Spreading Your News

When you’re ready to generate news coverage, start with this question: Is this a local, industry, or national/international story? Your answer will focus your distribution strategy. Until recently, you had three essential avenues to circulate your news:

check.png Distribute news releases on your own by hand, mail, or e-mail to a list your business has developed and maintained. This approach is especially common for local or targeted industry news stories.

check.png Hire a public relations firm. Especially for stories with broad-reaching impact, professionals often have more open channels to news sources, and they distribute news through appropriate wire services and the Associated Press.

check.png Use a news distribution wire service. PR professionals and individual businesses use services such as Business Wire (www.businesswire. com) for simultaneous release of material to news networks, newspapers, magazines, news bureaus, TV and radio stations, sites such as Google News and Yahoo, and investment and research departments in the business and financial world. PR Newswire (www.prnewswire.com ) provides the same service but isn’t limited to business press.

Today, you have one more essential approach ...

Get Small Business Marketing Kit For Dummies, 3rd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.