Here is the standard information that I need to write a press release, and then I also like to speak to the client to get an idea of what news angle we will be emphasizing – sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes we need to find or create one:

Your contact information – the press release sites require this:

Contact person’s name, title, email address, and telephone number
Company name
Company URL
Company physical address

Your keywords

A one paragraph bio about you and/or your company – things that you could include:
Where you’re located, what you do, what makes you and/or your company special and unique in your field, awards or honors that you’ve won, achievements, (have you helped clients create successful businesses? Have you trained hundreds of dogs? Worked with hundreds of clients to successfully achieve their weight loss/fitness goals?), your experience in your field, your educational background, etc.

News: What are you announcing? Types of news announcements: a new product, service, partnership, webinar or teleseminar coming up, book launch, movie release, ebook, an award won, your comments on a new study that is relevant to your business (a dermatologist commenting on a new medical study which has statistics about skin cancer, etc.)

A couple of quotes from you:

What is it that makes your news special, new? What’s in it for the reader? Why did you create this new product/write this new ebook/create this series of videos, or why are you holding this teleseminar or webinar, etc.?

For instance, Jackie Silver wrote a book called Aging Backwards –

"Everyone wants to stay young. I’m here to help make it easier," said Silver, whose book is available at Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com and on her Web site, http://agingbackwards.com/.

or Adryenn Ashley,  who was holding a bootcamp called Monetizing Your Passion:

 "Monetizing Your Passion is a training system designed to build credibility for your business and brand you as the expert in your field and transform your knowledge into products that can be sold worldwide,” according to Ashley.
 
"I often hear prospective clients say, ‘I’m not an expert!’ and I always ask ‘Would you say that to your customers?’  Everyone has expertise in their field and our proven techniques not only find that talent, but effectively showcase it the world."
 

Bookmark It

Your headline is one of the most important parts of your press release, because if the headline is boring, or vague and confusing, people have no reason to read any further.

Your headline needs to convey excitement and immediacy and immediately draw people into your press release. It needs to contain a strong action verb and it must sum up, in a dozen words or so, what your press release is all about.

And it needs to read like a headline on a newspaper story. 

"Award-winning Reporter Launches New Press Release Writing Service", for example.  Or "Personal Trainer Releases New Series of Flat-Abs-Now Videos", or "New Study Reveals Link Between Vaccines And Autism".  

One of the best ways to get an idea of what press release headlines should look like is to go to www.prweb.com and look through the headlines of the latest press releases they have posted.

Here are a list of action verbs to use in your press release headline: 

Announces

Appoints

Unveils

Reveals

Presents

Launches 

Promotes

Hosts

Upgrades

Expands

Provides

Introduces

Debuts

Offers

Improves

Selects

Reports

Supports

Joins Forces With

Unveils

Names

Is Recognized For

Invited To

Prevents (illness, major disaster, etc.) 

Recognizes

Awards

Is Presented With

Opens

Features

Reports

Honors

Visits

Bookmark It

The fact that you’re on a tight budget should not stop you from creating your own publicity campaign for your business, product and services. These days it is easy and cheap to be your own publicist; all you need to invest is a little time. 

Here are seven essential tools for your publicity campaign toolkit:

1.) A  webpage which advertises your products and services. Even if it’s a free blogspot blog, you need to grab yourself a piece of online real estate and show everyone what you’ve got. Every website should include testimonials, an "About Me" or "About Us" page, a "Contact Us"  Page, and an "Our Products" or "Our Services", and, if appropriate, samples of your work. (You don’t have testimonials because you’re a brand new business? Do some work for free in exchange for testimonials.)

2.) A "Media Room" or "press room" page on your website. So you’ve never been written up in the press? No big deal. Hire a press release writer – ahem, I’m available – or go to PRWeb and see how they’re written, and then write a press release about your business, and put that press release in the "Media Room" or "Press" page. Write a new press release and add it to this page every time you hire someone, form a merger, release a new product or service, offer a holiday special, win an award, attend a conference, etc. Consider sending the press releases out to free press release distribution sites, or www.webwire.com for $19.95, or www/PRWeb.com for $80.

3.) A Twitter account, Facebook account, and Linkedin account, all linking to your website, with your company bio on each site. Visit those sites regularly and participate in the communities. The payback is HUGE. 

4.) A signature line in your emails that helps spread your message. Set up your emails so that your name, email address, website URL, and links to your Twitter, Facebook, & Linkedin accounts, are in the signature line of each email that you send out, along with a one line summary of your USP.  Mine is "We Broadcast Your Message To the World." 

5.) Other people’s blogs! Use them to grab some link love, traffic, and free publicity. How? Simple.  Find the popular blogs in your field and offer to write blog posts for them in your area of expertise. This gives you backlinks, traffic, and conveys credibility.

