1. It’s exploding with keywords - First, let me say that I’m a huge proponent of SEO. Optimizing your online press release is an excellent way to increase your search engine presence and to gain a few keyword-rich back links to your website. But optimizing your press release doesn’t mean cramming so many keywords in the thing that it becomes unreadable. Seriously, if your headline reads, “Houston Bicycle Company Launches New Website About Houston Bicycle Repair and Houston Bicycle Maintenance,” do us all a favor and never write another press release again.

2. Did Billy Mays write this thing? - Although he’s no longer with us, we all remember Billy Mays, the greatest (and loudest) pitchman of our generation. As soon as Mays popped up on the TV screen, you knew he was trying to sell you something. After all, that’s what commercials do. However, press releases are not commercials, so they shouldn’t read like one. Ditch the sales speak, and get rid of the hyperbole. It’s a news release: stick to the facts and avoid bias.

3. You focused on quantity instead of quality - Thanks to free press release distribution websites, the press release has slowly gone the way of the eZine article. As everyone begins to learn of the internet marketing benefits of press release distribution, they start to pump out as many press releases as they can. The result: Their internet presence consists of hundreds of poorly-written, keyword-stuffed, and non-newsworthy press releases.

4. Get to the point already! - Here’s a little tip: Someone should be able to know what your story is about by reading only the first paragraph of your press release. Press releases are written in what’s called the “inverted pyramid” format. This means the most important information (who, what, when, where, and how) is placed at the top of the press release, followed by all of the minor details. So, get to the point quickly, and don’t drag your press release out for 3 pages.

5. A translator is required to interpret the jargon - Have you ever seen the Web Economy BS Generator? It’s a funny little tool that allows you to instantly create meaningless jargon and corporate-speak, like “generate ubiquitous mindshare” and “monetize frictionless technologies.” Unfortunately, some companies must be using this tool to write their press releases because I can’t understand what the heck they’re talking about sometimes. Save the jargon for your shareholders meetings; it has no place in your press release.

6. The headline is boring - I hate to break it to you, but no one cares if you updated your website or started a new blog. Sure, you can create news from doing this, but you have to find a different angle than “XYZ Company Updates Website.” Find a solid news angle that focuses on some unique function of the new website that provides a tangible benefit people might be interested in. Then, craft your headline around that news angle. Just be careful not to make your headline too salesy or cutesy, as it will come off like a cheap advertisement rather than a newsworthy press release.

7. You forgot to proofread it - Honestly, I hate proofreading. It gives me a headache, but it’s a necessary evil. Without proofreading, you risk sending out a press release that’s riddled with typos and grammatical errors. Needless to say, that doesn’t exactly command respect from editors and online readers. I find it helpful to set aside the press release for a day or two before trying to proofread it. This allows you to view it with a fresh set of eyes, helping you identify overlooked mistakes.

Which press release mistakes would you add to this list? Share your thoughts in the replies.

This article, written by Eric Brantner, originally appeared in PR Fuel (http://www.ereleases.com/prfuel), a free weekly newsletter from eReleases (http://www.ereleases.com), the online leader in affordable press release distribution. To subscribe to PR Fuel, visit: http://www.ereleases.com/prfuel/subscribe/.

In the last eighty years, the concept of the publicity stunt has been elevated to a high art as a wide variety of companies, from corporations to non-profits, have discovered that a well-executed stunt can garner massive media attention that money can’t buy.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has long been a publicity stunt trendsetter. The organization has had Playboy Playmates serve veggie dogs to Congressmen on Capitol Hill wearing nothing but lettuce bikinis; circulated bloody mutilated animal toys to journalists; wanted to rename fish as “sea kittens” to keep people from eating them; and had several beautiful actresses and supermodels pose nude to protest wearing furs.

However, their finest hour was when they produced a 30 second commercial entitled Kentucky Fried Cruelty and stated they were ready to spend millions of dollars to place it on the SuperBowl broadcast. Fox refused to air it (as PETA had expected) so the commercial was seen by millions of people online … for free!

