10 Critical Points To Get Your Press Release Accepted

Patrice Barber - Wednesday, August 24, 2011
10 Critical Points To Get Your Press Release Accepted Publicity is one of the best ways and most cost effective ways to drive traffic to your site. You already know it is an excellent marketing tool for your business overall. Because it is very cost effective it makes a great tool for small business owners and entrepreneurs. The key to success is understanding when, where, and how to submit press releases so they get accepted. Many of our clients use press releases on PR wire and PR Web as a way to drive serious traffic ( 1000’s of new visitors) to their sites, promote upcoming events, and they never even talk to the editors. Others send releases to the media (not online sites) and end up with the governor coming to their event. That is the power of publicity from the media. If you seek printing in publications, here’s an important fact -  publications with under 30,000 subscribers – local publications  - are THRIVING as the rest of the bigger boys are seriously struggling to stay in business. Keep your local focus, use your local publications, and build your local presence. You never know where that will lead since the A/P picks up lots of local stories for national coverage. Join us at our workshop Aug 31, 2011 and find out the Insider Secrets to Getting Publicity on a Shoestring Budget. Getting started:
  1. At the top f your press release give the instructions about what the release is for. FOR RELEASE AUGUST 28th, 2011 or FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. Also include the type of release:  News Release above the instructions .Submit releases about 1-2 weeks before an event if you want to attract media coverage. Submit them within the week for shorter turn times and if you have some relationship with the editor or reporter(s)
  2. Type ,don’t hand write releases. Use double spacing and a large margin. Editors use the margin for their notes and get huffy if you use “their” space.  Huffy means they easily may toss your release. They get hundreds per day for significant publications.
  3. Use your logo and header above the actual press release.  Send in as a .pdf attachment, submitted to the editors site online, or sent in by snail mail – not my favorite, but can work.
  4. Use a headline that grabs attention and invites the reader to want more. Some examples: (Name of Company) launches new website for Your Target Market Free Information Available at Type of (Critical Business Resource, etc) Taylor Made Small Biz launches new website for Military Entrepreneurs Online
  5. Start with the place the story originates as the first two words. Looks like this (City, State)…in parentheses and three dots or 3 dashes  after. Denver, Colorado---August 28th, 2011- A new website launched this week to help our soldiers coming home realize the benefits and ease of starting their own business. MilitaryEntrepreneursOnline.com offers free training to our veterans on how to start their business using online marketing strategies that are low cost, high tech, and very effective at getting more customers in the door.
  6. KISS – Keep It Simple Sweetheart – Most of us struggle a little here, so get a good editor. Make sure your first paragraph answers who, what, when and why. ( See above example)
  7. At the bottom include your short paragraph about your company About Your Company (Company Website)
  8. Below the about the company provide the contact’s name.  Include the first and last name of your contact person to call for more information. Show the email and if you really want to get contacted include home phone (or cell phone), as well as the business number.
  9. Keep the release to a single page. If you have more than 1 page, number the rest at the bottom. Put  “more”-centered at the bottom of each page. Don’t add another subject reference or headline on the other pages.
  10. And most critical - At the end of the release, add –END- or three # signs centered on the page. Who knew                  ###                  could be so vital !
Best of luck as you present your grammy award winning story. So .. .Do you have a great or horrible PR story to share ? We love your comments so tell us your story. Join us at our workshop Aug 31, 2011 and find out the Insider Secrets to Getting Publicity on a Shoestring Budget. To get more information and assistance on creating your press releases and even launching a simple PR campaign check here.

Getting Started With Social Media

Patrice Barber - Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Social Media is the exciting new tool of the future businesses today are using to expand and grow. To successfully and efficiently use Social Media, there are some key points every business needs to address.                 First of all, you must have a clearly started purpose, a select target market and a vision. After this initial step, you must choose appropriate platforms to cater to your purpose, target market and vision. Next, come up with a budget. How much do you want to spend/how much can you spend on Social Media? Once the budget is decided, allocate someone to manage your Social Media. Next, time and resources must be set aside to work on and maintain your Social Media efforts. Then you must decide which KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) you are going to measure. These measurements will allow you to keep track of how your company is doing in regards to its Social Media efforts. Next, is it important to decide how you will integrate your Social Media with your conventional marketing and website. This integration is very important as it gives your target market a clear vision and understanding of your company as a whole. Next, decide how will you create the content for your Social Media. Also decide how much content you will present and how often you will present it. And finally, give examples of the content. This can be in the form of articles, eBooks, blogs, video, coupons, sampling, podcasts, contests/sweeps etc.  Efficient Social Media efforts can lead to a more successful business, reaching its target markets and expanding its fan base. By following these steps, any business can effectively utilize Social Media!

