My Buy Essay

Posts Tagged ‘tips’

Press releases have the potential  to create incredible exposure. Looking beyond the linking benefits, a well written press release may land you in newspapers, TV, and radio.  I write quick content daily  for websites.  When a good subject doesn’t come to mind, I turn to a news search engine for inspiration.  Quite often the top results are press releases or  news articles feeding from those press releases.   Some of these releases inspire me; others are empty promotion with nothing of interest to me or my site visitors.  Here are some tips on the making of a great press release.

Know your reader.

Balance between writing for the target audience (newspaper reader, radio listener, web surfer) and writing for an editor, reporter or journalist who may take up your subject or even reprint the story.  Hooking both the media and the end consumer will result in a snowball of PR.  Remember, a journalist scanning a PR source will make decisions based on the first few words of each article.   Pack the opening with the hot topic points.

Style

A strong headline and intro is critical.  It absolutely must capture the eye of someone skimming press releases and inspire further reading.  Hit them with the news first.  You can explain how and where it comes from later.

Keep it brief, accurate and readable.  The media isn’t looking for full blown articles to copy, but may have use of some filler content or extra information within a report, column or website.  Don’t exaggerate. If your PR is a success you will be getting phone calls and emails asking questions.  It is possible to build or destroy credibility based on your accuracy.  You may become a source for different reporters as you build on your record of knowledge and accuracy.  If you use outside stats and facts, include the source.  The press release should create confidence.

Grammar and spelling should be checked and rechecked.  Read it; edit and re-read; print it out; read again; email to friends for corrections; give yourself many chances to catch mistakes.  Then don’t rush to publish.  Reading something again after a nights sleep is always an eye opener for me.  Something about my focus during the writing process tunes out errors that jump off the page the next day.  This is why an extra set of eyes, or waiting till your eyes are taking a fresh look can make a big difference in the writing quality.  Printing a copy to read also helps you see it differently.

Attach images if the PR publisher allows it.  If you have image rights or public domain images to publish then this is one more way to make your content usable by others.  Permission regarding quotes is important as well within a press release since the exposure can be significant.

Anatomy of a Typical Press Release

Headline

Headlines should have a hook.  Make people wonder where they stand or curious about an outcome.  For example, "Are you a lunatic?  Research may surprise you!"

Summary

Some PR publishers allow a summary after the Headline.  This is a second chance to grab attention.  Make it strong and to the point.

Date Instructions – capitals are often used


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


FOR RELEASE BEFORE __/__/__


FOR RELEASE AFTER __/__/__

Contact Information

Make it as easy as possible to be contacted.  You don’t want to even appear to be hiding.  Reporters may work odd hours, so use a phone number you can answer day and night.

Body


Resist the temptation to tell it all.

Hit the high points in a few paragraphs under 350 words.

Make the reader want to visit your site or call your company for more details.

Pack the best parts in the beginning, inverted pyramid style.  This makes for it easy if an editor needs to shorten it. 

About Us

If you feel the need to include a couple sentences about the company, this is a good place to tag it on.  "In business since___, a member of____, awards include___" or a brief company mission statement will work here as extra information.

End of Press Release

### is often used to signal the end of the press release.  Anything after the ### is not published.

Be Newsworthy

Don’t kid yourself.  You either have a great story or you don’t.  Generic name spreading press releases are a waste of a reporters time.  Don’t write something that reads like an advertisement. And don’t keep re-submitting the same press release. Surely something interesting happens with your company every month?  If you don’t have a great story ready to tell the editors and journalists, then wait for one or develop a story.

Do all this well and you may be talking live on a local radio show, or answering the questions of a  national journalist.  The power of a great press release, when capitalized on, can rocket an enterprise to success.

More and more people are considering the World Wide Web as a great opportunity to offer their products and services to a new, bigger market or even as a chance to create entirely new businesses online.

Even if the perspective to reach millions of potential customers is surely exciting, the truth is that internet marketing is more difficult than it may seems and if you don’t have a sufficient experience you will usually waste a lot of time and resources doing things that don’t produce the results you expect.

For this reason, seeking advice from competent internet marketing experts is essential if you want to succeed online.

Hiring a consultant can be very expensive, but fortunately this is not the only possibility.

In fact you can utilize one of the many internet marketing informational products (like books, manuals or ebooks) that are available online.

There are complete courses that deal with every possible aspect of the entire process of building, managing and promoting your business online.

Other products concern very specific topics like how to write effective advertisements or sales letters, or how to promote your site on search engines.

You can usually choose among a great variety of media formats: printed manuals, downloadable ebooks that allow you to use the product immediately, CD-ROMs, or even videos and audio tapes, if reading a big manual is not something for you.

The only risk is to be confused by so many possible choices. So how can you determine the product more suited to your needs?

When I need to decide about the purchase of an informational product, the first thing I do is reading each and every page of the author’s site.

You may think that the informations on a site designed to sell a product are, by definition, not objective.

But you can still find a lot of useful elements that will help you with your decision.

The following are the most important for me.

1) How is the product presented?

Reputable authors will never tell you that you will be able to make a lot of money without work simply by reading their ebook or manual.

They will warn you that personal efforts are always needed to succeed online and every concept you learn must be applied to your particular situation.

Disappointment is the only thing you will earn from an informational product that is presented like a ‘magic recipe’ to make money fast and without efforts.

2) How many details the author gives about him/herself especially with regard to past business experiences?

You want to be sure that you are about to spend your money to learn proven techniques successfully tested on real businesses not some vague theory.