6.) An online and offline press kit with a photograph of yourself and/or your product,  a one-page bio of yourself, and a page about your services/product/company. When I say "offline", I mean a printed version, ready to mail or hand to a reporter or editor.

7.) A list of media who might be interested in writing about you. Contact them, find out what reporter or editor you should submit press releases to, or pitch stories to, and regularly follow up with them with timely story ideas. Odds are good that if you are polite, persistant and professional and are pitching good stories, sooner or later someone in the mainstream media will feature you. 

Bookmark It

 When you are writing a press release,  it’s easy to get so caught up in finding a news hook and crafting a well written release that you forget about keyword research.

That would be a mistake.

Writing press releases these days is like writing articles for ezinearticles – it gains you valuable virtual real estate and backlinks, as well as traffic. It gets you out there where your potential customers are searching for answers – and you want to be in front of as many of those customers as possible.

So it is important to expand your thinking beyond the old fashioned "I’ll write a press release and fax it to tons of newsrooms and maybe someone will pick it up" approach.

Whether or not your aim is to be picked up by mainstream media, it is important that you take full advantage of  the power of press releases, and get the best possible search engine ranking for your PR, by using appropriate keywords in your headline and in the body of your text.

When I write press releases for clients I ask them what keywords they want me to target. Some provide a list, some ask me to do the keyword research for them.

You want a keyword or keyword phrase that is getting a decent amount of searches. Here’s an example; avoid foreclosure is getting 880 monthly searches. Avoid foreclosures is getting 6600.  That one little letter,  s, makes all the difference in the number of people searching for your press release. The more people that are searching for your phrase, the more people are going to come across your press release. And you wouldn’t know this without doing your keyword research. 

I use the Google Adwords external tool to find out approximate monthly search volume; it’s free.  Wordtracker has a free version of its service as well. 

You want to use the keyword in your headline, in the first paragraph, and maybe once more in the body of the press releases.  Don’t overdo it; the search engines see that as keyword stuffing and may not rank your press release as highly because of it. 

So just remember, the next time that you write a press release, doing your keyword research can make the difference between a press release that is barely visible and one that drives tons of traffic for you. It’s worth the few minutes that you spend researching your keywords. 

Bookmark It

 Once upon a time, when a business wanted publicity, they wrote up press releases and delivered them to a bunch of newspapers and possibly radio stations and television stations as well. Most of the time, those press releases got tossed in the garbage; I know this for a fact – I was one of the reporters doing the tossing.

The other options for businesses who wanted to announce their news, or even their existence, to the world, was to pay for advertising. This is expensive, and it’s very hard to tell how effective those advertising dollars really are.

But now it’s no longer necessary to seek publicity using just these venues – and in fact, smaller businesses with little money to spend on advertising, and who’ve had little success in getting media attention, can and often do bypass media and advertising altogether.

Why?

Because their audience isn’t reading newspapers and frequently isn’t even watching TV to find their information. They’re going online.

It kills me to say that, because I love newspapers. I used to eat, breathe, and sleep newspapers, I had newspaper ink for blood, and I hate that newspapers in their traditional form are dying, but we have to face facts:

When people want information these days, most of them go online. 

51.1 BILLION searches were run on Google in December, according to Nielsen Online. Yahoo had 1.56 billion, Microsoft 796 million,  AOL 352 million, and Ask.Com 172 million.

So spending a fortune on traditional advertising, and begging some stressed out, overworked editor to run your press release in their paper, is no longer the best way to get your message in front of the people who need your product or searches.

They are online, typing in questions like "How do I tone my abs?" or "How do I housebreak my adult dog?" or "What clears up teenage acne?" or "What’s the best website hosting service?"

This is actually good news for small businesses. It means that it is very easy to be your own publicist. You can craft your own campaign, get your name or your product name all over the web, WHERE YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE, and get a lot more exposure than you would have by using yesterday’s PR methods.

Don’t get me wrong – traditional media is great too, but it takes time, it takes money to hire a publicist, it takes persistence, it takes a thick skin to deal with irritated uninterested gatekeepers…and all the while, you have the ability to bypass that ineffective, hit or miss process, by creating your own online publicity campaign.

1.) Writing and distributing your own press releases by using free press release distribution sites.

2.) Writing articles for sites like Ezinearticles and Buzzle and Associatied Content and American Chronicle, for further exposure and authority.

3.) Creating your own videos and distributing them via Youtube

4.) Creating social media accounts and educating consumers on social media sites about who you are and what you do

5.) Blogging about your services and your area of expertise, and making your site an authority site filled up with vital information and resources – which establishes you as the expert in your area and pre-sells people who are considering buying your products. 

 So if you don’t have tens of thousands of dollars available to market yourself, don’t despair – these days,  you can create your own online publicity campaign, you can reach more people than you would through traditional media,  and you can do it for free. 

