As the U.S. economy continues to stumble along, small business owners are searching for low-cost and no-cost ways to promote their businesses and get their name in front of potential customers. “Even with talk about a recovering economy, businesses are still watching every penny,” says Drew Gerber, CEO of Wasabi Publicity, Inc., a boutique PR firm based in North Carolina. PR is a perfect way for many small businesses to get attention and attract new customers. “Nothing has people knocking on your door like PR,” says Gerber. “Most companies know this, but not all have the budget to hire a PR firm. The good news is you don’t have to.”That’s because there are so many free or low-cost ways to get PR via the Internet. It’s never been easier to practice your own public relations. But it takes time and effort on your part. Here are eight frugal PR tools you can use to launch your own public relations effort.
1. PRWeb is a low-cost news release submission and distribution service used by many small firms. News and press releases distributed via PRWeb raise your online visibility where millions of people are searching for information. When you submit your news releases to PRWeb, they will be indexed by search engines such as Google, sent to news sites such as Yahoo! News and placed into RSS feeds with more than 250,000 subscribers that include bloggers, journalists and consumers.
PRWeb also helps you build back links and inbound links from other premium sites, one of the most important assets to build your website’s credibility in search engines. All of this helps drive traffic by helping people find you online and click through to your website.
One of the best parts about PRWeb is all of the free help available on the site. Look in the “Tools & Tips” section for advice on how to write a good press release, common press release mistakes, best practices for online news releases, how to format your news release and more.
2. Free Press Release lets you submit releases at no charge. The basic service provides free distribution to Google News and other popular search engines. If you register (still free) you have additional capabilities to log into your account, monitor your release, and delete it. A more expansive paid service is also available.
3. Another free press release distribution service called 1888PressRelease.com sends your releases to search engines, news wires and websites. For a modest fee, you can upgrade to wider distribution. You can also attach files, logos or images to your press release if you want.
4. PitchRate.com is a free service that connects journalists with topic experts – such as small business owners – for free media coverage. Basically, it’s a place where you can get free media leads. PitchRate also offers helpful (free) information on how to get free publicity, PR tips, personal branding ideas and more. It sponsors regular free “PR Happy Hour” conference calls that let you talk live with marketing and PR experts, ask questions and get free advice.
5. Techrigy (www.techrigy.com) is a web-based service offering social media monitoring and analysis to help you see how your PR efforts are paying off online. Techrigy provides a “SM2″ software solution designed to monitor and measure PR and marketing mentions that appear in social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs and elsewhere. The free account includes up to five search words or phrases and can store up to 1,000 results. Paid “professional” accounts with more features are also available.
6. For a free list of local newspapers and other publications in any area of the country, as well as Canada and a few other countries check out a site called US Newspaper List at www.usnpl.com. For a fee you can purchase and download a spreadsheet or mailing address label file for all of the U.S. newspapers listed on the site – about 3,900. Information is updated quarterly.
7. PRnewswire.com and Businesswire.com are the two largest news release distribution services used by major companies and organizations. These services are more expensive than others, but even if you don’t use their paid services you can learn a lot by seeing what kinds of releases other companies are issuing. You can view releases for free at the site, with hundreds issued daily.
8. If don’t already have a logo for your business, it will help your PR effort to get one. Logoease.com is a site that helps you create a logo for free in little time. Logoease provides you the different electronic files for both web and print use of your logo. You can download as many as 10 free logo designs at any one time. Or for a low-cost logo (under $50) designed by a pro try LogoNerds.com.
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