With press release in hand you are sitting at your desk right now wanting to pick up the phone and alert a reporter it’s on its way, or else you are hesitant to put it in an envelope and stamp it, hoping you’ll just miss the mail man. Or maybe you have pasted it in an email and you are stalling on hitting send. I know this because this is every small business owner or sole proprietor that I’ve written press releases for. Getting it out there is a difficult move to make.
What trips a lot of people up, besides the fear of success, is not knowing exactly who to send it to or where to send it.
First of all if you are submitting it online, there are many sites that let you submit for free. Here are a few of my oft-used free submission sites. There are many others as well, but it’s a start.
Then you want to start with your local media. Always start with local media, because these guys are the most likely to give you media attention simply because you are from their area. Even if your business is run online, you are still a local resident.
For most businesses submitting a press release you will want to target the business editor, that goes for most news, simply because you are a business and really that is the easy page to break into. Now here is where it gets more complicated.
If you have something that may be of more general interest, say you offer a lawn care service for homes in foreclosure. You’ve seen business just triple because more banks are realizing that if those homes sit in disrepair they become harder to sell, so they hire you to keep the lawns maintained and thus keeping the curb appeal of the property. This is an example of a trend story. It is a unique angle to the whole played out foreclosure issue. So you might want to add a cover letter pitching the release this way and letting them know you are available for interviews.
This is also the perfect type of story to pitch larger media. Bigger news outlets are not interested in a story simply about your existence. They want a way to tie it into a bigger concept that affects lots of people. Trend stories are a popular way of doing this.
But in both of these situations, know that you will likely be part of a bigger story with lots of sources. It will likely not focus on you alone. However it does set you up as an expert and knowledgeable on the subject. And isn’t that the reason you are submitting the press release in the first place?