November 15th, 2009 by Glen Barnhardt

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Promoting new products through an advertising business or business itself is both challenging and risky. Once the money is gone, there’s seldom second chances. An alternative to advertising is a public relations strategy. Effective PR is a cost-effective way to gain exposure for your product, get leads, and generate more sales and build a great business.

Credibility is the key!

Seen through advertising, So as a product that is mentioned in the news or feature you receive a passive advertisement and the credibility advertising just can’t buy.A news report is actually far more likely to move people to action than conventional advertising, and a good public relations strategy is the way to get the media to seek you out.

Making the PR process work for you? There are 10 tips you need to create an effective PR plan to give your product competitive advantages in your market:

1. Research your market. Be the most specific you can get about which community will use your product, that will make it easier to identify which method you need to work with. Narrow in your target to be specific and realize that no product ever commands 100 percent market share, nor does it need to in order to be successful.

2. What are the product benefits relevant to your market. what your product does for your potential clientele isn’t as important as the features. You are trying to sell your product so you will get traffic. What are the benefits of your product and now show them the numbers that prove that your product saves your clietele time and money–or makes money.

3. Individuality of your product. Prove your product is faster, better, cleaner or more economical than your competitors’ product or industry standard because of research you do and the knowledge of the product. Such specific and proven advantages will provide concrete evidence to feature your product over anyone else’s.

4. Use testimonials. Everythings equal, and a testimonial may be one of the strongest ways to enhance the credibility of any promotional piece. This holds true for editorial piece work as well. The biggest difference is the way the testimonial will be presented. Some promotional pieces might get away with “Bob.K.” from Nebraska who says your widgets are “great.” But an editorial piece needs to be about a targeted benefit.

5. Target your market. Trying to sell a studded neck coller at “Hot Topics” would be better then trying it at lets say Sears. With research you’ll identify specific article sites or programs for the industry you are targeting. You will need to do some research to find out which are most seen or read by your target market. These types of publications that are available are newspapers, magazines, newsletters, radio and television broadcasts according to locality and special interest groups. Working on the internet the research is much easier.

6. Prepare your product release. Your release needs a great headline and make sure it has your keywords in it. Your first paragraph should be no more than 25 words and needs to both the headline and summary of the story. A publicist spends on average seven seconds “speed reading” the hundreds of releases they receive each day, so the first short paragraph is critical. And remember to keep your editorial to one page or less.

7. Sell your promotion. You have a product that may interest someone. Give them the headline and the first article. They’ll make a decision then and there whether they like it or not. Then, forward immediately marked clearly to their attention. Earn the right to follow up by asking if you can call back the next day or at some other specific time, depending on publication dates.

8. Follow up. Re-confirm whether or not they received the information you sent and offer to provide more information if necessary.

9. Keep in contact. But don’t be pushy. If the product is of value, it will sell itself. All you should do is provide your contact with more information. This is also a good way to make sure your press release gets a second look.

10. Pictures. A photograph can literally sell a thousand words. Daily media are more photo-conscious than ever, and are more interested in photos than the monthly special interest magazines or trade journals. Those publications are usually only interested in a photograph if it educates or informs the reader.

Are they a guarantee of success? No.

But by following them, you’ll immediately increase your chances and you’ll also start to build the good media relationships you’ll need for the future. You’ll also give your product a strong competitive advantage in the media market, while any results you do achieve from “free press” will be more effective.

If you’re looking to start your own online business, these steps can help. Eventually, you can work to apply your “off-line” efforts to the online space–a strategy that can leverage your message in a number of ways conventional media simply can’t.

The tools you need to succeed are here for free, Free report on affiliate marketing/niche marketing to help you start your own business either on or offline. Free report Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service

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November 1st, 2009 by Scott A. Dennison

I just released a report called “Public Speaking (*as you know it) Is Dead!” that states my view of the last couple of years of the public speaking industry.

If you would like a free copy of the report, you’ll find a link to it in the resource box at the end of this article

The information in the report is just my opinion but the research shows that the facts support it. Also, well-known speakers are agreeing with my conclusions.

I recently received a comment from well-known speaker and author, Jim Cathart, CPAE and Past President of the National Speakers Association, who said this: “Scott Dennison has nailed it. The problem in our business is that it’s not there anymore. The needs are still there and our skills are still valuable, but the ways in which people buy our services has permanently moved. It’s time to go where the buying is happening.”

So what can public speakers do to survive in 2010 and beyond if the old model of public speaking is dead? Here are three tips that will help you.

1) Understand that the new rules apply to every speaker. We’re no longer living in a world when speakers could just present their message, collect a high fee and go home. Since the meetings that require a speaker have been reduced, we all need to have a different approach.

However the audiences who are used to attending meetings and conventions are still hungry for information on your area of expertise. They want to access your specific knowledge and are seeking content from you – so give it to them. What this means in short is that you need to think like a publisher or content provider, not just a speaker.

2) Try to find out what audience members loved about your presentation. Was it the information itself? Was it your unique view on your topic? When you understand that, you can attract those who get excited about your topic and build relationships with them.

Because of the Internet, you audience is not limited to those who would or could travel to the convention or meeting where you were presenting your information. Access to your work is now available to people all over the world with the only barrier being that persons access to the Internet. If your material fills a need your content can be distributed everywhere on earth.

Provide content for your users in multi-media formats for them to consume. When you offer your information in video, audio and text based formats you meet the needs of everyone and do it in a way that allows them access in the learning style which they most prefer.

It’s become quite common to take a presentation that was originally recorded in video that later becomes available as audio CDs, transcribed into a book, converted and distributed as articles or even blog posts. While repurposing your video may seem difficult and require a lot of work its very easy and quite profitable to do.

Where perhaps you once needed many many thousands of people to hear you speak to make a nice living, what if you only built relationships with 1000 who each were so passionate about your work that they’d be happy to invest $100 per month each to learn your information? Once you do the math, you’ll quickly conclude that mourning the death of public speaking makes no sense at all.

For a limited time, public speaking expert, Scott A Dennison is offering free Public Speaking Tips and a free copy of his Public Speaking (*as you know it) IS DEAD report Visit the Uber Article Directory to get a totally unique version of this article for reprint.

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