A press release is an outlet for your business to get free, yes free, publicity that attracts favorable media attention and extensive coverage. In plain terms, a press release is a news story written in third person that communicates something newsworthy about a person or a business and is submitted to the media.

Press Releases can benefit everyone

Every business needs to promote themselves and gain brand recognition among the desired target market.  Whether you are a small local business with less than 5 employees or a multi-million dollar national corporation, writing press releases to generate publicity can benefit your business tremendously. The key is to know what to write your press release about, how to write and format is correctly, and who to send the press release to.

If done correctly, a press release can improve your business’s visibility, improve name recognition, increase traffic to your website, and build rapport with important media contacts. Not to mention, submitting online press releases can improve search engine optimization (SEO), which means increasing the number of links to your site which will improve your site’s ranking on search engines like Google and Yahoo. Online press release optimization is only as good as the presentation, position, and performance of the release, however.

What do I write a press release about?

Your press release should be interesting and newsworthy. It should also be timely which means it is relative to the events happening at large as well as relative to a publication’s editorial calendar. If it’s not then no one will want to read it and the news media won’t publish it. Press releases can be written about new products or services that you recently introduced, the addition of new employees, partnerships or acquisitions, announcing the opening or relocation of your business, sponsorship of charitable events, gaining important contracts with other companies, awards and community recognition, or any other news that is a story - not an advertisement. Virtually anything can be a story as long as you put the right spin on it and give it the angle it needs to generate interest.

Remember to K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple, Stupid. Your press release should answer all the “W” questions: who, what, where, when, and why. Keep in mind you’re not writing for your target market like you would with advertising copy; you are writing to appeal to journalists and fulfill their requirements by answering the question “Why would readers care?”. Your headline should not boast your product or service benefits, but rather proclaim your story’s newsworthiness. You only have a few seconds to capture the reader’s attention, so make your headline count.

How to write a press release correctly in 8 simple steps

Once you have determined what you will write your press release about, you need to make sure that you format is correctly.

Step 1 - You need to include release instructions, whether it is for “immediate release” or “for release on some future date.” Make sure you include this at the top of your release.

Step 2 - It is important to list contact information including a contact person, company name, phone, fax, website URL, and e-mail address.

Step 3 - The headline should be short (aim for less than 10 words) and attention-grabbing. DO NOT WRITE IN ALL CAPS or use exclamation marks!!!

Step 4 - Write a summary of a few sentences which summarizes what your press release is about and acts as an extenstion to your headline.

Step 5 - The body of your press release should always begin with: City, State, Month, Day, Year- Then you can begin your story.  Aim to keep the body within 400-500 words maximum. Make sure your story is relevant, and give it a sense of urgency.

Step 6 - Don’t forget to include an about section which should summarize your company. Include your product or service offering and where the business is located and conducts business. Do not forget to include a link to your website at the end of this section. This gives you an opportunity to drive potential customers to your website who otherwise might not have stumbled upon it.

Step 7 - You should always include a section that lets readers know where they can go for additional information. Make sure you include a contact person, their position, the name of the company, a phone number, and an e-mail address where this person can be reached.

Step 8 - When you are finished with your press release, end it with ### centered at the bottom. The three #’s signal the end of the press release.

You can view some cample press release formats at the following sites:
Example 1, Example #2

Where should you send your press release?

When submitting a press release to the media, there are a variety of different sources to distribute the release including print, television, and online sites. If you are submitting your press release to a print or television source, make sure to send it to the most relevant contact person available and that the source you send it to makes sense for your business.

For example, if your press release is about the grand opening of a local restaurant, then you would want to send the release to a local newspaper that is read by your target market, or a local television station. Make sure that the contact person is the most relevant person to your story. You shouldn’t just default to sending the release to the editor-in-chief or the publisher. Do your research and send it to the person in charge of press releases, or someone who handles local news coverage. This will give your story a better chance of getting published.

In addition to submitting your press release to print and television media, you should take advantage of the press release sites that the web has to offer, both free and paid are available. There are many free press release websites for you to take advantage of. They create free backlinks to your website which helps with search engine optimization (SEO). Just make sure you follow each site’s guidelines for submission carefully, or else your press release will be rejected by the editor. A few good free press release websites are www.24-7pressrelease.com, www.1888pressrelease.com, www.PRlog.org, www.newswiretoday.com, and www.PRcompass.com. You can also try to Google ‘free press release websites’ for a list of more sites.

