Posts Tagged Online PR

Over the last couple of years, public relations has become a very important online tool. Alongside article writing and increasingly video marketing Internet marketers have begun to take public relations far more seriously as a method of ensuring that they or their clients’ sites reached the top of the main search engines.

The biggest danger is that inexperienced marketers might think that the tried and trusted techniques used for search engine optimisation are appropriate for PR. Firstly it must be remembered that there is a broker in between the writer and the person you’re trying to influence to buy. That broker is a journalist and journalists have a certain way of writing and interpreting data.

The web is legion with articles on how to write a press release, but writing one and having read to totally different things. Even online, journalists have to wade through quite a few e-mails and press releases on sites like PR newswire PR leap in order to get to yours. Why would they want to? What is so special about your product they would want to read about, let alone write about?

And it’s not just about online press releases. With the final growth of the Internet, it is easy to forget that newspapers, radio stations, TV channels didn’t simply disappear. In fact these traditional forms of media fighting back. As far as small businesses and non-profit making organisations are concerned, this huge sector should not be ignored. If a story is a compelling one, there is every chance that your product or service will make the pages and programs of this traditional type of media.

The point is that there are no corners to be cut. There are no easy ways to persuade journalists. Yes you can pay PR Newswire $149 to distribute a news release, but that’s not to say that it is necessarily going to get you to the top 10 of Google as a result of the payment. It doesn’t work like that. Certainly sites like PR Newswire, PR Leap and many of the free sites have a decent ranking in Google, but you’re wasting your money if you fail a) to come up with a compelling story can b) you fail to optimise the keywords within press release.

The trick is to box clever. When selecting stories for possible publication, it is often the more quirky stories that journalists looking for. To use that adage about the stake and the sizzle, journalists not so much looking for stories about what you do, it’s the effect of what you do on their readers. For example, if you have a choice between two stories, warm publicising a $1.2 million extension to your building and another about a product you really you releasing to help decrease eyestrain, I know which one I would choose. The first is pure bragging, and the second fulfils a need. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that journalists will necessarily be interested in how you spend your money.

Where possible, and with the advent of online press release sites, this has become little more difficult, it is best to chat to journalists first. Or at least e-mail them before you send. Clearly if you’re using a distribution service, this isn’t always possible. You will gain better results, if you get to know the journalists that are operating in your market either locally, nationally or internationally. That way, you will build up a two-way relationship with the reporter or editor so that coverage is more sustained over a period of time.

It’s really a case of mix-and-match all horses for courses. If done correctly, public relations can increase your presence in the market place and subsequent articles will show you how.