One of this morning's must reads is a guest post by FutureWorks principal and PR 2.0 blogger Brian Solis over at TechCrunch.

In his post, "The Evolution of the Press Release," Solis breaks down press releases into four neat categories: Customer-Focused News Releases, Traditional Releases, SEO Press Releases and Social Media Releases.

Surely, there can always be some overlap in these categories, but the tactics outlined are a rock solid starting point.

A stat we've seen tossed around lately, Solis cites a recent Outsell study that found "over 51% of IT professionals reported that they get their news from press releases in Yahoo and Google news over trade journals."

With newswire releases popping up more and more on Techmeme and other news aggregation services, it's time well spent to make sure your release is finding its way to the right people.