In the past, companies have gone green as part of both an ideology and to send a message about their community responsibility. It’s mostly been considered an expense attributed to Marketing and Public Relations.

In the past, the cost of being green has been prohibitive to many small companies. Today it is becoming the exact opposite; a way to reduce both the cost and the environmental impact.

The current economic state has turned the reasons for going green from purely a philosophical stance and a calculated cost to being about the bottom line and potential savings. Fuel costs alone have thrown the balance towards ecological thinking

It is no longer about making a statement, it’s just good business.

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Part 1 - Consumables, The easy place to start

The paperless office was a joke when it was first thought of in the 80’s and 90’s. We have been creating more papers since then than ever before. But again, the cost of office supplies is increasing, so by going green and actually reducing the amount of paper and other disposables used you will save money and the environment in one move.

Modern software packages – Office 2007 for instance - have file sharing and cooperative functions built in that make working on electronic copies of documents easier and better than ever before. Implementing new document handling services will also save you time and money in the long run by speeding up your processing time and accuracy. A piece of paper gets misplaced a lot easier than an email.

Accounts Payable Management

Accounts payable and Invoices are big problem areas for many companies. Different standards and systems often cause payment policy problems. Espcially if you are using a central processing that sends invoices out for verification.

Use scanners and email to verify invoices between departments. The cost of losing an Invoice is often high in both supplier relations and financial terms. Emails can be traced much easier than papers.

You can also consider using a system like American Express - @ work. Which allows you to completely computerize your expense processing, all invoices can be processed through this system, not just the ones paid with the AMEX card. Saving you both paper and postage if you normally send paper copies of invoices for verification to different site managers etc.

Using the Amex Card for invoice payments also adds a net 30 days to your payment time. Which can even out the disparity between a company who has a fixed payment policy and suppliers who invoice with different payment times.

I am sure that there are many services like this, but the one I have most experience with is the AMEX system, which is why I’m mentioning it, if you can find something that works as well or better, please give me a heads up.

Printing / Copying

Printers are expensive, ink and toner is expensive. And they are power hogs. By reducing the amount of papers used, you can reduce the cost of all three, and keeping fewer more efficient printer/copier combinations in a central location.

Using double sided printing and copying for anything that does not specifically require a single sided print can reduce the paper usage with over 40%. (Client observation) Most modern copiers have automated single to double sided conversion settings.

Filing

Filing systems take up between 5 and 15 percent of the floor space in an office. With less paper, you will be able to either improve the conditions of the employees with more open space. Or you can move to a smaller office.

Less paper in filing also reduces cost of long term storage of documents, and if created and maintained electronically from the beginning, you reduce the cost of converting them later.

Reduced Housekeeping

Anything that reduces paper waste also reduces the potential cost of document destruction as well as cleaning cost. 10-15 percent of all cleaning activities are focused around emptying trash, and most office trash is paper. Less garbage is a strong negotiating point with your cleaning service.

Lighting

The new low energy light bulbs are no news to anyone these days. But the use of them can quickly turn into a money saver. Using 1/5 to 1/6 of a normal incandescent bulb in energy and lasting longer before replacing accomplishes two things immediately.

a. Reduced energy cost and cost of replacements

b. Reduced cost of maintenance with fewer calls for broken bulbs

Task Lighting is also better for employee health and well-being, just ask your average employee how they feel about overhead fluorescents in general and you’ll see that this is a very quick way to make the workspace a more comfortable and inviting place.

No reason not to do it

Reducing and replacing consumables is a direct money saver, capable of both improving the bottom line and the workplace environment for employees. The long term effects of better environment on the cost of sick leaves, workers comp and other health related expenses Is hard to predict, but can only work in your favor.

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-Stay tuned for the second part -
"Going Green is the Cheapest Marketing You’ve Ever Seen"

Think your hobby can’t be turned into a business?

Think again!

Don’t forget to subscribe to get more of these ideas.

1. The Model Aviator

Tommy was a fairly disillusioned call-center operator. He hated frustrated customers almost as much as he hated the company policies that prohibited him from actually helping them.

His weekend hobby was to fly model helicopters, and he was good at it too. After hearing him joke more than once about what a shame it was you couldn’t make any money doing that - I had a lucky coincidence.

