5 PR Hacks To Get Better Publicity for Your Business

Marketing your business can be hard work. When you’re not working in your business, you should be working on it, which means doing all things needed to make it tick along nicely and earn you a sustainable profit.

So in the interests of helping out fellow business owners who put their PR activity to the bottom of a very long to do list, I thought I might share some of my favourite PR hacks with you. These are a combination of tools websites and services I use to market client businesses, as well as my own, and I hope you pick up something that makes your life easier.

1. Social media – I’ve written extensively about using social media to promote your business here, here and here, to pick a few posts, because social media should always be part of your PR strategy. You don’t need to be across all platforms, in fact I actively dissuade clients from that approach, but picking two where your customers are and where you feel happy to share updates on a regular basis is enough.

2. Use great images – were not all talented photographers (lucky you if you are!) so how do you source images for your website/blog/social media/newsletters/marketing collateral? Many take the chance and pick images they like from the Internet without considering copyright restrictions. Why do this when there are websites like Unsplash where you can source beautiful, high quality images for free? Using powerful images will make a huge difference to your publicity efforts.

3. Media release distribution websites – I’ve been using these websites to increase my client’s online reach for years. These sites distribute media releases by industry sector and key topics to journalists, bloggers and businesses in their database. There are paid and free options, with some specialising in Australian content and others sticking to one industry like IT or fashion. My favourites are PR Wire, Newswire and PR Newswire.

4. Collaboration – whether you’re considering inviting bloggers with complementary audiences to guest post on your blog (or you’re looking for guest post opportunities), toying with the idea of running a business event in your region or running a competition for your newsletter subscribers, the more partners you can get on board the better for your business. You instantly increase your promotional opportunities as your collaborators will help spread the word by telling their networks, which in turn leads to increased business, and you will probably lessen the workload because others will be helping. And on the topic of helping, unless you’ve done this before you have no idea how powerful asking for help really is. People want to help; you just need to direct them in how best to do it.

5. SourceBottle – I know I talk about this introduction agency for journalists and business owners/PR professionals a lot, but it’s because everyone who is marketing their business should be on the SourceBottle mailing list! It’s free, easy to set up a profile and you’ll receive journalist requests on your specified topics twice a day.

Now I’ve let you in on some of my favourite promotional hacks, I’d love it if you could add your own hacks in the comments. What tools do you use to make marketing your business easier?