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Actually, that’s not the question, at least not the question I get asked. Surprisingly most of my clients who are writing their own press releases simply believe that it does, and they painstakingly draft their press releases, making sure to include a witty-verging-on-cheesy intro, and they pepper them with a lot of buzz words and professional sounding phrases to say something that could’ve been said in just a line or two.

Here is the ground-breaking secret about press releases: It doesn’t really matter how it’s written, it’s about what’s in them.

It really is that easy. Because, (here’s another secret) the reporter is going to take it and mumble to himself, “Cut. Cut cut. Cut. Don’t need that. Your new product helped you double revenue last year. Blah, blah, don’t need any of that. And cut.”

And 85 percent of your hard work gets thrown out. It’s true. Most of the time a news source will not publish your press release as is. Reporters rewrite them. That goes for whether they are just including a little “blurb” about your business or whether it’s a story. It will be rewritten.

What we really want to see is that all the facts are there, contact information, the who, what, where, when and why. And more importantly tell us why it matters to readers.

Now let me get back to the initial point of this post. Does spelling and grammar count in your press release? Of course. But in the sense that it makes you look more professional and you will probably have more of a likelyhood of being taken seriously. Will a misspelled word or misplaced preposition matter? Not really. So if you are drafting a press release yourself don’t sweat it. Get the important facts in there, make it look as presentable as possible and remember what matters most is actually getting it out there.  So do it.

With press release in hand you are sitting at your desk right now wanting to pick up the phone and alert a reporter it’s on its way, or else you are hesitant to put it in an envelope and stamp it, hoping you’ll just miss the mail man. Or maybe you have pasted it in an email and you are stalling on hitting send. I know this because this is every small business owner or sole proprietor that I’ve written press releases for. Getting it out there is a difficult move to make.

What trips a lot of people up, besides the fear of success, is not knowing exactly who to send it to or where to send it.

First of all if you are submitting it online, there are many sites that let you submit for free. Here are a few of my oft-used free submission sites. There are many others as well, but it’s a start.

Then you want to start with your local media. Always start with local media, because these guys are the most likely to give you media attention simply because you are from their area. Even if your business is run online, you are still a local resident.

For most businesses submitting a press release you will want to target the business editor, that goes for most news, simply because you are a business and really that is the easy page to break into. Now here is where it gets more complicated.

If you have something that may be of more general interest, say you offer a lawn care service for homes in foreclosure. You’ve seen business just triple because more banks are realizing that if those homes sit in disrepair they become harder to sell, so they hire you to keep the lawns maintained and thus keeping the curb appeal of the property. This is an example of a trend story. It is a unique angle to the whole played out foreclosure issue. So you might want to add a cover letter pitching the release this way and letting them know you are available for interviews.

This is also the perfect type of story to pitch larger media. Bigger news outlets are not interested in a story simply about your existence. They want a way to tie it into a bigger concept that affects lots of people. Trend stories are a popular way of doing this.

But in both of these situations, know that you will likely be part of a bigger story with lots of sources. It will likely not focus on you alone. However it does set you up as an expert and knowledgeable on the subject. And isn’t that the reason you are submitting the press release in the first place?

If I asked you if there is such a thing as too much publicity, unless you are Russell Crowe, you’d probably say “no.” But now change that question a bit and ask if there is such a thing as submitting too many press releases, and you’ll probably scratch your chin and go “hmmm.” Because that one is a little harder to know for most people.

As a longtime newspaper reporter, I tend to think that no, there isn’t such a thing as too many press releases. However, there is one caveat–they must all be newsworthy. And of course, that’s the key right there, isn’t it, making sure your press release is newsworthy? There are a lot of subjects that even public relations pros will fudge on and try to put across as newsworthy. There is a big difference between putting out a press release because you named your dog your company mascot and allow him to walk about the office, and being named “One of the Best Places to Work for Animal Lovers” by some top magazine because of the fact you allow your dog to be the mascot. Yet, somehow those mundane-not-really-newsworthy-but-it’s-a-slow-news-day-press releases get out there and onto reporter’s desks.

And that’s OK, usually. But when you send similar un-newsworthy press release after un-newsworthy press release, well it begins to say something about you: that you aren’t newsworthy.

