Someone told me the word “NEWS” stands for information coming from the North, East, West, and South.  It has nothing to do with the meaning of “new.”  For over 36 years, I’ve specialized in preparing product news releases.  Although I publicized the first compact disc manufacturing system in the United States, most product announcements that we have prepared at Venmark International have been about existing products.

Why bother?  Well, I remember the day early in 1977 when the editor of ComputerWorld, Drake Lundell phoned our office and asked me, “who are you?”  “I’m Steve Stroum, a product publicist,” I replied.  Lundell said, “why haven’t you called on me like every other flak?   “Because I’m not like every other flak and wanted to become recognized for the quality of my work,” I said.  “You have,” said Lundell, “would you like to come over and meet my staff?”   “Absolutely,” was my reply.

As a 28 year old budding entrepreneur in business for three months, I was thrilled to receive that call.  When I arrived at ComputerWorld, Lundell introduced me to his reporters and said, “Meet Steve Stroum, he’s the president of Venmark, a high quality source of information about companies we otherwise might not know about.”  That was central to our role as publicists.

Venmark International is a high quality source of information about companies and products editors otherwise wouldn’t know about.  We have skillfully created news releases about product features, benefits, and applications.  That lets us use news releases to expand our clients’ markets, both functionally and geographically.  We have refined this skill because it is our only business.  We have no other agenda.  Our expertise at arousing interest in products is well documented by editors.
http://venmarkinternational.com/marketing_industrial/publicity-editor-testimonials.php

Today,  “content is king”  with respect to the internet.  Therefore, the importance and impact of using news releases to stimulate interest in your products and to help influence where your products show up in internet searches is critical.  This is a result of the link popularity from being published in quality websites.   Google’s PageRank technology is based on the idea that the best way to find relevant information is to prioritize search results not by the characteristics of a document but by the number of websites that are linking to it (Source: Wikinomics, Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, Penguin Group, ©2008).  With respect to content, in his book, “The New Rules of Marketing and PR,” David Meerman Scott, wrote, “Don’t just send news releases when big news is happening; find good reasons to send them all the time.”

At Venmark International, sending news releases out consistently with remarkable, creative presentations has been the basis for our business model and extraordinary success since 1977.  We learned a long time ago: a product doesn’t have to be new to be newsworthy.

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© 2012  Steven M. Stroum