One of my clients needed an upgrade of their reception and they looked into having aerial pictures taken and framed. Those turned out to be anything but cheap. (In fact, I thought taking a pilot’s license would be a cheaper alternative.)

Tom now takes pictures of every new construction and building for sale in his town and sells it either to the owner as an art piece, or to Realtors and builders as marketing materials. He also takes pictures for companies (like my clients) on request.

The great thing was that as soon as one realtor started using his pictures for marketing, many others got scared and started buying his pictures too. He not only found a way to provide something at a great value, more importantly his business created its own demand.

He is making about three times as much as he was getting yelled at all day.

These days he gets a good laugh telling people that his major business expenses are model helicopter parts and sunscreen, and he writes them both off.

2. The Fisherman

Brett loved fishing on the weekends, but like many others, the job he was doing everyday was not really making him happy. He spent most of the week half a step out of the insane asylum trying to deal with a boss he couldn’t stand.The evenings he spent in school hoping to earn a promotion away from his boss.

He had a boat, a really nice one that his father had left him when he passed away. Spending time on that boat was his great escape on the weekends. And kept talking about being a charter boat captain.

Eventually I made him a deal. If he got his licenses and insurance, and it didn’t pay for itself in one year. I would pay for it. If it did work he’d pay me my fee over the next year after that.

He started working weekends, marketing through local newspaper ads on Thursday and Friday. After a while he got a dock close to two hotels, and put a big “Charter Fishing” sign on the dock that was visible from both hotels entrance. I was there to help him nail it up and he was jokingly wondering when they would start calli… that’s when the first call came. After that, he quit both his job and his school and hasn’t looked back since.

I should have asked for a percentage instead…

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What skills do you have that you think are worthless in the marketplace?

Subscribe for free to get more ideas on turning a hobby into a business.

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Today Google launched their KNOL (Short for Knowledge) service. A user contributed knowledge base that can take a huge bite out of for instance Wikipedia. But KNOL has a much more interesting aspect.

It is a showcase service for authors, and it has more in common with for instance Digg and Propeller than it does with Wikipedia.

Proprietary Information

On KNOL, the author owns the article. No more moderations where overzealous people nitpick on the smallest details and undo every change that they feel is wrong; regardless of its true merit. On KNOL, the article and author is voted on as wholes. No one but the author can modify it. So in that sense, it is more related to Social Media than it is to Wikipedia. And now we are beginning to see the genius of it.

The Bloggers Dream (or Nightmare)

This creates a very interesting new aspect for online marketers. Especially those that have spearhead knowledge in combination with great writing skills. These authors can now showcase not only their work, but themselves on something that proves to be a very interesting battleground for bloggers. It’s no longer a battle of “who has the most friends on Facebook and Stumble” This one is going to be fought with good old-fashioned writing skills and sweat of the writer’s brow.

The KNOL Effect Is Coming

Now, the best writers, will undoubtedly be able to drive massive amounts of traffic to their blogs, Much like the Digg Effect, a top voted article on any subject is bound to bring traffic in the thousands when KNOL gets established.

The problem here is that KNOL May take over a large part of the referencing capacity from other Social media sites. Especially for “normal” users who are already used to trusting Google with delivering the content they are looking for.

We may see a very large, and quick shift in traffic generation. We will definitely see changes occurring around us when the current big names scramble to counter whatever effect it has on them.

Time is no longer an issue – Were back to Quality

On Digg, you are the flower of the day, here one minute, gone the next.

But because KNOL published works are not going to be time sensitive. It is no longer enough to be the only person that day that posts on a topic. You have to be the best permanent to claim that particular spot. Now quality articles written with the utmost precision will be the best way to create a following.

One Digg - Hold the LinkBait

On many social media sites, Link bait and Flashy headlines combined with funny shtick photos is the mainstay of popularity. KNOL promises something else.

This is a new world, one where being the best social networker may no longer be enough to get anywhere. KNOL may just have cornered the market on quality.

Verification of Authors and SEO

Another interesting thing is how the voting of verified authors may or may not influence the search engine ranking of sites associated with that author in general. THIS may very well be the largest impact KNOL has on the online marketing world.

