I spend a fair amount of time talking with small and medium sized business owners about their web marketing. Often times these individuals aren’t ready to shoulder the costs associated with true goal-oriented web design, SEO, or PPC, so the conversation turns to, “what can I be doing in the meantime?”
Aside from blogging, posting on forums, and keeping their site content fresh, I always talk about online PR. Most of the time the people I’m conversing with have no idea that you can freely or cheaply distribute press releases online.
Writing a press release and then pushing it out to the various distribution services is a great way to get the word out about recent newsworthy happenings at your organization, and also an effective method of getting inbound links for the purpose of Search Engine Optimization. Some of these sites will also distribute the releases to news syndication services such a Google News and Yahoo! News.
If you’re confident in your writing ability, read over a few press releases that have been released in your industry to get a feel for the format and the writing style and give it a whirl (I wrote the majority of the press releases in the early days of Awecomm – how hard can it be!). If not, go out and hire a freelance writer. There are a lot of good ones out there that don’t charge all that much.
Like many things in business and search engine optimization, this isn’t the holy grail; it’s just one more thing that can attract website visitors and potential customers, and one more thing that you should be doing. Also, there’s really no substitution for a good Public Relations firm if you’re at the point that you can afford it. Until then, get writing, and use the list below!
Free Press Release Distribution Websites
– PR Leap
– Webwire
– PR.com
– PR Log
Paid Press Release Distribution Websites
– PR Web
– PR Zoom
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