Publishing A Press Release

Publishing your "press release" is obviously the final thing you need to do and can be the most frustrating.  Publishing the press release can be done yourself or it can be hired out.  The do-it-yourself method means many hours of hard work and using a bit of common sense with regard to who you send it to.

At SeniorMag, we receive many press releases each day and to date, have not published a single one.  Most of the press releases that we see are just plain silly and for those that are not, we simply don’t have the venue or desire to do so.  The same is true with many organizations, yet the fact that there are no press releases simply doesn’t seem to matter to some people.

Depending on the situation, you can distribute your press release through a wide variety of mediums including websites, newspaper, radio, and if you are lucky, television.  As the list order in the last sentence would indicate, there is however, a significant decrease in the likelihood that your press release would be read much less acted upon.

A nice trick to getting your press release to go further is to do something phenomenal past your business experience.  Give something away to a charity, organize a fundraiser for something, or be the spokesperson who leapt to the front to take on a bad situation.  A simple mention of what you do or making your business front the point of contact here is a perfect way of doing the good thing and getting honorable mention of your business name.

If you quote someone or mention another business name in your press release, get permission first.  Quoting someone without their permission can get you in some trouble and can often lead to your press release being pulled.

Don’t just contact everyone or send out your press release as a spam.  This is very bad taste and will likely get your email address blocked and a nice complaint made to your ISP.  Know who you are sending to and send it in the format they ask for.  Some want their press releases sent via email, others want them faxed, while others prefer the U.S. Mail.  

Press release format

Only do your press release in text format.  Never use anything like HTML or any other markup languages.  Since your press release will generally be received as text, if you compose it in any other format, it will probably look odd and it will almost certainly be unceremoniously dumped.

Never write your press release online.  Do it with a word processor application to test for grammar, punctuation, and spelling and then submit the final product.  Press releases that are contrived online in a form box often have many errors and they look like you haven’t taken any time to do it correctly.

Here are some popular press release services:

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