I did a search on PRWeb.com and discovered that Internet Marketing Center had been using this form of marketing for some years. From the search results at newspad.prweb.com, the earliest press release was dated 2005.

Here’s some the the press releases which I feel are representative. You will like to model your next press release base on these samples:

1. Give Readers Solid Value: Internet Marketing Expert Takes a Stand
   Derek Gehl sends a free eBook instead of his scheduled promotion and gets 8,000 downloads in 18 hours plus a 1000% increase in traffic to his blog.
2. Three New Last-Minute Internet Marketing Strategies…
   Internet Marketing Center CEO Derek Gehl wants online businesses to know they still have opportunities to increase their holiday sales as the busiest shopping season of the year draws to a close.
3. Derek Gehl’s Team Heads to Florida …
   CEO of The Internet Marketing Center to end national seminar tour December 2nd-3rd in Miami.
4. Internet Marketing Expert Brings Two-Day Free Seminar…
   CEO of Internet Marketing Center adds limited extra seating for hotly anticipated November 4th-5th Internet marketing seminar in Canada’s largest city.
5. Strategic Alliances Build Better Web Site ROI, Says Internet Marketing Expert
   Internet marketing expert explains how to build better web site ROI by forging valuable strategic alliances with other businesses to create new streams of income.

The above press releases are excellent content to promote online marketing businesses. In addition, you get backlinks from these press releases and in turn help you to gain higher PageRank and top search engine ranking in Google and Yahoo.

However, writing press release is quite different from web page copywriting. There are certain rules and format to follow for a press release to be approve by editors at the various Internet press release platforms.

Here’s the simplest condensed guidelines.

Format of Press Release

• Title
• Summary
• Body

The title should be concise. Place your most important keywords withing the first 7 words of the title.

The summary should a short paragraph to highlight the body the press release and this can be done after you have completed the body

The body should have enough content that is relevant for the keywords you’re targeting. The first sentence or the first paragraph should contain the most important content of the press release. The first paragraph should expound on the title of the press release. The rest of the body of the press release may contain benefits, features and technical specifications. It is common to cite quotations at the middle or the later part of the body.

You can get more tips on press release writing PRLeap.com blog. These are the two posts which I think is a must-read for those who intend to write a press release.

• How to Write a Press Release
• 25 Action Words for Writing a Newsworthy Headline

Press Release Keywords

You may want to prepare a list of keywords related to the content of your press release. These keyword list should consist your primary keyword, secondary keywords and related keywords. And, if you need help on keyword research, go download this very useful Keyword Research Guide from Wordtracker.

You can look at some samples of press release that I submitted recently.

Press Release: Medical Aesthetic Services

Search terms related to medical aesthetic clinic in Singapore and the announcement of a new system to reduce body fats and detox the body without surgical procedure – Diamond Contours Biomesosculpture System.

Press Release: Singapore Accounting Services

Announcing the move of JDT Management Services Pte Ltd, a full service accounting firm in Singapore, to a new office double the size of it previous premise.

However, it was not approved by the editor because the format was not right.

Here’s the suggestion for me to fix the problem:

Your submission is not approved because it does not follow standard press release format.

Suggestion: Rewrite your submission using the inverted pyramid format. Make sure to put the most newsworthy information at the top, and then the remaining information follows in order of importance, with the least important at the bottom.

A press release should have a headline, summary, lead paragraph, body and about section. A press release should read like a news story. A good release will sound as if it’s been lifted from the front page of a newspaper. News stories are written in third person.

The only time your press release should contain pronouns such as I, we, us, or, you, your, etc. is when you are quoting someone. Opinions should only be expressed inside quotation marks.

I rewrote the headline and the summary. Kiat Wee helped me to rewrite the body according to the inverted pyramid format. Go read the press release now:

MyWebCulture Announces SEO Web Design Course in Singapore
The SEO Web Design course reveals strategies for designing
search engine friendly websites and teaches website owners
proven SEO techniques that will enhance search engine...

You see, the headline and the sumary sound quite formal and matter of fact. However, I feel that the body of the press release is not exactly “inverted pyramid”. It would be pretty boring to make it that way.

What is important is the lead paragraph. It has to be the most important paragraph – to summarize what the press release is all about. In this case, what the SEO Web Design training is all about and what so special, I mean newsworthy, is this piece of information.

Also the headline has to be like news headline, no pitching and no sensationalizing. It has to sound really formal. And I don’t like such writing. I can’t write in that way!

PRLeap.com Press Release Stats

I like the statistic provided by PRLeap.com. It shows how many times the press release was viewed and also when the search engine robots have visited.

Google News

The press release was “immediately” picked up by Google News.

So, we thought Singapore blogs is a good niche and we will attract lots of traffic because we know there are plenty of Singapore bloggers – people young and old are blogging or starting to blog. So we started with some famous Singapore blogs such as…

• Mr Brown
• Xiaxue

We wrote to some of them and ask for reciprocal links at their blogs but none of them return the favor. What to do… Singaporeans!

Press Release via PRWeb.com

Our biggest marketing effort was the press release on the launch of SGBlogs88.com on PRWeb.com. Kian Ann wrote the press release and I submitted it to PRWeb.com. I thought it was well written and attracted quite a surge in traffic during the first 2 days of the release.

Why We Abandon the Word-Cloud Project

Unfortunately, Google was aware of such word-clouds made popular by www.500words.com and started to filter out these websites when more and more internet marketers created too many such word-clouds by Aug/Sep 2005.

Anyway, we sort of abandon the project and did not further our marketing and promotion. However, SGBlogs88.com does pull into constant traffic due to our initial efforts and we manage to sell several suggested tags.

Revival of Famous Singapore Blog Tags

It seemed that the word-cloud fever had cooled down and maybe it’s time to do something on our little Famous Singapore Blogs experiment. So, over the past 2 days, I revamped the website and give it a “less word-cloud” look. In fact, I think it looks more like a blog.

Now, there is even Flickr badge to spice up the look!

Hopefully, with this new look, we will get more Singapore bloggers to buy a tag at our Famous Singapore Blog Tags site.