Network Solutions® Tips on Building a Regular Online PR Campaign

A regular campaign featuring online, optimized press releases is a cost-effective way for small businesses to expose their name to the media, the public, and to the most popular search engines.

Public relations is an important part of any company's marketing efforts. While in the past, running a PR campaign was often handled by a dedicated individual or team, in these perilous economic times small business owners are more often forced to deal with media and press relations on their own in order to save capital while building the business' name.

The media climate is also changing. Sending a series of press releases to local media outlets on a regular basis now no longer guarantees any sort of readership or benefit, as the circulation of print publications is going down and people turn to online resources for news, gossip, and shopping. Running an online PR campaign with regular releases is different in many respects, but one of the major benefits is that you, as the business owner and creator of the press release, are in full control of the image you are presenting to the press and to the public. Instead of depending upon the media to pick up on your release and write your story, small business owners can issue the releases directly to the public.

Today's online, optimized press releases are tools for marketing as well as information, and can also provide search engine benefits to the website of the small business if done correctly. A keyword-rich press release using anchor text links, when released on a reputable press release distribution site like PRWeb.com, provides valuable backlinks that increase search engine confidence in a small business' website.

Once the technique for writing and optimizing press releases has been established, and a viable distribution source like PRWeb.com is decided upon, the next step is to figure out when, and how often, to put a release on the wire — in essence, how to build a regular PR campaign. Depending upon the size of the business, regular releases should go live quarterly or monthly. Releasing any more often than this, for a small business, decreases the search engine and publicity benefits of an online optimized press release, as one release tends to replace the last in the eyes of the search engines.

In addition to regular, "new publicity" releases, designed to keep the business in the eyes of the media and the search engines, other, less regular releases should be put on the wire as well. These should be based on newsworthy announcements-anything from a new product or partnership to a connection made between the small business and something going on in the news. These releases serve to inform the media and the public.

Finally, when building a regular PR campaign it is important that other efforts be made to gain page views for these releases. Use of social media bookmarking sites like Digg® and Reddit, and other social media outlets like Facebook® and Twitter®, can direct readers to the release. In addition to the benefits gained from getting the business name out there, each page view increases the release's value to search engines, especially if other readers decide to link to the release in their own Facebook, Twitter, or industry blog.

Building a regular online PR campaign is a cost-effective and organic means of garnering business exposure both in the media and in popular search engines. For more information, visit Network Solutions®.