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.