Don't Use Celebrities as Your Publicity Role Models

Newsmaking celebrities such as Rush Limbaugh and Tiger Woods can use a passive media relations strategy to get their information or point of view out to the press. All they have to do is post a news release on their Web site and sit back and wait for pieces of it to be used in media reports.

The rest of us? Not so much. Nobody's coming to our Web sites looking for our news, so we have to be much more proactive. We need to use hand-crafted media lists or press release distribution services to generate stories, mentions, interviews, and exposure.

It's important to push your news out there. While a journalist might stumble upon your press release while doing research online, you still need to take the time to figure out which media gatekeepers can help connect you with your target audience and provide them with appropriate information that helps them do their jobs.

This doesn't mean that you don't want an online press room -- you do. It definitely helps. You just don't want to make that your entire publicity campaign. And one tip about that: Don't use the PDF format for your media relations materials. It makes them harder to work with and when you make it harder for a journalist to use your information, chances are, it won't be used at all.