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Showing posts from February, 2006

Crappy News Releases

I was reading a post in a technology bulletin board that was raving about how much business they get out of the site and how they get nothing out of news releases. The comment were pretty indicative of why start up companies, as a whole, can't seem to get their message out to the market and end up crashing and burning. I agree that most news releases aren't very valuable. I agree that word-of-mouth is a very valuable selling tool. The problem is that most companies view news releases as a sales tool and that's why most of them are crap. News releases are not supposed to be sales tools. They are supposed to be a way to give valuable information to the news media. The media, in turn, filter the content of the release to eliminate hype. Occasionally, a news release can be a leave-behind for a salesman, but that's a secondary use. Its more important to make sure it works for it's primary purpose. The web has compounded the problem because now, companies can bypa...