Since we let Jon off the leash and let him loose as our Press Relations type person, it’s been pretty cool to watch. If like me you’ve had absolutely no dealings with the press, you really are missing a great opportunity to promote your site. Journalists are hungry for stories! Sure, being a journo sounds like an interesting job, but like any job they have to meet the demands of the person higher up the food chain. Feed them a reasonably interesting story and they’ll bite your hand off.

In our industry, stats are something we use all the time and possibly take for granted, as everything we deal with can be measured and logged. They also tell a story. How’s that you ask? Let me give you some examples.

Looking back over a few months stats we noticed that our most popular page was surprisingly a resort in Turkey. We compiled a top 20 list, and one for the same period from the year before. Then we wrote the press release to suit what the stats said “in a sexy way” as Jon puts it. So from a fairly mundane compilation of stats we end up with an interesting piece on our visitors research preferences with a bit of year on year comparison - there’s your press release. As well as 2 daily nationals, 2 Sunday broadsheets and several online news sites carrying the story, we also got a bump from it about a month later when somehow it hit the Turkish press!

So about 2 hours work brought a nice bit of brand awareness and some trickles of link love.

Last week we sent out a press release to launch a “consumer incentive”, and again response has been eye-opening. A few regional papers and some more online news sites and travel related blogs (including a popular Italian site), throw in a radio interview request for good measure; that’s just in a week!

Press releases don’t have to be all about self promotion. We helped break a story to the press about a scam being perpetrated, where unfortunately thousands of people had been conned into buying holidays that weren’t actually being booked. This received a LOT of press attention from the national press including the B B C. While it’s not an ideal way to go about gaining some link love, we felt quite good about ourselves for helping to highlight this fraud!

When you are dealing with the press on a more regular basis, they then know they can come to you for a quote to whatever your related industry is. The great thing about quotes is they just keep on running, and generally with your site name tied on at the end of it.

Not every PR is going to see the light of day, but a few hours a week spent writing and building a good contact list can provide you with the opportunity to do some free brand building and pull in a few links from respected sites.

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