Since the year began I have been concentrating on writing press releases at the expense of writing articles for my clients. These days I am writing what I enjoy working on more than writing on what I have to do to make a living.

NewspaperYes, I am still marketing myself as “The Article Writer” but I have been mentioning to everyone who has asked that press releases is the main type of “article” servicie that I am providing right now followed by web content. Somewhere down my unwritten list are “feature length” but I am not seeing much of a demand for those at the moment.

Most of my press release customers are new to press releases, so I get to break them in on what they are all about and what a press release can, might, or will or will not do for them. There are some wrong ideas out there about press releases, so allow me to name a few in order to clear certain notions about them:


1. A press release is newsworthy information offered to members of the media and is written in the third person. Now that the internet is an important way of transmitting and sharing information, an online copy is as important or even more so than a release submitted to the local newspaper. Likely, you’ll get the majority of your readership from folks who read your press release online.

2. A sales pitch is what a press release must not become. Sure, there are probably some distributors out there who do not uphold editorial integrity whatsoever and will take your money in exchange for publishing your “piece.” This is unfortunate because the internet becomes all the more polluted with overt sales material under the guise of a press release.

3. Newspapers still count so you’ll want to send a copy of your release to your local newspapers. Write a personal cover letter to the editor of each newspaper and attach your release; community newspapers are hungry for fresh news so even if your customer base is national or international your local paper could be interested in knowing that your type of business is operating within their service area.

4. There is a good chance your press release will not be used by your local newspaper no matter how well it is written. Sure, you want them to take your release and turn it into a story or at least use excerpts from the release for reprinting. Still, there is so much information that lands on the desk of an editor that your press release may not stand out. That is one reason why a cover letter addressed to the right person really helps matters. Better: get to know your local media contact personally and send your release with a personal note attached to him or her.

5. Your release will eventually obtain some sort of page rank. While page rank is good, is this all that you want from your release? I link directly to the online copy of the release to give that release a decent backlink. Because my link rests on a page that is currently PR4, that alone can go far in helping to elevate a press release’s ranking.

I almost always talk directly with my new clients before writing a release for them. In many cases their ideas of what a press release can or will do for them isn’t entirely accurate. Sometimes they have been fed a bunch of hooey meant to extract an extra amount of monies from them when a simple upgraded release through a service such as PR Leap is all that they need in order to receive the Google News inclusion desired by them.