Al and Laura Ries write about the Law of Publicity: "The
birth of a brand is achieved with publicity, not advertising." The
authors point out that you build a brand with publicity and then
maintain it with advertising.
As a small internet business owner, you must learn to use publicity
to your advantage. Here are six ways you can generate good publicity
for your website or internet business:
• Search Engines: users will have more trust in a website if
they find it in a bona-fide way, for example through a search
engine
query. A good position in regular search engine results is great
publicity, and it can be much more effective than pay per click
results or sponsored listings. Granted, it is more difficult
to achieve a good position in the regular results than paying
to be placed on top as a sponsor listing, but that is precisely
what makes regular results more powerful and credible. If you
want to improve your rankings with the search engines, follow
some common search engine optimization techniques. Don't over-do
it, though: search engines are catching up very quickly to over-optimization,
and it may do you more harm than good.
• Tell-a-Friend Scripts: In the internet world, the equivalent
of word of mouth is word of mouse. Few marketing techniques
work as well as a recommendation from a friend. You have
probably
seen those "Send This Page to a Friend" links or forms
next to articles and news items. You must incorporate them to
your site's pages to make it easy to recommend your site. These
links or forms are created using cgi scripts, although it is
not necessary for you learn how to create them or how to run
them on your site. There are services like Bravenet.com that
offer these scripts for free. You just cut and paste a snippet
of HTML code on your page, and you're ready to go.
• Text-Based Ads and Content Links:
By now you probably have heard about Google AdSense, the "text
based" advertising
links that Google serves in millions of websites. While both
text based links and traditional banners ads are advertising,
text links work better because they "don't look like
advertising".
They look more like relevant options of a web page's navigational
menu. Another way to turn advertising into publicity for
your site or business is to get in-context links (links to
your site
from the body of an article). This links must be smoothly
integrated into the copy of the article, so that the the
article doesn't
look like a sales pitch, and will be most effective when
they truly add value to the article.
• Testimonials: People tend to increase
their trust in a business when they see that other people just
like them have have
tried its products and services and find them useful. It
is important
to include the name and email address of the people giving
the testimonials, otherwise they will come across as phony,
and their
effect will backfire. Ask satisfied customers for permission
to post their comments and their contact information before
using them as testimonials.
• Press releases: A successful press
release is probably the most cost-effective way to generate publicity
and
credibility for
your business. When writing a press release, you must
remember to follow some common sense tips, like making your
information
timely and unique, present it in a format that will be
attractive
and easy to understand to the editors, create a catchy
headline, use quotes from newsworthy people and write
in third person
voice. If you don't feel confident about your writing
abilities, there
are copywriting services that can do a professional job
for you for a small fee.
• Writing Articles: One of the best
ways to promote your website is by writing articles that you
can post
in
e-zines and sites
that provide free content to e-zine publishers. This
will establish you as an expert in your field and,
with time,
develop a solid
customer base. The trick to turn your articles into
effective publicity is to give useful, unbiased, value-adding
advice
(don't ever stuff your article with affiliate links
or bogus recommendations).
At the end of the article, remember to include a short
bio with with your name, the name of your business,
a short tagline,
and
the link to your website.
© 2004 Mario Sanchez
You can freely reprint this article. Just include
the following resource box at the end:
Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest www.theinternetdigest.net,
an online collection of web design and Internet marketing articles
and resources.
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