When I was a newspaper reporter, on slow news days, my editors used to hand me stacks of press releases that had been faxed to us, and ask me to find something worth writing about.

Think about it. Dozens of press releases, and I only was going to pick out one or two at most, and the rest were going to end up shoved into the recycling bin by the copy machine.

So which press release would I pick?

I can tell you right now that if it didn’t have any angle of local interest, odds were it was going to go into the bin. If it was poorly written and filled with typos, it was DEFINITELY going right into the bin. 

Here are some of the things that would make me, or an editor, look twice at a press release:

1.) If it had some useful news to our local readership. Contest giving away a free tank of gas or a month’s worth of groceries IN OUR GEOGRAPHICAL AREA? That might do it.

2.)  A Hollywood style tie-in. Yes, it’s going to be hard to get a celebrity to come to your store or promote your product unless you are very wealthy and can throw a lot of money at them. So look at ways to tie in to celebrity trends; for example, "The Next Internet Millionaire" was a great concept because it ties in to the ongoing fascination with reality shows. 

3.) If you have created a new product, offer a sample to the appropriate editor or reporter for review.

4.) Fundraisers. I know I harp on this one a lot, but it’s true: a fundraiser is a GREAT way to grab lots of press. Is there a local family in need, displaced by a fire, etc.? Can you help out an animal shelter? A battered women’s shelter? It’s almost a sure bet that you can get your business some local press if you hold al fundraiser. 

5.) Publicity stunts. Don’t go crazy, and don’t violate the law, but sponsoring a Santa parade or celebrity lookalike contest, or a pet-owner lookalike contest, just to name a few ideas, is a great way to get the press to show up. 

And tomorrow, I will write a post about the one thing that you can do that will greatly, exponentially increase the chance of your press release being picked up by local media.

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I mentioned in my last post that there is one simple trick that you can do to hugely increase the chance that your press release will be picked up by the media, and here it is:

Pick up the phone. 

If you want great traffic, backlinks, branding, and exposure all over the internet, then online press release distribution sites are a great solution.

But if you have a story that genuinely has a newsworthy angle, you need to take things a step further and make a list of all the potential media outlets who might be interested in your story, and contact them.

Or hire a publicist/press release professional to do it for you. 

You need to talk to someone in the newsroom, find out who the right editor or reporter is to submit your press release to, and how to do it – fax? email? What day? How much lead time do they need?

Then you need to get your press release to them.

Then if you don’t hear back after a few days you need to follow up with a polite telephone call.

Personal contact makes all the difference in the world; odds are not great that the media outlets who would be interested in your news, are scouring the web at the exact same time that you placed a story on a free press release distribution site. So you need to follow up with some effort. It can take time, persistence, patience, finesse, and a thick skin, but getting actual media coverage is worth it’s weight in gold. 

Final note: not all press releases/stories have an angle that’s going to interest the media, although you can often find an angle or create an angle. 

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I have updated the list of free press release distribution sites that I use. Some formerly free sites started charging a fee, some were too annoyingly finicky and quirky and buggy so I removed them rather than tear my hair out every time I wanted to submit a press release, and then I found a few new ones to replace old ones that I removed from my list.

And if you know of any good free press release sites that are not on this list – please let me know! 

These are all sites where I have successfully created accounts and submitted press releases – there are a couple of dozen sites where I spent a lot of time trying to create an account or trying to submit a press release and was not successful. Needless to say, I left those sites off the list. 

So these are the ones that actually have worked for me. 

Are free press release sites worth your time? Based on my experience and my clients' experience, I would say most definitely. 

Advantages of free press release sites: They are a fast, free, easy, way to get your message and your company name all over the internet. Some of them are fairly high page rank which passes along some good link juice. I've gotten my clients 6 of the top 10 Google listings on the front page of google, for the keywords we selected, using free press release sites. (There's never a guarantee of this, of course; Google does what Google wants.)

Disadvantages: Many (but not all) of these sites require you to create an account, which is time consuming and tedious the first time around. Think half a day, at least, of sitting there entering in all your information, waiting for the confirmation email to show up, clicking on that link so you can enter your press release, etc. Also, these sites don't allow you to use anchor text, although you can of course put your website's URL in them, so you still get backlinks. And most of them don't allow you to include pictures or video; for that you have to use a site like www.prweb.com. 

All of the free sites have options for you to pay amounts ranging from $3 to hundreds of dollars for instant placement rather than waiting a few days, better exposure, HTML links in your press release, etc. I have not yet experimented with those to see what the results would be. 

So, without further ado, here is the NEW, UPDATED list of free press release sites that I am currently using: 

http://www.ecommwire.com – only for stories about ecommerce

 http://www.downloadjunction.com/submit_press_release – for press releases about software

http://www.techprspider.com

http://www.prhwy.com

http://www.pressabout.com  

http://www.pressmethod.com 

http://www.1888pressrelease.com 

http://www.i-newswire.com 

http://www.24-7pressrelease.com 

http://openpr.com/

http://www.clickpress.com  

www.onlineprnews.com 

http://www.freepressindex.com 

http://www.free-press-release-center.info 

http://www.prurgent.com 

http://www.prlog.org 

http://www.pressexposure.com 

www.pressabout.com

http://www.free-press-release.com 

http://www.pagerelease.com 

http://www.pressreleasepoint.com  

http://www.bignews.biz  

http://www.newswiretoday.com 

http://www.pressrelease.com.np/submit-release/ 

www.prfocus.com 

http:pr-usa.net 

 http://www.usprwire.com    

www.ukprwire.com 

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 Here is the standard information that press release distribution sites require:

• Company name
• Company URL
• Contact person’s name, title, email address, telephone number
• Company physical address
• Photograph of company contact person, or company president, or new product, logo, etc., if desired – not a requirement but nice to have
• A short blurb about the company, 2-4 lines is fine. This can be about the history of the company, location of the company, what the company does, what distinguishes it and makes its products or services special.
• A brief summary of what the press release is going to say. This is generally featured on the press release distribution site’s home page, along with dozens of other summaries, so it should be compelling and well written. It should not repeat the first paragraph of the story; it should summarize in two or three sentences what the story is going to say.
• The body of the press release – should answer the standard who, what, where, when, and why questions.
• It should have at least one quote from someone at the company talking about why this news matters – if you are releasing a new product, say what’s great about it. If you have received an award, thank the people at your company and the award givers and talk about what it is about your company that caused you to win the award. If you are announcing a merger, provide a quote about how this merger will help you better serve customers from both companies.
• It can’t read like an advertisement.
• When you are writing a press release, even about you and your company, you need to write it in the third person.

When you provide this information to a professional press release writer – for instance, the experienced journalists at www.thepressreleasesite.com – they will be able to craft it into a compelling and attention grabbing press release which will present you in the best possible light. 

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