Bookmark It

1.  To promote a new product
2. To launch a new website or blog
3. To announce a contest
4. To announce hiring someone
5. Seasonal promotions
6. To promote a charitable campaign
7. To announce a merger or strategic partnership
8. If you’ve won an award or competition
9. If you’ve been recognized by an industry organization
10. To tie in your product or service with a national trend – the economy, the real estate market, etc.

Bookmark It

The holiday season is likely to be tough on most business owners this year, but you know what makes it tougher? Being invisible, so no customers can find you.

You know what helps make you visible?

How did you guess I was going to say press releases?

This being the season of giving, you most DEFINITELY want to show everyone that you and your business are good citizens and members of the community.  Contributing to charitable causes is a great way to get picked up by the media. And they score you karma points and make you feel good about yourself.

So pick a cause that you want to contribute to, and send out press releases to announce your charitable giveaway. Timely suggestions – a homeless shelter, a battered women’s shelter – these are really vulnerable populations who could use a pick-me-up this holiday season. 

Now: 

1.) If you have a brick and mortar business, find out what your charity needs, and ask your customers to help. Put up a poster in the front of the store, set out a big basket, and solicit donations of clean clothing, canned goods, etc. Write up a press release and send it to all of the local media to let them know about this. Before you send it out, find out the appropriate contact person at each media outlet, and when it is best to submit a press release to them.

2.) Get together with a group of other merchants to make the charitable campaign even more powerful – and list all of the stores on the press release, and talk about how you came together during the holiday season to create a happier holiday season for everybody. Perhaps all the stores on your block or in your strip shopping center would get in on this. Perhaps you can come up with complimentary gifts from area stores – say you own a beauty salon. You contribute toiletries to the local homeless shelter or battered women’s shelter, a shoe store contributes shoes, a clothing store contributes clothing, a grocery store contributes food, etc. 

3.) If you only have an online business, or your business does not lend itself to having customers stroll in and donate, you can still do this. Announce that you are offering a certain product or service for 20 percent off and all the proceeds for a certain time period – a day, a weekend – will go to charity. Send out the press release to online press release services announcing your giveaway. 

4.) Aside from charitable giving, there are other holiday promotions that can be done. Send out press releases to announce holiday specials, new products, sales, etc.

5.) Hold a contest and send out press releases to announce it. Make sure it has a holiday theme. Thanksgiving dinner for six delivered to someone’s home on Thanksgiving…a weekend getaway or a spa day for 2 during the holidays…maid service to clean up after holiday dinner…and so on. 

6.) Have Santa come to your store and send out a press release announcing it. Even better – Santa, a sleigh kids can sit on, and (most likely fake) reindeer. Fabulous photo opportunity! 

7.) Have a holiday decorating contest for kids, display all of the entries, and send out a press release announcing it and awarding prizes.

8.) Form a Christmas Caroling group with local merchants, go to senior citizen centers to perform Christmas Carols, and hand out gifts, and, you guessed it – announce this in a press release.  Do the same at a local children’s hospital.

9.) Have a mailbox for letters to Santa set up in your store, and answer all of the letters to Santa. Announce this in a press release.

10.) Collect hot selling items like a wii or an iphone, and raffle them off for charity at a holiday event. Did I mention, announce this in a press release? 

Bookmark It

If you are in business today, whether it is primarily offline or online, it’s extremely important that you monitor what people are saying about you. 

People may be praising you to the high heavens and recommending you to others – you should track them down and thank them! It’s unexpected and makes a huge impression. People may be furious at you and trashing you online – you should find out what’s wrong and fix the problem. Or at the very least present your side of the story.

When I griped about elance on Twitter, a company representative from elance promptly emailed me and asked how they could improve their service.

When I talked about PRWeb on Twitter they contacted me and asked me to be on their consumer advisory council. 

People on Twitter, and online in general these days, EXPECT their complaints to be heard. Several times I’ve seen someone mention that they complained about a company repeatedly on Twitter and the company never contacted them. This may not be fair, but this is reality. Don’t lose customers and suffer a tarnished reputation just because you haven’t bothered to find out what people think of you. 

There are a number of wonderful, free tools, including www.search.twitter.com,  Tweetbeep and Google Alerts, which make it easy. 

www.google.com/alerts

http://www.tweetbeep.com/

I also like to search for my name on www.addictomatic.com

Don’t forget to search for your name, company name, and your competitor’s names on Twitter Search

And if you want to spend all day long tracking everything like a CIA spy, visit Marketing Pilgrim and check out their great list of 26 buzz-monitoring sites:  Marketing Pilgrim

So what am I missing? If you have any other great reputation monitoring tools that I’ve missed – please let me know! 

Bookmark It

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.

Bookmark It