Public Relations in Salt Lake City, Online PR, PR For Small Business

Something that will help you and your business out with getting better news coverage is making sure that your press release or news information is timely.

Valentine’s day is on our heels, for example, news outlets are looking for timely tie-ins to this holiday. If you are a love poet or a relationship expert this is your season. But if you are not an obvious pick, even better. You can take what you do and start to think of a creative tie-in. Maybe you are a minister and decide to mass marry people in the park on this day or you sell real estate and just so happen to have a system or bullet points on how to find the right house for lovers. Think about what you can do that relates to this season or to something happening in the news right now. Maybe you wrote a book, or are working on a book that has something to do with our current political situation, or you blog about the weather and we’ve just had a major snowstorm. Whatever you do, tie it in to something current. Make it timely and you are more likely to get on the show of your choice.

Great news. I don’t promote this enough on here, but I want to spend some time talking about the great coverage Big Star is able to get for our clients. This morning one of my fav clients, Master Lu’s Health Center, was featured on KUTV 2 for a story on Chinese medicine.

http://www.kutv.com/content/morning/story/Tuesday-January-27-2009/sXdMBLpAzU6qGzHTmiUPug.cspx

Here’s a great insider not-so-secret tip to getting a higher rank for your website on Google: Get your most popular friends to link to you! Better yet, get other quality websites to make a hyperlink with your name, product or service in it. Yep, that’s the amazing secret.

Right off the hot pages of Google’s webmaster:

“In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.”

You shouldn’t be paying for something that is as simple as searching for it on the pages of Google. What you should be paying for is a smart person with a lot of good connections who can get your site linked on other good, quality sites. However, this tends to take A LOT of time to do. You basically pay for their great connections and time to do that for you.

Don’t pay for someone who says they “know how to do it”. Any Joe can figure that out within a 5 minute search. Pay for expert work. It’s well worth every dollar to have your site one of the first to come up when someone wants to find what you sell online.

Hmmm, there’s an Obama look-a-like in Indonesia http://tinyurl.com/7hc64a

Big Star would like to take this moment to recognize this historical day of great change in our country. No matter what your political beliefs, today Barak Obama, a man who comes from a father who felt the African sun and a woman who knew the great plains of the Midwest became the 44th President of the United States of America.

Much hope rests on him as our new figure head and leader. And there is much for him to attempt to change while in office. Here is this man full of enthusiasm and energy with the motto “Yes, we can!”. No matter the troubles that seem insurmountable before us at this time in our history, this man has done what some thought would be impossible. He said “Yes, I can!”

Those before him have felt that someday this change would come, and
he, a black man who’s parents abandoned him, and who faced those who told him he would never see this day, did it. Yes, he did. With that same hope and faith in a brighter tomorrow, things can get better for us as a nation as well. We can turn our economic situations around, we can keep going, we can become better as a people and make that change that seems impossible now. But he did it and so can we. Yes, yes, we can!

Sincerely,
Sarah Buhr
Owner / Consultant
Big Star PR
801-864-1830

This article seems to think so. But it just ain’t so. Twitter is definitely gaining a large presence for news dissemination, it misses a lot of key information. Google is still (and will most likely remain) a robust tool for tracking more in-depth details. The two are actually a perfect fit. News travels first from Twitter, Google tracks it as we search for more.

This is a note I received from Google today:

Hi Sarah,

Thank you for your note. We’ve reviewed your site and will be adding it to our index for Google News.

Regards,
The Google News Team

Many a journalist will type in Utah and click on the Google News tab to find story ideas. However, individuals cannot submit that news to Google News directly. I am very happy to be able to now supply this online news source for those who use my services.

To submit your release go to Utah News Source

I’d like to announce the advent of a fully functional Utah News Source. This has been a long time coming, but it is finally here! I am so happy to be able to offer this local news wire service to my followers and clients.

Why did I do this? A lot of you out there are start ups on a budget. You don’t have thousands to spend on an ad campaign or PR stunt. But you do have news to share.

Bigger wires like Business Wire or PR Web also cost in the hundreds to thousands of dollars. But many of you are local. It doesn’t make sense to send your news to CNN. This is a low-cost solution to someone with news that fits the local market.

Utah News Source also helps PR agencies on a budget by controlling their overhead costs. You simply fill out the form, submit your press release and viola! You are well on your way to getting a call asking if you could come on the 5 o’clock news.

Check it out, tell your friends, spread the word on this exciting new wire service tailored specifically for the Utah market!

www.utahnewssource.com

Sincerely,
Sarah Buhr
Owner / Consultant
Big Star PR
801-864-1830

Other easy ways to find me on the web:

http://www.utahnewssource.com
http://www.twitter.com/sarahbuhr
http://www.twitter.com/utahnewssource
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahjanebuhr

From Techcrunch:

Top Social Media Sites (ranked by unique worldwide visitors November, 2008; comScore)

1. Blogger (222 million)
2. Facebook (200 million)
3. MySpace (126 million)
4. Wordpress (114 million)
5. Windows Live Spaces (87 million)
6. Yahoo Geocities (69 million)
7. Flickr (64 million)
8. hi5 (58 million)
9. Orkut (46 million)
10. Six Apart (46 million)
11. Baidu Space (40 million)
12. Friendster (31 million)
13. 56.com (29 million)
14. Webs.com (24 million)
15. Bebo (24 million)
16. Scribd (23 million)
17. Lycos Tripod (23 million)
18. Tagged (22 million)
19. imeem (22 million)
20. Netlog (21 million)