Free Press Release sites? or other forms of marketing.advertising?

Must admit, not had much experience of Press releases. We used to send out to our local newspapers if we were doing something potentially newsworthy, charity donations etc, but never really came to much.

We've used a chap called Alan a few times, whose a member here (Alby10). He does a Press release writing and submission service which should give you a few decent back links. I think he cost about

Yeah, it can get very pricey, they are meant to be good though, I'll have too have a look at a few more, did you get good results from your press release?

Thanks

I did some online reading and wrote my first press release. I submitted on the FREE press release submission sites and waited nothing happened (well except the PR article from these sites showing in google searches)

I saw a nice business link adviser, who advised me to change my approach and tell my story. I did just that sent my story in the email and attached the same press release, I had written months prior to this ( tweaked a bit). I was a little cheeky with my subject heading to get their attention to read further. The next day got phone calls and email and got featured on a local paper.

It actually summaries this nice TED talk by Simon Sinek. People buy not what you do but why you do it

Ah right, where did you find these free press release sites? I have not yet written anything but I will bare this in mind, I'm hoping the fact that we are three young entrepreneurs will also make it more appealing, but I will have to see.

What is your business? do you sell products?

I have to dig up the word document were I saved it from my old hard drive. You can pm your email address and I will forward this to you.

No, I don't sell a product. I got PR on a site that wasn't yet live. It was the idea that was portrayed in that press release. I also included info about an award I had won from ShellLiveWIRE.

When I won the award, I thought PR would be easy but it didn't work out that way.

A few days ago in the metro, I read about three young entrepreneurs that had set up a studentjob site. There are several student job websites online but their story was newsworthy. Read the article ( sorry can't post links, search for thestudentjob on metro website).

Do a research on current trends, you need to find something that your product or service can relate with and use in your press release (what problem are you solving?). If you have won any awards or achieved something, add this as well.

This is half the problem, we got some good exposure from local rags, picture of shaking hands with Mayors, Air Ambulance crew that sort of stuff, maybe this translated into a couple of links back to the site? But other than that, it's incredibly hard to monitor any results.

How many people reading about us in the paper then decided to go online and list their business on our directory? I'm guessing very few. Ok we could have the "where did you hear about us" page, but you only have that persons attention for such a short space of time, I'd sooner spend it on an upsell

We had similar issues with Radio advertising and Branded Taxi campaigns, it's trying to monitor offline exposure and gauge the effectiveness. Something like a flyers easier because you can send to a specific link and then track any traffic, but PR wise, I now just look at online releases.

We know they will get picked up by google news (however briefly) and normally generate a few links on different PR sites.

The one I want to try this year is a survey, but that's another story

Thank you both for the advice, I have just had some flyers printed and the plan is to go round local shops, houses and also hand them out to people at the markets we are doing, as for the PR I am still looking in to this, it make take me a few days to write and article so if it's not worth it, it will be a waste of time!

Thanks

I think flyers should be ok for a start, you can do ads on twitter, recommend to friends on facebook.

If you need assistance with writing an article at a later date, you can try posting a request on myTaskAngel to get competitive quotes.

Usually you can’t get a good press release without paying good money (you get what you pay for). You can try local colleges and see if you can find someone looking for experience that might be willing to help you out for a small fee. I know a friend of mine went to college for video game design and PR and was eager to get experience under his belt some way or another.