Google certainly has the power to penalize authors who are viewed as poor writers and translate that into their search algorithms.

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This is not something where “wait and see” will be a good plan. Don’t for a second think that a social media endeavor, launched by Google, and with its sights set so squarely on some of the largest services out there will have anything less than earth shattering effects on the scene.

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In “The Extinction of Dinosaur Marketers,” I discussed the problems of bringing the old school of hardcore sales and pushy advertising into the new online marketplace. We are starting to see a new trend blooming that is showing exactly this problem.

This morning I read an article by Neal Levitt, who is discussing the shift from online advertising to online promotions; Coupons, Contests, Giveaways etc. and we can see clearly that fear and lack of understanding is the driving force behind this change.

In the article, Rob Enderle states the problem very clearly. “Promotions are typically tied to actual sales; advertising is vastly harder to measure. You may never know for sure whether an advertising program is truly successful, but a promotion’s success or failure tends to be rather obvious,”

Microwave Marketing

So we are back to what I was discussing in the Extinction Series. It’s not about the actual results, it’s about being able to squeeze the results in to an easy to understand and immediately available metric. Instant gratification rules the show still. It’s the microwave society thinking I’ve been warning about.

Problem is, you aren’t dealing with the same ballgame anymore, now that customers are forcing us to accept that they are individuals with which you need to create a functioning and lasting relationship. You can’t measure the single sale result as a measure of success. The easy to understand metric may be a comfortable and familiar feeling. But to rely on single sale as measure of success is suicide in the age of customer interaction.

Thought Exercise

Which would you mention as the top three websites right now?

Yahoo - Google – Youtube – Myspace – Facebook.. You should have had at least one or two of those In your top threes. Now, what do all of these have in common?

They are user driven – and – none of them are focused on you. Yahoo and Google, provides searches, where your customers can find you at their leisure. Youtube, Myspace, and Facebook are communities where your customers can talk about you when they want to. Although you can buy advertising on Google and Yahoo, your ad will only get seen or clicked on when that is what the customer did a search for.

Any and all attempts to circumvent this, and create an artificial ingress point into your customers interactions with eachother will be considered spam.

Experiment

Create a page with a great sales promotion. Something extremely good, and submit it to Digg or any other voter driven system. Then watch how fast you get slammed with negative feedback and your submission gets buried.

If you think this is irrelevant. Maybe you are thinking that this is a problem with the nature of Digg more than a problem with the approach. Think again. Guess who just got annoyed with you? It was a cross section of your customers. And they just let you know what they think about direct advertising and promotional pushes invading their space.

All these networks are nothing without the users. These users are showing you exactly what they think of the way you are trying to talk to them, and these users are your customers when they leave that particular site. So to think that this is not a great way to check your customers’ reaction to your particular approach is short-sighted at best.

Advertising or Promoting?

It’s funny how the old school thinkers are turning these against each other, when in the new marketplace, they are completely interdependent. They are doing this because the harder to measure metric of online advertising is branding. And branding just doesn’t translate well into an excel sheet.

You can, and SHOULD offer your customers great value, which can be done with measurable systems like giveaways, coupons etc. And you can use contextual online advertising to drive them to the place where they can see it. But you can’t do either without the other. Advertising without having a conversion in mind is fairly brainless. But to do a sales promotion without driving targeted traffic to it is even worse. Now, the reason advertising works for this is because advertising online (when done right) is contextual.

Lets go Viral – Nope… too late

What the thinking behind online promotions is, is that it hopes to drive a viral market. The promotion is intended to create a buzz on its own and make people talk about it. This is actually not a bad idea at all.. Have you started yet? Oops. You missed it!

Once this becomes the standard way of squeezing the square peg into the round hole, people will stop doing it. Once these promotions become the mainstay of every online venture, no one will want to hear a word about a promotion anymore.

Just by writing this post I’ve educated a couple of bloggers that may stop writing about promotions as a result. So you are either ready to go now, or you are probably too late.