If you want to gain more exposure for your press release whether it’s for SEO purposes or to try to get your story picked up by more news media, you can also utilize paid press release sites. Some good ones to try are www.PRweb.com (better for SEO purposes), www.PRnewswire.com (best for getting your story picked up by the media), and www.PRleap.com. Remember: You get what you pay for.  Free press release sites are good if you are trying to create more links for SEO purposes, but if you are looking for something more than you might want to consider spending some money.

I hope that this gives you some insight into writing press releases and welcome additional questions and comments.

Where is most of your site’s traffic coming from and why?

Mostly Direct Traffic: This means that your traffic is coming from your print advertising, word of mouth, and existing customers.

Direct Traffic is the one kind of traffic that refers to real-world sources. Potential customers who get your web address from your brochures/signage or heard of you from other people/businesses are typing your address in their browser to directly access your site. Depending on the percentage of your marketing you have reserved for print advertising or how long you company has been using print advertising, this number may overshadow other traffic sources. If your company has a website that isn’t very popular, but your company has been around for a while (including pre-internet), you may have a very large base of print advertising patrons and a lot of word of mouth. Including your web address on this print media and mentioning that you have a website causes more customers to actually go directly to your site for more information.

Existing customers can be tricky. Depending on your site’s setup, tools, and deployment on the web, your existing customers may be coming to your site to get information like a phone number, product pictures and data, or get caught up on your business’s up-to-date company info. The distinction between existing customers is whether they are coming again and again or just once to get contact information. Either way, they know your web address and do a b-line to your site. 

Mostly Referring Sites: This means that links to your site from other sites (whether you know about them or not) are directing customers to your site.

Referring sites are actually one of the main ranking philosophies behind search engines today. The more links on other sites to your site can help boost your rankings on search engines. However, if this is your biggest source for customers, you should be looking into where those links are coming from. Links to your site from sites that are part of your industry, refer to news about your company, or are on very trusted/popular sites, will provide you with customers and better search engine optimization. If links to your site are on spammer sites, unrelated industry sites, or use misleading text to link, the wrong customers are coming to your site and jumping back out (bounce rate) and your search engine optimization based on linking from other sites can sag.

Referring sites leave a lot out of your hands. The buying potential for anybody who comes to your site this way can vary greatly. Be sure to see where your links end up and what you can do to get your link on good sites and avoid linking with bad sites. Analyzing your bounce rate compared to your referring site percentage can help you understand who ended up at your site by accident and who is actually looking for your business.

Mostly Search Engines: This means that customers are coming to your site by search engine ranked links. This usually denotes good standing in search engines.

Most customers (approximately 84%) start their browsing at a search engine. Customers who have never heard of your business can find you based on keyword searching. New customers from around the world and regionally can find you through this traffic source. However, search engines hold all of the cards here and can change their search algorithms overnight, destroying your rankings.

To understand customers coming from search engines to your site, you must be aware of the keyword phrases they are using that lead them to your site. If they are using your company’s name to find you, then that search engine traffic is no different than direct traffic. If they are using keywords and find you, this is true search engine traffic.

Where should your site’s traffic be coming from and why?

Older (well-known) businesses: Usually, your business will have a strong base of print media from the pre-internet period. Adding your web address to that print media connects your print media customers to your website through direct traffic.

Newer (unknown) businesses: Newer businesses need all the exposure they can get. Using business connections, practical industry information, and popular social aspects of the web, your business should rack up referring site links – which will subsequently increase your site’s search engine rankings.

Service-based (regional) businesses: This type of business usually requires that its customers remain relatively local or regional. Using local business connections to create word of mouth and possibly links from their local sites can create direct and referral traffic.

Product-based (worldwide) businesses: As shipping has become easier and cheaper, products can effortlessly be shipped around the world. Getting more traffic from worldwide search engines is your best bet to get your business’s products out to your neighbor or a customer in Asia.

Information-based (n/a location) businesses: Information is only as good as its source. To become the best source for information, you need to be seen as reliable. The best way to do this is getting articles and information out into the web creating referral traffic. More referral traffic means that more people trust your information and that can build upon itself.

Having struggled many times to provide a short, but comprehensive answer to this question-I decided long ago to use metaphors to help people understand what they are asking.

