After deluging dozens of editors at newspapers and magazines for months, you finally get lucky. Your press release makes it into print. Congratulations.

Big deal.

Maybe the publication that finally used your carefully crafted (perhaps also expensively prepared) press release has 50,000 readers. Perhaps upwards of 2% of those readers noticed the story, buried as it was near the classified ads. Maybe half of the 2% actually read it. Maybe half of those remember it.

Maybe even some of those were in your target market. Great. Just what you wanted to know, huh? After all that effort and expense, you finally break through, get some ink and chances are that only a handful of people whom you probably don't even care to impress are the ones you actually reached.

Here's the remedy:
Photocopy the published article. Jot a handwritten note on a Post-It. Something like this: "I want to share this news with you..." Stick the note on the photocopy, and slip them both into an envelope.

Mail the envelope to the people you wished had seen the story in the paper. They don't even have to be people you know — people you want to know will be just as interested to get it.

Even if they did see it in the paper (fat chance) the letter will reinforce the message. You can even get Post-It notes to run through your laser printer. Use an informal font that simulates handwriting, and you can turn these notes out by the hundreds or thousands. Send the notes and photocopies to your entire targeted mailing list.

Everyone that you wanted to see the story you worked so hard to get published will see it after all.

Here's Plan B:
If you don't get published in a newspaper or a magazine, send a copy of the press release to your mailing list. On the Post-It note scrawl something to this effect: "I wanted to share this scoop with you, before the general public…"



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