The intermediary step is to try and fake it, With undisclosed pay per post articles for instance. But that time has passed too, the social networks have educated each other and undisclosed promotions are getting a lot of negative feedback now. If you at any point make the mistake of thinking that the customer can’t recognize a sales pitch a mile away, you missed out on the real opportunity. To build a relationship based on their expectations, not your need to make a quick buck.

Natural Recommendation Is the Only Lasting Approach

Your customers will talk about you, when you simply meet their needs and requirements, and do it with their end satisfaction in mind. Satisfaction will drive discussion and recommendations naturally. Honest opinions and reviews from trusted sources will never be out of date.

The forced discussion started dying as soon as it became a marketing idea.

Whatever your thinking is for using promotional activities, interactive systems or contextual advertising online, you have to always step back and consider the value to the customer of not only the promotion, but the way you are advertising the promotion.

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When you meet their needs, they will meet yours. If you do it well enough, they will come back to do it over and over again.

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We know that social networks like Digg, Reddit, and Stumble are great for gross traffic, but often send quick stop visitors who don’t convert well to ad-clicks and sales.

But how are Social Network users at converting to other social networks? Will a Digger Stumble your post and vice versa? Many do use more than one network, so this would appear to be common at first glance. Guess again.

In fact, this is almost as uncommon as ad clicks. Apparently even though many use both Stumble and Digg, there is a definite lack of transition. It appears that the users are "stuck" on the network they arrive on. Even those that like and digg an article when they arrive from Digg, are unlikely to stumble it.

This is of course a shame for the site. But, more importantly it’s a missed opportunity for the Visitor.

Quick Profile Building

The smart Social Media Networker will use one network to build their profile on the others. Building a profile relies on participating in the network, which means submitting and voting for good articles. Finding good articles can be very time consuming, unless you use one to find for the other.

Once your profile becomes better, you will start attracting other people that are actually interested in your submissions. You will get quality followers organically and can stop adding friends in bulk on your lunch breaks.

Use The Resource You Already Have

A page or post that is currently doing well on one network can be a great submission resource for any visitor. If you can find an article that is seeing good feedback on stumble, and it hasn’t been dug yet. Chances are that your submission will translate well into Digg, which will get. Same goes for all the other networks.

Strong profiles gives you more power to influence traffic in the future. Spend 10-20 minutes a day on your social network and leverage one profile against the other. You’ll see both grow to powerful traffic drivers in very short time.

So don’t forget to

And 

As much as I love the big sites like MySpace and Facebook for their incredible and innovative impact on the web and social marketing, I also hate them for being such a mess to get anything really useful out of.

If you look at these massive sites, they cater to pretty much everyone. Getting a piece of useful information out of them, you first have to become a wiz at using their filters to get rid of what you don’t want. Even then, you are more often than not presented with a large selection of mostly entertaining but useless information.

But there is hope on the horizon.

The Opposite of Google

Relevance is the basic of why Google is so big. Its strength has always been to give you what you want, when you want it. They do the filtering for you, and you get relevant results immediately.

In a social network, they try to accomplish this by adding subgroups, filters, search functions and other means, but it is still user driven to the nth degree. This means that spammers have free roam of these networks; and will use the broadest possible definition of every keyword to get their information on your screen. As soon as you step outside the boundaries of your personal group of trusted friends you are presented with the exact opposite of Google. Vast amounts of non-relevant information.

The Future - Targeted Social Media Networks

This week we saw GLCzone.com go live. A niche social media site that targets bloggers primarily writing about health and personal growth. I’ve had a lot of contact with the owner of this site over the last few months and I’ve begun to see the genius of it all.

What this does is create not only a gathering place for likeminded bloggers, but a powerful resource for readers. For the reader, a niche site will remove a large amount of the non-relevant information by design. Creating a ‘best of both worlds" aggregate where you get a variety of blogs presented to you, but gathered around a topic that is relevant to your current needs.

Niche social media sites provide the missing link in social media evolution. They are the intermediary between Googles high relevance, and Diggs "whatever goes".

Better for Publishers

Granted, a niche social site will not give you the Digg Effect with 100.000 readers crashing your web server. What it will get you are targeted readers, with a clear intent of looking for what you have to offer. It makes sense for publishers to be part of a targeted network rather than trying to scream over the noise of a major site.

