How do you spread your news?

5th January 2010 | Posted in Uncategorized

Once upon a time a press release was printed, stapled together, and mailed out to all and sundry in the hope it could be included in a magazine’s news pages.

As an editor, I would receive tens if not hundreds of these releases a day. As we were a small publication, we didn’t have the resources to follow up too many stories, or even re-write them. The releases that made it into our publication were the ones that were relevant to our readers, were already well-written, did not brag but stated the facts and claims clearly, and could easily be edited down to fit the space available.

Times have changed, but success for releases still hinges on these criteria. Keep your messages clear, realistic, grammatically correct, and written so they can be edited from the bottom up.

Now of course, press releases are distributed by email. As well as sending out your releases to a well researched and targeted media audience, you can add them to one of the many press release electronic distribution lists*. Optimise your release with keywords, and you will attract the attention of search engines, raising the profile of your release and driving more traffic to your web site.

Making space on your own web site to publish your latest press releases is a good plan. Research has shown that journalists want to visit your site for more information beyond the release.

You can also use social media to make more noise about your release. Mentioning the news on Twitter and other networking sites will expand your audience again.

Press release distribution sites (free and paid) include:

– Business Wire
– PR Newswire
– PRWeb
– 24-7 Press Release
– PR Zoom
– PR Leap
– I-Newswire
– Webwire
– ClickPress
– PR.com
– PR Log
– eReleases
– MarketWire

(Thanks to Webpronews.com for the list.)