I’m writing this article on the day before Thanksgiving and want to remind all my website visitors that holidays are a perfect opportunity to get press releases out.  I’m not suggesting you send out the press release on the actual holiday but I am suggesting you use the holiday as the subtopic of your press release.

There are holidays throughout the year and we all know when they are.  There are also entire months devoted to one cause or another.  The trick is to incorporate those occasions with your own news and send them out at the appropriate time.  Perhaps you could have a Thanksgiving special or a package deal during October for National Breast Cancer Awareness month.  You could find causes throughout the entire year based on occasions like these.

Keep in mind that media outlets give preference to stories that tie in with these occasions.  In fact, for some occasions, they allocate time for related stories and look for appropriate press releases.  That’s a tremendous opportunity you can capitalize on, just by keeping an eye on the calendar.

You have to understand the process these journalists work within.  Thousands of stories come over the newswire every day and journalists have access to that resource.  They search for stories the same way you might search for something on Google.  They enter keywords and see what comes up.  That means you can cater to their process by using appropriate keywords in your title and throughout your content, making it come up closer to the top when journalists run their searches.

If your press release is about Thanksgiving, I would try to maximize words like Thanksgiving, turkey, stuffing, gravy, holiday, family and football in your title and throughout the story.  That will raise the likelihood your story will come up when some journalist does a search for Thanksgiving.  And given the disproportionate allocation of time for Thanksgiving stories, the odds of getting your story picked up is much higher.

Take some time and put together a 2008 calendar with every holiday and special occasion listed.  Then, focus about two months into the future and think about announcements you could coordinate with these special events.  It may sound like a lot of work but you could get this down to a five minute daily ritual, looking at the calendar and thinking of things you could do.  After some time, you won’t even notice doing it anymore and ideas will start popping into your head.

Everything starts with an idea and the brain can produce plenty of them as long as we keep it focused on the right activities.  You might be surprised when an idea pops into your head and over time, it evolves into something even more brilliant than the original thought.  If you wait until the last moment, your brain has few options available will probably come up with nothing.  Give your brain some time and it will surprise you with clever ideas.

Tactical Execution strives to give entrepreneurs advice that will produce immediate and measurable results.  By definition, this calendar suggestion won’t produce immediate results but over a period of time, if you take a look at it every day, it will start paying dividends and you’ll be amazed at the creativity you’ll end up with.

More Articles