Blow Your Own Trumpet for Positive PR

You can become famous. Maybe you don’t want be famous but at least you can learn to make your product or service well known. Of course that will in turn help the bottom line and you might become rich and famous! Is that what you want – your 15 minutes of fame? Your opportunity to shine in the spotlight.

So how do we get that opportunity? Why not tell everyone who you are, what you do and how you make a difference. The way of doing that is through public relations and it is simply communicating who you are and what you do – it’s having “relationships” with your “public”.

One way of letting people know who you are is through publicity. Getting that free editorial coverage in press, on radio and television is what we all want. It’s our way of letting people know about our product or service or how terrific we are. But most of us don’t like blowing our own trumpet. But without promotion something terrible happens – nothing!

If you are an independent business owner you have a lot of things to juggle, a lot of hats to wear, that of lawyer, accountant, manager, entrepreneur, technician and of course marketing expert and under that umbrella comes PR, promotion and publicity. So let’s get rights down to the basics – the publicist. That’s what you need to be. You need to write a media release, send it out to the media and ring them up. Talk to the media about who you are and what your product is.

You need to sing your own praises or at least that of your own business. Publicity is very effective. They say it is seven times more effective than advertising.

No point writing that fancy media release with the dynamic headline, strong opening and all the elements of who, what, when, where and why – that’s all very well but you also need to follow through. Find out the name of the person you want to send that media release to and phone them up. Find out whether they want to receive the media release by fax or email – build a relationship. Get that message out and then follow through.

The first step is to go and buy the magazines. Have a look in the front for the name of the editor. Their phone number is usually there – it’s that simple. Then write and send your media release or perhaps even an article. Pick up the phone and promote your story idea to the media.

If your story is interesting it may be published in the newspaper or magazine and then you will reap the rewards of people contacting you and wanting to know more about you. It’s not that hard really. You can do it. So I hope to see your name on the front page someday… on your way to fame and fortune.