3) Does the site contain customers testimonials? Do they sound genuine?

A testimonial should be always followed by a full name, a website or email address so that it can be verified.

4) What kind of guarantee is offered should you dislike the product once you have purchased it?

Ideally every good informational product should be covered by a full money back guarantee as it’s always the best protection for your investment.

If you pay attention you will find many other elements that will tell you a lot about the author and the product he/she sells.

Learning how to market online is an ongoing process. Even if your personal work is always needed, with ebooks, manuals, courses you can learn from successful marketers experiences, concentrate your efforts on strategies that worked for them and consequently avoid mistakes and save time and resources.

If your website traffic has suddenly come to a stand-still, you may need to give your site a marketing jump start. This is really directed towards Information Marketing (one of the best markets around) but can really be applied to anything. Here are a few ways to get your traffic flowing again.

1.Buy hits for your website.

Pay for targeted hits to your web site. You can do what is called “pay per click” advertising. This is where you pay search engines every tine some one clicks on your link for your web site. A great advantage to this is it almost instantly gets you visitors.

2.You can also send out a promotional email to the opt-in email list you SHOULD be creating by offering free reports or courses to your visitors.

3.Pay your competition a flat fee to email your promotional offer to their lists. This is a great way to build relationships with your competitors.

4.You can do what is referred to as a Joint Venture. This is when you pay someone a commission on sales when they email your promotional offer to their email lists.

5.You can pay for advertising on someone else’s website by paying a flat fee up front to put an ad, banner or link on the site.

6.You can pay for advertising by offering a commission to your competition or anyone on sales when they put your ad, banner or link on their site.

7.You can submit your website to search engines with your keywords and website description.

8.You can submit your link to other websites, and in return, add them to yours.

9.You can write a free report or course to give away to other websites in your market and allow them to put an affiliate link inside (so they have an incentive to give it away), and give that away for free. If its good information, it will spread like a virus. This marketing concept is known as “viral marketing”.

10.If you have good material you can have a nice marketing edge because people will share the website because the enjoyed it. You can also offer affiliate programs so your customers can earn commissions when they refer some one to buy your product .

These should give you some good ideas to get more traffic, and maybe even spark some ideas of your own!

Best wishes,

Maranda Mann

Do you have a website which pulls in large number of visitors everyday? You can actually benefit yourself with the traffic and earn a great, residual income if you give a little more effort. Here are some of the greatest ways you can convert those traffic into mountainous cash:

1. Sell a product/service

Of course, to earn money you need to sell a product or service to your visitors. It is the best way to profit from your own product. Usually, an e-book or software works the best &ndash they can be downloaded right away, no shipping included, no handling to be done. You earn 100% of the profits without any investments to be taken before that.

Other than that, selling your own product allows you to set your own price.

2. Opt-In list

It is very crucial that you try to convert every visitor of yours to a subscriber of your mailing list. The most important asset that an Internet marketer has is his or her list of subscribers. They define whether you will go far in the online business venture.

With an opt-in list, there are tons and tons of ways you can profit greater in the future. You can make previous customers purchase again from you, making them your repeating customers &ndash that is of course, if they are in your mailing list and you can urge them to buy again.

Building a closer relationship with your own subscriber will be the best thing you can do. By having your subscribers ‘trust’ you, you can endorse many other useful products to your subscribers and the chances that they will buy from you will be high &ndash because they trust you.

3. Viral marketing

You can provide a free product or bonus to be listed on your site to be downloaded by your visitors. Usually it’ll be an e-book where people can read from and learn useful information. In this bonus, you include give away rights and urge readers to give it away to anyone they want to. This way, you increase your own publicity and branding.

In the future, you will receive great benefits as when you are known, people will trust you more and this profits you. Between a product &ndash let’s say a tooth brush from a beggar and a doctor, who will you prefer to purchase from? Unless the beggar offers something special, it is hardly that you will purchase the tooth brush from him.

4. Pay-per-click

In this case, you don’t pay for every click but earn instead. There are many advertising programs that give you a percentage of the bidding on a certain keyword. The famous ones are Google Adsense, Chitika, Yahoo Publisher Network and Kontera.

When people click on the ads shown from either of these advertising programs, you will earn a small portion of money. Nevertheless, if you have high traffic to your site &ndash these programs alone can generate your residual income.

5. Offer an advertising space

Usually websites which brings in very high traffic will sell a small portion of space on their web page. You can charge a minimum of $300 for advertising someone’s ad a single month on advertising fee if your web page is pulling more than 2000 visitors a day.

Other than that, you can also create exit pop-ups that advertise other websites as well. By doing this, you don’t clutter your website with too many ads and you can earn a better reputation from your visitors.

6. Affiliate marketing

If you don’t have your own product for sale, you can sell other’s products instead and receive a commission on every sale. With affiliate marketing, you have an unlimited source of products to sell and you don’t need to go through any problems after your sales.

No customer service, you don’t need to issue any refunds, just let the owner do everything else for you after each sale. If you have a mailing list, you can endorse many other products and earn very great profits from your subscribers.

7. Pay-per-lead

Instead of earning money from every click your visitors clicked on, you are paid if you get your visitors to subscribe into other’s mailing list. Nevertheless, it is not necessary that you just get visitors to become other’s subscribers.

There are a lot of bigger companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi which holds survey every few months. By referring your visitors to them in order to complete a survey, you can also earn great profits from it.

Applied correctly, you can make a huge fortune on the Internet and build a steady online business &ndash taking over the place of your day job. Take some time to put effort in either of these strategies, because it can make your day bright.