Small Business Trends

Five Killer Press Release Tips for Small Businesses

Marketing TrendsOctober 26, 2009By Janet Meiners Thaeler

Five Killer Press Release tips for Small BusinessesLet me tell this to you straight: most journalists will never write about your company or product.

Why not? You are not newsworthy! When I say newsworthy, I mean something new in your business that someone besides you (and your team) cares about.

So you know what I recommend? Coming up with a great story, essentially pre-write the story. You’ve done most of the work for the writer, be they a journalist or a blogger.

Another thing: most press releases that news organizations receive are deleted or thrown away. They are never seen by anyone else. But here’s a secret – online it doesn’t matter because you decide what gets published. All you need to do is write a press release and distribute it through an online news portal. But first, you have to have a killer idea.

Top Five Press Release Ideas

  1. Publish Case Studies, Data and Surveys
    If you have research to share, a press release is a great way to do it. So maybe you looked through your customer list and found that small businesses with a blog get 5x more traffic to their web site. Expand that and send it out!
  2. Make Lists
    Just like this article, you can create stories around a list. Information like “The 3 Mistakes Most Small Business Owners Make,” “How to Build Muscle like a Bodybuilder Pro,” “Small Business Trends Names 5 Best Online Tools for Small Businesses,” or this one – “5 Ways to Wear Leggings this Winter” make good stories.
  3. Publicize a Good Cause
    This is the story about how you and your team took the day off to serve homeless youth. Or how OfficeMax is helping teachers by donating school supplies. Look for these type of “feel good” stories and write them up in a press release.
  4. Give the Major News Story a Local (or your) Spin
    You’ll need to act fast to capitalize on this opportunity but it can be worth it. When big news hits and you can add your take, you can be a local expert on the topic. Recently my video editor made a video about the Typhoon in the Philippines where he lives. It got more than 40,000 views on YouTube. He could’ve sent out a press release with the video embedded in it.
  5. Highlight the Strange and Bizarre
    This idea can go viral more quickly. Find the odd, sensational, strange and deranged to write about. The stranger the story, the more likely you’ll get publicity from your press release. This is extreme marketing. You can find examples in Digg.com by searching for a general term. If you’re a dentist, search for “teeth.” Follow that link and you’ll see one of the top stories is how monkeys teach their offspring to floss. You could send out a press release about that and how monkeys teach their kids to floss, why don’t humans? Another site I like for bizarre ideas is Trend Hunter.

Hopefully this inspires you to write your own press releases. Most businesses overlook many opportunities to send out a press release and get some media coverage. They make the one mistake that is common: they make it about them, not the story. Once you do that you’ll turn most people off right away, including journalists.

Use these tips and write your own killer press releases – and you’ll get media biting. And if you don’t, please distribute your news online and blog about it. Then people can find your story regardless of if media picks it up.

* * * * *

Janet Meiners thaelerAbout the Author: Janet Meiners Thaeler is an Evangelist for OrangeSoda Inc. and the principal blogger for their corporate blog and Twitter account. She regularly advises clients on blogging and social media strategies. Her own blog is Newspapergrl.com (and Twitter account @newspapergrl). She is passionate about online marketing and is always looking for new insights, resources and trends to help her clients.

email post Print This Post

  • Facebook
  • StumbleUpon
  • LinkedIn
  • BusinessWeek
  • del.icio.us
  • bizSugar

217 Tweets 1 Other Comment



234 Responses to “Five Killer Press Release Tips for Small Businesses”

Leave a Reply
  1. Martin Lindeskog says:
    October 26, 2009 at 11:05 am

    Janet:

    Do you know how many press releases the major newspapers are receiving on a daily basis?

    You said in your bio that you are “always looking for new insights, resources and trends to help her clients.” I must then ask you if you have read The Fall of PR & the Rise of Advertising by Stefan Engeseth? The foreword is written by Al Ries, author of The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR. You could download the book for free (PDF version).

