Yesterday we talked about sending out press releases in order to promote your event and get free advertising by exploiting the news media.  But today we’re going to tackle one critical fallacy in the press release marketing approach–the shotgun approach.

One might assume, and logically enough, that mailing a press release costs less than a measly fifty cents, and this after factoring in an envelope and sheet of paper and ink to print it, so why not throw them out onto the very wind itself and contact everybody in sight?  And with email, which is essentially free but for time to produce it, this approach makes even more sense.

This is actually not a smart plan.  What you WILL want to do instead is target your press releases according to one primary factor: interest.

Now, of course, any local (within fifty to a hundred miles of your front door) news outlet is fair game.  Television, radio, and newspapers thrive on “local news”, and so offering it up is a help to them and to you.  A good rule of thumb is if you can get it on your TV or radio, it’s local.

National news outlets should only be limited to those that have some stake in what you’re offering, as you’re less likely to appeal to them and more likely to make them resent you for wasting their time.

Of course, the final say of any news outlet is their own, and they’ll decide if you’re “sufficiently newswothy” to cover.  But you can make their job easier–and thus win yourself a few extra brownie points–by carefully considering whether they’re likely to find it newsworthy.

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So we’ve been tackling, this week, the issue of how to get free advertising by exploiting the news media.  And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing, too–we’ve been planning an event, we’ve been writing the press releases, but once we’ve got that killer press release written, how do we send it out?  More specifically, where do we send it TO?

Now, the really ambitious among us will say “why, to as many places as possible!” though that may not be the best strategy.  What you’re really going to need here is a list.

There are two ways to go about doing this–one, if you’ve got a budget, you can contact a PR firm that has a background in this sort of thing, and already has a list of ‘trusted contacts” that they use to send their stuff to with a reasonable chance of getting noticed.  This is great if you’ve got a budget, but if you’ve got more time than money, make your own list.  If you’re worried about spamming laws, Wikipedia actually has a good starter summary (starter summary only, do your own research) of spam laws around the world.

So now that you’ve got a good starting off point for getting your press releases out and getting that free advertising, tomorrow we’ll take a quick look at how to get the most out of that mass email you’re plotting.

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Now I KNOW I got you guys right there!

That’s got to make most everyone sit up and take notice, but I assure you, it is possible for most anyone to get FREE ADVERTISING at absolutely any point.

How do you do it?  It’s a simple plan, but it’s tough to execute.  What you’re going to do to get free advertising is to do something newsworthy. See?  Yeah, tough, all right.  But you’re going to figure out something to do that will get attention, and you’ll go out and do it.  Just consider what you normally write about, and think about what you can do in that arena to make something that’s newsworthy.

Consider things that involve words like “biggest”, “longest”, “widest” or “most”.  Pretty much anything that actually involves an “est” will do.  And once you’ve done it, or are in the process of doing it, now you can hawk it.  Not you–no, not yet–rather the event.  You can slip in a few interesting asides about your site in the process, and of course a link back to you in the press releases works.

And with that, you should be looking at plenty of free advertising as the papers spread the word for you.

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Now, this is actually a good question that comes straight from the comments section.

User Digital Images asked, “How do you set up a business blog for your boss?”

Again, a great idea that deserves to be fully examined.  Of course, your mileage will vary on this point, but here’s a simple plan for you to try and get a job blogging with your current employer.

1. Analyze your company. Do you have a lot of new products?  Do you market mainly to consumers or businesses?  Is there a good reason to disseminate lots of new information in a relatively rapid schedule?

2. Gather your findings. If you market mainly to consumers, and have a lot of new products and events to discuss, then you may have a blog-worthy concept. Can you run ads?  Are you likely to draw readers?  These are all things to consider in packaging your analysis.

3. Present them to your boss. It’s always good to have all this written down on a hard copy somewhere in case some corporate power-junkie decides they want to take credit for YOUR hard work and genius.  But what you’re going to do here is take an extremely new idea (in most corporate power-circles blogging is a concept often believed reserved for college kids and people with nothing better to do all day than talk about their cats at length) and show people how it will work.  Consider things like advertising revenue through Google Adsense or similar, the intangible value of “getting the word out” in a relatively inexpensive fashion, cross-promotion opportunities to fuel readership (see, we put our blog web address on the box of every product.  So when they buy stuff, they have or blog site, and go to it to learn more about stuff they can buy.), and so on.

The key thing here is to make this look like an idea that will either bring in money outright or save money, and if you can reduce it down to those terms, chances are pretty fair you’ll land yourself a full-time corporate blogging job, even in this lousy economy.

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A strange distinction, I know, but it’s one worth thinking about.  If you’ve been considering adding onto your small business, or have been considering a way to expand your blog outward, maybe you should look into becoming a corporate partner.

Now, I’m not suggesting selling out. But what I AM proposing is that a blog can be an excellent tool for the rapid dissemination of information across a wide space to a very, VERY focused audience.  This is exactly the same principle that your advertising works on, except this time, you’re not going to a middleman like Google or Project Wonderful or something similar.

What I’m suggesting is that, if you own a small business (or conversely, know someone who does) consider using your blog as a way to promote that small business.  Not shilling, of course, no one would suggest such a thing.  But rather, disseminating ideas through it.  New products.  Upcoming events.  Previews of coming attractions, as it were.  You can scarcely go wrong with that sort of thing–people want to know what’s around the corner and you can tell them things they didn’t otherwise know.

And of course, if you do it for other people, you can always accept payment for services rendered.  Access to a readership is a very important item, after all.  Just another something to consider in your quest for blogging fame and fortune!

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Having a blog is great, but only if someone other than you and a few of your family members reads it. So how do you get other people to read your blog?  You have to promote it and you have to do so in a variety of ways. Essentially you are going to become a marketing and PR department for your blogging business.

There are many ways to promote your blog, these are amongst the most successful:

• Social Media - Use syndicating tools to cross post your blog posts to sites like Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Friend Feed, Twitter etc. Make sure that people know you are blogger by including a link to your blog in your profile page.
• Search Engines - Use the plugins/Widgets that are available to help ensure that your posts are optimized for search engines, you want to be on page one of the results for your particular niche, this takes time and effort and monitoring. It isn’t something that just happens.
• Blog Comments - Make good use of other blogs in your niche and leave comments, meaningful comments on others posts. Don’t just leave the “nice post” type of comment and hope other readers will follow a link to your blog. Engage in conversation.
• Forums - Similar in approach to blog comments, this is a longer term activity, it is important that you build trust and authority within the forum community before you start to promote links to your blog.

Promoting your blog is an essential activity and it is very time consuming but it is the life blood of any successful blogging enterprise.

Next: Global or Local?

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