Online Media Publicity

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Press Release Mis-steps – What you don’t know can make all the difference
By Patrysha Korchinski

As a publicist, my job is to help my clients get media coverage. The tool I use most often on their behalf is the simple, but highly effective, press release. What I do isn’t rocket science; seeking publicity can be an in-house job for most small business owners.

Press releases can seem like a panacea for small business owners. The prospect of getting free publicity in exchange for a couple of hours of writing and submitting a 400 word release seems like a great deal. And on the surface – it is a great deal.

The publicity generated from one release picked up by a major media outlet can increase awareness and sales with a far greater impact than buying advertising in the same outlet.

Under the surface though, lurk thousand of disappointed publicity seekers who for one reason or another did not get the coverage they desired.

I used to believe that the reasons for the failed attempts lay mostly, if not entirely, on the message within the release.

The headline wasn’t strong enough
It read like a sales pitch rather than news
The subject wasn’t newsworthy

While those are definitely factors that will get your press release a one-way ticket to the circular file, most serious business owners I’ve met don’t fall victim to these mistakes. They took the time to craft newsworthy releases that were topical, relevant and well-written. They had the initiative to create a targeted media list to submit to – and yet still they struggled to get coverage.

What was going on?

It was only when I dug deeper and examined other aspects of their failed efforts that a few trends began to emerge. There are factors in press release pick up that the professional publicist innately utilizes for the benefit of their clients that most small business owners just aren’t aware of.

The timing of your submission is one component that is often to blame for poor results. You see, each media outlet has what is called a lead time. This is how far in advance they need to start working on stories that will eventually appear. Magazines with a large circulation tend to have the longest lead times, often 9 months or longer. If you send out a release geared towards Christmas to a major magazine in November, you’ve missed your window of opportunity by eight months!
You don’t necessarily need a publicist to get over these hurdles, you just need to be aware of what hurdles exist. Overcoming them is usually a fairly simple matter. As I said before, getting media coverage is not rocket science. You can improve your odds significantly with a little fine tuning.

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For more tips on turning the odds in your favor, you’ll want to grab the free special report Click here.

Promote your Business the Right way!

5 Tips to Help You Build Buzz around Your Business

As a business owner, one of the best things you can do for your business is to learn new publicity and promotion techniques. If no one knows your business exists, they cannot buy anything from you!

Here are a few business promotion ideas to help you build buzz around your business:

1.    Toot Your Own Horn – Many people are very modest, and if you happen to be this type of person, it can almost seem like bragging to let others know about your accomplishments. When you are creating a press release, a media page or a media kit, tooting your own horn is a necessity. If you don’t let people know about your achievements, they’ll assume there’s nothing worth knowing.

2.    Send Out A Press Release – Don’t know how to write a press release? They’re actually very easy! There is a standard structure that needs to be followed, but once you write one or two, you’ll understand the method. For a free cut and paste press release template, visit www.powerpublicityandpromotions.com. Press releases can be sent to your local media outlets, such as newspapers, magazines, and even radio and television stations. But don’t stop there; distribute them online to increase your exposure AND the links coming into your website.

3.    Distribute Content Everywhere – The more content you have out there, the more that can be introduced to your site. You can accomplish this by writing articles and submitting them to article distribution sites, becoming a contributing blogger to several blogs, and even sending query letters to magazines and newspapers, asking if they would be interested in publishing your story.

4.    Stay In Touch – Starting a mailing list is the easiest way to do this. You’ll need an autoresponder service, which will do the actual mailings for you. You can even set them up months in advance. The autoresponder service will walk you through setting up a sign up box that you can place on your website or blog. When one of your readers fills out their name and address, they’ll be automatically added to your mailing list.

5.    Recruit Help – Starting an affiliate program can increase your sales and help you with your online business promotions. When people join your affiliate program, they are acting as your virtual sales force. They will advertise your products and services for you. When they bring in a sale, you give them a certain percentage back in the form of a commission.

Many people are looking for tips on how to get free publicity. It’s important to remember that even the things that can be done for “free” will cost you time and energy. It’s very important to track your results so that you know what is bringing you the most traffic and where your time is best spent.

For more tips on how to get free publicity, download the free report ’15 Tips to Build around Your Business” at
www.PowerPublicityAndPromotions.com/15-tips.html

About The Author
Founded by Crissy Herron, Power Publicity And Promotions helps small and independent business owners realize that they do not need to hire a high priced publicist to achieve attention and recognition. And she should know. Herron is also the founder of www.IndieBizChicks.com, a website “for women who’d rather work for themselves, than work for the man.” Using the same publicity and promotional methods she teaches through Power Publicity And Promotions, Herron grew her site from zero visitors to over 5,000 per month – in just eight short months, and that is with spending less than $150 on advertising! For more tips on how to get free publicity, download the free report ’15 Tips to Build around Your Business” at
www.PowerPublicityAndPromotions.com/15-tips.html

Get your Site indexed in the Search Engines Fast!

How to get your site indexed in the Search engines.

Do you know what it takes to get your site indexed in the search engines? Many people especially new website owners believe that once they submit there site to web site submissions services or manually themselves. There site would automatically appear in the search engines after a certain amount of time. Although it could happen, it most likely does not on its own initiative.

Of course you could easily pay for this type of service to have your site listed to thousands of sites, but is that what you really want? The only important sites to concerned about include Google, yahoo, ask, windows live and msn. The rest of sites will pick up on your site once your site gets listed in these to begin with. So there is really no reason to concern about submitting your site, or using a service to do it for you and wasting your money.

So you ask, well how do I get my site indexed in the search engines?

First of all many of search engines crawl sites on regular basis, through  the use of spiders that hop from page to page or site to site through the way of hyperlinks. And if your site has a link from another site that gets crawled more frequently, or has a higher page rank than you do.  Then the search engine thinks that your site must have some value in it in because it has link from a higher ranking site. Therefore your site is picked up on and is able to get indexed in a quicker and more natural fashion.

Search engines base sites on links coming to them and who is linking to them. So the more links you can get in the beginning phases of your websites the quicker your chances of having your site indexed than through a submission process.

Here a few ways to indexed at lighting speed!

1. Submit a press release about your site.
2. Post at forums and leave your link
3. Start a blog and post freqeuntly
4. Write a couple of article and submit them to article directories
5. Become a guest blogger and leave your link.
6. Purchase text link ads or buy lifelong lists in directories.
7. Use the old-fashioned link exchange request
8. Use social media such as twitter and stumble upon and leave your link.