Three No-Cost PR Strategies for Small Businesses

Guest blogger, Stephanie Richards, M.A., is founder and Chief Newsmaker of The Write Way, LLC, an Atlanta-based P.R. firm.
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Small business owners are often short on time and money. But if you find yourself shorter on money than time, consider the following three no-cost public relations tactics that can boost your business. Here's the biz buzzz from Stephanie.

1) Speak
Just like small businesses across the country, many networking organizations, trade associations and chambers of commerce are also short on cash. Event budgets have taken a hit, which means that many of these organizations are looking for high-quality speakers who don’t charge speaking fees. Consider proposing a topic and offering yourself as a potential speaker. You may not get paid for your time, but speaking is often one of the best ways to establish your credibility and meet potential clients.

2) Write
If you possess solid writing skills, consider writing a by-lined article for a trade or business publication and submitting it to an editor. Many publications have laid-off a large percentage of their staff, leaving fewer journalists to develop content and generate ideas. This means that many editors are looking for ready-made, high quality by-lined articles by industry experts. Be sure to follow the publication’s writers’ guidelines, and remember to write like an objective journalist. This is not the time to write a biased, glowing review of your company. Instead, the content should provide readers with a resource or fill a need.

3) Pitch
It doesn’t cost anything but time to pick up the phone and call an editor and pitch a story idea. Many businesses don’t get coverage simply because they never reach out to the media.

However, there is a right way and a wrong way to contact the media. Imagine that you are an editor. You are at your desk, working tirelessly to meet a tight deadline and the phone rings. It is another PR professional or business owner, who didn’t do their homework, hasn’t read your publication and is pitching you a story that you covered last week. How likely are you going to be to write about them? Not likely.


Keep in mind that editors, executive producers and journalists are looking for objective stories that bring value to their readers and/or viewers. They are not interested in doing you a favor. Their goal is not to help your company gain exposure. That is the job of the advertising department. Instead, editors and journalists want to provide useful, valuable content that will help their audience solve a problem, make an improvement or fill a need, and you can help them do this by providing them with newsworthy content. This means no fluff and no marketing!

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The Write Way is an Atlanta-based public relations firm built around the concept that you have to be willing to go the extra mile to do things The Write Way, even when no one else does.

The Write way is also on twitter at http://twitter.com/thewriteway



Visit Stephanie's PR blog at Operation Media Exposure or look for her on LinkedIn.