I was thinking that sending press releases announcing the birth of the Coin Talk website to some of the magazines like Coin World and Numismatic News would be a good idea. I'm not sure how to start, though. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Peter, I believe all the information you'll need will be in every issue of each newspaper. If you do a press release,I'll get it into Error World Magazine too. 8) A little extra can't hurt. ~ Jim
Contact these guys and ask to do a courtesy ad http://bestads.com/Place/step1.cfm they shouldn't mind as the ads are free anyway, but, require you to sign up
I have done several press releases, that were published. The key is to have all contact info included and a good write-up. They may copy it word for word, so you have to make sure it sounds good. Name: Address: E-mail: Contact phone: Date: For Immediate Release! New, Numismatic Discussion Forum! A new numismatic online discussion forum has been created and is open to all at www.cointalk.org blah, blah, blah. tell about it, different forums, the rewards for 100 posts etc. Go online at www.cointalk.org and discuss numismatics with fellow hobbyists. Your Signature Cameron Kiefer
From the Editor's Desk Actually, Cameron, that standard press release format is a pain in the neck. The information at the top (Name address, etc.) is only if the editor really wants to talk to someone for a follow-up or something. Most press releases get rewritten. That is to say, at Coin World, we called it "writing from the basket." The clerical person who opened the mail (often an editor, actually) put press releases into a box and when you had nothing better to do you took one and rewrote it. If they stacked up, some editor at a staff meeting would fuss a bit and after the meeting, we might actually take one and re-write it. The other big effort was close to deadline when a lot of small spaces had to be filled. You could flip through the basket and find something you really cared about -- a dealer you knew or a club you liked or a coin you wrote about or something -- and you would take their 2000 word press release and make two paragraphs out of it to fill some space. It is not just Coin World that works this way. As a technical writer, I place a lot of magazine articles. I even sell the service. I meet some marketing manager who tells me that he does not need to hire the service because he gets his company's name in the trades all the time and I say "Great! That will make it easy to place a 2000-word article about you" and his eyes light up. He writes 2000 words and gets one paragraph under "New Products." No one cares about your new products. They all have new products of their own. People want to read stories about people succeeding in ways they want to see themselves succceeding. Oh... So, I have written and sold about 50 of these since 1990. If the marketing manager still does not want to pay, it is not a problem: the editor will pay for a good story. If you want your press release to get in, write it like a news story: Who What When Where Why and How. Make it short and sweet. Make it the kind of story YOU want to READ, not the kind of eulogy you want when you die. Put the contact information at the bottom. Also -- this is getting complicated -- READ the newspaper you are sending it to. One press release will not meet all the expectations of all the editors of all the trades. With word processing, it is NOT a big deal to send five versions of the same story to five places. Numismatic News is way more "people oriented" than Coin World. Coin World does not care why YOU do what YOU do: what they care about is what their READERS can get from what you are OFFERING.
Passive Voice Sucks "A new numismatic online discussion forum has been created ..." Passive voice sucks. Write in the active voice. Use short, declarative sentences. Put the reader in the story. "Collectors who want to chat about their hobby have a new online service to benefit from." -or- "The website www.Cointalk.org officially opened to the public on December 5, 2002, after 90 days of beta testing."
Just about anyone who wants to find a coin forum - will find it. You can make all the anouncements you want - and they really won't do much good. May gain you a few new readers - but then you have to keep them. That's the hard part. I found this one - nobody told me about it - and I'm still here.
I've worked on it a bit, but can't seem to come up with good wording. The idea behind this would be to get the attention of people who don't know that forums exist. There are plenty of new web users, or even old web users that never went beyond USENET or the AOL chat boards. I think plenty of them would appreciate a board such as this, as the features are very advanced comparitively. Obviously, someone who knows that sites build on forum software like this do exist could find CoinTalk without much trouble. I am putting a couple hours each week into promoting this site, so hopefully it's not too hard to find it.
REPETITIO EST MATER STUDORIUM Try this: ---------------------- Coin Talk at www.cointalk.org is a forum for meeting other people who share your interest in collecting and numismatics. Topics range from "See What I Bought" to "Artificial Toning" and from modern coinage to ancients and paper money, as well. This moderated discussion group is a friendly little forum for those who want to spend some pleasant time with knowledgeable friends. Find out about books, dealers, shows and more. ---------------------- Post that once a week on rec.collecting.coins and rec.collecting.paper-money.
Peter, I don't know how you feel about this, but you can also make mention of this in casual conversation in the CU and CS coin forums. The big selling point for this site is its chat room. EVP
