Archive → June, 2009
Welcome HARO Visitors!
OvernightPR.com specializes in writing powerful, keyword-rich releases quickly so that you can maximize the impact of your PR. Whether you’re looking to capitalize on a popular trend or need to get the word out now as part of disaster plan PR, Overnight PR’s talent (which is, well, me) has years of experience writing press releases, and has created and distributed scores of past releases. Take a peek at my LinkedIn Profile if you’d like a gander at my experience & qualifications to help you. Let me get right to the point, since we all skim:
Special HARO offer!
Any HARO member who orders his or her first press release from OvernightPR before the end of June gets free release distribution through PRWeb as well as 1 month’s free hosting for their release on PitchEngine. That’s a $130 value included in the price of your release.
The OvernightPR Difference
OvernightPR writes fast. How fast? Fast enough that I guarantee my delivery to you with a promise of money back. If you purchase a press release from OvernightPR and we don’t get it back to you within the time frame your package gives (look at the Pricing Page for more information on this), I’ll refund you the price of your press release and throw in free social media distribution to boot.
Help A Reporter Out is one of the coolest communities around, and HARO and its community have been a great help to me and my clients. By way of saying “Thanks” to the HARO community, I wanted to reach out to you guys with the special offer above.
While You’re Here…
While you’re here, if you’d like to read some of my blog’s PR tips, you can start by reading the most recent set, or download my older articles in PDF format by visiting the sidebar under “Downloads.” Also take a moment to sign up for the monthly digest of OvernightPR.com’s blog articles by entering your email in my signup form to the right or visiting the online form instead. Or, if you’d rather, subscribe to my RSS feed.
My Email Policy:
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Follow-Up Tip: How to write a follow-up email
Image Credit: Follow The Leader by KaCey97007. Licensed through Creative Commons on flickr.com
If you’ve read my previous articles (How to Follow-Up in particular), you’ve seen the OvernightPR way to follow up on your press release. I’ve said this before a few times, but I’ll mention it here again: your press release is a tool for you to use to get PR coverage, not and end-goal of your PR efforts. In order to maximize your return on the investment of writing a release (or paying a writer to do it for you) and distributing it, you need to have your all your ducks in a row.
I’ve given dozens of tips away on how to line those little guys up to make sure that you don’t miss your opportunity with your press release, but I’ve also received a few requests from readers of past articles asking how exactly they should phrase their follow-up email. That’s largely a matter of personal taste, but I’ll share with you my template that I use when I’m doing follow-up emails.
Make the Most of Your Release: Be the Source
If you’ve read any of my articles, you know that I’m fond of lists. On the heels of my last article about how to follow up on your release (See “Trevor’s 7 Rules of PR Pitching”), here’s the seventh of 6 tips to help you get the most out of your follow-up (read the first here).
Start Your Own: You know who some of the most powerful authorities in most market spaces are? The guys who write about it.
Journalist Stand on flickr by Glass Window licensed through Creative Commons 2.0
You know that post I put up earlier today? The previous one? Where I said that “reaching out” was the best way to get your story told. I lied a little bit.
Well, pretty much completely, actually. The absolute best way to get your story told is to be the source that tells that story. This is a lot of work, and don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise. Providing quality content that gets shared and talked about is brutally hard. Talk to anyone who’s a leading blogger and they’ll tell you that it is a lot of work to become a market leader in information about a big topic.
But that’s not what you need to become. Don’t look to be the biggest blogger on marketing and public relations. Be the guy who tells everyone how to make the most of a press release, a little budget, and a few hours of precious time out of the day. (Actually, um, don’t. That’s what I”m going for.) Don’t be the leading resource on machinery, just the ‘Net’s best blog on automated printing and folding machines. Is that sexy? Not really. but it’s what will bring in business, if your company makes those folding and printing machines.
So start your own blog. Nurture it. Feed it for two or three or five years. Once you get in the habit of writing about your market space, informing others about the new trends, and generally becoming a resource for anyone who wants to know about your market, you’ll look around one day and realize that every post you write gets linked to by 40 guys and discussed in depth by another 10. You’ve become a mover and a shaker, somehow, when you weren’t looking, and now you find that the reporters come to you.
Is this an easy way to get your story told? Well, no. But if there’s no one else out there who writes in quite the right area that your business works in, it’s definitely one of the most effective.
Make the Most of Your Release: Reach Out
If you’ve read any of my articles, you know that I’m fond of lists. On the heels of my last article about how to follow up on your release (See “Trevor’s 7 Rules of PR Pitching”), here’s the fifth of 6 tips to help you get the most out of your follow-up (read the first here).
Reach Out: Send out good tips about items in your field that don’t relate to you to influential media.
Image Credit: Tippie Toes by Exquisitur licensed through Creative Commons
Sound counter-intuitive? Maybe a little. But it pays off, even if it does mean that the press runs a story that talks about a competitor or mentions a burgeoning trend without discussing you. How’s it pay off? In two ways:
- Journalists are human, too: Make their job a little easier and they’ll remember you fondly. This means that you’ll have an easier time reaching them the next time that you want to get your own story covered, that they’ll be prone to call you for quotes when they need someone to weigh in on something they’re writing, and that they’ll feel (ever so slightly) like they owe you a good turn for the favor that you did them.
