Aaron Hoos

The Question:

I was asked a great question through the private message boards on Guru.com. After briefly outlining his 3 new businesses, an entrepreneur asked: “I have never done much online but am interested in the effectiveness of blogging, press releases, etc.. If i am just beginning each of these businesses, what would you recommend for my ‘plan” to success?”

Aaron’s Answer:
At a very basic level, you’ll want a 3 step approach for each of your businesses; and you’ll find that it’s not that different than a really simple sales process:

1. Get the attention of cold contacts. You can do this through search engine optimization, articles, Twitter, and elsewhere (depending on the specifics of your target market). You might consider investing a little in Google AdWords or some other form of marketing, but that depends on your budget. The point of this step is to draw them into your “sphere” and turn them into warm contacts…

2. Build a relationship with warm contacts. Now that you have all these people listening to you, you need to give them something valuable. Again, it depends on the specifics of your target niche, but typically I’ll create some combination of the following for clients: blogs, whitepapers/reports, and ezines. The goal is to ultimately turn these warm contacts into customers…

3. Sell to your customers. There are a number things you can do — some of which I can help you with. This might include presentation material, “inner” website content (that doesn’t appear in search engines), and more. You might even consider broadening your offerings to include ebooks, webinars, and other products that you can either sell or you can use as positioning material to help you sell your services.

It’s hard for me to give you much more specifics than that with the little bit of information I have. I would say that the specifics depend on:
* Your target market
* Your business area (i.e., where do you do business?)
* Your budget
* … and a few other things.

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Frequently, clients send me press releases that they’ve written but which have been rejected by the press release distribution company. They want to know why their press release was rejected and if there’s anything I can do to “fix” it. Here are the common problems…

A brief history of press releases and why it matters to you

A press release is supposed to be a news announcement. Originally, they were meant to entice reporters to write about the business that submitted the press release. When I was a reporter at a daily newspaper (many years ago!) we’d have reams of press releases roll off our fax machine every day. We’d grab a few, rifle through them, and find something newsworthy to report on.

Thanks to the internet, the potential audience for press releases have grown. They’re no longer strictly for reporters, the “general public” can now read them, too. And there are search engine optimization opportunities to take advantage of. Although the audience has broadened, the concept of “newsworthiness” has not.

Rules of thumb to remember while writing press releases

The following are the key issues that frequently appear in rejected press releases.

• Have one point. A news story will be about something. One thing: A promotion, a marquee customer, a huge deal, a completed project, a new hire, a new office, a new product or service. Press releases that aren’t about anything are bland and will be ignored… because they’re essentially really boring advertisements.
• Avoid the word “you”. Advertisements talk TO the customer with phrases like “you can get the product for free”. Press releases, instead, should talk ABOUT the customer with phrases like “customers can get the product for free”.
• Avoid the words “I” or “we”. Press releases were meant to make a reporter’s job easier (perhaps even to be published verbatim in a newspaper), so they shouldn’t be written in the voice of your company, like: “we do this and we do that”. Instead, they should be written ABOUT your company, like: “the company does this and the company does that.”
• Avoid exclamation points. Press releases should have the feeling of neutrality, as if a reporter is writing about the business. An explosion of exclamation points throughout a press release makes the press release seem less neutral.
• Keep it short. Press releases should be 300 to 600 words; no longer! They’re meant to be your audience’s initial foray into the information and the call to action at the end of the press release should be “for more information, contact…”. I’ve seen press releases that were 2,000 words long or more. Guess what: a reporter (or any other audience member) is not going to get past the first 400 words. People are busy and they want to get the gist of the information and then dig deeper if they prefer.

A really easy way to review your press release

Pretend you’re a newscaster on the nightly news and you’ve just been handed your press release to read. Words like “I” and “you” don’t make sense in this context and exclamation marks will seem out of place. The newsreporter should report the news. If it sounds too much like a glowing endorsement of your business then the press release should be revised.

Press releases are a great way to promote your business and drive traffic to your site. They offer measurable keyword advantages when submitted online and you might even get some local coverage if submitted offline (to a local paper).

But there is one make-or-break issue that I see often when asked to create a press release for a client: Newsworthiness. Press releases need to report some type of news: It might be an event, a sale, or some aspect of your business that has changed. In fact, this is a key reason why many press releases are rejected from online press release distribution sites or never followed-up when submitted to newspapers.

So, if you are going to write your own press release, or you are going to hire me to do it for you, spend a few minutes thinking about what makes your press release newsworthy. If you’re drawing a blank, give me a call and we can figure it out together.