Asking how much a “basic” website costs is like asking someone how much a “basic” car costs or how much a “basic” house costs.  You’ve immediately got a problem-if you want to know how much a house costs you need to know how big a house you want, how many bedrooms, what part of the country you want to be in, what kind of plumbing, colors, and on and on.  Anyone who has decided it is time to buy a house quickly discovers that buying a house is a process comprised of many individual decisions.  And all of the decisions have to be prioritized-which feature is more important and are some features mutually exclusive? 

It is for this reason that it is rare to find accurate quotes for websites online.  Even honest, straightforward web developers or companies will have a difficult time giving you a specific price or sticking to that price if you, the consumer, aren’t able to make the necessary decisions and stick to them.  A good web services company will walk you through the decisions and make sure that you understand what you are deciding on and what the consequences of your decision(s) will be. 

So, having said that, here is a discussion of pricing for the only elements that are required for any website:

• Domain Name- these are available through many vendors you can find on the web.  Typically, puchasing one domain name will be under $10 a year.  They must be continually renewed however, or someone else can buy it when your registration expires. 
• Hosting Server- as with domain names, there are many, many thousands of vendors online that sell hosting space on their servers.  This will be where your web pages actually physically reside.  Some sites offer free hosting, but you usually have to buy something else with it or you can’t have your own domain name and branding on the free hosting site.  The lowest you will pay for ordinary hosting will be under $10 a month.  Depending of the features and services you want to include with your web site, you can pay many hundreds or thousands of dollars a month (e-commerce, databases, and other features add to your hosting cost).
•  Web Pages- here is the tricky part.  Web pages are simply computer files.  Creating them is free and anyone can do it if they know HTML, or if they have web design software.  There are many types of web design software now that let you create your own pages without having any technical or design background.  Some of these software packages are free with hosting, or can be downloaded inexpensively online.  So, if you are confident in your design ability, you can easily create your own pages. 

My experience however, is that creating a web site for little or no cost is not beneficial to your business.

One of the problems is that it takes time- time many small businesses do not have to spare.  In addition, design experience is often underrated or underestimated by people who have not wrestled with graphics or text.  There are entire industries founded around the study of how human beings process information and on what works on the web and what doesn’t.  With websites multiplying rapidly everyday, it has become more and more difficult to make your web site stand out, get noticied, and get traffic.  Usually, the cost of paying someone knowledgeable to design your pages and your site for you will pay for itself.  Do you want a cheap site, or do you want an effective site?

What can you expect to pay?

Some web services companies will quote you a per page price, or will give you a standard price of $500 or something similar.  These are unrealistic models of pricing web sites, unless they spell out exactly what you get for that price.  Typically, you will find that your choices are extremely limited by that kind of pricing structure. 

If and when you decide to pay someone else to design your site, what can you expect to pay?  This is even trickier- because although most companies will base a price on an hourly rate (low-end novices will charge $35-50/hour, high-end and overpriced “consultants” will charge several hundred per hour), there will be all sorts of deals and extras that are possible.  Any feature that can be a part of a web site can be sold at a discount if the web services company is a reseller for other vendors.  For example, for a programmer to develop a proprietary database for you, it might take 100 hours at $100/hour.  If a web services company buys a database package, they can resell and set it up for you for say $500, but then you will still need time to “populate” the database- another hourly rate. 

So beyond domain names, hosting, and web pages, what other features does your site need?  Beyond the three basic features, the options multiply very rapidly.  E-Commerce packages will cost somewhere between $400 and $2000 for just the software and don’t include the time it takes to set it up. 

If you want to add a blog or podcasting, or RSS feeds, there are incremental costs for those as well. 

I recommend establishing the budget for your web site first, then prioritizing the purposes and functions your web site will serve before you consider talking to a developer or your web “team”.  If you know what you can spend and what you want the site to do, it won’t be as difficult to find someone who can meet your needs.

Quality Considerations 

So, back to the initial question of this writing- let’s focus on the word “quality”.  The dictionary gives one definition of quality as a “degree of excellence”.  And what makes a web site excellent?  It must be easy to use, it must provide options, information, and have features people want.  It must be visually compelling and the whole thing has to create the desired action in the viewer.  It must be searchable, flexible, and quick-loading.   It has to do well in the search engines and it must be reliable.  

When you look over all those “qualities” ask yourself if you or someone on your team has the time and the experience to make sure your web site does all those things.  If not, work on a budget- you will want to pay someone to develop a quality web site.  Plan to spend a little time going over the features and pricing with your vendor or team.  The decisions are difficult and therefore you should do some work up front to make sure you get the site you need for the price you can afford.