Back in the old days, getting the word out about a recent accomplishment or upcoming event used to mean crafting a press release, stuffing envelopes, and mailing the information to media organizations in the hope that someone—anyone—might find it among the mountains of competing content. Things aren’t much better with email, thanks to automated spamming, junk mail filters, and the simply staggering volume of communications. In the ever-changing media landscape, social media services can provide a direct path to your desired audience. Try these Twitter strategies to alert the press about your latest and greatest news.

Follow the organization, and then follow the people. Find and follow organizations that cover your industry or area of expertise and from there connect with the journalists and bloggers who write the stories. Many of them use Twitter in their writing and reporting, so this will help familiarize you with writing styles and the kind of content they seek.

Start a dialog. Engage with target journalists by retweeting, favoriting, or commenting on their posts. Be selective, not sycophantic; retweet items that are relevant to your business or industry and what you think your fans and followers would like. And be sure to spread RTs out throughout the days and weeks; retweeting a million posts in a row will scare anyone off and end your social media campaign before it begins.

Get your story out there. With Twitter’s 140 character limit, you’re obviously NOT going to be able to tweet your news, so you’re still going to have to write a press release and post it to your blog or web site… Once that’s done, break the information down into its basic components and use those to create provocative tweets, leaving enough room for a link to your release. Avoid Twitter slang and condensed words whenever possible, and consider starting each tweet with “RELEASE” so journalists and your audience know what they’re in for.

Social media tools such as Twitter provide effective distribution channels for your organization’s newsworthy accomplishments and can be an important part of your overall marketing strategy. Laying the groundwork with these tips can help connect you to the journalists and organizations that matter in your industry.

If you don’t have the 60 minutes or so that it takes each day to get this attention on Twitter, we’d love to help.  With our Twitter Master program, your Ghost Tweeting account manager logs on to your Twitter account daily to get you noticed by journalists, writers, publishers, potential clients, etc.  Get all the details here.