Internet Marketing Makes Your Business Reach to Your Target Audience and Boost Up Your Sales

Patrice Barber - Wednesday, August 10, 2011
In the light of growing internet awareness in every part of the world and use of internet in purchasing products and services online in developed and developing countries, internet marketing has become all the more important and even overtaken traditional advertisement modes in case of many products and services. Strategy and process of internet marketing differ for different businesses and hence it needs to thoroughly analyze and apply various techniques of internet marketing that uniquely suit to your specific business needs. Internet marketing is a broad concept that encompasses various processes like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM), PPC Campaign, Article Marketing, Press Releases, Link Exchange and YouTube Marketing etc. First of all, an expert internet marketing consultant decides which process will bring more business for a particular product or service in minimum possible time and then start working on that. SEO generally takes time but they bring quality business once the website comes on top ranks in different search engines through several business keywords. Similarly, SMM needs time to bear fruits. Hence, in the beginning one can run PPC campaign on search engines like Google and on social networking sites like Facebook. These will bring instant business leads. For SEO, the keywords analysis and selecting business keywords from which you wants your website to be visible on top ranks in search engines is very important. Ultimately, these keywords will bring traffic on your website and increase your sales leads. Once the website comes with different keyphrases, it is essential to constantly work on these keywords to maintain their ranks. An internet marketing company or a professional SEO service provider plays good role here. For social media marketing, it is necessary to catch the pulse of your targeted audience on different social networking sites like Facebook and accordingly attract their attention towards your Facebook Fan Page and towards your website too through the link given on the Fan Page. Similarly, appropriate work should be done on Twitter and MySpace as well. In some special cases, article marketing becomes important when the products or service needs to be described and circulated on large scale on internet. It works in two ways. First, the article gives the reader complete knowledge of products and services. Secondly, it brings traffic to your website through the links on the article. Similarly, YouTube marketing helps the customer to see the products in videos and understand the services perfectly. Recently, article and YouTube marketing has gained pace in business world. Press releases give you opportunity to highlight your business activities, products and services. It also enhances the traffic on your website. To sum up, different aspects of internet marketing that have potential to bring quality traffic and business leads must be analyzed, and finally the services discussed above need to be chosen keeping in mind the specific business requirements. Best planning and right strategy for internet marketing are pre-requisites of getting your business boost up on the internet.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5926872

Google Plus

Patrice Barber - Wednesday, August 03, 2011
Google Plus is the newest social networking site to hit the Internet. Being as its from Google, it's no surprise that this is going to turn out pretty big. While the network is still in its infancy, anyone who has a Gmail account has access to the network. Due to the huge number of users of Gmail, the number of uses in Google Plus skyrocketed as soon as the network was made available. However, since it still has not officially launched, there are many things lacking in Google Plus that Facebook has. For example, businesses are not allowed on Google Plus yet, making the avenue inadequate for advanced marketing. There are many things that make Google Plus quite unique, and it will take some time for Facebook to catch up. Many people theorize that Facebook has been slacking on updating its features, because until now it did not have any major competitors. MySpace unofficially died long ago, and frankly I have always hated the extremely cluttered look of the site. Facebook will always have a place in the social networking world, as it will be forced to innovate, but for now Google Plus has some very interesting features. Google Plus's two most innovative features are Circles and Hangout. Circles is what all the high school and college users of Facebook are really excited about. It allows you to exclude certain categories of people from certain postings, and is much more efficient than the Facebook system of categorizing posts. You can create as many circles as you want and name it whatever you want, and your friends cannot see the name of your circles. For your work supervisor, you could friend him and put him in the circle of "Dumb boss", and he/she would not be any the wiser. It truly is an innovative system! Then there is Hangout, which is a really awesome feature. It allows you to video chat with multiple people at once. You can get all your friends together and chat in the same place, which is an unparalleled social networking feature. The future is finally here, and it is only a matter of time before we are speaking to each other using holographic representations of ourselves. It might sound crazy, but such technology already exists, and at the rate technology is changing we will probably see that in the next couple years. It is going to be pretty incredible!  Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6455881 At Taylor Made Small Bizwe can help you create a online business strategy that incorporates all social media platforms to help you gain an ROI quicker.

