Promote Your Business With Press Releases

TipsPublished December 2, 2010 at 7:57 pm 2 Comments

 

One of the more effective and underutilized methods of creating attention for your business is to leverage existing media channels by using press releases. Have you noticed that Google puts news stories near the top of organic rankings? Yes, that IS the easiest way to beat those competitors who spend more on advertising each day than you can spend in a year!

There is a lot of resistance to writing press releases because of the stigma that they somehow require highly paid experts who have some secret sauce they apply to suddenly transform words from simple sentences into magical “news”. However, this is most definitely not the case. In fact VPSLatch, the premiere managed VPS solution provider, makes use of press releases regularly, without the use of press release ninjas.

 

Basics

There are some rules on what goes into a press release, how it is structured and what not to do. The first key point to remember is that a press release is not a place to drop in a full page text advertisement about your company, product or service. These are news stories, not display ads.

Press releases are great for alerting the world to an expansion of your business, where you are striking out into new territories, carrying new lines of products (as in company growth but not pure product sales rhetoric), bringing on new staff members and what they will contribute, channel partner relationships, supply chain agreements, and so on. There are hundreds of ways to approach this so long as you don’t try to make it a sales letter.

If you’d like to talk about your products and services, be sure that you approach it from the angle of ‘informing’. Your goal is to impart knowledge about your company and what you do. Done properly, this will result in your improved position as a thought leader and development of improved brand equity.

A press release informs the customer exactly how your product will benefit them by making use of a feature-benefit-advantage model. For example, Widget A has an all new delivery system which improves safety and reduces the risks of people losing a finger (as they shove their hand in the meat grinder). This must be conveyed in the form of a “newsworthy” press release.

 

Eggs in 1 Basket

Remember that press releases are not like water balloons – once you submit one, it’s not gone forever. Instead, you can submit your releases to multiple sites, so as to get maximum exposure for the least amount of time and effort required. But how will you know which one performed, if all the releases are the same?

Press releases need to be slightly altered (very slightly) for each site that you submit to so that you can track which one did the best. You can vary the title and a few words that can later be searched for. This using multiple versions and comparing results is often referred to as A/B testing or split-testing. It’s essential for knowing what to do again next time, and what not to bother with!

Please give this a try and promote your business with press releases. A little time is all it might cost you as you stand to gain substantial new customers and awareness within the online community.

 

Advanced

Press releases are also great ways of building backlinks to your site. Be sure to include a relevant company bio for placing at the very end of the release, including a link back to your site. That link should make use of a keyword rich link anchor so that you get the full SEO benefit from doing this press release. On many PR sites, you can also embed a link or two in the body of the release, and should always do so when allowed.

If you would like to get the maximum value out of your press release backlinks, you should seek to publish on a site with high traffic and pagerank. Here are a list of some popular press release sites:

 

• http://prweb.com
• http://prwebdirect.com
• http://marketwire.com
• http://prnewswire.com
• http://pr-inside.com
• http://pr.com
• http://24-7pressrelease.com
• http://prleap.com
• http://fastpitchnetworking.com
• http://send2press.com
• http://free-press-release.com
• http://pressbox.co.uk
• http://eworldwire.com
• http://readmedia.com
• http://newsforce.com
• http://przoom.com
• http://sbwire.com
• http://prfree.com
• http://pressrelease365.com
• http://ukprwire.com
• http://usprwire.com
• http://free-press-release-center.info
• http://press.xtvworld.com
• http://freepressreleases.co.uk
• http://theopenpress.com
• http://free-news-release.com
• http://pr9.net
• http://ecommwire.com
• http://epressreleases.org
• http://addpr.com
• http://prnuke.com
• http://pressmethod.com
• http://webwire.com
• http://targetwire.com
• http://prbuzz.com
• http://press.arrivenet.com

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