Marketing your Business through Blogs and Articles

Marketing your Business through Blogs and Articles

Guest Blogger, Corrie Petersen

Finding ways to put your business in front of your target market can be a challenge at times. One thing to remember is that you need to be consistent in what you do. Studies show you need to put yourself in front of your target market five to seven times before they will consider looking at what you offer.

There are several ways to keep your business in front of your target market on a regular basis. One way to do this is through blog posting. Running a blog is a great way to help your target market through tips, suggestions, and anything else that they may benefit from them.

One thing you need to do is add a subscription box to your blog and add an RSS feed to it. The subscription box will give your readers the ability to receive updates via their email. The RSS feed will help with blog submissions and you can use it with your social networking sites. Both of which are valuable tools for your business.

Another way you can keep your business in front of your target market regularly is to use article marketing. Article marketing is where you write articles and you submit them to article directories. Your articles need to be full of great content and you want them to be helpful to your readers.

You can use the articles as content on your blog or you can rewrite your blog posts and turn them into articles. Either way will work and will help you increase the content on the other.

Blog posting and Article marketing are two of the many ways that you can keep your business in front of your target market and increase your traffic. You should try to post on your blog three to four times a week and you should write and submit one to two articles a week. This will help you keep your target market aware of what you are doing and you will constantly be in front of them.

Corrie Petersen runs a successful Virtual Assistant business. She enjoys helping others
reach their goals and dreams. Check out her website at www.virtualfreedom4you.com

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How you can Use Press Releases in Marketing Your Website

How you can Use Press Releases in Marketing Your Website

By Guest Blogger, Alice Seba

Your probably heard the term press release at one time or another but do you know what it means? A press release is an interesting story about your business that you send in to different media outlets like newspapers, magazines, television, radio and website. A story picked up by the media is more important than any advertising that has been paid for. Having the media do a piece about you and your business is comparable to a personal endorsement of your business and website.

How to format a press release

There are six basic components to a press release. They are listed below:

1. Release Instructions

“For Immediate Release”;
“For Release Before [date]” or
“For Release After [date]”

If your press release is time sensitive, use one of the latter two. For instance if you are speaking at an event, you should use the “For Release Before [date]” and don’t forget to include the final registration date. If you decide to use the “For Release Before [date]“, make sure you pay close attention to media deadlines. Send your release well ahead of time.

2. Headline

Use a headline that is attention grabbing. Make your headline descriptive and answers the question, “Why would it be interesting to people?” Do not use hype and promotional language. Keep in mind that this is a news story/.

3. Contact Information

Put all pertinent contact information here. Make it easy for the media to contact you. Include the following information: your phone number, address, company name, fax number, email and URL. If applicable, include the hours you are available at the listed phone number and add an after hours phone number too.

4. Summary

Write a sentence or two, which summarizes your press release before you get into the body of the release. Make it as interesting as you can. Remember, your goal is to make your recipient keep on reading.

5. Content

Write a benefits-oriented story. Think about your target audience as you are writing your story. Your target audience is partly the editor or reporter who will be reading the release. Finally, your target audience is the editor or reporter’s readers or audience. You need to come up with a story that will be of interest to them. The content is the meal of your press release.

Make sure that the first paragraph answers the following questions: Who, What, Where, When, Why & How?

To break the story and to add credibility, include quotations. The quotations can be from you about the topic. It is also very effective to use testimonials or commentary from your customers.

6. Signify the End of Your Release

Your press release should be ended by a few simple characters. Place ### at the end of your release.

Other General Formatting Tips

- Your press release should be newsworthy story and not an ad.

- Address your release directly to the appropriate reporter or editor. Each day the media receives a lot of press releases. If you address the release to a specific person, it is more likely to get attention than a general submission.

- Your release should be only about 1 page, 2 pages maximum

- Don’t forget to number your pages 1 of 2 and 2 of 2

- Use active verbs.

- Avoid hype. Do not use excessive adjectives.

- Adjust your release when sending to various medial outlets. If you are sending to the local newspaper, your content may be somewhat different than if you are sending it to a trade magazine.

- Use 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper when sending a release by postal mail.

- Copy and paste your release into the body of your email if you are sending your release via email. Do not send an attachment.

