Direct Contact PR, Internet media faxgrowth




 
amateurfetishist.com

Paul Krupin's Trash Proof Marketing and Publicity Blog

What is the best day of the week to send out a news release?

Question came in from a member of the Yahoo Self-Publishing Group

In my experience sending out news releases using email and chasing editors and reporters by phone, Tuesday is the best day of the week to deliver a release and Wednesday, and Thursday are also really good days. A lot depends on what you are asking the media people to do and whether it involves significant work on their part.

The reasoning is that the media tends to work on a five day work schedule, Monday through Friday and they roughly work 8 AM to 5 PM with some variations for other types of work schedules, especially for early morning TV. Monday is the day they come to work catch up from Friday, have staff and other meetings, and plan the work for the week. Friday of course, they are wrapping up and trying to clear their desks so they can go home for the weekend.

Saturday and Sunday are not good days to reach media people. It’s the weekend and the media offices have reduced staff unless an emergency comes up.

Tuesday is the day where they’ve gotten past the staff meeting and drudgery that Monday’s entail and we see they have the maximum ability to focus on things that come in fresh. They also have the ability to allocate and deploy human resources to any task they decide to work on for the rest of the week. Wednesday and Thursday are also good but the time, attention and ability to deploy resources diminish as the week goes by. So early in the week is still better than late in the week.

I’ve also had some surprising hits on Friday but this was usually with something that was hard news or something enticing that requires very little action, like read this and they can say “yes, send me a review copy”.

So the absolute best timing is to try to transmit Monday timed for Tuesday morning delivery. I control the time of delivery to 6 AM west coast time, because the release arrives at 3 AM east coast time and the morning TV news producers arrive at work at 4 AM.

We can work on copy and strategy all the time. Basically you transmit your news and pitch when the lights are on and someone is there to receive and act on your message.

Social media often respond to this same pattern, especially if they are working in a five day office setting. However many of them are less office bound. They see your pitches often on mobile devices and respond on the fly. They work with more flexible schedules and often respond after their day job is over. The benefit of email is that your message stays there till they read it. The disadvantage is that everyone else’s pitch does as well.

Posted on Sunday, March 3rd, 2013 at 8:31 am In
Uncategorized