What should you pay attention to with press release distribution? First pay attention to the way that it is written. It must be written correctly to give it a better chance of being printed. Editors do not want to take time to call and verify information, nor to rewrite releases. Have the release tell who, what, when and where. [A:http://media.libsyn.com/media/purpleinternetmarketing/episode1-13pillars-intro.mp3;The first show of the 26-Week New Media Marketing Strategy Podcast]
The very first sentence of this piece should say whom and what the event is about. To describe the who and what you might say: Mrs. Jane Smith will be displaying her Monet collection this evening at 7 pm. Use the next paragraph or so to describe who Mrs. Smith is and the reasons a patron would want to see her show.
The rest of the needed information will be in the last paragraph. Where is the event to be held and when will be told here. The release may say: The collection may be seen at the Garden Inn on June 3rd at 7 pm. Follow this up with a phone number and where tickets may be purchased.
Distribution of these is another thing entirely, however since email has come into the picture it does help speed it up. If you send out releases on a regular basis then you should set up a file. It would be good to have one hard copy and one on the computer.
To set the file up, you will need to look up all the papers that are in your local area and get the name of the contact and his or her email address. This may take some phone calls. You can check online as well as in the yellow pages. Find everyone that is local to add to your list. Also you may find that the local television stations have a place for you to add releases to, so do a thorough job of looking for who will accept them online. You may send out 200 and only 10 will use them, so the more you can add to the list the better.
Building a working relationship with any of the editors could boost the chances of getting into print. A piece that is written well has a good chance of being used so be concise when writing. If there is space, most editors will use a piece that is written well.
So once you have built your list, add it to your contact list of your email. Place these names in a group in your contacts so you can bring it up quickly. You do not want to go through your list every time you send one of these out, so group them now while you are putting it all together.
A month before the event, begin your promotion. Email what is written to your group of editors. Then watch to see which ones use what you sent. Three weeks before the show repeat this process, sending only to those that did not use your write up. Two weeks and one week out repeat this again. After sending many different write ups over a period of time, it will become apparent whom you have favor with and will always use what you send. They are the ones to keep informed of everything.
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