There are many choices available when it comes to search engine optimization, or SEO, and you probably have many questions:

• Should you do your own SEO or hire a firm?
• Is SEO worth it?
• Will you be able to get to the top of the search engines?

With all of the services, tips, articles, expert insights, updates, and more, it’s enough to make your head spin. If you are starting to feel overwhelmed, but feel you need to take advantage of SEO to get more people to your site, here’s a simple question that will help you focus:

What are you trying to accomplish?

If you are a new organization, and you simply want to get people to your site, ask yourself these questions:

•    Do we have a budget to hire a professional SEO expert?

If you don’t have any funds to hire an expert, know that SEO takes time and effort.

•    Can we use other tools to get people to our site more effectively?

You may want to look at direct mail campaigns, public relations and other, marketing activities. Spend some time thinking about what you want to accomplish and how you can reach that goal. If you are only thinking about SEO, you may close your mind to some other activities that will help you save time and money, and reach your goal faster.

Keep it Simple.

This blog is short, but it’s a reminder to focus. Start your SEO efforts by thinking about your overall goal. Then, you can research all of the information and services available to see what will work best to get the specific results you seek.

Do you need help getting organized with your SEO, social media and PR activities? Please let me know here or at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

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5 Reasons to Use the Phone Instead of E-mail

1. You have a long message to share.

If you have a lot of information to share with someone, pick up the phone.

After all, it takes time to write a lengthy e-mail, and the recipient may not even read your entire message because it’s too long. By having a quick conversation via phone, you’ll be able to convey your message and get an immediate response.

2. You need to react to someone’s response quickly and accurately.

If you are trying to sell something, share an idea or get feedback, pick up the phone.

You’ll be able to hear how the other person responds to your information right away. Then, you can provide an appropriate response to get your point across.

3. You want to promote your company.

If you want to promote your business to the media, pick up the phone.

The only way to form long-lasting relationships with specific media-members is to get to know them, find out what they want and provide it. Plus, it’s much easier to share your passion and excitement about a story idea via the spoken word.

4. You need to discuss a touchy subject.

If you need to talk to someone about a sensitive work or personal matter, and cant’ meet with them in person, pick up the phone.

No one wants to find out they’ve been fired or dumped via e-mail! Show some courage and have mature discussions about touchy subjects via phone, not e-mail. By hearing what someone else has to say, and how they say it, you’ll have a better chance of solving problems, improving relationships and showing empathy.

5. You have business contacts that you’ve never talked to on the phone.

If you have business contacts you know only via e-mail, pick up the phone.

Being successful in business is about building relationships with the right people, communicating and doing well at providing a particular product or service. How can you network and give your target market what they want if you don’t communicate with your business associates in real-time?

Make the Effort.

Yes, many of you hate to talk on the phone and would much rather stay at your desk and type. (You know who you are, you SEO copywriters and techies out there!)

But if you make the effort to communicate with people via phone rather than e-mail, you’ll save time and effort. Plus, you’ll be able to give better responses to improve sales, media hits, relationships, and overall results for your business.

“Ring.” “Ring.” “Ring.” Is that your phone? Maybe you should answer it?

For help with your SEO copywriting and communications, please contact me below or at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

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While you may not be able to afford a professional, search engine optimization (SEO) copywriter yet, there are some things you can do to improve your copy… and they won’t cost you anything but a little time.

Ready? Here are…

3 Ways to Improve Your Copy in Less than 60 Minutes:

1.    Change all of your passive verbs to active verbs.

Check your copy to see if you are writing in the past tense. (“Our customers saved money.” “The new widget helped our clients.”) Then, change all of your verbs to action verbs. (“Our customers save money.” “The new widget helps our clients.”)

It’s a simple step that can make old copy sound fresher and more exciting.

2.    Get rid of sentences that start with “We.”

When you read your copy is it all about your business, product features and how great your services are?

Boring!

Your customers want to know what’s in it for them. Instead of using “We,” use “You.”

For example, your copy might say:

“We provide the leading service in the country for washing windows and have been in business for over 25 years.”

Instead, you might say something like this:

“Enjoy squeaky clean windows in minutes! Relax working with professionals who have over 25-years of experience in the window-washing industry.”

You get what I mean. Stress the benefits you offer your customers… not how great you are!

