Press Releases: A Powerful Publicity Tool to Build Business Awareness

August 7, 2012 Leave a comment

One sure-fire way to get your business known is by using press releases. A press release is written material that announces a news type event. Television networks, radio stations, magazines, and newspapers as well as online resources will publish the announcement if your news story peaks interest.

People are interested in the news and are always looking for a good story. Business owners can use press releases to give them those good stories while making a name for their company. The best way to do that is to make sure the release is a story and not simply an advertisement for your business.

Press Releases Provide Powerful Benefits to Small and Big Business Owners Alike

Press Releases are the most popular means of providing publicity online and offline. They have many advantages that both small and big business owners can profit from. Some of those are:

More traffic to your site - The press release that gets published on one of the media outlets will have your website link provided within it. Those who have reviewed your release and want more information will click through the link or check out the website.

Build a brand - What better way to get your business name into the minds of your target audience or anyone who happens to read your press releases. The more a consumer sees your business name being mentioned the more likely they will remember it the next time they, or someone they know, is in need of your products.

Inexpensive way to get free publicity - Getting an effective press release written will cost you some money. Some will include the costs of submitting it for you, so the cost of getting the free publicity will be inexpensive.

Gain Credibility - The press release can also help to get your business more credibility. Potential consumers will start to see you as an expert in your field and think that you should be the one to go to when they need the products you offer.

What News Items You Can Create to Make an Effective Release

By no means should you wait around for something newsworthy to happen within your business before you can start benefiting from news releases. Why wait? Start now.

Create news stories from what’s already going on. Here are some things that could be turned into news stories for your news release:

  • Any contests that you’re planning
  • Starting your business
  • Getting more products to sell
  • Special Discounts/Sales
  • Fundraising events your business is helping with
  • Offering Free Items
  • Any Awards your business has won

Some of these stories can not only be newsworthy items but also show what a humanitarian you or your business is. Credibility comes into play again and we all know that credibility helps to build rapport with your target audience and gains you a higher “expert” level.

Press releases are one of the most powerful publicity tools available today for all business owners. Use it to your advantage and join all the other successful internet marketers who have used press releases many times in the past with very positive results.

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Filed under Advertising, Brand, Branding, Business, Consulting, Content, copy, Entrepreneur, Expert, Marketing, Media, SEO, Small business, Techniques, Tips, Writing Tagged with , , , , , ,

Decide If Social Media Is Right for Your Business

March 1, 2012 Leave a comment

Decide if Social Media Is Right for Your BusinessSocial media is often a big help when you’re developing your brand. It allows businesses to connect to customers on a more personal level. But that doesn’t mean it’s right for every small business.

Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, believes that 9 million small businesses in the U.S. use Facebook.

Twitter and Facebook are useful in different ways. Twitter is known to be better for customer engagement, while Facebook helps funnel traffic to your site. Both sites help you better your search engine optimization (SEO).

Take three steps before launching Twitter and Facebook campaigns and decide which social media platform is right for your small business.

1. Is social media right for your company?

Remember the old question, “If everyone was jumping off a bridge would you do it too?”

The buzz makes everybody feel that social media helps their business. It’s likely that’s true, but it’s vital that you decide if social media is necessary for your business to succeed right now.

Though millions of small businesses have jumped on the social media train, your target audience might not be caught up in it. If you feel that’s the case, it makes sense to hold off. Or, perhaps you aren’t ready to make the most of social media’s benefits, so wait until your company is ready.

2. Timing is everything

Having a strong presence in social media takes a lot of time and a lot of resources. If you can’t dedicate the manpower to keeping up a quality profile, it might hurt your brand in the long run.

Look at your team and decide if your business can handle the workload. If it can, then be fully prepared to implement it. Like any good marketing campaign, your social media portfolio has to have a clear identity, and reach your target audience.

If you forge ahead, prepare the information you want to share each week. Figure out what time of the day your posts and tweets have the most impact by reaching your core customers.

3. Set goals and guidelines

In 2011, companies saw a 63 percent increase in marketing effectiveness. But businesses of all sizes are trying to establish a strong ROI when it comes to social media.