Bloggers and site publishers who participate in niche sites are likely to get much higher rates of visitors converting to loyal readers. Niche sites do the work of filtering out the rest for you.

Although the Digg effect is missing, this is the only drawback, the rest of your metrics should see a significant improvement with niche site traffic. Less bounce, longer stays with more page-views and higher conversions.

Although sites like Digg are never going to go away, they do embody "Quantity over Quality". For bloggers that are only interested in seeing their hit counters go up, that’s great. But it does little for those that are looking for people to actually become loyal readers and commenters or convert through sales or ad clicks.

SEO Opportunities

A Niche social media setting also does something very interesting for SEO. These aggregate sites will undoubtedly have a higher pagerank compared to the participating blogs. And since they are topic focused, they compete on many of the same keywords.

That translates into both an opportunity and a threat. The opportunity is that these sites will be Google front page material, causing more readers to land there after a search. Smaller blogs participating in niche sites will get a second chance to be in front of readers’ eyes.

Threats

For those that don’t participate, these niche sites will function as a very powerful "front page blockers" Hogging much of this attractive real estate.

So with SEO in mind, not participating is basically suicide until you can fight these sites on your own. In a sense this is the self-serving strength of the niche site. For small bloggers, not participating will slow any progress down, while participating makes them capable of competing and outperforming almost all of the larger blogs that are not part of these networks.

If you consider the tourism industry you will see how this is already in effect. When you search for a hotel by name or location, chances are you will find hotel review and travel sites before you find the actual hotel’s own webpage somewhere on page 4 of Google.

Better for Readers

The readers that come to a site like GLCzone.com are looking for exactly what it offers. Blogs and information about physical and mental health, when they get there, they will not be distracted by an information overload or be unable to find relevant information hidden behind the link bait titles.

This quickly translates to readers who are generally interested in certain topic areas will be more likely to visit these networks to find information. Since the aggregate sites will show up high in search terms, they are easy to find and will reduce the non relevant onslaught of sites like Digg. A niche social media site will be the needed step between an organic Google search and a wide open social network.

Social Media is about to take the leap towards relevancy.

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Why Are You Trying The Impossible?

Since I always stress the importance of customer relations, I often come across a problem with the desire to measure the return on investments. Especially larger companies often try to simplify their customer contacts into the single transaction to see if the sale was worth the effort. Some try to track referrals, but since many referrals are unknown to the company. This effort is wasted.

Does this mean that customer relations are wasted too? Of course not!

You just have to have a little faith.

Your Return on Investment is Unlimited

As customer relations become more of a focal point, the single customer can generate unlimited business. Every time a new customer perceives great value, referrals follow. As soon as a single referral has occurred that you are unaware of, your measurements are no longer accurate. The growth in business however is unmistakable.

Faith Based Business?

Yes, this is one of those times where you will have to employ faith in that doing what is right by the customer will pay off in the long run.

Since the chain of referrals is potentially unlimited, every customer you build a strong and positive relationship with has the potential to bring unlimited business. Every lost opportunity is potentially a loss of unlimited business as well.

Exponential Faith

If you every week can convert TWO percent of your new business to loyal customers, and at the same time keep your rate of new business, In one year, your business will be 280% of your starting point.

As soon as even one of them starts referring your business to others, the potential is unlimited.

You simply can’t afford not to have a little faith…

Whenever I buy something that says "batteries sold separately." I calmly dream that this will be the store redeeming my basic faith in a company’s ability to seize the most self-evident opportunity for customer service.

(I’m starting to think I am a hopeless idealist.)

1. If you are selling an item. TEST it before you let the customer walk out with it. Take out a pair of batteries. Put them in and make sure everything works.

It really doesn’t matter that the item is made by Widget Industries in Upper Mongolia. YOU sold it, and the customer will be angry with YOU when it doesn’t work.

2 . (This is where companies make fools of themselves) Turn off the object and put it back in the box before closing the sale. But LEAVE THE BATTERIES.

Yes, I said it! Save your key rings, forget about the complimentary Frisbee. Take the unusually smart step of actually making sure that the item will work when they get home without the customer needing to buy batteries.