3. Shorten your paragraphs.

This is an easy one. Shorten the length of your sentences and paragraphs. Make it as easy as possible for customers to read your copy.

After all, are you more likely to read a long page of text or short and simple paragraphs?

A Few Quick Changes Can Lead to Better Results.

These may seem like simple changes, but they can make a big difference to your written materials. By including active verbs, benefits and user-friendly paragraphs, your copy will be more exciting and easier to read, and that just may be what your business needs to bring in more sales!

For more information on SEO copywriting and increasing site awareness, please write to me below or at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

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It can be a whirlwind of activity. But be careful…

Don’t Move Too Fast with Your PR and SEO Efforts.

As you rush to get everything done in a timely matter, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• Take a moment before starting.

Once your discover that you need to prepare a PR or SEO document within a short amount of time, take a moment to review what you are trying to accomplish.

What is the call-to-action for this project, and what do you want your target market to do when they read it? By taking this step, you’ll be able to work towards a goal and have a better chance of achieving it.

• Have someone else review your work.

Even if you have proofread your press release for errors, read it aloud to hear the tone and checked the SEO-keyword density and copy, have someone else review your work.

Since you are close to the project and moving fast to meet deadlines, it always helps to have another set of eyes review your work.

• Check results.

When you are finished distributing your press release, posting some SEO copy or writing another marketing or PR piece, look at the results. What happened? Did you meet the goal for that project?

Write down your statistics from Google Analytics. Did Website hits increase? Are the search engines finding your site? Did your press release get picked up on media site?

Then, review this data before you start a new project. What can you do differently to get better results this time? Perhaps, you reached your goal and need to follow the same process, but you’ll never know unless you monitor results and take action on them.

Timing Is Important, But So Are PR And SEO Results!

It’s essential to move quickly with your SEO and PR activities in order to compete and distribute current news about your business in a timely fashion. But in the process, don’t forget to review what you are trying to accomplish, check for mistakes and monitor results. This way, you’ll be able to meet deadlines, provide accurate information, and successfully meet goals.

Do you need help with your SEO and PR copy? Please write to me below or at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

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On your mark, get set, go!

The alarm clock buzzes. You do your morning ritual, and it’s time to get back to work… but hold on just a minute…

Are you starting off where you left off in 2011, or do you have new and specific, public relations (PR) and search engine optimization (SEO) goals you are working towards?

If you woke up excited to get back to work, you are probably starting some new projects to help increase awareness and sales with PR and SEO.

However, if you started your day just doing “busy” work, (answering e-mails, following up on calls, checking social-media posts, etc. Yawn!), it’s time to add some Zing to your day!

To help you get over the after-holiday doldrums and add some excitement (and results) to your PR and SEO work, here are some questions to think about:

• Are you reaching out to customers?

If you haven’t sent a newsletter, blog notice, coupon, e-mail, or other, valuable communication to your customers lately, what can you send them that they will find interesting and useful now, and in the months to come?

• How old is the copy on your Website?

Add some new, SEO blog posts, articles, videos, case studies, and more to your site on a weekly basis (at least). This way, you’ll provide current and potential customers with fresh information and increase interactions to help build long-term relationships.

• What news can you share?

When was the last time you distributed an SEO press release to build buzz? If it has been more than a month, it’s time to post some news.

What is happening with your customers? Did you have a successful charity event? Do you have new products and services, white papers or other information you can share that will help others?

Even if you don’t think you have any news, there are good stories hiding in your company. It’s up to you to talk to your sales team, customers and partners to find out how they have benefited from your products and services.

Enjoy Some PR and SEO Zing Now!

If you are bored with your work and want to see better results, get creative! Think of ways you can provide more value to your customers and then promote the successes they have using your products and services.

Set new goals involving fresh and exciting SEO copywriting and PR activities, and you’ll have more fun. More important, you’ll start enjoying your work and see better results too!

Do you need help increasing results with SEO and PR? Please write to me here or check out my free information at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

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3 Things to Do Right Away if Your SEO Isn’t Working:

1. Stop!

If you are spending money on pay-per-click (PPC) ads, place them on pause. Why continue to spend money on a program that isn’t working?

Although it may not seem like a priority, stop what you are doing and schedule some time to review your entire SEO program as soon as possible.

