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Articles Index >> Marketing
How to Get Your Press Release Published
by Michael Cheney
If you’re looking to get free promotion in newspapers and magazines,
sending out a press release is a great way to go about it. I’ve been marketing
online for over ten years and I’ve had a lot of successes with sending
press releases.
The majority of my experience came from my ‘Over 50s’ website Seniority.co.uk.
When this website first started it was an unknown entity, so I immediately realized
getting coverage in the press was exactly what I needed to start getting traffic
and visitors to the site.
I also looked at competitors’ websites and noticed they had lots of coverage
in newspapers and magazines. At first I thought this wouldn’t be very
easy to achieve and that I’d need to send hundreds of faxes, hard copy
press releases and employ the services of a copywriting press release professional.
As I didn’t have the funds when I first started out, I had to do all
of this myself. I took a slightly different approach to my press release strategy
and didn’t bother using any hardcopy materials. Instead, I created a press
release via email. To ensure my press releases got read, I focused them on each
specific publication and tailored them by hand.
I then specifically tailored each press release so that it was specific to
the actual publication I was sending it to. So rather than creating one blanket
press release, I created several hundred press releases that were all similar
but had slight differences depending on the publication or newspaper I was targeting.
I also made sure that I sent the press release to a named individual. This
enabled me to include their name in the email and gave it that extra personal
touch. I also tested, tested and retested over and over the press release content
of the piece. I asked other people to read through the press release to make
sure it made sense and was effective with its message.
To my surprise I got the very first press release published days after sending
the first press release and it was featured in the Independent newspaper in
the UK. The great thing about press releases is once you actually get some press
coverage, you can start the ball rolling on a big scale. You should use some
of the quotes from the media in your footers in your email. If you send press
releases using email out to journalists, they will see these quotes and realize
that your website or your business is worth featuring. This is when your media
program starts to gather momentum. It becomes a virtuous circle.
Since sending out that very first press release I’ve since achieved a
massive amount of media coverage in all types of publications, including: The
Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Business 2.0 and Yahoo! 'Site
of the Week'. I even got a mention in Reader’s Digest magazine.
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