Where to Send your Press Release

It will take a bit of time but you will need to build a media list. You can start small and locally. Local and/or small media are most likely to be interested in your story. It’s also the best way to perfect your release writing skills. Besides, most of the larger media outlets browse the little guys to find stories to pick up.

Consider newspapers, trade journals, topic specific magazines, websites, radio shows, television show ~ those who might be interested in your particular topic.

Don’t forget to use specific contact information for your press release. If you address your release to a particular person, you will get a better chance of being considered compared to a general release sent to the media outlet.

Get More Press Release Help

If you’re ready to write your first press release and get it out to the media, sign up for the free press release course…and get started the right way. Click here to sign up.

How to Grow Your Business through Marketing

Grow your business through marketing

Guest Blogger, Corrie Petersen

As business owners we want to see continued growth every month. The only way this will happen is to continually market our businesses. We need to do this on a daily basis or growth won’t happen.

Marketing is something they many don’t understand or they don’t know how to do it. There are many ways you can do this both online and offline. Both of which are important for an online business.

Here are some offline suggestions for marketing your online business:

• Business cards

• Flyers

• Postcard mailings

• Face to face networking events

Online marketing is just as important…

Here are some suggestions for online marketing:

• Social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn)

• Forums

• Free teleseminars

• Youtube videos

• Newsletters

• Button and banner ads

As you can see there are numerous ways to put your business in front of others on a regular basis. When done the right way all of these suggestions can help you grow your business on a monthly basis.

Finding time to do these tasks will be difficult at first. You will need to build it into your routine and calendar it in to your day. Start out by scheduling 15 minutes a day during your weekday. Once you get familiar with what you are doing, you can increase that time to 20 or 30 minutes a day. At the point where you feel comfortable with your marketing strategies and you are making good progress you can change your time to an hour three days a week. This will help you get more accomplished because you will have more time and you will be able to take it down to fewer days a week.

Marketing is an important tool to growing your business to new and exciting levels. These are easy ways to grow and you will enjoy doing it. Get started right away so you can start seeing the increase in your business.

Corrie Petersen runs a successful Virtual Assistant business. She enjoys helping others
reach their goals and dreams. Check out her website at www.virtualfreedom4you.com

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Business Moms Marketing on a Limited Advertising Budget

How to start marketing on a low budget….

Advertising is one of the major costs of business start-up. Fact is, no one will buy your product if they don’t know that you even exist. But, what if your budget is extremely low and your very limited on funds? You can find ways to get started without going broke.

To market for free you have to start thinking free. What would entice you to try someone’s service or product? Internet users look for information all the time on the Internet about how to get started in ‘this’ or how to improve ‘that’. The one thing I hate to see is an offer to buy a product where I thought I would find some information on what I was searching for.

I am more likely to revisit a website if they give me something to work with. Sure I will buy your product, but if I want information, I’m not going to pay money when I am not sure it is even the information that I need. Consider giving potential customers a little taste with some tidbits to whet their appetite.

Offer free e-courses on your site. A site that is geared towards selling crafting supplies could offer e-courses in “how to sew”, or “how to create crafts for flea markets”. The e-courses should be geared around your products and the interests of your visitors. If you have told them about creating crafts and making money at flea markets, they may now come back and buy your crafting supplies to get started.

*Here’s an example: Let’s say that I wanted to know “how to grow vegetables”. I need an easy guide. I would pay for that guide on your website but not without some proof that the information would be to my advantage. Upload free videos for customers to watch on various aspects of growing vegetables. The videos could be about choosing the right seeds or when to plant them. Demonstrate other things that are important to vegetable growing that they would be interested in.

Give your customers an offer they can’t refuse. For a certain dollar amount spent, they get a free report on a choice of subjects. Have contests where the condition for entering is joining a free forum on your website. Once they are there, you can reel them in with other advertising strategies.

There are other ways to get the word out and keep people coming back to your website. Join forums that are related to your niche and post on message boards (with your website address in your signature if possible). Be genuine and helpful above all, and when it is reasonable, talk about your business and what it offers to customers.

Marketing in ways that take very little or no money involves creativity. With the entire world at our fingertips via the Internet, we can market our product in a number of ways without spending a fortune doing so.

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