Press Releases are important to grow your business. If you're a small-business owner you should take advantage of a number of excellent PR sites which will distribute your press release free of charge.

Here are the 10 that I use for my own PRs:

   1. http:/ www.pr.com
   2. http://www.1888pressrelease.com
   3. http://www.free-press-release.com
   4. http://www.prlog.org
   5. http://www.prfree.com
   6. http://www.i-newswire.com
   7. http://www.onlineprnews.com
   8. http://pressdr.com
   9. http://www.pressreleasepoint.com
  10. http://www.seoprwire.com

With all of these sites you need to register and create an account first. That takes time but it's free and you need to do it only once.

If you have more than one company, or if you're releasing a statement for a client, then you also need to create a separate Company Profile for each company. Most of these sites offer a drop-down list from which you can select the appropriate company. Once you select it, all the relevant Contact Information will be filled in automatically for you.

However, not all of these sites have that drop-down contact information fill-in functionality. Some of them will unfortunately require you to enter detailed contact information (name of the contact person, company name, email address, phone number, web site URL, etc.) by hand into its appropriate field. So keep such CONTACT INFORMATION handy in case you're prompted to fill it in manually.

(LEFT: Diagram explaining the many ways in which www.1888pressrelease.com web site can help you publicize your business news...)

There used to be times when such sites pretty much published anything and everything you submitted to them. Quality control was really in the pits. Not anymore. You'd be surprised how conscientious and quality-conscious even these free sites are. I've had my PRs turned down on rare occasions for one reason or another.

Your PR title will be the top reason why your release will be turned down and not published.

Make sure both the TITLE and the CONTENT is NEWSWORTHY. For example, if you launch a new web site, that's news and is worthy of a PR. But if you're trying to say you've got a nice web site, that's not news.  Here is the difference in titles:

• PR TITLE 1: "ABC Company Has a Really Great Web Site"  (Not news. This is OPINION. It won't be published.)

• PR TITLE 2: "ABC Company Launches Comprehensive Web Site for Construction Vendors" (This is definitely NEWS and it will get published.)

Another point: not all of these sites will publish your logos, images, or live-links for free. Some of them charge an extra fee to publish a live link or a picture. But when you're at that point you can decide whether to buy into the paid-service option which will always get you a better positioning and more distribution options as well.

If you'd like to learn How to Write a Press Release in 4 Easy Steps click here.