The Opportunity
A well-crafted press release can generate enormous, free publicity that you could not otherwise afford to buy.
The same methods and tools leveraged by the big PR firms can be used with great effect by even the smallest nonprofit organization. You'll just need to work a little harder if you don't already have existing relationships with the journalists and bloggers that you hope to influence.
Even if you strike-out with journalists, this chapter will show you how to leapfrog them by sending your press releases directly to the end-user via online news channels.
Access to Thousands of Journalists
The internet is the top source of information for journalists. Every day, 98% of journalists use the internet for research. Consider Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer: When asked how he exposed the connection between the Enron bankruptcy and the Bush administration so early, he gave a one-word response: "Google."
Every day, 73% of journalists go online specifically to find press releases. If you provide journalists with the information they seek, your mission or advocacy objective has an excellent chance of being the next feature story in their newspaper, magazine, or blog. Since many newswire services host press releases on their websites indefinitely, journalists may also become interested in your organization by discovering your older releases. They're already looking for new stories. Why not yours?
Direct Communication with the Public
Before the advent of online newswires, journalists served as the gatekeepers between organizations and the public. The only way for organizations to get publicity was to send their press releases to journalists, spend hours with follow-up calls, and hope that the information would be published eventually.
Those days are over. Today, your press releases can reach the masses without being filtered through the media. If you adopt the techniques recommended in this chapter, you can easily get each of your press releases viewed by 25,000 to 100,000+ internet readers.
Most press releases distributed through newswire services are now picked-up by online news aggregators such as Google News and Yahoo News. Don't underestimate the power of such a listing. Millions of people use these sites for their news. According to Hitwise, Yahoo News now ranks ahead of CNN.com and MSNBC.com, while Google News ranks before USAToday.com and NYTimes.com. Additionally, internet readers may receive your press releases directly through content-syndication feeds
The number of people who usie the internet for news continues to grow: 128 million American adults go online and 70% of them are looking for news. According to research done by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 50 million Americans use the internet to get news every day. Comparatively, 27 million Americans watch network TV news each evening. Write a release today, and it can be seen by thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands) tomorrow.
Recognition on Blogs
Internet press releases are often picked up by bloggers, who may write a story of their own—and link back to your website.
Bloggers can give your organization an enormous amount of publicity. The opinions of these "new journalists" are often given a lot of weight by their loyal audiences. Bloggers also tend to have a faster response time than traditional journalists. A recommendation from a blogger with established credibility and a large readership may be even more valuable than a mention in a print publication.