- You’re keeping up with the trends: As I’ve covered earlier, there’s a number of ways that knowing what’s happening in your business pays off well for your ability to write news releases (and it’s a no-brainer from a general business perspective). It’s also something that you can legitimately budget a little time to each week as part of your media outreach and not feel like you’re a slacker for tooling around reading blogs or your RSS feed reader for two hours.
Make the Most of Your Release: Provide Supporting Content
If you’ve read any of my articles, you know that I’m fond of lists. On the heels of my last article about how to follow up on your release (See “Trevor’s 7 Rules of PR Pitching”), here’s the fourth of 6 tips to help you get the most out of your follow-up (read the first here).
Provide Supporting Content: Post your release, photos, videos, diagrams, and anything else that you can think a reporter might possibly want on your website where it’s easy to get.
Image Credit: Didn't Shrug by Bitterjug licensed via Creative Commons 2.0
Yes, post a copy of the release on your website. But that’s the beginning. You also want photos, videos, company founder bios, product demonstrations, testimonials, and anything else that you can imagine a reporter could ever want from your company. Put it where it’s easy to get. A reporter on a 30 minute deadline isn’t going to email you for a quote, she’ll just find another source. You want it as easy as possible for a reporter who’s come to your website from your release to find the answers to any questions that she wants quickly and easily.
Make The Most of Your Release: Keep Current
If you’ve read any of my articles, you know that I’m fond of lists. On the heels of my last article about how to follow up on your release (See “Trevor’s 7 Rules of PR Pitching”), here’s the third of 6 tips to help you get the most out of your follow-up (read the first here).
Keep Current: Make sure before you send out a release that you’ve been reading who’s been writing about similar topics recently.
Image Credit: Run Stella Run by Laertes licensed by Creative Commons 2.0
Before you write that release (or before you talk to your writer about it) look at the twitter streams and RSS feeds of your media people. What are they talking about right now? Figure out how your story applies to the current news. Sometimes this is easy. Everyone’s talking about an expo or event, and you’re going to be there. Your headline just about writes itself, then: “ACME Inc. to showcase new widget at WIDGETCON Convention in San Diego.” Sometimes this is more of a stretch. Everyone’s talking about an expo or event in your industry, and you want to announce that you’ve just introduced a new product. “ACME Inc. debuts new widget that compares with/contrasts with/supersedes WIDGETCON theme,” for example.
Make the Most of Your Release: Make a List
If you’ve read any of my articles, you know that I’m fond of lists. On the heels of my last article about how to follow up on your release (See “Trevor’s 7 Rules of PR Pitching”), here’s the second of 6 tips to help you get the most out of your follow-up (read the first here).
Make a List: of the people who write about your industry or business.
Image Credit: To Do List by °Florian. Licensed through Creative Commons 2.0
Who talks about your industry? Your company? Keep track of blogs, journalists and commenters who seem especially influential or knowledgeable. They’ll come in handy later. Don’t get creepy about it, but take notice of what they’re talking about.
Unless you work in an incredibly niche market, you should be able to find at least a half a dozen good writers who cover your industry or something that is close enough to it that they might be interested in what it is you do. (If there *aren’t* a half-dozen people who write about your industry, then you definitely should take advantage of tip 7 on my list of making the most of your release, which will admittedly not appear for a few days.).
Make The Most of Your Release: Listen
If you’ve read any of my articles, you know that I’m fond of lists. On the heels of my last article about how to follow up on your release (See “Trevor’s 7 Rules of PR Pitching”), here’s the first of 7 tips to help you get the most out of your follow-up.
1: Listen: Find out who’s talking about your field now.
Image Credit: "Listen" by ky_olsen. Licensed through Creative Commons 2.0
Google has an incredible tool called “Google Alerts.” (http://www.google.com/alerts) If you are a web-savvy businessman or businesswoman, you will come to love it. Basically, you tell Google what you want to know about. Then, on a weekly, daily, or “as it happens” basis, Google will let you know when its search engine encounters a new web page with the terms that you’re interested in. Include your company name in these alerts, as well as some terms that are common in your business. “OvernightPR, Fast Press Release, Social Media News Release, and Fast PR” are some of my Google Alerts.
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Make the Most of Your Release: Intro
If you’ve read any of my articles, you know that I’m fond of lists. On the heels of my last article about how to follow up on your release (See “Trevor’s 7 Rules of PR Pitching”), here’s the intro article to my list of 6 tips to help you get the most out of your follow-up.
The reason for paying a service like Marketwire or PRWeb to distribute your press release for you is that they can get your story in front of people who you can’t—at least, not without difficulty. Depending on how much you pay, you can get your story released over the AP Wire and Reuters. This gives you an channel to communicate with that ties directly to reporters all across the globe, which is a great way to make sure your story is covered, right? Write a press release that’s full of good content, has clear links back to the source for the content, and you shouldn’t have any problem getting covered by the media, right? Sadly, not as much as you probably hoped.