Setting goals for the next few weeks, months and years helps you decide if your valuable time is worth the effort and if you’re using social media successfully. It’s also important to set ground rules of who in your company will handle your social media sites.

Decide on what content is and isn’t appropriate to post. Learn how to handle customer interaction and what steps to take if something goes wrong. Then spend some time educating your staff before the first day of having a visible social media profile.

Once you have created a place for your business in the social media realm, look around your direct and indirect competitors’ pages. It helps you understand what the best practices are to engage customers.

Also research the different ways social media platforms are reaching out to help small businesses advertise. See if those steps are right for your brand as well.

In the end, social media is another tool for your company’s toolbox. It will only be effective if you can take the time to learn how to use it properly.

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Filed under Advertising, Brand, CRM, Facebook, Marketing, Media, Mistakes, SEO, Small business, Social Media, Twitter Tagged with , , , , , ,

How Twitter Makes You A Better Writer

June 17, 2011 11 Comments

By: Jennifer Blanchard

By now you’ve most likely joined Twitter (and if you haven’t, you need to, pronto!). Twitter is not only a great place for businesses and marketers, but it’s also a great place to spruce up your writing skills. Yes. You read that correctly. Twitter can make you a better writer.

Here’s how.

Twitter forces you to be concise -

If you’ve ever used Twitter, you know that you have 140 characters to say whatever you want to say. Now keep in mind, I didn’t say 140 words—or even 140 letters—I said 140 characters.

That’s not a lot of room. Letters, numbers, symbols, punctuation and spaces all count as characters on Twitter.
What all of this means is, you have to be concise. You have to know exactly what you want to say, and say it in as few words as possible.

Many writers, however, are “wordy” and often have long, drawn out descriptions and sentences, so it can be pretty difficult to create a message that’s only 140 characters.

Here’s where Twitter comes in again.

Twitter forces you to exercise your vocabulary -

Since you only have 140 characters to get your message across, you’re forced to dust off your dictionary and thesaurus and find new words to use — Words that are shorter, words that are more descriptive, and words that get the job done in 140 characters or less.

Crafting a message for Twitter requires you to “pump up” your verbs (replacing adverbs and adjectives with them), and discover a better, clearer and more concise way to say what you want to say.

Now most people won’t hit 140 characters right away. No, they’ll end up with 160 or 148 characters to start out with (Twitter tells you how many characters you need to remove to make your message fit).

Twitter forces you to improve your editing skills -

Every writer needs to be able to edit their work. And by using Twitter, you can really hone your editing skills and make them top-notch.

It’s almost like playing a game; trying to write a 140-character message and still get your point across in a way that inspires your followers to take action, to click on your link or to “retweet” your post.

I like to think of it as a brainteaser, forcing me to think hard and dig deep down into my vocabulary to find a way to shorten my message.

I’ve been using Twitter since January, and my writing skills have not only improved, but I’ve been writing better copy as well.

Yet another reason you should be using Twitter. Not that you needed one.

About the Author: Jennifer Blanchard is a creative and effective copywriter. Her blog, Procrastinating Writers, offers writing advice, motivation and inspiration for writers who procrastinate.

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Filed under Content, SEO, Social Media, Twitter, Writing Tagged with , , , , ,

How To Build the Perfectly Optimized Page

December 13, 2010 Leave a comment

Filed under How To, InfoGraph, Marketing, SEO, Small business Tagged with , , , ,

How To Boost Your SEO with a YouTube Channel

June 23, 2010 Leave a comment

Mitchell Harper is co-founder of BigCommerce, a leading provider of shopping cart software used by more than 40,000 organizations worldwide. Mitchell has written and published over 300 articles relating to software development, marketing, business, social media and entrepreneurship.

While many companies are still focusing SEO efforts on their websites, there are many other ways to boost search results, especially since results are now comprised of all kinds of content, including videos, images, maps, business listings, tweets and even Facebook Page posts.

So how do you expand your efforts without breaking the bank? To boost SEO, consider creating a YouTubechannel. Every video you post to your channel can be tagged and indexed, increasing the odds your brand name will appear in natural searches for keywords associated with your business.

Creating your own channel is pretty simple — here are four easy steps to kick things off right.