2. Look!

Your optimization specialist should be able to give you statistics on your PPC account and a complete report about the words being used on your site. If not, go into your Google Analytics and review the data.

· Are people clicking on your keywords?

· Do you have the appropriate, keyword tagging on each page of your site?

· How long are people spending on your site?

· If you have a PPC campaign going, do the keywords in your campaign match the keywords on your landing page?

· Are people reading your landing page and clicking on the “buy” button?

If you do not have a specific, landing page for each of your PPC campaigns, you are probably missing out on sales. People who click on your PPC ad want to get more information about the topic mentioned on the ad. Once they arrive on your site, it’s important to provide compelling copy specific to your ad that makes them want to take a single action (buy a product, register for your newsletter, download a white paper, etc.).

And if you see that some of your keywords are more popular than others, update your site copy and PPC ads with those words. Write new pages and test different variations to see what works and what doesn’t.

3. Listen!

Once you’ve updated the copy on your site and your PPC ads, review your site statistics and any comments you receive from customers. Listen to what they have to say.

With all of the activities it takes to run a business, it can be easy to lose focus on what’s important – your customers’ needs.

Listen to their feedback, and if you are not receiving any, ask them via phone or an online survey, in-person, or whatever is most convenient for them. This is valuable data you can use to give your customers what they really want, update your optimization program and beat the competition.

SEO Safety – Avoid the Danger of Losing Time, Money and Effort Now!

When you cross the street, it can be dangerous if you don’t stop, look both ways and listen for oncoming traffic. In the same way, if you don’t take the time to review what’s going with your SEO activities and pay attention to your customers, you can lose an extensive amount of time and money.

With this in mind, set aside time to focus on your search engine optimization efforts each week or month. Monitor what is working, stop what’s not working and make changes for better results. Then, you’ll be able to provide your customers with more value, increase clicks and boost sales without wasting time, money or effort.

Do you need some help with your search engine optimization activities and PR? Please contact me at www.rembrandtwrites.com for more information.

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But as you scan the Web one day, you notice that your site is not showing up in the search engines.

You look a little closer and notice that all of the tagging you added to the site previously is no longer on the site.

What happened? Where did all of your hard work go?

Oops! This was an unexpected surprise, and you forgot a few things.

With this in mind, here are:

3 Ways to Avoid Unnecessary, SEO Surprises:

1. Check Your Tech.

If there are other technicians working on your site, communicate with them on a regular basis. They may be updating the site, forget about your coding and remove your SEO tagging.

When this happens, all of your hard work coding each page with the appropriate title tags and descriptions will be worthless. Even worse, the site engines will have a difficult time finding your site.

2. Monitor Results.

Even if you are the only person working on your site, it’s essential to check your site statistics on a regular basis. What are people clicking on? Are the search engines finding your site? Which keywords are working and which aren’t?

If you don’t check your site to see what’s going on, how do you know if your SEO activities are successful or not?

3. Make Changes.

By regularly monitoring your site, you’ll be able to see which keywords bring in the most traffic and the content your visitors find most appealing. Then, you can discard the words that aren’t working and update your copy to provide more value – for your customers and the search engines.

Pay Attention!

After doing tedious, keyword tagging for a site, it can be easy to put it aside and forget about it. But if you don’t check your site statistics frequently and know what’s going on, you’ll waste time and money in your SEO efforts.

More important, you will not see an increase in site traffic and that means a loss of new customers and sales!

Do you need help increasing your site traffic with search engine optimization? Please contact me here or at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

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Here are 28 Small Business Marketing Resolutions for the New Year that will inspire you to write your own.

1. Build Relationships With Customers

To create more opportunities for our end buyers to interact with the company. As a manufacturer it’s always difficult to have a dialog with customers because our primary “sale” is to the dealer and we don’t get many chances to communicate with customers directly.

Stephen Roberts, Marketing Manager, Timberwolf Manufacturing

2. Engage and Monitor

To be consistent and emotionally engaging in all marketing efforts. To continue to monitor and measure all results. (I know that in 3 years my unique visitor traffic has increased by 250% to just under 8,000 unique visitors per month.)  To convert more visitors specific to eproducts thus increasing monthly income.  To achieve Alexa.com ranking of under 100,000.  To have the blog recognized as one of the top business, leadership and sales blogs.

