I decided to try a little experiment. I tried out one of the major online news release services to see how well it might work for me. If I’d only known before what I know now.

It all started when I read about Suzanne Falter-Barnes’ own press release experiment and I thought it sounded rather, well, fun. Her experiment expanded my thinking about the kinds of things that might go in a news release. Around the same time, Rod and I went to see The Break-Up, a rather typical summer movie with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn. The movie was generally entertaining but won’t win any awards. But it did get me thinking about conflict and runaway arguments.

So, I drafted a little news release following Suzanne’s advice. I opened a PRWeb account and put the release out there for the world to see…or potentially ignore.

They saw it all right. 38,000 people and counting have viewed it. Over 900 media outlets picked it up. And many thousands clicked through to my designated website. Of those thousands, several hundred joined my mailing list and have become regular readers. And, of course, when a visitor becomes a regular reader, there’s a substantially higher likelihood that they’ll become a client down the road.

My somewhat Valley girl title for this post is really just a reminder that the web is opening up possibilities that didn’t exist before. If you’re trying to serve a local audience, then of course sending news releases to your local media outlets continues to make sense. Yet there are opportunities you may not be tapping sufficiently to expand your local and regional image.

I wish I’d tapped the PRWeb opportunity long before now. Oh…and there’s one more press release resource I have to share and I’ll write about it next time.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MakingMediationYourDayJob.Lenski.com.