Step 1: Choose Your Topics

You might be thinking “Who would want to watch a video about what I sell?” Well, the answer is probably a lot of people, but they won’t want to watch “commercials” about your products on YouTube. Instead, people will appreciate informative or entertaining videos about your products that illustrate how to choose the ones for their needs, how to use or fix them, and what special features are available.

But don’t stop there. Consider what other expertise you can offer beyond your products. Whatever business you’re in, you’re probably an expert at what you do, so share your knowledge. For example:

If you sell women’s apparel, record videos showing how you choose your merchandise, interview local designers or even create how-to videos on coordinating outfits.
If you sell specialty cookies, record a few different videos about where you source your ingredients, how you bake your cookies, and how you package them for shipping.
If you sell wine, record videos of yourself opening, tasting and critiquing the different products you sell. Or, help viewers pair featured wines with seasonal meals.
With a bit of creative thinking, you can come up with some really interesting ideas that would be a perfect fit for a regular or even semi-regular video series.

Though it doesn’t specifically use YouTube, take a look at Gary Veynerchuck’s WineLibrary.tv for an excellent example of using video to sell your products. WineLibrary pulled in $60 million last year.

Step 2: Record Your Videos

Once you come up with ideas, you’re ready to record. You can use any high-quality consumer-level camera, and you don’t need to hire a professional videographer. In fact, it’s great if your videos look “home made,” as that just increases the viral appeal and makes them look less like commercials.

Before you record your video, make a bullet list of 5-10 points you’ll talk about and keep the edited recording under two minutes. At both the start and end of the video, it’s OK to plug your website or business. Make sure to always include a link to your website in the video, which will deliver viewers from YouTube to your product pages.

I record the videos for our YouTube channel using a $600 Sony HD video camera, and edit with the free iMovie software that came with my MacBook Pro laptop. At the beginning and end of each video, I include a five-second promo for software and also a link to learn more on our blog, which gets people to come to our website for more educational content.

Step 3: Optimize for VSEO

After you’ve uploaded your video to YouTube, you’ll be asked to enter a title, description and tags. This is where VSEO begins.

Let’s say your company sells shoes and you just recorded and uploaded a video about “casual sneakers.” You want to use the phrase in the title twice to maximize SEO impact –- once at the front and once at the end, like this: “Casual Sneakers — How to Choose Casual Sneakers 101.”

Next up is the description. Always include a link at the front of the description back to your website, followed by a carefully crafted paragraph around your key phrase, like this:

“http://www.casual-sneakers-101.com — In this video, Casual Sneakers 101 coach Jim Smith explains how to choose casual sneakers that best suit your needs. Casual sneakers, when chosen correctly, will make it easier to jog and play low-impact sports. Jim gives clear advice in choosing casual sneakers for men of all ages.”

The video description is shown in the search results on Google and is also used to determine which keywords or phrases your video should show for. Lastly, remember to use a lot of supporting words that give context to your video. Words such as “jog,” “sports” and “men” help Google figure out exactly what the video is about.

Finally, for tags, repeat your key phrase and common variants. Similar to website SEO, stick to 10-15 phrases. For phrases with more than one word, make sure you enclose them in double quotes, like this:

“casual sneakers,” sneakers, shoes, “jogging shoes,” “walking shoes,” “men’s shoes,” casual-sneakers.

Step 4: Build a Base of Viewers

There are a few creative ways you can begin to “seed” your video beyond posting links on Facebook and Twitter.

One idea is to post your content as a “video reply” to other related videos. This gives YouTube context as to what your video is about and starts a steady flow of traffic. To do this, search YouTube for the exact phrase you want to rank for (in this example, “casual sneakers”). Click on each video that comes up and post your new video as a “video reply” to those.

Next, start building links back to your video. The more websites that link back to your video on YouTube, the more relevant that video will appear in searches. The best way to do this is simply to find out who is linking back to the most popular videos in your category, searching for that URL in Google to see where it appears, and then reaching out to these sites to ask them to link to your videos.

Once your video has had a few hundred views (which doesn’t take all that long), it should start appearing on Google for your key phrase.

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Filed under How To, SEO, Social Media, YouTube Tagged with , , , ,

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