Leanne Hoagland-Smith, www.increase-sales-coach.com

3. Waste Less Time on Social Media

I resolve to waste less time on social media channels!

Tea Silvestre, www.theWordChef.com

4. Be More Visual

Don’t forget: All marketing is VISUAL.

David Langton, Principal, Langton Cherubino Group, Ltd. (http://www.langtoncherubino.com)

5. Consistency!

It is easy when we get busy to stop marketing ourselves, but we know that we need to do it consistently if we want to grow. So we have resolved to be more consistent in 2012 on doing our own marketing and PR.

Beth Walsh, Clearpoint Agency, Inc., (www.clearpointagency.com)

6. Update The Plan, Then Walk the Plan

Ann Siegle, Tria Marketing & Design, (http://www.triadesignfirm.com)

7. Discover Previously-Unidentified Markets

To find new ways to help customers obtain loans - financing is still a major issue.  To further expand our worldwide presence.

Catherine B. Ahles, APR, Fellow PRSA, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, Premier Aircraft Sales

8. No More Advertising

Our 2012 marketing resolution is we will no longer buy advertising. We will buy results. After spending a year and a half attempting to optimize click through conversion rates, design high quality marketing communications and locate appropriate advertising vehicles we have discovered that we are not advertising experts. We have also discovered
that the risk for advertising success lies entirely with us. If we buy media space in a publication that does not produce results we lose both time and money. The publication, however, gets to keep our money.

For 2012 we are completely converting our marketing efforts to shared risk. We will no longer pay for click through or brand exposure ads. We will only pay a percentage of sales actually produced by the ad. Our advertising budget had previously floated at about 9% of revenue. For 2012 we will be increasing this about 30% of revenue. Instead of paying $600 for a quarter page ad we will pay 25% of all sales produced by the ad. If the ad produces $10,000 in sales the advertiser will receive $2500. If the ad produces $100 in sales the advertiser will receive $25. This will be tracked through coupon codes for print. All web advertising will be converted to affiliate programs which pay by the sale. We can increase our media budget since all advertising will be paid for by additional sales.

This does not mean that we will stop brand awareness advertising. Our brand awareness strategy for 2012 however will be entirely based on shareable content and partnerships with publications that have a similar audience. We will be producing more free downloads and more shareable content on the assumption that if it is valuable - it will be shared and republished. This is a big risk since traditional paid advertising guarantees space in a publication. Shareable content, however, may or may not get reused in other publications.

Chris Tobias, Director of Educational Excitement, School Skills

9. Positioning

Our 2012 our resolution is to position ourselves as the Thought Leader in our industry and also to all lose 5% of our current body weight, eat right and exercise more.

John Fairclough, the r e s i c o m group (http://www.resicomonline.com)

10. Happy Shoppers

Our 2012 Marketing Resolution is to keep our shoppers happy. Our success is driven by word-of-mouth marketing from wonderful customers. When they like their experience with us - as in our jewelry quality, diverse selections, low prices and customer service - they come back and they tell their friends about us. And the cycle continues when those friends have a wonderful experience too! That’s why we always try to listen to the needs and wants of our shoppers and make their Joolwe.com shopping experience amazing.

Monique Bird, Marketing and PR Specialist, Joolwe.com

11. Regular Communication.

Contact our email list on a regular basis (no more being flaky!) and not worry every single time that I might lose subscribers. It’s better to have tried and lost, than to never have tried at all!

Chris Wise, Online Marketing Director,  Guideline Central

12. Systematic Marketing

For our own firm and for our clients, we are resolving to commit to a programmatic approach to marketing (strategy) instead of simply a project approach (tactics, often with no real plan behind them : “one offs”).

Charles J. Morris, Jr., Principal, Morris Creative Group, LLC

13. Community Centric, Mobile Friendly Website

For 2012, The Voice of Your Customer plans to revise our company website to be less content driven and more mobile friendly with a great focus on customer engagement and community involvement. Previously, our website as focused on flash and SEO heavy content that is no longer of interest to our visitors.

The Voice of Your Customer also plans to increase our visibility in the media by distributing more company press releases and applying for more industry, small business and community awards. In years past, we won several awards that generated quite a bit of exposure in the local, regional and niche media that resulted in more visits to our website and social media pages.

