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PR is great, it’s not free, it’s earned, but when it is, it packs some very nice ROI.
One strategy that small business owners should employ is to take their PR message online and directly to the prospect by consistent use of the age old tool, the press release.
Creating and distributing press releases was primarily a PR firm function in an attempt to generate interest from journalists. The web has certainly changed that, putting the press release in the hands of all marketers and making it available as a direct to customer and prospect marketing tool.
Use the 3 step process and free tools below and commit to creating one press release a month announcing new hires, new certifications, new products, new customers, new locations and other tidbits and you will start to see traffic to your website, links to your website and direct inquiries start to climb. (You may even get lucky and attract the interest of a journalist or two as well.)
This Triple Threat approach is not meant to replace the PR outreach you need to be doing for the true big news and feature stories you need, this is just a great way to consistently start getting small mentions and links and developing a PR habit.
- Instant Press Release - use this tool as a guided template for creating and formatting your press release properly
- Press Release Grader - Take your written press release here and run it through a process that can help tell you how to make it even better.
- PRLog - with a strong release written, you can come here and to get your release distributed to thousands of news sites and feeds.
Comments
This entry was posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at Jun 13, 08 | 12:23 pm and is filed under Public Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Thanks. Very good tips. I’ll use them with one of my clients.
These are fantastic… I especially like the PRLog features. Also, everyone (PR groups, execs) does press releases a little differently, so it’s nice to be able to at least compare a release against overarching formatting and rating systems.
Honestly, I don’t know if I have EVER seen a news release pop up in Google search results. This alleged tactic is spam and wastes time and credibility. Go make some relationships with reporters and earn your coverage.
You did your readers a terrible disservice with this lousy advice, John. I thought you were a better person than this.
@Charlene - wow, pretty dramatic for a first time commenter don’t you think?
Since you’re worried about my readers and the kind of person I am go have a read here http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2007/10/07/the-proper-way-to-stalk-a-journalist/
As for the allegedness of the tactic in this post, perhaps you should spend a little more time understanding the approach before you come unglued - go to Google News and type in any search. When you will do you will see that most of the results are from useful news tidbits, the kind I prescribed above and you will also find RSS feeds for that search that may turn up on thousands of websites that follow news in that industry.
This is not the only PR tactic I promote by any means, but it is an effective and useful online tactic that provides great results.
Let’s try opening our mind before our mouth
PRLog has definitely been a great tool for me. I seem to get a pretty good response from Press Method as well.
I am a big believer in PR - thanks for the leads and tips on the online website tools to take advantage of the internet to launch future PR