Secret of a Successful Press Release

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Mailbox

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A client emailed me recently:

“I received an offer: Promote your book to 1,000 websites, media outlets, and search engines. What do you think? Is there a realistic ROI (Return of Investment) for the $97.00 press release?”
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My reply:
“Do you really want an honest answer? It is terribly expensive for what you get! Their work-effort is five minutes maximum, these mass email costs them less than a dollar – and the rest is profit…
The recipients are not selected to the readership of your books genre. It goes out in a mass email to any websites, any media outlets (can be a lifestyle magazine or a Christian newspaper, or a garden / cooking magazine, a sports magazine, just about anything …).  Well, and you are in search engines listed anyway with your blog and your website.
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The one who writes the press release will be you! They just copy / paste it into an email form (images seems not to be included, as far as I can see) and off it goes by mass email. NOT to your potential
readers! ROI (Return of Investment) with this kind of mass email? No way!”
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You might have read two former blog posts: 7 Errors To Avoid When Dealing With the Media and How to Write a Press Release for Your Book

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No time to read thousands of emails every day
Journalist, reporters and editors are under constant time pressure and overwhelmed with emails, they don’t even read them anymore, and for sure they are not reading mass emails with press releases that were not directly sent to their name, rather were sent to their newspaper office.
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Statement from a journalist:
“Why do companies and PR’s still target these useless muppets to waste journalists’ time, bombarding them with irrelevant stories. Do your homework properly, build up your own media contacts list and deal with them directly.”
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Make sure you email the right person.
Put together a file of hand-picked contact people at newspapers, radio stations, TV stations and other organizations that would be a good fit for your niche. The days of… blind copying everybody and hoping somebody picks up your press release is really over. Reporters and editors just get annoyed.
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If you want to receive great results from a promotional campaign, it must go to a target audience. To promote your book, you need to find journalists who are writing about books, and convince them that your work stands out among thousands in the same genre – and that it is useful / interesting for their readers. Having a great story is just not enough anymore. You need to know how to get reporters to listen. A successful press release campaign needs to be well planned:

• research of recipients
• research of key words
• research of benefits for readers
• creating a compelling headline
• get stunning photos
• write a catchy text
• editing, editing, editing
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As with everything you learn as an aspiring author-publisher-entrepreneur: When you do it the first time, it is a bit of en effort, but from the second Press Release on the learning curve is very steep, you have already a prototype, you have your checklist, and a number of journalists, reporters and bloggers coordinates in your files. Now you just need a brilliant photo or two, and to craft the article, which should be a breeze. After all you are a writer, right?

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If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only $ 159 for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/ Once you are on this website, click on Seminar to register.

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