by Mark Bloom | Jun 13, 2013 | Press Releases
What a Press Release Can Do and What It Can’t
Like blog posts, press releases often get a bad rap. “It’s tough to get noticed,” say some. “They are a waste of money,” say others. We’re here to set the record straight. It is tough to get noticed, but press releases aren’t a waste of money.
What’s a Press Release?
First, let’s define our terms. A press release is an article sent to the media by a company or organization wanting attention for something it considers newsworthy. There are two types of press releases: online and real-world. Both have pros and cons, of course.
Real-World Press Releases
A real-world press release gets sent to actual people: reporters, news station managers and magazine editors — those with a print edition product or a television or radio show. These are the people who decide what goes into print or out on the airwaves.
Ideally in this scenario, the business owner or public relations professional develops a relationship with the people working in the media. Then, when a press release is needed, it goes directly to the right person, who may view it more favorably than a cold call letter.
Obviously, real-world press releases work best for local news, where those relationships can flourish with the personal touch. Sending a real-world press release to a national audience is difficult without a public relations firm backing it. These firms exist because they have developed nationwide relationships with members of the media.
Online Press Releases
A press release directed to the Internet is a different animal altogether. Using a paid distribution service instead of a personal relationship, these press releases can gain worldwide access overnight. Better still, these press releases often remain visible (or at least searchable) for months or years or even longer.
The disadvantage is that they are impersonal and reach sometimes dubious outlets. Without a real person championing the release, they may be picked up by media desperate for any kind of copy at all — like business journals that reach mere hundreds of people… nationwide.
The Purpose of a Press Release
A press release, however it is distributed, should trumpet actual news. It should be directed to a select audience who might be able to use that news, or at least find it interesting. Often, that means a regional audience.
For example, a promotion to president of a nonprofit would interest business and nonprofit audiences. A new product that cures prostate cancer while restoring a full head of hair, on the other hand, would be of interest to roughly 50 percent of the world’s population.
Numbers Add Up
Furthermore, firing one press release into the media jungle will not likely gain you instant recognition. If your company or organization produces worthwhile news, it may still take time to get noticed. Develop relationships with your local media correspondents. Be prepared to wait.
Eventually, you will gain their attention. Eventually, you will be perceived as a reliable source. Eventually, your press releases will be published by the mainstream media. Eventually, your press releases will find their audience.
Before you blast a press release into the air, onto the page or into computers everywhere, consult a marketing or public relations professional. Make sure that the release is well written and targeted to the appropriate audience. Distribute it to the correct media. Finally, don’t expect the world to beat a path to your door.
For more advice about blog posts and press releases, contact us.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Elle Ray | Mar 7, 2013 | Content Marketing
Why Your Page Rank Matters to Your Business
Creating a website can be cheaper than printing tons of brochures… and it doesn’t destroy any trees. You can update your website much easier than you can update your brochure, too. Best of all, you can save on mailing costs. Instead of mailing your brochure to customers and potential customers, you can email, text, chat, or post your website address (or URL) to whomever you want in any number of different ways. You can even put your URL on your car doors. Try doing that with a brochure.
The question is: Are websites more effective than brochures?
In this day and age, you can be confident that nearly everyone is online or can get online (thank you public libraries). If someone has your URL and wants to visit your website, they can. They don’t need your four-color tri-fold. All they need is your URL scribbled on a cocktail napkin or printed on a business card. Of course, reaching your potential customers can still present a challenge — and that’s where search engines and page rank come in.
Make Your Message Count
Websites can do so much more than brochures as marketing tools, if you play them correctly. Websites never wear out. They are online 24/7. Your website serves as an advertisement for your company when customers look for your products or services. How can it fail?
Your website only works if your customers can find it. We’re not talking about cryptic URLs, which can be a problem. We’re talking about finding your site through an Internet search. Chances are good that people will find your website, but only if it comes up on the first or second page of a search result. That’s considered a high search ranking, with the first page being the ideal, the “Holy Grail” of all business websites. If your website doesn’t appear until page three or four — or worse — forget about it and keep passing out your business cards and brochures … because that’s the only way customers will find their way to your site.
The Puzzle of Internet Searches
The Internet is fast and convenient — and that’s what people have come to expect. Internet users aren’t accustomed to wading through page after page of entries on Google or Bing. They want instant gratification. If they search for buggy whips, they’ll visit a site that comes up on the first page. They might shop around, visit one or two sites for comparison, but more often than not, they’ll buy from the first site they hit. If your buggy whip company isn’t listed until page three, you’re out of luck and out of a customer. And not that many people are buying buggy whips these days.
