Making your own headlines part 2

Last time we discussed the process of identifying potential news release stories and how these are best presented to the media. But what are the best means of distribution?

This is a tricky one to generalise about. There are no hard and fast rules as so much depends on the type of publication and media being targeted whether it is broadcast, print, new media, local, regional or national.

So how best to deliver your message?

Be guided by what information you can find within your target publication. Most magazines and newspapers supply editorial addresses and guidelines for the submission of news releases either within their publication itself or online. Here you will find the principal contact, usually called the newsdesk, and their preferred mode of communication. Normally they will specify whether press releases are best sent by email or fax. If in doubt, call to find out. You will need to do this homework for each of your target media.

If sending by fax or email, do so in plenty of time. Don’t wait until the last minute – the nearer it is to the deadline the less likely your release will see the light of day. Also, the earlier you are, the more chance you have of a good position, such as the top story on a particular page.

Fill in all the contact details in the cover page of a fax, ensure it is clearly addressed for the recipient and that it is instantly recognisable that it is a news release.

If sending by email, paste the text of your release into the body of the email itself. Do not send an attachment. Always fill in the Subject field by prefixing the headline with ‘News release:’ to help flag up your email and prevent it being given low priority, overlooked or mistaken for spam.

It is debatable whether sending your email with a read receipt request does any good. On the one hand if the request is okayed you will at least know your email has been opened. On the other hand, a read receipt is quite often ignored or for a number of other reasons not sent. Given that the recipient has made clear their preferred means of delivery for releases is by email, with the inference that they actually check their in-boxes on a regular basis, it rather defeats the whole purpose and intent to call them up to ask if they got your email okay. The exception would be if your email bounced, then it would be quite legitimate to enquire if have the correct email address or if their email server is down.

It is also good practice when using email for your release to send using Blind cc header. This has two advantages. Firstly, the recipient will be unaware you have sent the release elsewhere. Again, this may or may not be a good thing. The response at the receiving end could be:

“Good, they’ve only sent it to us. We can use it.”

or

“Good, they’ve only sent it to us. We can sit on it until next week.”

Alternatively, including all the email recipients into the To or Cc field may lever some influence if one publication sees that a rival has been sent the same release. Then, the response could be:

“They’ve sent it to the Daily Blah, we’d better find a bit of space for this.”

or

“This is definitely a Daily Blah story, we’d better use it too”

Not so positively, the effect of a long list of distribution email addresses could be:

“We’re not using this, they’ve sent it to everyone and their dog.”

PR is a black art indeed. On balance, though, the scales are probably tipped to sending email releases via the Bcc field. This is because the email addresses contained in a To or Cc field could easily be harvested by spammers or unwittingly help to spread a virus. You could also find yourself in breach of the Data Protection Act.

It’s also useful to email the release to yourself at the same time as a double check that your email server has in fact sent the message and is not holding it for some reason.

Don’t overlook the many online sites where you can post news releases for free. Usually they require users to register and confirm by email before they can post, so get this out of the way before your release day.

Check out the free services at PR Web , prleap.com , pr-scotland.com and Pressbox.co.uk for example. For new site announcements go to click2newsites.com

Web sites dedicated to a particular subject are always on the lookout for content, so another good tip is to use a search engine. If, for example, you’re based in Sutherland and sell hand made jewellery online, try using the following search terms: “submit news”+“arts and crafts”, to find sites that may be interested in your release. If you retrieve too many results, refine the search by adding further search terms such as UK and jewellery.