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One of the secrets of succeeding online is generating great traffic. That's not just getting people to come to your site, but rather getting people who are good customer prospects to come out again and again. And a fantastic way to do this is to get some buzz generated in the right places.

Businesses have known for years how to initiate buzz: you get the press involved. And the best way to do this is to write a great press release and send it to all the right places.

Start by understanding the format. Press releases have a semi-set format, with contact information for a media spokesperson at the top and boilerplate text about your company at the bottom. Go out to press release sites and look at formats for an idea of what you need to follow. The good news is that you can use the top and bottom parts for every press release you write in the future, so save it.

Once you have a template, look at what you are promoting as a news piece. Which portion of it is newsworthy. Use the who, what, when, where and how formula. What makes your new website, store or product worth covering. You product could be anything. People have written press releases on everything from date matching sites for self-described geeks to an automatic dog washer. Anything can be newsworthy; you simply need to find the pizazz in your product. Find an angle that will make people sit up and take notice - donate something to a charity, help the soldiers, for example, and then come up with a press release to announce it.

An example: let's say your business makes custom doll clothes. How about matching the doll's clothes to the child's favorite outfit? Or working with the Girl Scouts to teach young girls how to make clothes themselves, and donate the resulting works of art to a children's hospital or Toys for Tots? It's things like this that make the media melt.

Write your press release like a news story. Remember a little journalistic secret. A lot of stuff you read in the newspaper is written straight from press releases. Editors dislike rewriting; they don't want to hire reporters to go out and track down stories. Good press releases that read like newspaper articles stand a very good chance of gaining publicity simply because its well-written and formated correctly.

Clarity, honesty and conciseness without spin are welcomed in news circles. You will want to being your piece with a good "hook" so that it grabs the attention of the readers. Use an active tone versus a passive voice. What that means is "Danny kicked the ball," versus "The ball was kicked by Danny". Focus on your special news and how it relates to your business. Keep it tight. Avoid flowery language and exclamation points. You are reporting the news and not commenting on it or reviewing it. Just give the facts and make sure they are compelling in and of themselves. The story needs to stand on its own.

When you have completed your press release, what's next? On the web, there are dozens of services like PRWeb, where you can submit them for a small fee. In turn, they will send it out to hundreds of media outlets. You should also have a press release section on your own site, listing subsequent press releases as written. It will become part of your press kit and promotion will take on a snowball effect over time.

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