In fact, if I come home with an object without batteries, but a complimentary branding Frisbee, I’m probably going to be even more fuming than if I didn’t get the Frisbee at all. At that second I am going to wonder what moron came up with that idea instead of just giving me a pair of bloody AA’s! Now I’m both angry that I have to go back out and get batteries, and convinced that your establishment is owned and operated by a cretin. Not the customer experience you should be shooting for.

Giving It Away Increase Sales

The amazing thing is that your sale of batteries has a great chance of increasing too. Why? Because if you don’t have a policy of testing each item, your sales clerks are going to forget to remind the customer they will need batteries x amount of times out of a hundred.

If clerks test everything as a policy, they won’t forget as often and that will improve sales of batteries as well. And here is the kicker, the customer probably has other things that need batteries, so even though you just gave them batteries for the item they purchased, they will often end up buying them for other items.

It All Goes In the Plus Column

If the item you are selling is $2.49 with a profit margin of 30 cents. This is admittedly not a great idea. But if you are holding a profit margin anywhere over $3 per item, you can’t really lose by doing this.

AA batteries are about 7 cents if you buy in bulk. You are paying more for those fancy brochures used to staple the receipt to in case the product doesn’t work. Now you will have to deal with less customer returns as well, which also saves you money and bad will. (See the math here?)

If you have a profit margin that is high, Say $70. You will have to convert 1 sale in every 250 to a returning customer or a referral for it to break even.

I guarantee you will be head and shoulders above the competition that are still standing there like misers, taking them back out of the gadget before asking you if you would like to buy batteries. To me, that is not just a missed opportunity of customer service. It’s downright counterproductive and borderline rude.

I can also promise you that the statement "I’m going to leave these in here, if you would like to buy extra batteries, this item takes Double A’s" will do more for your customer satisfaction than a Frisbee ever will.

Getting Your News Out There

The most time consuming part of press release marketing is to build a media list. This is why the companies that distribute press releases charge so much to do it. They have built extensive databases with every possible piece of information they might need. You are not paying for the service as much as you are for the use of their database.

Building your media list requires a lot of legwork on your part to find, classify, and target your contacts.

Start with the publications you already know. Your local media, the papers and magazines you already read, the channels you watch. Use the knowledge you already have to find your targets.

When you have completed the list of your known outlets, it’s time to broaden your horizons.
The internet is full of directories; it’s the perfect place to start to find media outlets that fit your idea of what you would like to spread yourself to.

Media Directories

US Newspapers - http://www.usnpl.com/
Yahoo Media Directory - http://dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/
News link - http://www.newslink.org/
Refdesk - http://www.refdesk.com/paper.html

Create a Database

As you identify the publications you want. Add them to a database of some sort. A basic Excel Spreadsheet or a simple Access Database works well for a job like this. Even your email address book can be used.

______________________________________________________________

You can download a Basic Spreadsheet here
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Target the Right Journalist

Once you have a publication, the most important step you can do to improve your chances is to target the right journalist. It’s far better to send a press release to a journalist that normally writes about your topic than to send it through the “catch all” emails and fax numbers.

Go to the publications website; see if they publish an online version. If you are lucky, this will also include the e-mail to the author of the article. This is the goldmine. You get the name of the author that has shown an interest in your topic area, and a direct channel to their inbox.

– Warning –

Try not to cause unnecessary work

If you intend to send the email to more than one writer at the same publication; Do NOT send separate emails. Send it to all of them in the CC Field. So that they can clearly see who else got it. You don’t want two people from the same publication working on the same story. That will happen once, and the next time they won’t touch it again since they wasted time before.

Fax

Some publications want you to fax them the release. If this is the case, find out what the fax is for the journalist you want to target. If that is not possible, Make sure that you attention it to the person you want. Faxes arrive by the truckload to a major publication. And if you don’t target someone, you risk getting lost in the shuffle of things.

Create a corporate list

Often overlooked, you can make a lot of progress if you build a list with companies you want to associate yourself with, potential advertisers, existing and prospect partners, Industry Leaders etc. It is never a bad idea to include these in your list.