Additionally, The Voice of Your Customer plans to increase the activity on our LinkedIn and Facebook company pages, better utilize the engagement tools and more effectively use the visitor analytics. When the pages were launched, the focus was on increasing likes and daily posts. In the near future, we would like to use these pages for survey research, recruiting and content management.

Crystal L Kendrick, President, The Voice of Your Customer

14. Mobile Marketing

In 2012, our company, Leon Mege Inc. (custom made engagement rings and fine jewelry) will be doing a lot more mobile marketing. We will also be focusing more on Google+ and are allocating a smaller budget to print ads and Facebook ads. A lot more branding is also in store for the New Year for our company (we are currently in the early stages of developing a branding strategy).

Olga Topchaya, Director of Marketing,  Leon Megé Inc.

15. Increase Twitter Following

Our marketing resolution is to increase our twitter following, in order to control cost and to weed out the multiple offerings of Marketing Services that I am swamped with on a daily basis. If I can control advertising cost, I can hopefully make better use of time and money to hire help.

Lance Dzintars , Zaria & Bella’s LLC, www.zariaandbellas.com

16. More Online Engagement

Going to do more: Webinars, email campaigns with partners who send on our behalf, retargeting, startup daily deal sites, guest blogging.

Going to do less: sitting around twiddling our thumbs

Going to start: LinkedIn advertising to drive webinar signups

Joshua Krafchin, Clever Zebo (www.cleverzebo.com)

17. Have a Conversation

We’re going to be more conversational and ‘broadcast’ less. We’re going to bring true value to our customers as opposed to just marketing our products. We’re going to listen to our customers and ask them, instead of making guesses as to what they want from us.

Kendall Moyles, Green Surf Shop

18. Give More Value

My resolution is to contribute more ideas and expertise to social networks that are related to what I do within my company.

Christi Pemberton, Global Crest Productions

19. Invest in Advertising

In 2012 I am going to jump off the bridge and go for big advertising in a major wedding magazine THE KNOT…it is needed at this time and so for 2012 I am placing an ad in this national player in the wedding industry.

Kelly Marie Albert , The Perfect Card Box

20. Intentional Marketing

A.    Greater emphasis on social media. We want to expand our presence on Facebook by adding custom tabs/pages to help grow our fan base. In terms of audience interaction, we are committing ourselves to posting at least twice per day on both Facebook and Twitter. The significance of LinkedIn is also something we plan to utilize in the new year.

B.    Videos, videos, videos. In 2012 we are launching a YouTube channel to post things like customer testimonials and information videos about our products or services. The goal is to educate our existing and potential customers through the informational videos while building and reinforcing a sense of trust with videos such as client testimonials.

C.    Targeted mailings. When we first started our original business we worked out a deal with a local printer to create some post cards for us. We mailed them out to local businesses and the response was better than expected. It may be a new year but the world is still generally the same, so we’re going to get back to some basics with this one.

D.    Launch an email newsletter. It is important for us to stay in front of our customers and on their minds. We are committing to sending out an electronic newsletter each month to those customers who opt-in to receive it. The newsletter will give them a first look at upcoming specials and promotions, as well as offer subscriber-only opportunities.

E.    Advertise in local newspapers. This relates a bit to point three above. We ran a few ads early on and experienced some moderate returns, so we will return to this as an option for us in 2012. Online readership is growing and rates are more than reasonable at this time.

Daniel J. Spence, President, Big Bird Media, LLC

21. Develop Partnerships

I plan to develop some strategic partnerships with other business owners so that we can combine our efforts to host a Mini-Telesummit.

I will be attending the Diva Toolbox Conference in Boston, MA for the second year and also be connecting regularly with my local chapter members of NAWBO.

I enjoy blogging and will be sharing my ideas on my LinkedIn Profile and the new Facebook page I am creating for my Coaching Business: “Moving Forward Through Divorce.”

Nancy A. Kay, Divorce Management Coach,

22. Focused Marketing

Narrow our marketing focus by eliminating distracting products and services that don’t pay their way that we carried in the past to be a “full service” company for our clients. They are a distraction from our meat and potatoes offerings. Instead, we’re creating a group of complimentary partner companies to take over those duties using other area business people we’ve known and trusted over the years to take over those services. We’re referring to them as “trusted local partners”. We’ll refer business to them and in return they’re going to refer back to us based upon our defined competency. Members in this group must have a complimentary business product or service that enhances the group. This is different than a networking group like those formed by Chambers of Commerce that group non-competing businesses together without any regard to how well they complement each other as businesses.