No matter how slick your site, regardless of how low your prices are, if you can’t get your website to be listed on the first or second page of an organic search — meaning based on a phrase naturally entered by someone looking for something on the Internet — your site might as well be invisible. In fact, it is.
When a person uses a search engine like Google or Bing, it begins an intricate process that weighs complex algorithms, paid advertisements, and many, many other factors to deliver the results — and the order in which they’re posted — in mere seconds. Worse, this process is subject to change without warning.
Solving the Search Engine Puzzle
You can hire a team of Internet marketing specialists, called SEO (or search engine optimization) experts to help you rank higher on Internet searches. They understand the intricacies and can advise you on different strategies for getting the best results. These strategies often work, over time, but SEO experts are expensive and often work for large companies who have large marketing departments.
Alternately, you can take matters into your own hands and play the same game. Learn as much as you can. Spend the time tweaking your website to find the magic bullet that jumps your website to the top of the charts, so to speak. But be forewarned: this is a time-consuming venture.
Fortunately, there is a real solution. Not surprisingly, it involves us.
How Search Engines Work: A Primer
Search engines ultimately want to deliver to their customers a list of websites that most likely help, websites most likely to contain the information, products, or services the person is searching for. Search engines are looking for sites with clear content, consistent and relevant information, and useful copy. In other words, they’re looking for websites that are clear and easy to understand. These are the sites most likely to deliver whatever it is the user is seeking, even if it’s buggy whips.
The complex algorithms the search engines use are merely ways to try to find those clear sites. Your website can be one of them. It starts with clear text on your site, with the right words and good images on each page. It continues with a constant stream of new material, delivered over time.
Why is new content important? Search engines troll the Internet for fresh content all the time, to keep its “index” up to date. If your website is static, search engines will never have a reason to check back, driving your site lower and lower in rank. If your website continues to deliver good, useful information week after week, it will naturally rise in rank, not to mention get readers involved and result in links from other sites.
So don’t go to all the trouble of creating a new website if you’re only going to use it as an electronic calling card. Instead, take advantage of the marketing power of search engines and drive new visitors to your site. Post new content on your site daily or at least weekly. That’s one of the keys to driving your page rank higher.
If you don’t have time to write new stuff every day — because you’re also trying to run your business — then contact Ray Access. That’s what we do.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Mar 2, 2013 | Content Marketing
How to Get Ranked Higher for Search Results
This is the question on every business-owner’s mind. If a company has a website — and what serious company, no matter how small, doesn’t? — the visibility of that website becomes a major concern.
When a business thinks about ways to grow — ways to advertise its products or services, and ways to attract new customers — a new hot website seems like a no-brainer. It’s the old “If you build it, they will come” philosophy. In reality, however, the world doesn’t work that way.
So, after an initial push to launch the website, it just sits there. All optimism soon fades. The site is written off as a loss.
It doesn’t have to be that way, of course. Building the site is just the first step. There are ways to nudge the search page listing toward the top (aka, increasing the page rank of the website, getting more potential customers to look at your site, and then turning them into clients).
Build It the Right Way
We recently took a seminar put on by Chris Kaminski of Lone Bird Studio. He’s been in marketing for 30+ years and in the website end of it for 13+ years. He knows of what he speaks.
Chris ran through a litany of proper ways to build and code a website. Part of the trick is to develop and employ the right keywords, not only for your business, but for each page of the website. Everything has to be relevant, and every keyword has to match.
But That’s Not Enough
The really interesting thing about the seminar, however, was what Chris had to say about the key elements of the keyword use (and we’re paraphrasing here): “Stuffing keywords into text on the page no longer works. In fact, it may work against you. The copy has to flow naturally.”
To put that in layman’s terms, he said, “Search engines today are content-driven… It’s all about the quality of the content.”
What It’s About
This confirms what Ray Access has repeated here many times: the best way to raise your page rank is to provide quality content — useful and relevant information — to your website continually over time. It’s the best way to attract visitors, establish your authority, and yes, move your listing up on the search pages. Find out how Ray Access can help your website’s page rank.
Having your website rank higher based on the site’s content is not only the most effective way to do it, but it’s also the cheapest way to do it. There’s also a term for it: it’s called organic. Organic means that you’re putting the time into your website to add value. Search engines, regardless of the current algorithm for determining rank, will always be attracted to organic value. Or as Chris put it: “Organic buzz rarely comes without quality content.”
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
