First build a media contact list. Get this wrong and nothing else matters.

There are thousands of media outlets. Magazines, newspapers, wire services, newsletters, online journals, e-zines, Web sites, television and radio stations. There are national, international, regional and local outlets specializing in hard news, human-interest and niche business topics.

Your challenge is to narrow the field. You can’t be everything to everyone, so don’t bother trying. A good place to start is with firms that already have compiled media mailing and e-mail lists, such as Gebbie Press.

To build a contact list:

• Target publications that target your market. To reach your customers, go where they get their information. Familiarize yourself with those publications’ content then slant your “news” to fit their tastes. Inquire about the submission requirements so your press kit can be 100-percent compatible.

• Target publications that focus on your industry. Your partners and competitors read these to keep abreast of trends, news and gossip. For them to know about you, get published in here.

Distributing press kits is no longer restricted to snail mail or courier services. E-mail delivery can be effective if your target market accepts submissions that way.

Before e-mailing a two-megabyte press kit, make sure the media outlet on the receiving end doesn’t mind. An editor is unlikely to happily consider your submission if you have tied up his incoming e-mail for 15 minutes downloading it.

One online option is to publish the press kit on your Web site, but this is a more passive approach. It requires not only a willingness by recipients to look at your material, but an overt act by them to go get it, rather than have it delivered to them.

There are online services that will send your press releases—and even your entire press kits—to targeted media and business recipients for a fee. The more you send, the more targeted the recipients and the more recipients you send it to, the more you pay.

This option works best for reaching many media outlets with a single press release. It’s not as effective—or cost effective—for a fat press kit that strains Internet throughput. One respected conduit for press release distribution is the PR Newswire. Another is BusinessWire.