We also plan to drop the less sophisticated parts of our previous offerings as they’ve become commoditized by the market. Offerings such as retail software, Internet Content filtering, computer repair services (we call it break/fix) and retail sales of computers and printers. We’re trying to move up the IT food-chain and focus on more sophisticated products and services that aren’t generally offered at the “shallow end” of the IT services pool. This is our effort to differentiate ourselves from the retail big-box “Geek Squad” type guys.

Jeff Hoffman, President, ACT Network Solutions

23. Pick a Few Good Marketing Strategies

Narrow down social media to 2 - 3 tools that REALLY work in terms of responses. Narrow down my marketing hours. Make more effort to make human to human contact rather than just social media. Hire people to do some work for me. (PR, day to day tasks). I know it’s an investment but it will free me up to think of the big picture.

Sandra Mendoza-Daly, DebutanteClothing.com and VintageFindIt.com

24. Increase Local Exposure

We will continue to get involved in our community through various B2B channels, such as the local Chamber of Commerce, regional newspapers and their online versions, and traditional “small town” handshake efforts. The goal is to have every local business owner know who we are, and more importantly, understand what we do.

Leverage the Local / Mobile / Social aspects of technology. Being in a small town environment limits the effect of many social media efforts, however the growth in location based services such as Foursquare, Oink, Gowalla, and Facebook check-ins have allowed small businesses to focus on the people who are already around them. As smart phones continue to grow on older customers, these services and features will become more and more important on the local level. We plan on offering specials and contests that involve being physically close to our location.

Increase community involvement. We plan on sponsoring a local softball team, running a clothing drive, and taking part in our local Autumn festival in 2012. We plan on doing at least one major community campaign per quarter of 2012.

We are in the process of developing tools for local business owners to leverage technology that they simply don’t yet understand. We have found that the average local business owner still does not know how to properly use even their old outdated Web sites to their advantage. Add in Social Media, iPhone apps, and local search listings (Google Maps, Bing, Yahoo Local, Yelp, etc.) and it just spins their head. We are working to bring these tools to the average person through a series of free seminars, online tutorials, and even a local business app builder which will allow for our community businesses to take a giant leap ahead of even their larger corporate competitors.

I am really proud that the same efforts that we use to market our company are going to help our local community and our local business owners. Although it sometimes feels that technology drives us apart, we feel that it can be used to bring back the Mom & Pop way of doing business of yesterday.

Jon Berry, Berry Smart

25. Create More Local Partnerships

Our resolution is to find more local/regional partners in order to foster visible job growth right in our own backyard. Restoring hope locally is job one in this economy!

John Leschke, Green 3 Apparel

26. Get Involved

We are going to work with more websites that cater to our target market. This includes offering free valuable information to other relevant sites on how businesses can start implementing strategies of their own to start seeing results. Developing more relationships with experts in the industry. Giving away more free information to prospective clients. Also participating in more guest blog related public relations.

We plan to do less direct mail advertising and instead use email and other virtual mediums to maximize profit. We also plan to continue not participating in cold calls.

A major thing we plan to start doing in 2012 is to be involved with more charitable events and more offline activities that are in the public eye. We feel that in conjunction with our online promotions, this could create a synergy that is unmatched.

Mike Calloway, Trinity Marketing

27. Be More Personal

I hope to be more personal than ever in my marketing.  As a freelancer and now a small business owner with predominantly remote work, online content marketing is a stellar way to establish my expertise, inform potential clients about my methods, and get my name out. But blog posts, newsletters, tweets, and Facebook posts only go so far as information vehicles. I’m finding more than ever it’s the thoughtful notes, unexpected responses, and general accessibility that powerfully push my business relationships and my career forward. It’s easy to write these things off since they don’t have the same reach of our other efforts!

Stephanie Peterson, Fairground Media

28. Referral Marketing

We plan on giving a strong push to referral marketing through social media in 2012. We’ve played with it in the past, but it’s time to really see if we can make it work to help grow our business!

Sara Sutton Fell, CEO & Founder, FlexJobs.com

What are your small business marketing resolutions for 2012?  Share them here along with the link to your website.  We always love hearing from you!

