5 Online Ways to Get Offline Publicity For Your Business

Well, my 15 minutes of fame has finally started.  My profile in the August issue of Good Housekeeping magazine has finally hit the streets. I’m featured in an article about people who make good money working part time from home.

  I’m still not sure whether I am glad they didn’t use my picture or not :)  For those of you who haven’t been following the saga of my first national feature story, I replied to a ProfNet query from a report back in March.  ProfNet is a service that matches reporters looking for sources with willing sources.  One of the services that I provide my clients is to look through their ProfNet e-mails each day and forward opportunities to them that I think are a good fit.  (hint:  I also offer this service as a stand alone — and it will cost you less than subscribing  yourself…)  I found the Good Housekeeping opportunity and responded to the reporter. A few months and a few interviews later, I got the news that I was in! 

Before becoming a virtual assistant, I worked as a local government public information officer where I helped some great agencies get some well-deserved publicity.  Here are five quick tips on getting some offline publicity for your business:

1. Subscribe to ProfNet (or hire a VA or publicist to scan for you).  I know several small businesses that have scored big coverage this way.  A free alternative to ProfNet which is a little smaller is helpareporter.com.

2. Read your local papers and business magazines.  Get to know the reporters and the different types of stories they write.  If have something newsworthy, e-mail them and tell them about it.  It also helps if you mention previous articles.  The more personalized the better — journalists are people too :)  You can also hook up with local reporters on Facebook and Twitter.

3. Hook into current news stories.  Visit the google news site every morning and send press releases to your local paper that hook into current news stories.  For example, if there is a new study about how child care affects children and you chose to work part time to cut down on day care — write about that. 

4. Get active in your local and industry blogging communities.  reporters are often turning to popular blogs for news stories. Subscribe to google alerts - http://www.google.com/alerts and find out when anyone blogs about your topic.

5. Do something newsworthy. Do you suppoart a particular cause?  How about donating a portion of your profits for a given month to the cause?  Hook in to a national holiday or create your own holiday.  Blog or write about the holiday.  Submit a press release. Naked PR has a giant list  of free press release sites on her blog.

Good luck and I hope you get some great publicity.