There are many other inspiring publicity stunts which show the power of how unabashed creativity and imagination can galvanize the media:

• Half.com paid the city of Halfway, Oregon $100,000 to change its name to half.com, Oregon for one year. The publicity that followed led eBay to buy the company for $300 million barely five months later.

• In 1993 recording artist Prince announced that he had changed his name to a symbol that defies pronounciation. The media attention revived his flagging career virtually overnight.

• The Blair Witch Project’s producers aired pre-release clips and circulated tapes to universities as “real video” for their shoestring budget horror movie. It went on to take in almost $200 million at the box office.

• Gaming website GoldenPalace.com purchased a grilled cheese sandwich which seemed to have the Virgin Mary’s image toasted into the bread for $28,000. The sandwich was taken on a world tour and generated countless millions of dollars of free publicity for the site.

• When British Airways’ Millennium Ferris Wheel was being erected it got stuck laying horizontally across the shore of the Thames River in London. Arch-rival Virgin Airlines flew a blimp over the site bearing the message “BA Can’t Get It Up.”

Of course, some publicity stunts go bad, a lesson that Richard Heene, the father of The Balloon Boy, has learned as he is now facing a jail sentence!

This article, written by Hal Licino, originally appeared in PR Fuel (http://www.ereleases.com/prfuel), a free weekly newsletter from eReleases (http://www.ereleases.com), the online leader in affordable press release distribution. To subscribe to PR Fuel, visit: http://www.ereleases.com/prfuel/subscribe/.

1. Is the topic newsworthy?
2. Does the headline need a tune-up? Get your free tuneup here: HeadlineTuneup.com
3. Is the first paragraph strong, essentially summarizing the release and containing the 5Ws?
4. Is the press release too short or too lengthy?
5. Does the press release follow AP Style and is it grammatically sound?
6. Does the press release set an appropriate tone, avoiding over-description, exaggeration, editorialization and ad copy?
7. Is the press release fact-based and adequately documented?
8. Is the contact information complete, including a person’s name, telephone number and email address?
9. Does your message match your target audience?
10. Is your press release media-friendly (not link-heavy or unorthodox)?

Need to Brush Up on Press Release Writing Basics?

For tips on writing your next press release, visit http://www.ereleases.com/howtowrite.html. You can also view press release samples and a press release template.

Study Winning Press Releases

Here’s a another little trick. Look at successful press releases. To view press releases that gained media attention, visit our customer reviews. You can see what media pickup some of our most successful clients obtained as well as a link to the actual press release that created all the attention.

This article is written by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases (http://www.ereleases.com), the online leader in affordable press release distribution. To subscribe to PR Fuel, visit: http://www.ereleases.com/prfuel/subscribe/.

British singer Leona Lewis is slapped at a book signing. Fortunately, she’s fine … but the media attention about the attack could boost book sales: a PR silver lining?

