SHIFT Communications, in partnership with Marketwire, examined a sample of 5,000 press releases published in 2012 and looked at the most commonly used words in them. The top overused words this year included global (used in 2,162 press releases), forward (1,287 press releases), solutions (1,275 releases), international (1,266 releases), and leading (1,275 releases). How many of these words appeared in your news releases, blog posts, and other publc relations materials in 2012 - and how many will you replace with more unique, more valuable words in 2013?

If you’re running out of words, don’t hesitate to ask for help! Contact SHIFT Communications today and work with our team of imaginative smarties to help your own story stand out. Learn more at http://www.shiftcomm.com today, or follow SHIFT @shiftcomm on Twitter.

Methodology statement: a random sampling of 5,000 press releases was chosen from Marketwire’s newsroom feed for 2012. Press releases were de-duped of boilerplate statements to only focus on the actual content of the releases themselves. Common words such as the, an, a, etc. were removed manually from the data once processed.

theof

MOSTglobal: 2162

forward: 1287

announced: 980

largest: 594

best: 903

effective: 313

standard: 289

performance: 874

experience: 804

outstanding: 332

investment: 765

social: 740

releases: 696

strategy: 297

benefits: 328

important: 524

environment: 328

integrated: 332record: 297

offers: 692

facebook: 606

impact: 513

success: 340

advanced: 338

features: 347

announces: 690 social: 740

brand: 574

worldwide: 567

solutions: 1275

international: 1266 strategic: 391

partnership: 392

twitter: 492

innovation: 374

growth: 1078 well-positioned: 1070

leading: 1275

solution: 470

award: 453

growing: 366 significant: 464

innovative: 419

natural: 453

enviornmental: 406

better: 452

strong: 443

latest: 403

opportunity: 394

OVERUSEDPR WORDS

2012