One way I incorporate contests into boosting traffic is by a referral program I have. If you notice I have a small form on just about every page of my site that allows visitors to recommend their friends to our site. The program sends out an email describing site and a thank you to referrer. The program also sends me an email with both referrers and referrals email addresses. The program then writes both email addresses to a text database. At end of each month I take all email addresses from referral database and draw one out to win whatever it is I happen to be offering, many times it's advertising slots.

You should always remember that main objective is to seek publicity for your business. You never should send out a sales letter. That's not what a release is for and you'll never get published. Always target person to whom you send your release. Sending out releases isn't a numbers game. The more targeted a contact is to your release, more likely they will publish it.

Once you find a media source that would be interested in your publicity release, then you want to find which editor is best for your purpose. Don't send it to a managing editor, you want to send it to a contact that is related to your release.

When you send a release, always personalize it. "Dear Editor's name,". Use their title, "Being Sports Editor for..." Also use their field of interest if it's known. "Being Sports Editor for (New England Chronicle) and an avid soccer fan..."

There are two, general ways of sending out a press release by e-mail. Both have good and bad qualities. Some editors prefer that you send them a short e-mail, "briefly" describing your release and asking permission to send it. This will prevent an editor from asking to be removed, which would end any future contact with him.

The second way is to make absolutely sure he would be interested in your release and just send it out. The advantage of going this way is neither of you is wasting time by asking permission and granting it. It's up to you. I suggest you try and see how each one works for you and choose better of two. Whichever strategy you use always honor an editor's request to be "removed."

Try to keep you release short; e-mail releases are recommended to be only three paragraphs. Many editors will receive a hundred or more releases a day, so you have to get his attention in a very short amount of time.

Catch their attention in first paragraph, main focus of your release in second and your contact information in third.

You don't want to give your whole story in press release, you want them to contact your for more information. The nice thing about internet is that you can make this information directly available by using a webpage or an autoresponder.