Be sure to read: WTF?? Free Press Release Distribution Head Scratcher

Top 10 Free Press Release Distribution Websites

Free Press Release
http://free-press-release.com

PR-inside.com
http://www.pr-inside.com

i-Newswire
http://www.i-newswire.com

PR LOG
http://www.prlog.org

BigNews.biz
http://www.bignews.biz

PressReleasePoint
http://www.pressreleasepoint.com

ClickPress
http://www.clickpress.com

OpenPR
http://www.openpr.com

IdeaMarketerss
http://www.ideamarketers.com

1888PressRelease.com
http://www.1888pressrelease.com

Additional Free Press Release Services

UpVery.com
http://www.upvery.com

Pressbox
http://www.pressbox.com

24-7 Press Release
http://www.247pressrelease.com

PressMethod
http://www.pressmethod.com

SanePR.com
http://www.sanepr.com

PR9.NET
http://www.pr9.net

PressExposure
http://pressexposure.com

Post a Free Press Release
http://www.postafreepressrelease.com

Free Press Release Center
http://www.free-press-release-center.info

PressAbout
http://www.pressabout.com

Businessportal24.com
http://www.businessportal24.com/en/

prFocus
http://www.prfocus.com

Exact Release
http://www.exactrelease.com

Press-Network.com
http://www.press-network.com

PR Friend
http://www.prfriend.com

Live-PR
http://www.live-pr.com/en/

Newswire Today
http://www.newswiretoday.com

MediaSyndicate
http://www.mediasyndicate.com

PublicityWires
http://www.publicitywires.com

AddPR.com
http://www.addpr.com

NetForce Press
http://www.netforcepress.com

PR Kiosk
http://www.prkiosk.com

Press Release 001
http://www.pressrelease001.com

PR Urgent News
http://www.prurgent.com

LocalNews.biz
http://www.localnews.biz

Prbd.net
http://www.prbd.net

USPRwire
http://www.usprwire.com

PitchEngine - Credit card required.
http://www.pitchengine.com

The Open Press Unable to register for months due to issues related to a hack.
http://theopenpress.com

Fast Pitch! - Despite free option, you basically have to upgrade.
http://www.fastpitchnetworking.com

Criteria: When developing this list, I looked at several variables, such as: Alexa ranking, Page Rank, credibility indicators, and style. Sites that didn’t make the rank included: simple blogs, industry specific, dead sites (no recent press releases), and sites with broken navigation or ordering systems.

Help Us Keep This List Up to Date

A trend I’ve noticed is that many past free press release websites are no longer free (but let you set up a free account to then pay). If you find any of these sites no longer offer free press release distribution, let us know by commenting below.

Share Your Free Press Release Success or Failure

Please comment below and share your experiences with free press releases.

For details on the pitfalls of free press release websites visit: Free Press Release Websites Are Expensive and WTF?? Free Press Release Distribution Head Scratcher

This article is written by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases (http://www.ereleases.com), the online leader in affordable press release distribution. To subscribe to PR Fuel, visit: http://www.ereleases.com/prfuel/subscribe/.

When do you use public relations? Why should you advertise? The best answer on both topics is “It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.”  Use public relations and advertising (and marketing) together as well as separately when the situation calls for it.

Still confused? Don’t fret. You’re in good company.

Message Control

A distinct difference between PR and advertising is their extent of message control.  When, where, and how an advertisement runs is quite controllable. Ad space purchased in the right format (i.e. broadcast, radio, print, online, sky writing, floating barge) means one has inherent control over what messages are communicated.

Conversely, while the process of creating messages through public relations is controllable, what occurs after the message has left the “nest” is often uncontrollable. The most common uncontrollable factor is whether the media view your information as newsworthy.  In advertising there is no question whether your information will be publicized-if the check cleared, you’re in.

I know what you’re thinking. You want control of the message from beginning to end so you’ve decided that advertising is the way to go.  Have you thought about the current shelf life of an advertisement? What about implied endorsement?  Costs?

Shelf Life: TV Commercials and the Press Release

Until recently, TV advertisements have had a shorter shelf life than a press release archived on the Internet.  For now this is probably still true, but watch out. New Web sites are coming online with nothing but commercial content that would make any ad executive smile.  Corporations are also posting their commercials on corporate Web sites to extend the shelf life of their ad dollars.

Obstacles to viewing archived commercials are many. The more common ones include slow Internet connections, lack of installed software for viewing, and unless there is an HTML description about the commercial for search engines to archive, add inability to find a commercial online to the list of obstacles. These barriers are coming down quickly as technology and computer training improves.

Archived press releases and news articles still rank high in terms of Internet longevity.  Search engines can locate information (even in PDF format for some) long after the hype of a press release has waned.  The major obstacle here is a person without access to the Internet.