So how many is too many? Again, there is no set answer. But the rule of thumb is if you are straining to come up with an idea for a press release on a regular basis, then you are trying too hard and maybe you need to wait for something a little more newsworthy to happen before you submit your next press release. Hey I’m just saying. It’s better that you send quality press releases less frequently then tarnish your reputation as someone who simply helps fill the reporter’s wastebasket.

In this economy businesses tend to think of cutting costs. The first thing some business owners think of throwing out is marketing. Big mistake. There are many ways to market your business in an affordable way. Perhaps the easiest of these ways is the press release.

Whether you are an online business or offline business a press release is an easy and affordable way to reach a wide audience. It works like this: You get the word out to someone influential and they get the word out to the masses. Instantly you’ve reached lots of people by making one contact. Of course it takes a teensy bit more work than that but you get the gist.

If you still underestimate the press release think of it this way. Try sending a quick email or note to said influential person with a short sales pitch about your business. Something like this: “Hi I own a business that sells household appliances and I was wondering if you’d do a story/blog post/mention of my business.”

Yeah, good luck with getting a response. Now instead how about a well-crafted press release that talks about how increasingly people were coming into your store asking for portable clotheslines because they were hanging their clothes to dry to save money on energy costs, and how your store picked up on the trend and is now the largest carrier of portable clotheslines, surpassing even your appliance sales. Well I can’t guarantee a big story but that may sound like a trend story to your local business reporter.

People the pitch is everything. It costs little to have a press release written up, it’s free if you do it yourself. Either way you take advantage of some affordable public relations. What are you waiting for? Think of an angle and get to pitching.

Once upon a time, a long, long, time ago, I was a real estate agent. A pretty good one too. In fact, my husband and I worked as a team and we were named top sales agents for our office. Early on we had decided to enlist the help of a coach and that made all the difference. We got a lot of good advice from that coach but the number one thing we took from our weekly coaching sessions was that sales is a numbers game and in order to play you’ve got to have enough numbers. In our case it was 40 a day. We were told to “touch” or basically contact 40 people a day in order to get enough negative responses that would lead to positive contacts. I think the numbers worked this way;  you touch 40 people and of those you’ll get three leads and of those three leads one will be a sale.

So we found the easiest way to touch 40 people a day. Instead of door knocking like most other agents we decided to go to businesses. You’ve got a captive audience and they almost have to be nice to you. We never took advantage of that, merely coming in introducing ourselves as real estate agents and then leaving. But the numbers worked every time.

I’m not saying there’s a magic formula to sales but yes, I kind of am. Back in the day it was called networking. And whatever you want to call it, touching people, networking, whatever, I’ve always been a big believer in it. With social media it’s easier than ever to do it. Want to grow your email list or drive traffic to your site? It’s not going to happen if you sit back and list your site on a few blog directories. You need to work it. You need to touch people. I’ve heard from some bloggers that they drive traffic by commenting on 50, and even 100 sites a day. When you are making that many contacts on a daily basis you are bound to make some connections and gain some followers.

Try it. How many people will you touch today?

The way people use the term public relations often varies significantly, I’ve found. Some businesses  will talk about their public relations plan and will instruct their employee to do ad buys, others will be referring to press releases, others will talk about putting flyers on cars.

Public relations is just that, getting word out to the public about your brand. That can be anyway you see fit. The operative word here is “relations” and you need to build them. And that is specifically what public relations is about.

Often I get clients who ask about how their public relations plan will translate into increased sales. While there are all sorts of metrics to measure that, the focus really is on building relationships with the public, with customers and building name brand recognition. After that the sales will come and they will be repeat sales because they will be coming from loyal customers.

How does social media fit in to that? Social media is another way to reach those customers. Whether your customers are solely online or mostly off you should include social media as part of your overall public relations campaign. It’s simply another way to increase your relationships with customers. And it’s a free way at that.

What different ways are you reaching out to build relationships with your customers?

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Last week Amber over at  Altitude Branding wrote a Dear John letter to PR folks. I totally get it. She’s totally right. Basically, it was a bit of a rant (deservedly so) about her frustration about getting pitched by PR pros. The thing is she doesn’t do reviews in her blog and especially not for the types of products she’s getting pitched.

In the offline world this has long been one of my frustrations with PR pros. At my newspaper job I will get an email or phone call and usually the pitch is this: “Hi, our client is a local resident and they just (did this wonderful thing)  and we were wondering if you’d do a story.” Then I get totally thrilled until I release it’s someone from a major metropolitan city 3 hours away. That’s not a local resident and if they did any research they’d find that our newspaper doesn’t have a coverage area that reaches that far out.

