What No One Ever Tells You About Online PR

With the recession in full swing and customers holding on to their wallets for dear life, small business owners are trying desperately to get attention from potential spenders. But unless you are lucky enough to have your business on Main Street, chances are not enough people know about your shop. I count both types of business owners when I say, "shop" - those who provide a product and those who provide a service. In short, I'm talking about entrepreneurs. You know who you are.

In order to get attention, business owners have relied on paid advertising for at least 174 years. During the last 7 years, more and more advertising shifted online. Overall, paid advertising has been an effective way to shout to the world that your business exists. But there are two things that are inherent downsides to paying for ads. One is that once you stop paying, you stop getting traffic. This is especially true with online advertising. Two is that people tend to distrust ads to a certain degree.

The better alternative in recent years is to create buzz or online PR. Think of how certain celebrities tend to get a lot of exposure because of online buzz. The same techniques can also be applied to your business. You just have to know how.

The best part is that you can create word-of-month for your business quickly and easily using online tools like social media and content sites. Here is a bare bones plan for how to get started:

• Think of a news-worthy angle for your business.
• Create a head-line that announces that "angle."
• Create a 250 fact statement that explains your angle. That would be your story. Try to answer the questions - who, what, where, when, and why.
• Essentially, you have created a press release. Submit your press release to the top 10 online press release sites.
• After your press release goes live, social bookmark the press release URL and build links to it.
• Post the press release on your site and print a copy to post at your shop.
• Repeat this process religiously every 30 days.

The simple blueprint that I described above will get you good online public relations. However, there are ways to go one step further to secure interviews with reporters and columinists based on your press release. For a blueprint on how to do that, visit http://www.adpublishing.org/online-pr.