With only a month to go to the Big Bike Bash I was going to send a press release to all the biking websites so it hits their front pages.

What information should I include? What do you need to know about the vent? What would entice you to buy tickets?

Is there still someone alive who does not know about this event? Are they living in a cave? 😯

I appear to live in a cave BigDummy.

Is there anything unique or special about the event?

Do you have any celeb guests?

It's traditional to try to find a "hook" for the journos to hang a piece on. Did I see something about a lake jump on your flyer before? That's what I'd pick to lead on if I were writing a story about your event.

If it's the inaugural event, and you don't have any pix from previous years, then maybe get a good photo taken that you think people will want to click and journos will want to use.

Follow it up with phone calls to the news desks involved, try to have a friendly chat with the reporters and ask their advice too. Invite them to send somebody along to cover it.

(I'm a journo, not a PR – so this advice may actually be useless).

This could of course be exceedingly clever "Web 2.0" PR 😉

You mean like mentioning it in every thread and starting gratuitous threads just to mention it? 😉

chapaking has good advice…

Cheers chappa – I wanted to try something other than drowning the forums in gratuitous threads about the BBB although it seemed to work for the original HTN

Have a look at the site here – there are plenty of releases there – eg the Cheddar Bikefest and so on.

Five Ws are the most important – Who, What, Where, When and Why.

As Chapa says (hello, fellow hack) a hook is a good thing.

Other good things:

Don't put Press Release in the subject line

Don't attach it as a Word doc or PDF – but the raw text in the email body

Don't start follow up calls with the line: "Did you get my press release?"

If you have images, don't attach them unless requested – put a link in to a selection of images in high resolution. TIFFs are always nice, but good, high res JPEGs will do fine. Don't CMYK them, as different titles have different colour profiles.

If you have the time and inclination, find a hook for each site / mag's readership. i.e, STW and BikeMagic vs. Cycling Plus or the Guardian cycling correspondents – they'll be looking for different things.

Bear in mind deadlines. If you can, speak to someone at each mag and find their news section deadlines, and deliver the release a week or two before it.

Basically, write a short, informative press release, back it up with a few good pictures in good enough resolution for say, MBR to use on a half page, and don't be pushy when talking to journos – they choose what news to report, they're not beholden to you. Give them something that makes their life easier, like a well-structured, relevant release with all the info, and you'll get ink.

HTH