Discover how you can write a press release for your home business, your brand info product, an your brand new published book in few steps and become “The TOP GUN” in your niche!

While back ago I did a marketing training  on how to write a press release for a home business and I wanted to discuss with you the importance of internet press release in your personal branding and as one of the best lead generation methods.

I shared my story of generating 4.3 million hits to my press release in 8 months. Of course not every press release I wrote got so many hits but press releases are still my favorite method. I have used press releases to promote my previous business.

Press Releases is considered one of the most forgotten marketing methods by small business owners but considered to be the most proven marketing and lead generation method. The online marketers are looking for more sophisticated methods (ppc, seo methods) or trendy marketing such as youtube, twitter and facebook. It is all good but not enough in my opinion. Press releases can be a good addition to what an online marketer does on a daily basis. You can truly write a press release for your home business in less than hour and see results in the next few hours. Pretty Powerful!

The excuse I hear so often, “Tatyana, I do not know how to write press release”. Well, it is a pretty lame excuse. Everyone can write. WHY? Because every day we share news, announcements or even gossips with our friends, family, church members and our business collegues. We forget how natural it is for us to share the news or events that occured in the past few days or months. Google loves rich content that is natural and has good flow and it will crawl its content with its powerful spiders.

How can we write press release that are not only good content rich editorials but also bring quality traffic and buyers for our product or a business?

First of all, you need to understand how to write a press release using 5 Ws Principles: Where, Why, Who, When and What. Once you grasp the idea that press release is not about selling but it is more of announcement of events, products and people stories,  you will be able to do it with ease as if you are telling or reading a story to your child. Press release is about presenting solutions to a reader and be enough compelling for them to contact you right away! Be a story teller and you will be more trusted!

Here is how you can write press release in 11 steps:

1. Determine what you are going to write about. It could be event with your company, your personal achievements, announcement of the partnership with a particular company and etc. Tell a story that is compelling!

2. Research keywords you want to target. Make sure they are buying keywords not some generic keywords. You want to use keywords that a customer or a business seeker would be looking for on google or other search engine. I recommend to use services such Web CEO, Marketing Samurai or WordTracker. I think they are great tools to use

3. Make sure your press release is about 5-6 paragraphs with 4-5 sentences each to make it easier for you than counting words. Keep close to 500 words!

4. Use important two keywords in the title or headline then summary of your press release. Repeat headline sentence in the summary then in the first paragraph.

5. Put the main keywords you plan to use to the left of each paragraph and if you have an option to hyperlink that keyword to your personal site or a blog then do it. That will help with optimization. Do not overuse your keywords. Create natural flow of keywords without too much repetition and relevant to what you say. Use ONLY 2 primary keywords per each press release.

6. Include your link to your website with a compelling offer to get your FREE report, free ebook, free consulting session and also include the information with your website for media contacts. Do not forget these two important sections in the press release, which I call “Magic Calls To Action”

7. After you write your press release, you need to review it and submit your press release to online press release distribution sites. Some sites are free press release distribution sites and some will be offer paid options.

8. Another important step- submit to social bookmarking sites such as digg, technorati, stumbleupon and more. I recommend to use services called “Social Marker”

9. Share with your friends, business collegues via Twitter, Facebook or forums. Ask them to share them with their friends and ask to leave comments after reading the press release. Remember comments are very important for search engines to crawl your press release and get more exposure! The press release that got a lot of traffic had many comments that turned into heated debates and it was actually fun because it allowed me to post my answers and create more curiousity among my viewers. I was receiving calls about my business every day just from my press releases that they saw online.

10. Write a press release at least once a week and if your time allows you write more. Just imagine you will collect over 50 press releases in one year just with one press release. Talk about incredible online presence!

11. Make sure share press release on Twitter and Facebook. Twitter loves news.. This is YOUR news.. Make sure share it. Plus it gives great traffic to your press release for FREE… Ask people to re-tweet and share with others…syndication is very important.. I personally recommend Katie Freiling’s The Unified Tribe social media platform to syndicate my content

The last tip: Take your press release and distribute offline. Find local companies that can include your editorials in their local news papers or magazines. You can even find good national publications that will accept your articles as contribution to their community. Do your own research and discover targeted publications. If you write about real estate crisis, find popular real estate publications. If you want to promote your business, find magazines like “Who is Who In Nashville” as good example and it will give an option to submit article about you and what you do.

Enjoy your week!

(c) Copyright 2009-2010  Tatyana Gann. All Rights Reserved

Tatyana Gann is an online PR consultant, a business coach,  a professional business connector, a mom of two great boys and an amazing hostess. To get instant access to Tatyana’s free tips on Online PR methods, business and creative marketing ideas, subscribe to her “Online PR Traffic“ newsletter.