Shiny new things that will burst your bubble on Google Places.

Patrice Barber - Tuesday, July 26, 2011
If you haven’t checked lately you may be in for a surprise on your Google Places page. First you will start seeing a Write review red button to begin capturing Google reviews which of course will be highlighted before the other reviews like from Yelp or Merchant Circle and others. This is a wonderful addition that your clients will find helpful. Encourage them to use it as it is going to be very powerful to your business. This will be interesting to watch as Yelp takes a back seat to Google. Next you may find you are missing reviews. Google is not showing your reviews from non Google reviewers ( like Yelp etc) AND some of our clients have found even their “Google Reviews “ have gone missing . hmmmm. In addition, check on your Details section as some are finding that their details are not showing up. For service based businesses like us that provide our services for a wide area, the Service Area Map was quite useful and for the time being has gone missing too. Overall there is a long term “nit” between service based business and brick and mortar businesses both of whom would like to take advantage of the SEO (traffic driving) advantages of Google Places.  There are of course new, alternate ways to accomplish the online traffic driving goals. Our online business clients are getting the details of how we will be fixing their pages to continue to optimize their online business. As always, we have followed @Perry Marshall age old advice and don’t rely all that much on Google directly BECAUSE it changes and is not predictable. If you haven’t considered widening your traffic generating strategies beyond your Google usage, perhaps now is a good time to reconsider all the aspects to growing your online business. Find out more about google places change  here http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/07/ongoing-evolution-of-place-pages.html

5 Useful Internet Marketing Tips

Patrice Barber - Thursday, July 07, 2011
Using the internet to promote your business is the newest form of advertising. There are many different ways to make sure that your business is being recognized online. When considering your internet marketing strategy there are a few tips that can help ensure the success of the campaign. Below are five tips for starting a successful internet marketing campaign. Tip 1: Online Research One of the biggest mistakes a company can make is to not research what other businesses in the same industry are doing. Taking the time to research your competition will give you a heads-up on what is working and what is not. Look into how they are developing their internet marketing campaign to gain useful information before starting your own. Another important step in the research process is to determine who is using your product and how to best reach this target market. Tip 2: Analyze Data After researching information about your competition, it will be important to sit down and analyze the information that has been found. Consider the strengths of your competition and how your company may use a similar strategy. Determining the websites that are visited most often by your targeted market will enable your business to consider these websites as targets for advertising. Consider something that your company could offer the consumer that your competition is currently not offering, such as a bonus or other incentive. Tip 3: Develop Strategy Using the research that has been performed, it is time to start developing your Internet Marketing strategy. Plan the type of marketing methods that your company wants to use and what it will cost to use them. Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, pay-per-click advertising, blogging, email, link building, and webinars are all worth consideration. These options should be ranked in order of preference and cost. It is important to consider your time and budget when considering your internet marketing strategy. Tip 4: Implementation Once a plan is in place, the company should start implementing it as soon as possible. After starting the internet marketing campaign, it is important to monitor the success of each type of marketing technique that is being used. Consider your SEO rankings; are they performing at a rate that is satisfactory? Track the time the consumers are spending on your website, if it is less than 30 seconds it is important to find out why. Tip 5: When in Doubt, Hire a Professional It is important as a business owner to understand what your strengths and weaknesses are. Hiring a professional for your internet-marketing plan may be your best option, especially if no one on your team is comfortable with this type of work. There are several businesses that offer professional services that can benefit your company greatly. Consider the amount of money that is in your budget for your internet marketing campaign. It may be well worth it to hire a company that will guarantee the creation of a successful strategy for your business.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6114100