  2. Robert Brady says:
    October 26, 2009 at 11:23 am

    Online PR is great and has huge potential for small businesses. You mention distributing through an online news portal. What are the top 3 in your experience?

  3. Time Clock Software Guy says:
    October 26, 2009 at 12:22 pm

    Janet, Timely post, thank you! I am pondering through your ideas as I write a press release for our software release tomorrow.

  4. Janet Thaeler says:
    October 26, 2009 at 2:09 pm

    Martin
    You write: “Do you know how many press releases the major newspapers are receiving on a daily basis?”

    Precisely why it’s important to get coverage online. There’s practically infinite space and bandwidth. You don’t need a newspaper to pick it up. That’s my point. But the principles apply either online or offline – telling a good story.

    If you want traditional media, it’s a lot easier to get the media to pick it up if your story is popular online (which is over-rated IMO, still important but I’d rather get my story on a major blog).

    Example: everyone passes around the video with the dancing bride and groom. After it gets critical mass, then the networks start talking about it.

    My specialty is pitching to search engines. I’m an internet marketer, not a PR person. I haven’t read that book but I’ll find it and download it to my Kindle.

    Thanks for the suggestion,
    Janet

  5. Janet Thaeler says:
    October 26, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    Note: If I wrote this again, I’d make sure the title wasn’t edited by my editor. I didn’t catch this until now.

    People online read visually and they skim. AP Style says spell out the numbers. Online writing says don’t.

    The title of this post should be what almost everyone is tweeting on Twitter:

    “5 Killer Press Release Tips for Small Businesses”

    NOT

    “Five Killer Press Release Tips for Small Businesses”

    I saw research to show how you get more clicks you’d get on the 1st example but I can’t find it again. But I’ve seen it in my work and case studies I’ve read over the years.

    Clients push back on this. Some think I’m uniformed or uneducated. They want to follow AP Style, but what’s more important to me is # of reads, clicks, sales, etc. not following a style that was created before the internet even existed.

    Janet

  6. Janet Thaeler says:
    October 26, 2009 at 2:25 pm

    Robert,

    You wrote: “Online PR is great and has huge potential for small businesses. You mention distributing through an online news portal. What are the top 3 in your experience?”

    Depends on your budget. I’ve seen good results with http://www.free-press-release.com but the free sites are always in flux. Good today, bad tomorrow (they start charging or the quality drops or you can’t get the press releases approved once they become popular). Lists I find that are even a few months old are outdated. So it’s a moving target.

    I’m a huge fan of PRWeb at the $200 SEO visibility package – can’t beat the features or the customer support. That’s what I use most often. But PRLeap.com and 24-7pressrelease also have good offerings for under $100 and even let you embed a video.

    The press release submission service on this site, even though it’s a republish rather than syndication, has shown excellent results too. I used it for the press release about my book and it’s one of the top 5 results on Google.

    Hope this helps. Story first, then good distribution. My book “I Need a Killer Press Release, Now What??” goes into more detail about online press releases.

    Janet

  7. Unlimited Free Publicity says:
    October 26, 2009 at 3:24 pm

    Great tips…thanks for the information.

  8. Kris Bovay says:
    October 26, 2009 at 3:43 pm

    Thanks Janet. Good strategies. And also thanks for the tip about writing out numbers vs using the actual numeral in headlines. I’ve argued this one from both sides; but I do agree online effectiveness is the goal (in an online environment).

  9. Heather Lloyd-Martin says:
    October 26, 2009 at 5:10 pm

    Hi, Janet-

    Great post!

    One more thing to perhaps add to your fantastic list is conducting keyphrase research and focusing the release around two primary keyphrases. That way, the release is more likely to come up during a keyword search – and it can gain even more exposure.

    Thanks again! I’m going to blog about your post later today. :)

  10. Pamela Seiple says:
    October 26, 2009 at 5:37 pm

    Janet,

    These are some great tips! I do, however, think that press releases can also be used as a great way to generate inbound links to your company’s website.

