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Are you planning to promote your home business with online press releases? Before you start distributing information for publication via publicity websites, it’s important to learn how to properly write press releases. Writing a press release is not the same as writing marketing oriented copy for your website or for a brochure. If you send out press releases that are not written using the correct style, they will not be published. The good news is that writing effective press releases is not difficult as long as you focus on the facts and remember to put first things first.

Focus on the Facts

Press releases should contain only verifiable facts. The style should be journalistic in nature rather than sales oriented. When you’re writing a press release, ask yourself if the words you are putting on paper is written in a style that you might see printed in an article published in a major daily the newspaper. If the language you are using does not reflect words a reporter would be expected to print, you aren’t using the proper tone.

For example, if you’re writing a press release to introduce a new product that your home business is offering, avoid using adjectives such as “best, outstanding, innovative, or superlative”. You may think that your new widget is the best in existence, but that is a statement of opinion, not an actual fact. The new product press release should state that your company is introducing a new product, say what it is, describe what it does, and provide information about what makes it unique without editorial comment.

Put First Things First

Press releases should also be written using an inverted pyramid writing style. This means that the document should begin with the most important information. Many people have a tendency to write in a manner that focuses on revealing very little information initially, with the idea of building up to the main point. While this may be acceptable for some types of writing, it is the opposite of what is appropriate for press release.

When you are writing a press release for online distribution, keep in mind that you only have a few seconds to capture the attention of the reader. People aren’t likely to scan through the length of an online press release to get to the main point. The same is true if you are submitting your press releases to members of the news media in addition to online press release sites. You only have a brief window of opportunity to convince a reporter that the document warrants further attention.

Getting Started

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Track Publicity Success with Google Alerts

How can you tell if your online publicity efforts are effective? Once you start submitting online press releases to promote your home business, you’ll want to keep track of how much publicity you are able to generate for your company and where the information that you send out is published. The Google alerts tool is a free online service that allows you to receive email notifications when information about your business is published on the Internet.

Google alerts is a free service that allows Internet users to request email notifications for phrases that they are interested in tracking. It’s a good idea to set up an alert for your company name and other key phrases that may appear in publicity related to your business. It is an outstanding way to find out when your company’s name and other terms of interest show up in current Google search results. In addition to using this resource to keep track of online publicity success, you can also set up alerts to keep you informed about the publicity and Internet marketing efforts of your competitors, customers, and other organizations of interest to you.

To set up a Google alert, simply visit www.google.com/alerts and create an alert for each search term that you are interested in receiving a notification about. If you are entering phrases with multiple words, be sure to place quotation marks at the beginning and ending of the phrase. This will ensure that you receive notifications when something is published online with the entire phrase, rather than every individual word within the phrase.

Once you have entered the phrase, or phrases, that you want to receive alerts about, you’ll need to specify the frequency with which you want to receive email updates. You can choose to receive daily or weekly notification, or you can request to be notified on an “as it happens” basis. If you are tracking breaking news or a significant promotional campaign, you may want to receive instant notifications, but in most situations daily or weekly notices are sufficient.

Once you have set up the Google alerts that you’d like to receive, you’ll start receiving notifications whenever the phrases you have chosen index in relevant Google search results, You’ll receive an email notification that lists the phrase you requested the alert about, along with a short excerpt and link to the website where the phrase was published. When you receive a notice with your company’s name in it, you can click through to find out exactly what was said about the organization and where it was published. There’s no easier way to keep up with your online press release success!

Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/office/home/articles/38095.aspx

• find out what is being said about their company or product.
• monitor a developing news story.
• keep up to date on a competitor or industry.
• get the latest news on a celebrity or sports team.
• find out what’s being said about themselves.

Here’s how it works:

1. You enter a query that you’re interested in.
2. Google Alerts checks regularly to see if there are new results for your query.
3. If there are new results, Google Alerts sends them to you in an email.

Read More: http://www.google.com/support/alerts/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=28413&rd=1

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