While back ago I did a training on how to get massive traffic with with press releases and articles, and I wanted to discuss with you the importance of press release in your personal branding and as one of the best attraction marketing methods that is forgotten and not used by many owners. 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 Marketing is considered one of the most forgotten marketing methods.  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. The excuse I hear so often, “Tatyana, I do not know how to write”.  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 a 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 that press release is about 4 words: Where, Why, Who and What.  Once you understand that press release is not about selling but it is more of announcement of event, news, sharing   testimonials and real stories. Press release is about presenting solutions to a reader and grabbing their attention in the headline and then two paragraphs.. Remember stories sell not facts. 

Here are few little tips to help you to write simple and quite effective press release.

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.

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 WebCeo.com. I think it is the best keyword research software.

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.

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 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.

6. Include your website address in round brackets in the beginning of the first paragraph to help with SEO and make sure include information with your link in the end of the press release.

7.  After you write your press release, you need to optimise and submit your press release to online press release distribution sites. Some are free and some will cost you money. 

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, collegues via twitter, facebook or forums.  Ask them to repost it for you and leave comments on 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 at least one press release a week if your time allows you. Just imagine you will collect over 50 press releaeses in one year. Talk about online presence!

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.

If you want to listen to my recorded call on blog talk radio where my business collegue James Holmes interviewed me how to write press releases that bring buyers feel free to click on the link and listen to the podcast we did couple weeks ago.

 

Tatyana Gann, Nashville TN

Business Coach, Immigrant Success Coach

CEO Global Mentors Marketing Group

615-354-7625

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