearly. One piece of coverage would lead to another mention, then another link, then more people searching for the brand. It wasn’t immediate, but it built over time. That’s the key difference. Paid ads stop the moment you stop paying. Press keeps working. 13. Why ContactJournalists.com was built (and who it’s actually for) ContactJournalists.com wasn’t built because I wanted to create a PR tool. It came from a slightly uncomfortable realisation after years of doing this myself, which is that most founders aren’t bad at PR, they’re just trying to do it in a way that doesn’t match how journalism works anymore. I did everything I thought I was supposed to do. I wrote press releases, built media lists, sent emails, and waited. Sometimes it worked, often it didn’t, and when it didn’t, there was no real feedback. You’re left wondering whether the angle was wrong, the timing was off, or you just contacted the wrong person. That uncertainty is exhausting when you’re already trying to run a business. What founders actually need isn’t more templates or theory. It’s visibility. Being able to see what journalists are working on, what they’re actively looking for, and where you might genuinely fit into that. That’s the gap ContactJournalists.com is designed to fill. It’s not really for blasting announcements out into the world, it’s for approaching PR in a way that feels more intentional and far more manageable alongside everything else you’re doing. 14. Final takeaway (especially if PR has ever felt “not for you”) If you’ve read this far, there’s a good chance you’ve tried PR before and felt like it just didn’t work. You wrote the press release, sent the emails, waited, and got nothing back. That doesn’t mean PR isn’t right for your business. More often than not, it just means the approach you were using wasn’t built for how things actually work now. Press releases tend to fall flat when they focus on announcing rather than contributing, when they assume interest instead of earning it, and when they prioritise the business over the story. On the other hand, PR starts to work when you lead with insight, pay attention to timing, write like a human being, and approach people more thoughtfully rather than trying to reach everyone. I learned all of this the long way, while running a real business with real pressure and very limited time, so none of this comes from theory. You don’t need a big budget, and you don’t need to be “good at PR”. What you need is a clearer way of seeing what actually matters and a way to respond to it without wasting hours guessing. If PR has ever felt like shouting into the void, that’s usually why. When it’s done properly, it doesn’t feel like that at all. It builds quietly in the background, strengthening your visibility, your credibility, and your growth over time. And that’s when it starts to feel worth it! Ready to make PR feel less painful? Start your 7-day free trial of ContactJournalists.com and see what journalists are actually asking for right now. Plans start at £14 per month, which makes it perfect for solopreneurs who want PR without the agency price tag.