Follow Up

Once you’ve sent your release. Try to follow up with those that you sent it to through a phone call, it does wonders to be picked up if you call them, and ask if they got it, if you can send them anything else. or answer any questions. Again, if you do a little of their work for them, they’ll reward you for it in the long run.

If you have a large list, Make sure that you follow up with the most important ones, as well as the ones that you already have a relationship with. Always nurture your press contacts, they are worth every ounce of effort.

Free Press Release Services

You should also consider news aggregate services like the free press release services, as well as posting your press release onto places like Digg, Reddit, Propeller etc.

Here are two free news release services that function as aggregates. and news people do read them. So you definately want to post your release here too since it does increase your chances with no cost and barely any effort.

Free-Press-Release – http://www.free-press-release.com/
Open PR - http://www.openpr.com/

Condition the Journalists

To maximize your chances, you need to condition the people that pick up your press release. If you follow the basic guidelines, you will give them max benefit for minimum work. This conditions them to look for you again when they need something to publish.

You want to become their "go-to" resource when they need something, you can only do that by providing the best possible release - with easy access followup and supporting information. Do that, and you’ll be rewarded.

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Press Release Marketing if done right, is one of the most powerful, low-cost marketing channels. Don’t miss out on the business you can generate from it.

Good Luck!

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Previous Articles on this topic

How to Create a Media Kit
How to Write a Press Release

Press Releases are extremely powerful marketing and branding tools. They are almost zero cost, and becoming a news item carries a credibility that paid advertising can never achieve.

But unless your press releases are actually picked up, they have very little effect, apart from being a useful resource for fleshing out your media kit like i mentioned in that article.

You need to write the press release in a way that will appeal to your target audience. The problem, is that your target audience now is the press, and they are not likely to succumb to sales pitches and hype.In fact, they are highly allergic to it.

It’s time to bring out the Journalist in you, and write news.

Mind your Format

A well written press release should follow a standard format, this is not the time to be creative. You will do better if you appeal to the familiar when a reporter picks up your release and looks at it. Don’t make them think and wonder about where you are.

Here is an example of a standard format that works well.

Breakdown

1. Top - Logo or company name

Don’t forget to be clear about who you are. This is a great way to be noticed on an overcrowded desk for instance.

2. Contact Information

Make sure that the person you put here is the best one for answering questions. And that they will be available. I’ve seen far too many CEO’s demanding that they be put as the contact on Press Releases only to miss being picked up because they didn’t have time to answer their phones.

3. Date It

Make sure you put the date on it. News are perishable, so the release date is almost as important as the actual news.

5. For Immediate Release

Theoretically, you could put a future release date here, I don’t suggest it though because it will get lost in the shuffle before you get to that date. Better to write the text in the press release so that it includes an eventual future date instead. Don’t make it complicated on anyone by asking them to read it now, and publish it next week. Not to mention that your news might get “leaked” before you want them to.

Headline

This is your moment to shine, don’t give them a bad headline. If you normally write for the Web, be extra careful. Web headlines don’t normally work well in traditional media.

A good headline is clear, conversational, and attention getting. Don’t give away the lead in, or the ending of an article if you can avoid it. There are plenty of good resources for writing headlines, but the best you can find is the people around you. Write five or ten versions, and ask people what they like best.

Avoid trying to be sensational if the story isn’t. That’s just going to annoy both the reporter, and probably the reader if it gets picked up as is.

Don’t try to plug yourself in the headline. It’s cheap, cheesy and never flies. No matter how much you think it would be great to have your company in the headline, just remember that it’s better to be picked up at all. And chances are that if you try to sell yourself with cheesy copy. You’ll never get that far.Your best bet is to go and read as many news paper headlines as you can find and learn that way.

Headlines are normally written in all caps in press releases.

Subheading

The Subheading is where you get a chance to sell the story, you should give a little more flesh here, but still keep it so that you don’t give away everything, Clarify the background but keep the real story for the body.

Example

Here is an example using a post i wrote a while back.

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Bad Headline and Subheading

AMAZING BLOG ADVOCATES FOUR DAY WORKWEEK

The Weakest link, a fresh new marketing blog has determined that companies should let their employees work longer days and get three day weekends to save on transportation costs.