Implied Endorsement

No matter how interesting an advertisement might be, it is recognized as a self-serving communication.  The only implication here is that someone paid to have a message filtered directly to a consumer.  There is no third-party endorsement, no filter before it reaches you.

Public relations affords the credibility of indirect third-party endorsements.  This means you are not paying to get advertising placed, but a publication is freely giving space to a story about your company. An endorsement such as this is a powerful tool in shaping public opinion.

Consumers today are far more cynical than previous generations, with only a small percent saying they have a great deal of confidence in advertising messages.  Anyone can buy visibility, however PR plays a critical role in sorting out the hype.

Costs

Advertising exposure is often proportional to the amount of money spent on the advertisement. Whether your ad sits on a billboard overlooking the highway or plays during prime time television, advertising will consume your budget faster than a well-positioned, well-written press release.

For small companies, public relations is the better method for direct and personal communication with a target audience.  For larger companies with a sufficient budget, advertising along with public relations may be the right combination for success.

This article, written by Michael D. Driscoll, originally appeared in PR Fuel (http://www.ereleases.com/prfuel), a free weekly newsletter from eReleases (http://www.ereleases.com), the online leader in affordable press release distribution. To subscribe to PR Fuel, visit: http://www.ereleases.com/prfuel/subscribe/.

One Press Release, 12,800 Hits. Great, Right?

Most of these newly created pages are cluttered with ads and have no PageRank. Traffic is also misleading. Many of these free press release services have heavily streamed RSS feeds that are constantly pulling press releases. Just because a press release has been streamed, it doesn’t mean it has been read. Most of these press release “hits” are not end-users but an RSS reader constantly updating its feed. I access my Google Reader every day but I only get to browse the latest 40 or so headlines. Several hundred headlines buried beneath my latest headlines, which have been streamed, will never get read but count as a “hit.”

Free Traffic to Your Site

Free press release sites are also coveted for free traffic. The average free press release produces less than 100 visitors to your website, which is not bad — until you realize most of this traffic isn’t a potential customer but a website owner looking at his own press release and sampling other press releases on the website. I realize that any traffic and any resulting sales is a real perk, but I also realize that more than 99 percent of all free press releases will yield no real traffic, no leads, no sales, and phantom “hits” from RSS feeds.

For details on the pitfalls of free press release websites visit: Free Press Release Websites Are Expensive

For a roundup of free press release websites, visit: Free Press Release Distribution Roundup

This article is written by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases (http://www.ereleases.com), the online leader in affordable press release distribution. To subscribe to PR Fuel, visit: http://www.ereleases.com/prfuel/subscribe/.

It’s about the PageRank

I’ve been told it’s about PageRank. Lots of people believe peppering free and low-cost press release distribution companies with your content squashed between text ads of your competitors will benefit your company. Inbound links of duplicate content doesn’t seem like a long-term strategy that will benefit your website’s search engine standings.

Why Should You Listen to Me?

I’m not just some guy who believes reaching the media and posting on a major national newswire should be part of any online press release equation. I’ve also generated tens of millions of dollars in publicity for my clients. Not PageRank or SEO voodoo but actual articles in major publications, not to mention television and radio media coverage, that have resulted in massive sales and transformative exposure for my clients. I’ve also had press releases routinely rank in top ten results on Google. But please, view such results as a nice bonus — not the end game.

Asinine Waste of Time and Money

Don’t get me wrong. Search engine visibility has a place for online press releases. That’s why eReleases offers SEO enhancements for all press release (http://www.ereleases.com/pr/seo-enhancements-press-releases). However, search engine visibility as the end goal and only goal of online press releases is an asinine waste of time and money you could be spending actually doing what press releases were originally intended to do: get media attention.

SEO PageRank Voodoo

XYZ-full-of-ads.com has a PageRank of five on their home page. The assumption is that by using XYZ-full-of-ads.com’s online press release service I will get inbound links to my website with value of PageRank 5. Wrong. Dead wrong. Go to XYZ-full-of-ads.com and visit your online press release or any other online press release that has been on their site. I have yet to find any of these individual pages, which are the actual pages from which users get inbound links, with any decent PageRank — certainly nowhere near XYZ-full-of-ads.com’s home page.

