By Manuela Willbold
Knowing how and where to get the right publicity and exposure for your business is hard with so many online platforms out there these days ranging from magazines, news websites, popular listings to social media and influencer blogs.
Below ClickDo PR strategist Manuela Willbold highlights the most effective and inexpensive ways to boost your business brand with strategies she uses such as SEO, expert guest posting or press releases in adequate places to reach your target audience in combination with other digital marketing hacks.
1. Provide Business-Specific Insights in a suitable Publication
Establish yourself or your company as an industry expert by providing a featured guest article or press release to be published in an online magazine or blog relevant to your niche.
Every business manager or CEO can share insights about what they do daily or what they have recently learned. Reaching out to popular publications in the sector of your expertise can maximise the number of visitors to your business website and consequently your conversions. And if the editorial team loves your pitch, they will publish it for free.
If your company is related to technology, you should certainly research some timely Tech Magazines or niche blogs that cover what your business provides. Try to find their contact details, ideally the editor’s name and email address, and pitch your idea to them in a few short paragraphs.
Say you are an eco-business producing sustainable products, then you could pitch an expert opinion piece about sustainable business practices you implement to get featured in environmental publications as the readership will certainly be interested in your insights and even if you do not promote your products or services directly, you will still create greater brand awareness.
To tailor your guest posts to the target audience of the publication you should make sure your topic is of interest to their readership. You should also include a call to action so that the new readers you are reaching will check out your website.
Link placements on high-authority websites related to topics your website covers are an important SEO strategy you will find in any SEO guide, and to achieve the best ranks on search engines the guest posts should contain keywords added with related links to your business site that your target audience will search for.
Submitting a press release is ideal for international or national news and business publications like Yahoo News or Business News Publications where you share important and innovative announcements like new product releases for example. Highlight your business achievements, latest developments, or customer news. CEO interviews are another format to get your brand circulated and reach a much wider audience. You can contact professional PR services agencies that can help with this to achieve the best outcomes.
2. Add your Business on a Business Listing for free
Because most people search for businesses, services, and products via search engines these days, it is vital to rank ideally on the first 2 pages of search engines for certain keywords.
However, if your business website is new or not ranking well yet, then business directories or listings are another great and often free marketing tool. All you will need to do is add your business details such as logo, address, description etc. and a link to your business website on business listings that are popular or in your niche.
This can be a listing for your specific business location, a business directory for your industry or niche or a general country- or worldwide listing. However, it is advisable to get it listed with as much information about your business as possible also with nice images or videos so that you make the most of it.
Multiple free business listings provide an additional boost for your website’s SEO as every backlink to your site, especially from high-authority sites with a high domain authority, will improve your ranks on search engines.
Most people assume that online business directory websites are only suitable for companies, but freelancers, news or educational platforms and even influencers or bloggers should get listed to gain more exposure and expose their brand. You can see how my directory profile ranks on the first page on Google when people search for my name:
My profile listing on the SeekaHost Directory comes up in 5th position and if people click on it, they will find all the information about me and what I do on it in one place with a link to my personal blog.
Journalists may search for more information about you or your business and through such business listings they can contact you quickly and find more information about you. This may lead to an interview or feature in their publication.
3. Diversify your Online Presence
It is unthinkable for any company these days not to be featured on social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
Setting up a business page with relevant business information and images that will be relevant to your audience is key to connect and communicate with current and future customers. For each channel different strategies which is why you should not market your offerings in the same way on each. Analyse first which of these channels can bring your business the attention you want, and you can gain the best results from.
FB groups can be hugely beneficial and attract many more new users to your page and website, if you share, comment and like the right content. Instagram works better with stories, videos and images including hashtags and Twitter is obviously more suitable for short informative posts containing news.
But social media are not the only online platforms that can boost your brand for free. Many business owners are not aware of the power of a so-called private blog network (PBN), meaning creating a digital real estate portfolio with several websites. Obviously, purchasing a domain and hosting a website is not free, however, often web hosts will offer free trials and a domain costs on average $10 annually so it is a bearable expense.
With a few websites you host, you can publish content that is related to what your business offers, and you can interlink your websites with each other to reference sources and articles with similar topics. This is certainly a more time-consuming tactic to boost your company, however, you have full control over your virtual properties compared to social media platforms. Plus, it is beneficial for SEO.
Publicity does not have to be costly
With the right idea, story, or content any business owner can get into papers, magazines, go viral on social media or YouTube. Providing useful life hacks in an entertaining way will always get many hits online.
Be creative and investigate the tips provided in this article to establish and research marketing strategies that will work well for your brand without having to spend fortunes.
The internet offers plentiful ways of growing your brand and business online and you should not miss out on these often very affordable PR options.
About the Author
Manuela Willbold is an Online Media & PR strategist at ClickDo Ltd. & SeekaHost Ltd. and a Copywriter and Educator by Passion. She is also a contributor to many News, Business, Education and Lifestyle Blogs in the United Kingdom. She has completed a journalism summer course at the London School of Journalism and manages various blogs where she publishes press releases and guest contributions.
