free press pr

 

Free PR for Your Small Business

Generating exciting free press for your business is absolutely possible. As you well know, starting and operating a business has many challenges, and maintaining a highly streamlined budget is one key component to success. Often times, every cent matters for a small business and startup. At the same time, spreading the word of your business is also critical; however, you do not need to spend thousands, or even hundreds of dollars to achieve the publicity your require for success.

No Easy Way

It is important to understand that when it comes to free press, or any press at all for that matter, there is no such thing as an easy way. It will be time consuming and it will take time to see positive results. However, if you put in the work, you will see great rewards. Your clientele and followers will grow, and you will increase sales conversions. You can begin by registering with a number of free press release services. Be sure to manage all of the sites with which you register in one place so that you can easily access this database in the future. You can do so with a simple spreadsheet or by using a free project management service. You should also add a subscription box to your website landing pages that allow anyone who visits your website to provide you with their email address for important updates, discounts, and newsworthy announcements pertaining to all company matters. And, do not forget to register your website with search engines and website directories to ensure your page ranking remains amongst the top.

Here are some Free PR sites:

24-7PressRelease.com– Free release distribution with ad-support

1888PressRelease.com – Free distribution, paid services gives you better placement and permanent archiving.

ClickPress.com – Distributes to sites like Google News and Topix.net, Gold level will also get you to sites like LexisNexis.

EcommWire.com – Focuses on ecommerce and requires you include an image, 3 keywords and links.

Express-Press-Release.com – Free distribution company with offices in 12 states.

Free-Press-Release.com – Easy press release distribution for free, more features for paid accounts.

Free-Press-Release-Center.info – Distributes your release, offers a web page with one keyword link to your site. Pro upgrade will give you three links, permanent archiving and more.

I-Newswire.com – Allows for free distribution to sites and search engines, premium membership differs only slightly in adding in graphics.

NewswireToday.com – All the usual free distribution tools, premium service includes logo, product picture and more.

PR.com – Not only will they distribute your press releases, but you can also set up a full company profile.

PR9.net – Ad supported press distribution site.

PR-Inside.com – European-based free press release distribution site.

PRBuzz.com – Completely free distribution to search engines, news sites, and blogs.

PRCompass.com – Distribute your press release with a free or paid version, others can vote it up a la Digg style.

PRUrgent.com – Not only distributes your release, but attempts to teach you how to write one, and even offers downloadable samples for you to work with.

Press-Base.com – Submit your release for free and get on their front page and the category of your choice.

PressAbout.com – A free press release service formatted as a blog.

PressMethod.com – Free press release distribution no matter what, but extra services based on the size of your contribution.

PRLeap.com – Free distribution to search engines, newswires, and RSS feeds. Fee based bumps get you better placement.

PRLog.org – Free distribution to Google News and other other search engines.

TheOpenPress.com – Gives free distribution for plain formatted releases, fees for HTML-coded releases.

 

 

The Press Release

Write and distribute a simple press release. The intent is to make the press release engaging; therefore, be sure to write the press release in a manner that is exciting so that it keeps the audience reading until the end and so that they become excited about your product or service. It should be written in a manner so that it appears as though a professional journalist might have written the press release on your behalf; therefore, be sure it is written in the third person. Be sure to include the following so that it has the greatest chance of being published:

● Title
● Summary
● Primary Announcement
● Unique Content!
● Contact Details
● Keywords

You can find a number of top free sources online to help guide you to write a professional press release that will attract significant positive attention from the right people. You should also create a list of news sources, industry leaders, bloggers, etc. to whom you would like to send the press release directly. Keep all of this information with the press release websites to which you register for easy reference. Try to find and distribute your press release to individual emails rather than to send it to the generic email on company web pages. Again, doing things the right way for the best outcome is going to take time, but is worth it.

 

free press news content

Strategic Partnerships

One of the best ways to reach your target demographics without actually having to spend any money is to establish strategic partnerships. The way you can do so is by reaching out to other small businesses and startups that are not in direct competition with you, but rather they have a similar target demographic to your own with a well established following. Here are some examples of the type of businesses and individuals with whom to create strategic partnerships:

● Industry bloggers with a high number of followers
● Bloggers who allow guest blog posts
● Reputable industry podcasters and video-casters
● Indirect competition within your industry

 

The right strategic partnerships will be a mutually beneficial relationship. You have to be able to provide them some value in turn for the partnership; therefore, it is critical to work on expanding your social network early in your business development phase. If you do not yet have a strong or relevant social media following, try to build it up before you reach out to potential partners and outline the ways in which your business will be an asset to them now or in the future. Remember that hard numbers are more persuasive than general empty promises. Also, you can always offer discounts and freebies to their audience to get them to try your products and services and as a way to provide value to the partnership. You always have something to offer. Be creative.

Some Tools to Help:

Buzzsumo.com – If you have not heard of this one, visit it asap and start using it. You can learn about what posts get shared the most in your industry (by topic) which will show you what your audience is interested in. You can even attain a list of top influencers from this site too.

Followerwonk.com – This tool is great to discover which Twitter people are your real influencers. Once you discover who they are, with this tool you can see who they follow and which of their followers shares a lot. Then you can reach out to these people and introduce yourself.

 

Friends & Family

Do not forget to ask your friends and family for help. These are the people in the world who are supposed to believe in you and your business more than anyone else in the world. They can be highly useful and persuasive tools in the realm of free press. Ask everyone you know and your general social media followers to spread the word on your behalf through their social media channels. Create a fun and exciting post and ask them to share it. If you do not ask, it will not miraculously occur simply because you wish it to happen. Personal endorsements are one of the most effective means of advertising alongside word of mouth. If you can get people talking about your business, you are winning the war. Also, it is essential to network. Work on building up your professional social media profiles such as LinkedIn. You might be surprised at the business and partnerships you can generate from these social media networking powerhouse sites. Be sure to meet people in person because it is much more genuine and works much better than simply connecting via social media. Never underestimate the power of face to face meetings.

To generate free press, you must be willing to put in the work and ask for assistance. Your press release and social media initiatives will also be essential to your success, as well as your strategic partnerships and networking efforts. And, do not forget to involve your friends and family to make your life a little easier and to help create new and long-term clients.