Press Releases: Part 1 - Gathering Information

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 PART 2-Mail Merge | PART 3-Email PRs

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Your book is published. Both paperback and electronic editions are picked clean of errors, and your best effort is out there for the public to imbibe of. What? The public is not imbibing at the rate you expected? Then it is time to organize your press release campaign.

This process is tedious and will test your patience. It requires organization and diligence for it to pay off. However, if you are able to land just one or two publications with viewerships of over 50k or so, it will certainly be worth your time and effort. 

I will share with you my process for gathering the pertinent information. I prefer to use Excel to gather the data. I start with a basic set-up that looks like this:

  
Next, I open a browser window and go to my favorite news outlet website, http://www.world-newspapers.com, and choose which state or country for which I am going to make a database. For the examples used in this blog, they will be related to a search for news outlets in the Philippines. 
At the home page, I now select 'Philippines' from the country drop-down box:

  The page that opens will contain a list of links to different news outlets related to the Philippines. Some of the links may or may not work. Some will take you to spam websites. Others will lead to websites that do not offer the information you need, or they are not related enough to your promotion. Nonetheless, this is part of the process. In the end, your work will be worth it, since you will have an accurate database with valuable potential contacts. 

When you open these unfamiliar web links, you should be alert and aware of the information you are looking for, and get it as quickly as possible. The faster you do this, the quicker this task is completed.

 The first useful link I found was for a news outlet called Asian Journal. Immediately I found the two words I scan for - "Contact Us." I also noticed that there was useful information already posted on the home page:

 Between the two sources of information, I was able to capture the necessary data for my spreadsheet. 

Sometimes you will scan the landing page, but there will be no contact information link. If this is the case, I immediately go to the very bottom of the web page, either by clicking 'ctrl-end' or by grabbing the scroll bar and zooming to the bottom. Many times you will see a link for contact information there:

Other times this link will be in the general link table for the site, usually on the left side of the screen. Still yet others will be hard, if not impossible, to find at all. 

Here is an example of one site that did not have any clear contact info posted in their home page or on their 'about' page. I was about to move on, when I saw a 'site map' link. Sometimes the site map will provide links not readily available or obvious. I clicked on it, and I was about to leave once again when I spotted the following:

  
































From here I was taken to a page with a form to fill out and submit. Most forms are familiar, and this one was no different. I made sure that the subject field said, "PRESS RELEASE - Twist of Fate." Then I copied and pasted an actual press release into the message portion and sent it off. 

I made sure to gather as much information for my spreadsheet as possible, even though I don't need to send a press release to this outlet at this point. Instead of filling in an email address in the spreadsheet, I just filled in "Form Online" where the email addy would be. That way, when I copy and paste the press releases later, I can just skip over this one. 

Some forms are more detailed than others. When given the option, I have a priority that governs which photos I use. Here is how it works out for me:

The process isn't very hard, it is just tedious and redundant. It is still very important that all of the information you provide is accurate and timely, or your feedback will be dismal at best. 

When you are done with your spreadsheet, make sure the information for key columns are completely filled in. For my purposes, the 'Publication', 'Contact' and 'Email' columns are fields which are necessary in the Word batches I merge this information into:

When you are certain that you have all of the information you need, you are finished with this part of the process! Congratulations. The footwork is complete, and now you just have some admin and marketing left to do.

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Watch this blog for Part 2 of the 3-part series of how to put together a press release campaign. As you can see, the process is broken down into methodical and logical processes. Once you have done it once or twice, this method will allow you to crank out over 100 press releases per hour, when you use it to send the releases via email.

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Stephen L. Wilson
Indie Author/Publisher
Indies In Action Blog
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@WilsonStephenL