Business Strategy Tips: Online Press Releases

Jay: Tip number 8 again is just common sense business strategy, and that’s to list all your web addresses on everything you’re doing on the offline world, every business card, letterhead, all of your packaging, any physical products you make, should have your web address on your products and all your information. I can’t tell you how many business cards I get, and they don’t even have the web address on there.

Monte: Not only that, but a big think that people miss is having an email address that doesn’t’ have your brand on it. And this is where another key point to the domain side of this is, is that if you’re going to build a brand on something, don’t use an AOL address, don’t use a Yahoo address, use your brand as the domain name. It should be Monte@Moniker.com, it should be Jay@tengoldenrules.com. Everywhere that somebody has to type in to get to your email, they’re remembering your brand, and that’s your domain name. Without the domain name, you don’t have that email address.

Jay: Exactly.

Monte: It’s a big piece that people really miss, and it really is from being in the domain business. When we look at business cards and we see those ancillary addresses, sometimes you feel that there is not a legitimate business on the other end because they don’t even have the domain name or a like domain name relative to the business that they’re operating in.

Jay: And it’s so inexpensive. Monte, how much does it cost for someone to set up an at your domain email address.

Monte: On our side, it’s $2 a month for an email only address, for a domain email address. So, it’s really inexpensive and you can have multiple email accounts. At least you have a domain name. Even if you don’t have a web site, at least use your domain name to contact people so that future brand recognition is very important on that brand. And some day you’ll build a site or it’ll bring more traffic to your site by spreading that domain around. And that goes back to number 3, which is adding a signature to all your email. Your signature has to have your email address which has to have your domain in it. That’s a key point that everybody needs to focus in on.

Jay: It just looks so much more professional than an @AOL or @MSN.

Monte: Right. Right. Okay, number 9. We’re just wrapping it up.

Jay: Number 9 is to write articles for relevant web sites and publications. A regular article published in an industry web site or in their publication is just a great way to feature your company and drive traffic to your web site. Make sure you include a link to your web site in the title or the closing of the article, and write about current issues that are topical in your industry, what kind of things are your customers asking about, what questions are your service team getting, what’s relevant and in the news? This kind of content is really easy to come up with, and writing about it positions you and your company as the experts in your industry and, again, builds those links and builds those listings for your web site in important places on the internet and off the internet.

Monte: Yeah. I can tell you first-hand that really works for us. And we’re rolling in to number 10 in a second; but, it’s important that you’re interviewed, that you have relevant content to give to other places that you post in the forums, and those kinds of things so that people know who you are, and it naturally draws traffic to you and to your web site and to your business.

Jay: And number 10 is that PR is incredibly powerful. In some cases, maybe we saved one of the best for last. A media release about a contest or a new product or a free tool or a trend in your industry is a great way to get good pickup and drive a lot of traffic to your site. We’re big fans both here and at WebmasterRadio of a company called PRWeb, and PRWeb are very good and a very inexpensive way to send press releases. You can even do them for free; but you’re better off to pay a little bit of money into their service, and then you’ll get listed more effectively on Google, Yahoo, and the other powerful search engines. If you write a press release, do the research and find out what keywords people are searching for. Include those keywords in that press release, and release that release on PRWeb or another one of the newswire services; and its incredible how quickly that spreads around the internet. We’ve used this strategy for Moniker; and within 5-10 days, most of our press releases will get picked up by 300 or 400 different web sites. And we didn’t even know that all these small web sites about hosting and the domain business are out there, but they’re searching for this information; and when they like your article, they add it to their web site. All of a sudden you have 300 or 400 high-quality, valuable links into your web site. It’s a really good strategy.

Monte: And, uh, speaking from first-hand knowledge and success, we had a press release hit last night or this morning announcing the sale of advertise.com, which is getting a lot of PR across the web. We used the strategy, we had a bunch of pick-up on the site today, a bunch of phone calls, it really worked well, and so did the previous announcements when we announced the sale of cd.com and consulting.com, and some of the other domains we were selling. It really does work, especially when you include the key words in there. Another show that is on this very network that is relevant to that is the Cover Story show that Brandy Babin and Dave from PRWeb actually host together. And I really recommend that everybody listen to that show; because they cover a lot of these issues about how to promote yourself, how to promote your products and services and your companies across the web. It works really well.