Distributing Press Releases

The two most common ways to distribute press releases are via e-mail or fax. Unfortunately, both methods are heavily abused by spammers, who send out untargeted press releases and solicitations to journalists at a rate of hundreds per week.

The best way to ensure that a press release is actually read by a media contact is to capitalize on an existing relationship. If the journalist knows that you've spent the time to research his tastes, or has received newsworthy stories from you in the past, he's much more likely to pay attention in the future.

interview
Photo courtesy Dreamstime
Press releases can lead to an interview.

Still, some situations call for the ability to send many targeted press releases at once. E-mail makes this easy. Paste your press release in the body of an e-mail (some filters automatically delete messages with attachments), address it to all the journalists you want to contact and press send.

Advances in fax technology have also made it easy to "broadcast" a faxed press release to many recipients without faxing each one individually or spending the money to pay for all the long-distance phone calls. This is accomplished by desktop fax, a technology that enables users to send and receive faxes from their e-mail accounts. For a company to use desktop fax, it has either to buy special fax servers or subscribe to a third-party hosting service.

Like regular e-mail, it's possible to send desktop faxes to many recipients at once. Simply add all of the fax numbers as separate e-mail addresses.

Web-based fax broadcasting services work similar to desktop fax but with a few extra features. Using a Web interface, you can schedule press releases to release on a certain day and time and even include a preset number of redials. Web-based fax broadcasting services also allow you to upload contact lists from spreadsheets or existing e-mail groups. Some also include reporting services to see which faxes went through.

Press Release Alternatives

The explosion of Web 2.0 and social media Web sites has given rise to a whole new breed of public opinion-makers. For the Net Generation -- those who grew up in the online age -- blogs, message boards and peer reviews are what matter most, not the opinion of some "official" source.

To reach the Net Generation, says social media expert Brian Solis, you have to join the game. Traditional press releases won't fly with most bloggers and will stick out like a sore thumb on message boards. What PR professionals need to do is participate in the online communities they want to influence, as genuine fans.

There are other alternatives to sending press releases to journalists. If you or your client is an expert on a certain subject, you can send an introductory letter to journalists who cover your area of expertise, advertising yourself as a useful source. Or, you can write feature stories or Op-Ed columns yourself. One of the best ways to establish yourself as an expert is to collect published clips of your work.

For lots more information about press releases and related topics, check out the links on the next page.