Well-Meaning SEO Gurus Perpetuate Online Press Release Myth

In the end, the bulk of these online-only online press release services create a situation where what you intended to buy and what you’re actually getting are not the same thing. Most inexperienced SEO folks, and quite a few experienced SEO folks, don’t realize this. Online press releases are just one of the many balls these busy, well-meaning SEO guys are juggling. When a client experiences bumps in SEO or increased inbound links, they just suspect these online press release services are an integral part of this. Most SEO gains to an actual website made by these online press releases are temporary and fleeting.

Remember the Tortoise and the Hare?

You can keep feeding the online press release machine while your competitors formulate a true PR strategy that includes real media attention and permanent, natural one-way links to your website. Slow and steady wins the race. I challenge you to look at your best keyword or keyword phrase that you would like to rank for and see how many of these sites use free or low-cost online press release services. I think the results will speak for themselves. I’m not saying you won’t find a couple of these guys who use online press release services. I’m just saying that online press release services played little to no part to their SEO ranking or their PageRank.

This article is written by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases (http://www.ereleases.com), the online leader in affordable press release distribution. To subscribe to PR Fuel, visit: http://www.ereleases.com/prfuel/subscribe/.

Many companies shy away from this, which is a mistake. Value doesn’t mean that a product is cheaply made; it just means that the product is cheaper than what a competitor offers, or that the product offers a compelling value for the price. Value does not just come in the form of a physical product. Services can also offer value. While placing a service-oriented product in a holiday gift guide is sometimes difficult, it can be done.

A few years back, one of my company’s investment newsletters found its way into a holiday gift guide. We had offered our subscribers holiday gift subscriptions for friends and family, and I decided to pitch our newsletter as a holiday gift idea. We squeaked into a major magazine — had we put out press releases earlier, we may have scored more publicity — which promoted our product under the headline “A Gift That Can Also Make You Money.”

While print publications have historically helped move holiday products, the online world has quickly become a go-to for holiday shoppers. Companies such as Yahoo!, AOL, MSN and CNET all publish well-trafficked online holiday gift guides. Typically they launch these micro-sites a few weeks before Thanksgiving, meaning that editors at these properties are already hard at work putting their holiday gift guides in order in September or earlier. The good news is that unlike print gift guides, their online brethren can be updated regularly.

Not many blogs run full-blown holiday gift guides, but reaching out to bloggers should be part of your holiday gift guide strategy. Word-of-mouth marketing has helped land breaks for thousands of products, and bloggers are today’s frontline when it comes to word-of-mouth marketing. Target bloggers with whom you already have a relationship or those covering your industry. If you send product samples, treat bloggers as they were journalists and don’t just try to grease them with free products.

One of the best ways to get into a holiday gift guide is to create one yourself. I’m not saying that you should go out and print one. Instead, pitch holiday gift guide stories around your product.

One of the pitches I used for our newsletter was to suggest to journalists that they write a story about what type of subscription services a person could give as a gift to another. I went so far as to break it down by subject/demographic. You, of course, want to keep your competitors out of your gift guide pitch, but by offering up an idea that’s not just tethered to your product, you may score some serious points with journalists.

Consumers may not be thinking about holiday shopping in the early fall, but media outlets will be. The window closes fast if you want to be included in holiday gift guides, so get your press releases on the newswire and your press kits in the mail come back-to-school time.

This article, written by Ben Silverman, originally appeared in PR Fuel (http://www.ereleases.com/prfuel), a free weekly newsletter from eReleases (http://www.ereleases.com), the online leader in affordable press release distribution. To subscribe to PR Fuel, visit: http://www.ereleases.com/prfuel/subscribe/.