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EXCLUSIVE DIGITAL MARKETING SERIES: MARKETING WITH ARTICLES AND PRESS RELEASES | November 22, 2011 (0 comments)
The ninth installment of The Centurion's exclusive digital marketing series examines a blend of old and new technology: writing articles to establish yourself as an expert, and sending electronic press releases to the media.
Las Vegas, NV--Up to this point in our series we have talked mainly about social media and its use to ‘engage’ your audience. Those are all very powerful ways to increase your awareness and build your brand with potential customers and those two-way communication techniques are critical to long-term success. The next few items that we will cover (article marketing, press release marketing, and video and image marketing) are one-way communication items that help you cast a much wider net out into the Internet to capture the audience and draw them to your website.
The idea behind all of these techniques is to post large amounts of content to highly trafficked, high-page-rank websites throughout the Internet. By providing this content to these sites, there is a very good chance that Google will index your information and start to provide it as part of its search results. The more content, the more appearances in search results. The more appearances, the more click-throughs, and more traffic to your site.
Article Marketing. In article marketing, you will post articles about your industry to Internet sites that are built for this purpose, such as ArticlesBase.com or eZineArticles.com. These articles typically have to be at least 400 words (don’t worry, that’s only 2/3 of a page!) and should provide some helpful or informative content. They cannot be advertorials or blatant advertisements for your company. The concept behind article marketing is that you will be perceived as the ‘expert’ in your field and people will want to visit your site knowing that they are coming to an experienced jeweler.
You probably can write an article in about 10 minutes. Pick a subject in your store and see if you can come up with a “The top 5 reasons to____” list about it, or something similar. This is your first article. Then, create a full individual article for each of the bullet points. Now you have six articles. See? Easier than you thought, isn’t it?
If you truly don’t feel confident writing, have others write the article for you. Run a contest in your store for your employees and tell them you want them each to write four articles that talk about things a customer would want to know. Offer a $50 gift certificate for the best article. Four employees writing four articles each is 16 articles for $50. If you wish, you also can hire a freelance editor to ensure that all the articles are grammatically correct and consistent in style. For someone local, try Craigslist or even tap a grammar teacher who might want to pick up some extra cash, or you can look up “freelance editor” on Google. With email, there’s no need to stay local unless it’s your preference.
Or, you can use a writing service to write articles for you. Just Google “article writing services” or “freelance writers.” You can then have these articles posted to a variety of article sites with high page rank. (A note of caution: Spell-check is not a substitute for proofreading. Do use it to catch typos and misspelled words, but it won’t flag a correctly spelled word that’s been misused, such as “theirs” instead of “there’s.”)
Try to avoid using article sites that use a “no follow” attribute. “No follow” is a tag that can be added to the website’s code (HTML) to tell the search engines that, from an SEO point of view, the hyperlink adds no value to the target site’s rankings. These links can still add value to your efforts, because the links can still drive traffic to your site, but if you are going to take the time to post your articles you should try to get both the link and the SEO influence from the link.
Why would you want to post your articles to all of these sites? Most of these sites have higher page ranks than your site. If you can get articles posted to sites with a page rank (PR) of six or higher, you are now getting a link from a ‘more powerful’ site than yours with important anchor text (the keywords that are linked to your page) linked to your site. Be sure that your article links the term “engagement ring in New Jersey” if that is your target search term. Sometimes the article sites allow one or two links within the body of the article, but more commonly they only allow links in the ‘author profile’ that you set up on the site. So, you could have a profile/bio that states, “Joe Smith is a master jeweler in Freehold, NJ. If you are looking for an engagement ring in New Jersey, be sure to visit Joe.” The phrase will then be linked to your main page. Also, when linking, try to link to internal pages of your site (link directly to your ‘engagement ring’ page instead of just the main page).
Article marketing is as easy as ‘cut and paste’. Once you set up your account and your bio, you will just cut and paste the articles that you have created into the various sites. Start with the highest PR sites you can and work your way down. If your staff has extra time during the day, you can have them post, as well.
Since these sites are indexed quickly, your article soon will show up in the search engine’s database, which will likely get you ‘on the radar’ with Google much faster than posting only to your site. You also will want to post this article to your blog (which will then—if you have taken my advice in the previous installments—feed to your Facebook, Twitter and other social sites).
Press Release Marketing. Press release marketing is quite similar to article marketing; however, due to the nature of the press release being a ‘newsworthy’ event, press releases are quite often picked up and given more power and influence than an article. With press releases, you will follow the same basic rules as article marketing. The one key element is that press releases typically are reviewed by humans (as opposed to many article sites that take your submission without review), so you need to be sure your press release is actually newsworthy, not just a blatant advertisement.
Usually, business owners have problems coming up with ideas for press releases. They think they need a major event (i.e. grand opening) to do a press release. Not necessarily: think about smaller events. Have you hired a new employee? Partnered with a new vendor? Put a new line of jewelry in your store? Remodeled? Running an unusual promotion? Hit a new sales plateau? Any of these items can serve for a press release.
The second major issue that concerns business owners is a lack of understanding of how to create a press release. If you just brought on a new line of diamond rings, Google “press release new product” or “press release new line of merchandise” and you will find hundreds of press releases about someone launching a new product or new line of merchandise. Read over it and model your release on that one, just—obviously—change the pertinent information. Below is a standard format for press releases, whether product, person, or event.
This is a standard format for a press release regardless of news. It applies to both digital or non-digital media. Always include your company logo--digitally if it's an email--and make sure the contact details are easy to find. Your headline is the main subject of the release, for example, "Johnson's Jewelers Opens Second Store," and the sub-head tells a little more. For example, "First Luxury Jewelry Store on The City's East Side." Then put a dateline--when and where the action is taking place--followed by the pertinent details. Wrap up with a brief boilerplate about your business, i.e. "Johnson's Jewelers is a fourth-generation family-owned independent jeweler specializing in rare colored gemstones, vintage watches, and diamonds." Always end a press release with a series of hash marks (above), or --30--, or --ends--, to indicate that the information ends there and no pages are missing.
Remember that a press release will have more of a factual approach than the articles. As with articles, if you don’t have time to write press releases, you could have your staff write them or get an outside service.
Unlike most article marketing, press release sites typically have a number of paid upgrades you can choose. Some will permit photos or videos to be added and others will allow more links back to your site for a small fee. Then you will have options for press release distribution to a multitude of sites and distribution lists for front-page prominence. I wouldn’t advise using these paid services unless you have a defined plan of who you want to reach and why, and/or if you have something that is really spectacular that may drive national traffic to your site (for example if you have your own brand and Jo Lo just wore your necklace on the red carpet at the Grammys).
The key element to all these marketing techniques is to “think local”. Put yourself in your potential customer’s shoes and think about what terms they will use to search for an item in your store and link those terms to your site. Linking “diamond engagement rings in Freehold, NJ” will have much more benefit than linking “ABC Jewelers.” If someone already knows who you are, they will find you. You want to capture those new customers who don’t (yet) have a preferred jeweler.
Jeffrey W. Arnold is a business consultant for Focus Business Management Institute an industry leader in retail jewelry consulting. Arnold has helped increase the profitability of numerous companies, ranging from start-ups to multi-billion-dollar entities. He now conducts social media and Internet marketing seminars for retail jewelers and leads the marketing initiatives for Focus. For more information on Focus and how they help increase profitability for independent jewelers, visit www.FocusBMI.com