SOME SOURCES IN WRITING FREE PRESS RELEASES

by Craig Lock

We find witing press releases a most effective means of getting traffic to our various web sites.

When submitting a press release to a news media organisation, I use both a main heading, as well as a sub-heading (as in this recently published press release):

"PRESS RELEASE (FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE): NEW ZEALAND AUTHOR DOING BOOK PUBLISHING"

When we published this release recently we submitted it to free services of PR Web...and traffic to our sites has increased substantially already. Their web address is:

http://www.prweb.com.

PR Web recommend adding a link back to them to add credibility to your web site - good idea, I think!

Incidentally, we have a press release up there at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2002/4/prweb36049.php (In case you want to have a look at format.)

The Comitatus Group also offer a FREE press release service. Their web address is:

You've a great web site and it's working well. Sales are good, site is listed on search engines, and hits are great. What can you do now? Well you could sit back and do nothing. But just maybe you might want to expand your potential market. There's a big world out there and every day of every week, all over world, thousands more people get connected to Internet.

A relatively small effort would allow many of them to buy from your site.

I live in New Zealand; it's a small country in South Pacific Ocean. Every day of week I receive emails proposing great offers, products, competitions and services. Some of them I want to take advantage of. But time after time I can't. Why? Because web site from where these great offers originate aren't organised to support purchases from outside their own country. Now I know that Federal Express and UPS and countless other transport companies can deliver goods to my front door (I see their adverts on CNN). I know that I can download software and ebooks from their web site. So what are problems? Well, in developing their web site, no one has taken trouble to look at how customers outside North America can buy.

The most obvious and first on list are problems with order form: • Zip codes are often mandatory. Like many countries we don't use zip codes here. • Price, always shown, but often without advising currency in which it is charged. • State is often mandatory and you pick it from a pull-down list, great, but no option for 'no state" offered. • Only tolls free number shown. 1-800 numbers can't be called from outside North America. • Special offers only available to residents in US, but only shown in tiny print and hidden away.

Email offers It's pretty obvious from an email address, if it's not a .com, where person is lives. And if someone has signed up to your email list you will have asked them for their address. So don't make special offers for Independence Day, Memorial Day and Thanks Giving to your subscribers living overseas. These holidays are only celebrated in US. Special occasions such as Easter, Fathers and Mothers Days and like are likely to be held on quite different dates outside USA. Most countries use metric system for sizes. Dates such as 12/7/2002 mean 12 July 2002 to most of English speaking world. Rather than using numerals for month, use word i.e. Dec 7, 2002 so that dates are clear to everyone.