There’s plenty of research to show that young companies – weighed down by business of simply running a new business – pay scant attention to PR, yet that’s exactly what they should be doing from very start to get their names and products known. For most businesses, PR isn’t about spin or abstract maintaining of “good relations” with press and public; it’s simply about telling people that you and your products or services are there and letting them know why they should be interested. It’s about getting column inches in newspapers and magazines and fulfilling adage that an inch of good editorial is worth a page of advertising. It’s about making your sales easier.

Issuing press releases is a mainstay of basic PR. It’s how you start ball rolling with press. The good news is, if approached in right way (whether you do it yourself or use an affordable professional, this activity need not cost earth).

But do remember that you’re presenting your business to public. A release that’s poorly written, with grammatical or spelling mistakes, or full of jargon, or long-winded and unfocused, can do you more harm than good. Given importance of PR, there’s something to be said in favour of paying for professional writing skills. PR writers don’t just turn out good English: they know how to structure a press release and present facts in a way that appeals to busy journalists and grabs their attention.

The next question is: “When should I issue a press release?” Certainly, issuing releases willy-nilly, at whim, is no good. The time to make a business announcement is when you have something topical and newsworthy to say (but remember: what you consider topical might not be of interest to wider world or to journalists). All releases need a strong ‘hook’ – in other words, an angle that will appeal to editors and give your story a good chance of gaining coverage.

So, what would be considered newsworthy? For starters, perhaps you’re launching a new product or service? Or opening a new branch? Or you’re launching a spin-off venture from scratch? Whatever it is, it should be presented as offering something reasonably new and interesting, not just as a “me too”.

I always find that when I learn about a new technology or way of doing something online, geeks have already been there (and I say word ‘geek’ with complete affection – I’m one too!). Before business became inseparable from computer, email or internet, academics and tinkerers were there first, kicking tires and playing with technology. Blogging was no exception.

Many of earliest internet geeks wrote online journals detailing interesting links and points of view. As this was before programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver, everything was done by hand - and that was a huge hassle. Each time you updated site, you ran risk of breaking links inside website and leaving your readers stranded with dreaded ‘page not found’ error. Eventually, computer programmers and web designers became fed up with all of this manual work and created their own software to automate process of updating their journal websites. Thus weblog was born.