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 public relations 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.”
Here are some frugal PR tools you can use to launch your own public relations effort:
• 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.
• Free Press Release (www.free-press-release.com) 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.
• Another free press release distribution service called 1888PressRelease.com sends your releases to search engines, newswires and Web sites. 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.
• 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. •
Daniel Kehrer can be reached at editor@business.com.
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