Want to get more inexpensive and practical small business marketing ideas, grab a free ebook called “Build Buzz for Your Biz, 23 Creative and Inexpensive Marketing Strategies That Will Get You Noticed” at http://23kazoos.com.

Wendy Kenney is the bestselling author of How to Build Buzz for Your Business available onAmazon.com, and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Newsday.

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Don’t get me wrong. You need to send out a press release announcing your product. But, unless you are a well-known brand or have an unbelievable product, you will not get a lot of media attention from your press release. After all, it’s just an announcement about a new product, and media members see those all the time (yawn!)… so what do you do?

Well, after you announce your product with SEO keywords, it’s time to prepare for a bigger story that the press will find interesting. And it doesn’t need to be difficult. In fact, here are…

3 Steps to Prepare a Killer PR Story for Your New Product

1.    Find happy customers.

Look for happy customers who love your new product. Discover how they have used your product and the results they experienced. Ask them why they think your product is unique and to list all the benefits it provided. Have them provide a video or written testimonial. And be sure to get their written approval to share their information with the media.

2.    Create a cool story.

Using the information you received from your happy customers, write a pitch that shows a before-and-after story. Media members want to know how your product benefits others, why it is unique and specific numbers to prove results (reduced my energy bill by 20%, saved me five hours in cooking time, etc.). Try to give your story a personal touch that focuses on people, not the product.

3.    Pitch to targeted, media-members.

Find an appropriate media-member to contact with your specific story and give your pitch via phone. Let that person know that they can have the exclusive on the story and be the first to announce it. If that person is not interested, go on to the next media-member on your list.

Eventually, you will find someone interested in your unique story. If not, it’s time to re-evaluate your pitch and develop a more interesting story specific to a targeted, media venue.

Your Product Is Not The Story.

It can be very exciting to launch a new product. But before you pitch your product to the press, make sure you have some stories about actual use ready to go. After all, media members do not want to hear about your product. They want to hear about the exciting results and unique benefits it gave to real people.

By taking the time to obtain some cool stories from actual customers, and promoting those stories, you’ll obtain more publicity for your new product and reap the benefits!

For more information about this topic, please contact me here or at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

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But who are you?

How many of these invitations do you receive?

Well, LinkedIn, www.linkedin.com, is a great, social-media tool for networking, staying in touch with key contacts and more. But if you just send out random invitations, you are not using it to your advantage.

Yes, it’s easy to use their automatic invitation. But, does it work?

I receive invitations like the one you see above on a weekly basis, and they go straight to my wastebasket.

Why?

Well, I have a few rules about using LinkedIn, and you may want to take them into consideration too:

Rule 1 – I only connect with people on LinkedIn that I know.

Why? The main reason I have a LinkedIn account is to network and make referrals. However, how can I possible refer someone if I have no idea who they are?

If I refer a complete stranger to someone I respect, and that stranger turns out to be a nightmare, there goes my reputation and credibility.

And it goes both ways. How would you like it if one of your contacts referred a complete stranger to you for an important project?

Rule 2 – If I receive an invitation, it had better be personalized.

If I receive a LinkedIn invitation, I want to know who the person is and why they want me to be part of my network.

I may receive an invitation from someone I worked with in the past, a fellow speaker at an event or an old classmate. But if it has been some time since we spoke, I may not remember that person.

By adding a little note in the invitation that states who you are and why you want to connect with me, I’m much more likely to add you to my network.

Rule 3 – Please don’t take advantage of our connection.

Great! You are part of my LinkedIn group. But now, you are sending me advertisements and marketing messages on a regular basis and constantly asking me to introduce you to others in my network.

That’s not cool. Social media is all about being social (see my previous post about this), and the communication needs to go both ways.

If you use LInkedIn as a marketing tool only and take advantage of my connections, you are out of my network!

What Do You Think?

These rules may not be for you, but you do need to think about why you are using LinkedIn and what you want to accomplish when you spend your valuable time on the site.

By remembering that it’s a social-media tool to communicate with people, you’ll be able to provide valuable information, help others and increase your network.

But if you just use LinkedIn to build a huge list of strangers in your network, constantly advertise your services and don’t really care about helping anyone but yourself, you are going to see very negative results and waste a lot of time and effort.

Do you need help with your social media and SEO strategies? Please let me know here or at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

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