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Ten Ways To Publicize Your Small Business

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Ten Ways To Publicize Your Small Business

 Whether you run Dow Chemical or the Dairy Queen there is no substitute for positive publicity. Most successful small business owners realized early that marketing was a very important if not the most important part of staying in business. But where to start? Here are a few pointers for getting covered.

There are plenty of ways to get newspaper, radio, and television publicity for the small business owner willing to invest in the activity on a consistent basis.

Ten Ways To Publicize Your Small Business. There are plenty of ways to get newspaper, radio, and television publicity for the small business owner willing to invest in the activity on a consistent basis.

  1. Do something newsworthy. Media coverage in traditional outlets (not trade journals or business magazines) will not occur without some kind of event, happening, release or introduction. Remember that news worthy events almost always occur in real time and are finite. News is not open ended.
  2. What are some newsworthy small business happenings? A grand opening is the perfect occasion to get news coverage. While cutting a ribbon with a big pair of scissors might seem silly, it is a good photo opportunity and is newsworthy.
  3. Expansions, new products, new menu items, new services, new or expanded contracts are all newsworthy.
  4. Sponsorships of local sporting teams, high school athletics, charity fundraisers are also considered newsworthy. Go to your county’s fair and bid on something and win it. Pose for a photo with the young person who raised the calf, chicken, pig or goat. Send the photo to the local newspaper. Boom, publicity.
  5. Monitor the news and see where what you do might fit with a reporter or news outlet. For example, if you repair computers or other high tech equipment, be ready to give advise on preventing a cyber breach at home or at work the next time hackers from Wikileaks release something or a major business or government entity is hacked. It’s only a matter of time before this happens. Own a drug store? Do a release on over the counter flu remedies. Travel agents can write about the best times to fly at the start of summer vacation or how to negotiate TSA during heavy travel times like Thanksgiving, Christmas, July 4, etc.
  6. Business professionals like accountants can do year-end publicity on how to prepare for tax season. Lawyers can schedule interviews when new laws come into effect. Public bathroom access for transgender people is one example of the law where professional advise would have been useful. The same is true for gun laws, licenses to carry concealed weapons and on and on.

More Ways To Keep Publicity Going Ten Ways To Publicize Your Small Business

Publicity is not like a tattoo or statue where you do it once and forget about it. Business promotion via local publicity is a process and like all processes has to be attended. So here are a few more tips!

  1. Find out who covers business in your community and get acquainted. Reporters and editors receive dozens if not hundreds of releases and pitch calls every day. Yours is more likely to get read if the reporter/editor knows who you are.
  2. Write press materials regularly and send them out routinely. I used to have a rule that I would send out a release at least once a month. This was at a very large and already well known company. For those who are not already those things, it will take more work and more releases. For the new business clients I work for I recommend at least one per week if possible.
  3. Don’t forget trade journals. Local business and media will often cover the fact that a local person wrote for a trade journal.
  4. Invent your own media. Hosting your own podcast or curating news from your field of interest and posting it on line are just a couple of options for small business owners that were not available even five years ago.

Harold Nicoll, APR is the owner of Media Public Relations and can be found at www.media-public-relations.com.

 

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