Marketing Masters
Smart ways to create business buzz
By Joe Dysart
Create a Killer Press Center
Here are nine ways to get the media to notice your decorating business in cyberspace.
One of the Web's great secrets is that with a killer press center, you'll be able to attract many more editors and reporters to your embroidery industry Web site, and generate many more stories about your firm in the news media.
"We put up a press release to get better recognition in the search engines, and it worked," says Dean Gannet, treasurer at Star Embroidery (www.star-embroidery.com), who used press release distributor PRWeb (www.prweb.com) to disseminate news about his company. "Now, any time someone keys in ‘Star Embroidery' on Google, our name and press release comes up. The release presents a very positive image for our company, and for the nominal cost that PRWeb charged, we think it was worth it," he says.
The trick to putting together a press center is knowing how to trigger story ideas, how to relentlessly promote what you're offering, and being sure you post the equivalent of a neon "welcome sign" for members of the press.
"News publicity costs you nothing," says Thomas Wong, author of 101 Ways To Boost Your Web Traffic. "It often produces better results than advertising, because people trust news articles more than sales ads. Press releases often lead to personal interviews on the phone or TV or radio appearances, which can make you and your Web site very popular."
In fact, there are so many tactics and new Web technologies available for courting the media online that building a killer press center on your company Web site can become an ever more sophisticated, ever more publicity generating pursuit. Here's how to begin:
1. Offer Web-friendly press releases. While some text, quotes and contact info are a good start for a press release, you'll get better play if you optimize press releases for the Web. This means embedding a relevant keyword in the press release headline, as well as in the text, if possible, so it can be easily found by the search engines.
It's also a good idea to make it easy for others to spread the word about your press release by adding a social bookmarking tool like AddThis (www.addthis.com). Vodmochka Graffix (www.vodmochka.com) tries to generate news buzz about its site with an AddThis tool embedded in the bottom right corner of its home page. The EmbroideryWarehouse has a similar tool at the top of its site: www.theembroiderywarehouse.com/home.php.
Another good practice is to ensure visitors can effortlessly cut and paste your press release text into a Microsoft Word or similar word-processing document. (On some sites, press release text is impossible to copy; others use Adobe PDF documents, which are meant to be tough to cut and paste.)
2. Trigger coverage with other content. Editors and reporters are always hungry for story ideas, so you can never offer too much story idea content in your press center. The overarching guideline here is to clearly state that all – or as much as possible – of the content you post can be directly quoted by editors and reporters. The importance of this practice can't be overstated. Essentially, this little permission can save the press five days or more of phone tag with your company, and often means the difference between getting covered and being skipped over for a more press-friendly company.
Specific content ideal for launching press coverage includes company white papers, as well as executive quotes on recent industry news, legislation or studies. The press also loves transcripts of executive speeches they can quote (always include the exec's name and title for attribution purposes), transcripts of recent company Webinars, company case studies, industry survey results and customer testimonials. (Always include a name, title and company for the testimonial.) If you're lucky enough to have already been covered, also offer links to these news stories.
3. Become a media authority. You'll get even more coverage if you establish one or more executives at your company as a media authority. Blogs are one of the quickest ways for an exec to loom large before the press – but only if the blog is interesting and insightful. One of the easiest ways to guarantee this is to simply hire a good ghost blogger for your exec.
Meanwhile, you can enhance the credibility of your media authority execs by publicizing them in the various "expert stables" on the Web – places where experts gather to be quoted by the media. Some of the more prominent include Profnet (www.profnet.com) and ExpertClick (www.expertclick.com).
4. Add dimension with rich media. One thing YouTube has taught us all is that Web users, including the press, love their sound and pictures. Besides posting your company video on YouTube like thousands of other firms, you can also embed a free YouTube video player on your own Web site. For a how-to video on adding the YouTube player to your Web site (it takes just a few minutes), check out: www.youtube.com/youtubeonyoursite. There's also a separate how-to video on how to customize your player at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTwWEtVtu58. For a good example, view the Stitching Cow promotional video on YouTube at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOwzJDC5-MA.
One caveat: Have your attorney look at YouTube's fine print before you get too aggressive using the player or the YouTube site strictly for advertising your company. As with many things Web-related, this area is still very gray.
Other multimedia you can add to your site are podcasts (check out www.podcast
directory.com for all the skinny on those) and virtual reality, or 3-D moving images. Software for creating virtual reality includes Quicktime VR and IPIX.
Of course, don't forget to include basic digital images that can be downloaded to accompany stories. EmbroidX.com, for example, includes a logo journalists can download with the press releases it distributes through PRWeb; Star Embroidery offers color images for journalists via PRWeb, as well.
5. Be charming. Most companies know that offering a name, phone number and e-mail contact info for all key public-relations personnel in your press center is a good start. But the same contact info for executives who are open to being interviewed is even better. A promise – and practice – to turn around all press requests within 24 hours will go even further toward winning you instant friendships in the press. And a stated openness to quickly respond to a media "e-mail interview" will make reporters wonder if they've died and gone to heaven.
6. Tweak under the hood. Over the past few years, Google has released a number of free tools designed to help your press center appear as high as possible on Google search engine returns. Sign up for a free Google Webmaster's account (www.google.com/webmasters) and these tools are yours to use. Plus, once your press center is search-friendly for Google, the center will also be optimized for most of the other major search engines.
While you're at it, ensure that your press center downloads like quicksilver. For speed optimization tips, check out Andrew B. King's book, Speed Up Your Site. Founder of Web Site Optimization LLC, King also offers a free tool that will check to see if your press center is optimized for speed at: www.websiteoptimization.com/
services/analyze.
7. Promote relentlessly. One of the great equalizers of the Web is the fact that a tiny, nimble company can leap ahead of the largest goliath with the right promotion. Offering press releases and a company e-newsletter gets this process started. But you can also offer the same information via RSS feeds for reporters who like their news delivered that way. IceRocket (rss.icerocket.com) will make your page RSS-friendly for free. Madeira, for example, offers an RSS-feed for its press releases at: www.newswiretoday.com/news/30769.
Other tactics that work: Circulate your news through a professional press release distribution service like PRNewswire (www.prnewswire.com) or PRWeb, or via free services (use the keywords "free press release distribution" to find these on the search engines). Include a "send this page to a friend" button on every page of your press center and Web site. To attract more traffic to your site, establish a directory of industry links with FocalMedia's PowerSeek SQL or similar software. Add a live chat room to your press center if you have a staffer who can babysit it – LivePerson (www.liveperson.com) is one of many good live-chat solutions. And establish a presence in virtual worlds like Second Life (www.secondlife.com) if your target market tends to cluster there.
8. Measure your success. The quickest way to an increased press center budget, as we all know, is quantifiable results. Document how press traffic has increased on your press center with Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics), another free program. Or, if you're looking for even more robust analytics, check out software such as Coremetrics (www.coremetrics.com), Web Trends (www.webtrends.com) and Omniture (www.omniture.com).
JOE DYSART is an Internet speaker and business consultant based in Manhattan.