If you’re going to start kicking out press releases, understand the term “newsworthy”. It differs greatly depending on the audience, whether it’s a trade or consumer publication, etc. Doing generic “we have a new product” press releases may not get you as far as you hope, since everyone else is pretty much doing the same thing. Media people are *flooded* with those things and simply don’t have the time to read them. They get canned.

Take a good look at your “release” and seriously ask yourself: if you were a reporter or staff writer, reading this, where is the story? Take a step back and get a feeling for the overall theme - what exactly about this announcement is truly relevant to your readers? Are you aiming to inform, educate and entertain, or is it nothing more than a generically formatted plug? Learn to think like a staff writer - you’ll get much farther with your releases if you give the editorial staff what they need instead of what *you* need.

Also - having done this kind of thing myself (on both ends), Andrew is very, very right about reporters on deadline. Respect it and prepare for it. Make sure that a reporter on a two-hour deadline can reach you for relevant followup. That very often means the difference between publication and not.