    One great resource to help your readers optimize their press releases from an SEO and inbound marketing perspective is HubSpot’s Press Release Grader. It’s a free tool that evaluates the marketing effectiveness of a release. http://pressrelease.grader.com

    Thanks for the post!
    Pamela Seiple (PR Manager, HubSpot)

  11. Locanto says:
    October 27, 2009 at 7:44 am

    Thanks a lot for sharing this post! I will try to put your suggestions into work with my next press release. :)

  12. Andee Sellman, One Sherpa says:
    October 29, 2009 at 12:39 am

    Great ideas Janet.
    Thanks for taking the time to share them.

  13. Pat Jennings says:
    October 29, 2009 at 12:59 pm

    I have consistently had success using the first of your ideas: publishing the results of case studies of surveys. I conduct the surveys for my own benefit, to learn about my customers and prospects. But if something unique or surprising appears in the results it’s easy to turn it into an angle that journalists can use.

    Bottom line is that if you can solve a writer’s problem by, as you say, essentially pre-writing the story you stand out from the crowd that is looking to get something for nothing.

  14. Janet Thaeler says:
    October 29, 2009 at 5:13 pm

    Pamela,
    I’m a big fan of Hubspot and the press release grader! I need to send you a copy of my new book about SEO press releases.

    Pat,
    Thanks for commenting and sharing how the tip to use research helps. I love how it helps you know your customers & gets publicity. I’m going to include that point in future tips.

    - Janet

  15. Review of I Need a Killer Press Release | Small Business Trends says:
    November 1, 2009 at 9:31 pm

    [...] (If you’d like more reasons to get the book, read Janet’s popular article she published here at Small Business Trends recently, called Five Killer Press Release Tips for Small Businesses.) [...]

  16. Para um bom press-release says:
    January 27, 2010 at 11:51 am

    [...] ideias para pautas. Então, se você está precisando divulgar a sua empresa ou seus serviços, o Small Biz Trends listou cinco dicas importantes para ajudar o seu release simples a cair nas páginas de revista em [...]

  17. carol says:
    October 31, 2009 at 11:16 am

    Indeed there are many unexplored territories in the internet and I must admit, it’s a pain covering them all, much less attending to them daily! I’ve been doing online marketing for sometime now and I tried a couple of them until it’s time to move on. I know there are still a lot of them out there that are waiting to be tested but once you got successful with one, you’re stuck with it for life! thanks for giving me yet another great idea to try.

    This comment was originally posted on Women On Business



Leave a Reply

TrackBack URI

Additional comments powered by BackType

Small Business Trends Feed Subscribers

 


Small Business Trends updates you on trends affecting the small business market. "Small business success ... delivered daily" -- Anita Campbell, Editor


Marketing Tips Center launched with the support of HP.


 

Recent Press Releases


NEW! - Small Biz News (SUBMIT Release)

Recent Comments


  • mike_gingerich: Just read: Getting Bloggin’: Customers Trust Transparent Experts http://ow.ly/16xfKD...
  • crossroadllc: Just read: Getting Bloggin’: Customers Trust Transparent Experts http://ow.ly/16xfKC...
  • PreneurPulse: Getting Bloggin’: Customers Trust Transparent Experts http://ow.ly/16xfNN This comment...
  • Kelly Baggett: Nice article. Too many people underestimate the power of blogs, especially when it...
  • andertoons: RT @smallbiztrends: We’ve started a monthly giveaway. This month: 8 copies of...

Small Business Trends Team

About Small Business Trends

Send us news Tips! sbtips@gmail.com

CEO & Editor in Chief

Anita Campbell

Operations Manager

Staci Wood

Contributing Editors

Books: Ivana Taylor

Community Promotions: Joel Libava

Green biz: Kelly Spors

Legislative: Rieva Lesonsky

Product Reviews: TJ McCue

Social Media: Lisa Barone

 

Poll

What is Your Top 2010 Resolution?
  • Add an Answer
View Results

Twitter Conversation

 
Web Site by out:think