Jump-Start Your PR Know-How and Results in Short Order for the New Year

It’s a fresh year. You’ve got a fresh slate to turn your business right into a publicity machine that generates favorable headlines that shine a light on your winning ways. In doing so, you will get known, build buzz, earn credibility, and generate a path of qualified leads to your door. What growing business doesn’t want more of all of that?

If you’re a newbie to public relations and have to jump-start your PR know-how, I invite one to subscribe to some excellent and FREE ezines that may deliver useful, powerful, and proven ideas to your email box on a regular basis.

Ezine is short for “electronic magazine.” Ezines offer news your readers (clients, prospects and referral sources) may use to perform better businesses or live better lives because of your expertise. They might be as simple as a free email tip sent to a list of people who have given you permission to advertise in their mind online (zero spamming!) or jump start service near me as a longer electronic newsletter. Ezines are powerful since they keep you before your audience 26 times a year if you send them biweekly, and 52 times a year in the event that you send them weekly. That means you have 52 chances for connecting with your readers with quality tips, information, and resources, while using 20% of the content to sell your products and services.
The wonder of ezines is that you will get to learn from the masters of these craft, and you become familiar with the authors and their particular perspectives over time. If you want to turn to an expert to solve a problem or pain you’re experiencing with your own business, these are the experts who you will call first. It will be as though you’ve been working with them and learning them for months just because you have invited their ezines into your own inbox.

These ezine authors have become my colleagues and co-collaborators. In preparing this column, I asked The Publicity Hound Joan Stewart and Media Coach and Marketing Strategist Susan Harrow of PR Secrets to share their best ideas to help business owners jump-start their 2007 publicity results. Here is what they had to state:

Joan Stewart:

Many businesses, from one-person shops to big corporations, should start blogging. The search engines love blogs, and blogs pull in traffic just like a magnet and draw people to your Website. If you don’t know very well what blogs are or how to start one, do a explore Google and obtain as smart since you can as fast as you can, or your competition will leave you in the dust.

Begin to build valuable relationships with media people, and identify at least one media contact at each media out where you want coverage. Ask “How do i help you?” Listen. Then do what they say.

Don’t curb your publicity activities only to traditional media. Bloggers, podcasters and other “new media” come in a posture to spread the term about you more speedily than traditional media can, also to a wider audience.