Make a Press Release Every Week

Creating a buzz is always hard work, but you can increase your chances of doing so by operating like a weekly magazine publisher and making a weekly press release. It doesn't matter if you don't have "Big" news every week... The important thing is that you use your creativity to make something newsworthy every week so that it merits a press release.

Some good folks have asked, "What is the best way to keep in the public eye?" Of course there are many ways, but one of the best and most profitable ways to do so is to create continual press releases about you, your company and product or service; and do it every week religiously.

女性自身 Josei Jishin (Women's Confidence)

Josei Jishin is Japan's oldest and most popular women's magazine

Over 50 years of gossip and still going strong.

Think about those weekly magazines; it is incredibly difficult to come up every week with an interesting jacket and headline that sells magazines. But they work at it and come up with a catchy idea and and catchy image that sells magazines. You should think like they do. The magazines and daily newspapers have it hard. You have it easy. All you need to do is to come up with one good idea once a week that will have people reading about you and thinking about your service.

You will also want to target your press releases to the public and certain people in the media - and I am including all forms of media. Find specific media targets that may be able to help you. Send out e-mails to them - not BCC - specific e-mails addressed to them personally. Keep doing this and, after a few months, they will start to pay attention. Trust me, I know this for a fact after years of working as a radio and TV producer; editors and producers get tons of mail and junk; it takes a special effort to get them to sit up and take notice. Items addressed to "anyone" just don't cut it.

With bloggers or online items, you might be able to get a bit more luck if you take the time to find out who these people are and then write to them directly. A warning though, people don't like it if you ask for favors without knowing at least a little bit about that person (it used to drive me crazy when a record company promoter would give me Hit Parade of Hell albums (Top 40) or a Madonna CD and ask me to play it on my show when I was producing a show that only played Punk and Alternative music.)

I talked to media star George Williams the other day and he mentioned that he was going to start his own blog and design it much like Max Keiser's web page or Mike (Mish) Shedlock's. Like the examples I mentioned, George's web blog will have blogs, videos, U-Stream, Tweets, Pick, and other goodies.

George Williams (right) with up-and-coming rockers,

"Nothing's Carved in Stone"

George and I also discussed promoting it properly. We talked about having a press release party whereby he announces his new web blog and, then for laughs, maybe he announces that he's changed his name to georgewilliams.jp. The party will have drinks and snacks and unveil the web page. This is a good opportunity for George to build a buzz. First, he gets to announce the event; then, report on it as it is happening; then he gets a follow up report... There's three press releases right there. From then on, it's just a small step to making a useful and beneficial press release every week to promote himself and his business.

You can do the same.

So, don't forget to think like a weekly magazine publisher; send out a press release every week. Target several important people who could help you or write about you. Then, of course, you place your press releases on your web page too.

Make a press release every week. It's good enough for the big boys, it's good enough for you...That's just smart marketing.

---------
Keywords: Buzz, business, press release, smart marketing, catchy idea, weekly magazine, publisher, Max Keiser, Mike "Mish" Shedlock, blog, web page, promote,  U-Stream, Tweet, Pick, George Williams, Nothing's Carved in Stone, publicity, advertising, marketing, Japan

How New Companies Can Succeed in Japan - And How They Fail

Many new companies, especially in IT, think that to make it in Japan, all they need to do is release a Japanese language version of their product... They couldn't be further from the truth. Japan is an entirely different animal.

To succeed in Japan, of course a company needs a Japanese version of their product, but just that won't do the trick. They'll need experienced, well-connected PR and Marketing in Japan. 

On top of that, the new company product/service will probably only have one chance to do their initial product/service release right in the Japanese market. Their first release is their Golden Chance in Japan.... It could also be their only chance in Japan. 

If a company blows their initial release of the product/service in this country, the company will most probably not succeed here. Ever. No matter how much money is spent on PR and advertising. Many before who have made this mistake have tried to recover and failed; even ones with multi-million dollar budgets. A good case in point is Pepsi Cola. Pepsi spent tens of millions of dollars and twenty years for terrible results.


Now, they've finally gotten smart and tied up with a Japanese beverage maker so their prospects are better... Why didn't they do that from the start? Disney, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and many others did. Why did Pepsi even bother to try to reinvent the wheel?

How to correctly handle a new product or service release?

A new company/product/service will need to appoint somebody in Japan to handle PR for them in Japan and work with that company to make a plan. 

A necessary part of any good plan of attack would be that the representatives in Japan arrange meetings with major media at least 1 - 2 weeks before Japanese release day, as pre-press release. This is critical.

If this sort of ground-work is not fully prepared by the company and their reps in Japan, I strongly suggest that the company postpone the release of the product/service (and fire their  representatives and hire a competent company) and then get properly prepared. If this sort of pre-press release is done correctly, the Japanese media will then follow-up and prepare and study the circumstances of the product/service and company so that they may be able to publish and provide better information for the Japanese audience (don't forget that the Japanese media are competing with each other, too, to provide up-to-date concise information, so this has to be done. No short-cuts here). This is critical for the success of any new company in Japan.  

Even after years of repeated failures by various companies, to this very day, foreign companies come to Japan and repeat the mistakes Pepsi Cola and Seven-Up made decades ago. Some recent examples are Linkedin; E-Bay Japan, Google.jp, and a few others. (I strongly suspect Sugarsync is about to make the same mistake too!)

Take, for example, Linked-in. Linked-in came out with a Japanese version quite a while back but no one here in Japan uses it because no one knows about it; they had no local representation; no pre-press release information. 

Kind of shocking, when you think about it; a supposedly forward thinking company coming to Japan and making such an amateurish mistake. 


E-bay is another example of a successful service in the west which came to Japan and flopped because of not having experienced people on the ground in Japan. Neither Linked-in nor E-bay Japan will probably ever recover... 


No, not probably... There's no way they will ever recover here.

Sad. Had they thought about what they were doing and not tripped over the half-dollar in order to pick up the penny, they probably could have partnered with a huge Japanese company and been worth hundreds of millions of dollars in Japan alone by now. 


The situation today? I only know of one other person besides me who even knows that Linked-in has a Japanese version. People know what E-bay is, but prefer Yahoo Auctions by a laughable margin. 


Oh dear! Linked-in and E-bay blew it... and in the second largest market in the world. I wonder how this will affect their stock price? 

Why won't they recover? Well, because they already launched and flopped... They are not newsworthy, except as failures. If the Japanese want to read about failures, they'll read about their politicians. 

An example of a successful Japan launch recently was Evernote. The PR company which handles that was able to get Evernote into Sony so that Sony scanners come pre-installed with Evernote. 

A Japanese language release might have some sort of plan like this:

1) Setting the Key Concept for Japanese Market 

2) Arranging Press Releases for TV, Internet, Papers and Magazines promoting the URL and product/service

3) Press conference for Japanese Market 

4) Make a presentation to major Japanese companies in order to obtain a major Japanese corporation as partner for the Japan market

In Conclusion

Japan is the #2 market in the world... Being lazy and trying to break into this market without understanding the underlying differences between the Japanese psyche and the west is a sure fire recipe for failure.

Pepsi, along with many others, failed... And they spent tens of millions of dollars... Don't repeat these mistakes. Why not make a little effort and find the people who can help you? You do need Japanese representation here on the ground, in Japan, to make your product/service a success.


Remember that success is 80% preparation.

Many others have already shown you how to fail... Here is written the best way to succeed... Will you learn the lesson?

------


Keywords: IT, pepsi, failed, Evernote, Press conference, press release, Sony, Linked-in, Sugarsync, PR, Marketing, Disney, Coca-Cola, McDonald's