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No reporter worth his salt will pick this up, its clearly a promotional stunt, it’s self-promoting and cheesy and it doesn’t work. Ever!

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Better Headline and Subheading

GAS PRICES WARRANT THREE DAY WEEKEND

Employers are forced to consider new scheduling solutions to offset rising travel costs

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This is better because it has a headline that states the topic, and still raises why questions, the subheading is better because it answers the question, but still leaves a lot to be said.

Lead In Paragraph

The lead in paragraph is the most important part of writing you do here. It has to be interesting, informative, and well written if you are to have any chance at all. I can only suggest reading a lot of articles to get the feel for how this is normally done.

The capturing Lead is the difference between journalistic writing and a school report. It is the baited hook that will grab the readers attention.

It should answer most if not all of the who, what, when, where, why, how. Answer no less than three of those. If you don’t get that part right, you are leaving too many holes in the story, and it becomes hard for a publication to pick up without a lot of extra work.

Body

The body of the press release covers all the supporting facts. This is where you can mention your company more specifically. But do not fall to the temptation to push a sales pitch in here. The reporter has no interest whatsoever in helping you make money. And even less to paint you out to be better than you are. So as soon as they smell that particular rat on your press release. It normally goes into the circular archive.

Give the reasons and rationality. Include the supporting evidence and round off with a quote or two. The quotes are very important, most news stories will have at least one if you read through a paper. Get them one right away and you just took that hassle of their table. less work for them, equals more chances of getting picked up.

The Closing Paragraph

The closing paragraph is a place where you can make conclusions. Remember that in News writing, it is perfectly acceptable to end a story with a question. One thing i’ve noticed is that a pondorous statement works really well. A thought as to what this might be, or a prediction as to what may come because of this. A great place to learn this is to listen to the evening news. They almost always close with a cliffhanger of that kind.

Boilerplate

This is an old term meaning text that gets reused over and over. You can simply use the same text about your company in ever press release. Remember to write it in third person, and avoid the standard buzz words. Amazing, Unique, Pioneering, etc. Reporters are bad targets for hype.

Suffice to say - Never BS a BS artist.

Call to action

After the three hashes ### (which marks the end of the press release.) Insert a short paragraph with contact information and a call to action, you can invite them to schedule interviews, Get copies of research for verification etc. make this running text, give them a quick easy way to get what they need to publish it.

This is by far the best way to better your chances. A reporter on a time-crunch will look at a press release and consider what needs to be done before it can hit the press. If you have made those steps easy for them. Your press release will have a greater chance of making it.

Keep it Short

I’ve written and released well over 1000 press releases. And i have never seen one that was more than two pages get picked up. Single page releases get published almost five times as often as two page ones.

Long stories are written by reporters, they work on those for a long time. Press releases published “as is” are almost always fillers. So if you make it too long, there will be nowhere to fit it. If they want a long story on your company, they will do the work to flesh out the release you wrote on one page themselves.

Some thoughts to remember

- Read big reporters in big papers. These guys can write stories, its what they do. Unless you are a star reporter for the NY Times or Washington Post, don’t miss the opportunity to study those who are.

- Write from the journalists perspective - Third person only (unless you are quoting of course.)

- Put the sales pitch away - Reporters aren’t stupid, and they’ll be happy to give you the number to their advertising salesmen if that’s what you want printed.

- Is this interesting? important? most of all, is it newsworthy? Double check everything with the “So What” question. If it isn’t interesting enough to pass that simple point, don’t put it in there.

- Lose the ego, If you are too busy to answer the phone, you are not the person that should be listed as the contact person. You are dealing with people on tight deadlines. Don’t make them wait for information. It’s better to have the receptionist listed, - and get published- than to have your own name in the trashcan.

The Marketers Trick

- Add a little extra white space between paragraphs.

A long time ago, i worked in a news room. And i saw that the stories that got filed close to deadline often had handwritten notes in between paragraphs and in the margin.

It’s simple really when you think about it. When you are running out of time, you will grab what you can finish quickly. Not something where you have to go on an archaeological expedition for your notes. Work with them here and give them something to write on. You’ll see that it works to your advantage.

Good Luck with your writing. In the next article I’ll show you how to distribute your press releases.

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