The problem is lack of research. This is why I often don’t recommend buying media lists if you are are running a DIY PR campaign. It’s really a waste of your time to blanket pitch journalists and bloggers. This is actually a good thing to know because you want to target your news to the media that can do something about it. The misguided pitches that make media bristle make them feel that way because  it’s obvious you didn’t even bother to check out the publication or blog.

However most people, and PR folks, go for the media lists because you can blast out your message to tons of media with the theory being the more press releases sent out the more likely you are to get publicity. However, your odds are the same as the person who put in a little effort and identified 25 reporters/bloggers likely to publish their news.

So do the research. It will definitely be worth your while. You’ll gain exposure with less effort.

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If you are Tiger Woods or Jesse James and you’ve just had an affair, that bad publicity will probably only mildly tarnish your image but on the flip side it highlights that badboy image. If you are a former Disney starlet looking to drop your good girl image let a few sexting incidents or nude pictures taken on your cell phone leak and the hubbub is actually good for business.

Most businesses don’t operate in the same realm as Hollywood hotties. Negative publicity can be bad for business, so monitoring your brand becomes crucial. And the easiest way to monitor your brand is on the Internet. At the very least you should be doing a Google search of your name and business name. Set up Google Alerts to let you know when your name has been mentioned in cyberspace. You can also go over to Social Mention Alerts and do the same. If you aren’t participating in social networks (first of all shame on you) then you should at least be monitoring them.

You can search for your name on Twitter via keyword or hashtag.

Backtype.com and Cocomment.com can help you keep track of comments that mention your brand on blogs.

Yahoo!Pipes will email you alerts about what you are interested in.

Sites like Boardtracker.com and Boardreader.com will keep you informed of comments about your brand left on message boards.

Google Sidewiki is a toolbar that allows web surfers to leave comments that are attached to your website and can be seen by anyone else with a Google Sidewiki toolbar when they visit your site.

If you are tracking comments and you find something damaging is being spread about your brand how do you manage it?

Try to address any negative comments by engaging the person who made the post. You want to make that person feel like their complaint is being addressed and other readers to see that you are addressing it, but you don’t want to start an ongoing finger-pointing war or you risk damaging your brand further. If the comments are serious consider addressing the issue offline.

If there are many negative comments it can be useful. Analyze the comments to see if there is a common thread. Maybe there is a failure in your customer service department. Or maybe a defect in one of your products. Finding that commonality and fixing the problem you can then go back and publicize the fact that your customers spoke and you listened.

Heading off bad publicity can help you keep customers loyal and all it takes is a little monitoring and prompt attention to diffuse negative matters.

Do you want to know what reporters really think about your press release? Why that press release never made it to print? Or maybe after several attempts one press release did make it and you are wondering why. Well I asked a few news media colleagues to give me their opinions on what they like to see in a press release and what bothers them the most about press releases they receive. They didn’t hesitate in giving their opinions, and mostly because if their answers help you to write a better press release then their job is that much easier.

I’ve compiled their comments in a 10-page free report called Your Press Release Sucks! And Other Things Reporters Wish They Could Say. You can get it here:

Your Press Release Sucks!

Do you know what reporters really think of that press release you are sending out? Maybe you’ve slaved over it for days, editing, proofreading, and getting feedback from others. Or maybe you are a naturally gifted writer and simply assume you will have no problems with your press release.

On the other side of the desk, however, reporters may not be giving your press release the attention it deserves. Usually it’s because you’ve set off a reporter’s pet peeve. It’s OK we all have them but it’s something you really want to avoid when you are sending out a press release about your business.

Want to know what really sets a reporter off? Want to know what reporters really think of that press release? Well in a few days you will find out. I compiled a short report based on my own experiences as a journalist of 15 years, and the opinions of a few other veteran reporters and editors to create the report “Your Press Release Sucks: And Other Things Reporters Wish They Could Tell You.” This free report is a blunt look at what reporters hate to see in a press release, and what they prefer.

Some of the mistakes you may recognize from your own submissions, and others, well, you will be surprised at what kinds of things get sent in. Even if you are doing everything right, you’ll want to read this report just to keep you on the right track and increase your chances of getting your press release successfully published.

Check back next week for that report!