Business Articles For Online Businesses

You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on advertising to build an effective campaign. In fact, you can get great publicity that will drive customers to do your door absolutely free of charge!

One of the best ways to do this is to attract press coverage. You don’t have to pay for advertising space to get written about in a newspaper or magazine, or on a website. All you have to do is interest the editor or webmaster in your story. Today’s media is huge - and it’s hungry for news. If you present a publication with a ready-made story that will interest their target audience they will snap it up.

The way to do this is to write a press release, sometimes called a “news release”. Release writing isn’t rocket science, but there are a few important tips and tricks to remember:

· Make sure the release is dated, and has a contact name, address, phone number and email address. The contact should be a single, named individual.
· Start off with an attention-grabbing headline that announces a piece of specific news. “Atlanta Motorbike Store Launches New Line of Helmets” is a good headline; “Atlanta Motorbike Store Has Another Good Year” is not. Your release should announce something specific and out of the ordinary.
· Always include a quote. Store owner Mike Smith, 44, says, “we’re really pleased to be stocking X-Brand Helmets….” Quotes bring news stories to life and give them a human touch - you’ll look a long time before you find a professional media story without one.
· Make sure your spelling, grammar and punctuation are one hundred percent accurate. If they’re not, the professionals in your target media will lose respect for you and trash your release. If you didn’t get top grades in English, get a friend to check it over.

Once you’ve written your release you need to distribute it. There are plenty of free newswires that will do this for you - www.internetnewsbureau.com < internetnewsbureau.com> is a good example. Remember that to be successful a press release needs to be targeted at a precise market. If you’re releasing on the topic of your new range of motorbike helmets in Atlanta, you’d better make sure every bike magazine and local newspaper in Georgia gets a copy.

It’s quite acceptable to email press releases. Just make sure that the text is included in the body of the mail - most sensible internet users are a little suspicious of mail attachments received from strangers.

So your release is out, and it’s getting you some coverage. Why other cost-free means can you use to build your business’s profile? Well, the obvious place is the internet. Here are some suggestions:

· Build web links. It’s a tactic as old as the internet and it takes time - but it’s still worth it. Make sure your business’s name is on every relevant free directory on the web. This can be pretty backbreaking work, but it will pull in the customers. Crucially, it will also improve your website’s rank on Google and other search engines.
· Post to message boards. If you can find a web discussion forum related to your business topic, join in and post regularly. Don’t simply push your product - get involved in the online community. This is a great way to establish contacts. Make sure that your username is the same as your business name and that your forum profile contains a link to your site.

One rule of advertising hasn’t changed since prehistoric times: nothing beats word-of-mouth. Ultimately the secret of getting free publicity is having a great product that people will talk about. If you can get folks talking about you and your business, you’ve beaten every single Fortune 1000 company - they’ve spent millions on advertising and branding campaigns. If you’re smart, and if you’re persistent, you can achieve the same results without spending a single cent!

Matt Bacak became “#1 Best Selling Author” in just a few short hours.
Recent Entrepreneur Magazine’s e-Biz radio show host is
turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories.
Discover The Secrets. PromotingTips.com PromotingTips.com

// Add Comment »

Imagine you’re doing some research on the internet.

Now imagine you’ve found a site that says it has the kind of
information you’re looking for only …all the information
is contained on other pages of the site and the page you’ve
found doesn’t provide any links to those pages.

Now, how valuable would that site be to you?

This is a rhetorical question since we all recognize the value
of putting links to the other pages on our site where our
visitors can find them easily.

But how about e-books?

Imagine you’ve found an e-book that holds a lot of valuable
information. The e-book has more than 200 pages of information
that has been split into logical sections for ease of use
however … there is no Table of Contents or Index contained in the e-book.

If this is a PDF e-book and you know the right search term, you
may be able to do a search and find what you’re looking for. But
if it’s not a PDF e-book, you have no way of finding the
information except by clicking through every page.

So how valuable is this e-book?

This is not a rhetorical question since many e-books are
created with no Index or Table of Contents.

Sure, you can take notes so you’ll know where things are. Then
you can either go straight to that page or click that many
times.

But wouldn’t it make more sense for the author to have provided
either a Table of Contents or an Index? Would you buy a hard
copy reference book that didn’t provide 1 or both of these
things?

If you are an e-book author and create e-books that contains
more than a few pages (few is a ambiguous term so let’s say 20
pages), then you should provide either an Index or Table of
Contents for your readers.

If you create PDF e-books which are the “in thing” right now and
you use MSWord to write them, then making an Index or Table of
Contents is not that difficult. All you have to do is:

As you write you’re
e-book, make every main section title a “Heading 1.”

If you have
subsections you would like contained in the Table of Contents,
then make every subsection title a “Heading 2.”

If you have
subsections within your “Heading 2″ subsections, you can make
those subsection titles a “Heading 3.”

After you’ve finished
writing the content and saving, place your cursor at the
location where you would like your Index or Table of Contents.

Click on “Insert” in
the menu bar.

Go to “References”
and select “Index and Tables … .”

Click either the
“Index” or “Table of Contents” tab.

Select the formatting
options you want and click “OK.”

You’ve just created a
Table of Contents. True, it doesn’t provide hyperlinks but at
least the reader can see where things are located and can get to
them easily.

You can play around with how you want to format your Index or
Table of Content until you find the one you like best. Just
remember to delete all the extra ones since MSWord doesn’t
overwrite, it just keeps adding them.

(Side Note - If you discover you need to add new sections
or subsections to your e-book, you’ll have to delete the Table
of Contents and recreate it after you’ve made your additions.)

If you’re creating your e-books in .exe format, making an Index
or Table of Contents is like creating a site menu. You have the
option of putting it on a separate page, putting it on every
page or both. I also suggest that you use hyperlinks in your
Index or Table of Contents since the reader cannot get to pages
easily unless you do. Also, if you decide to put it on a
separate page, you’ll want to provide a link to your Index or
Table of Contents on every page of your e-book.

Making either an Index or a Table of Contents does make a little
more work for e-book creators but it also makes the e-books more
user friendly.

So as you create your e-books, tell your readers where to go
because having quality information that is easy to find can help
build your reputation as a “good” e-book author.

Susan Carroll owner of friendswhocare.us friendswhocare.us has formed a global community of online business people through her weekly newsletter.

Susan recently created a free membership site to help those doing internet marketing. It’s available at: friendswhocare.us/join.htm friendswhocare.us/join.htm

// Add Comment »