By James Harvey Stout (deceased). This material is now in the public domain. The complete collection of Mr. Stout's writing is now at http://stout.mybravenet.com/public_html/h/ >

Jump to the following topics:

1. Suggestions for publicity on the internet.

Suggestions for publicity on the internet.

1. We can publicize our URL and email address in many ways.
   • Printed materials. Our business cards, stationery (for business and personal correspondence), checks (business and personal), printed ads (in magazines, newspapers, etc.), brochures, merchandise packaging, directories, catalogs, invoices, advertising specialties (i.e., coffee mugs, calendars), fax cover sheets, shipping labels, postcards, press releases, billboards, in-store signs, greeting cards, bags for store merchandise, newsletters, technical manuals for our products.
   • Electronic messages. Email, voice mail, answering machines, recorded "on-hold" messages.
   • Our website. The URL can be on every page of the website, because many people print out web pages to read them, or they send the pages to someone else. If our URL is on the page, people will know where the pages originated.
2. We can write articles for publications. Many publications are looking for fresh, free material. They are not interested in an article which is merely publicity for our business, but they might want an article which contains useful information for their readers (along with a short plug for our business).
   • Types of publications. They can be:
     • Printed publications (e.g., newspapers, magazines, trade journals, etc.).
     • Electronic publications (e.g., ezines, email discussion lists, web sites, etc.)
   • Our payment.
     • A link from the article to us -- our website, email address, or autoresponder, phone number, or another means of contact.
     • A brief paragraph at the end of the article, to tell about our products or services. Of course, this paragraph contains a link to us.
     • Name recognition and credibility. If our articles are good, we gain respect -- and customers.
   • Suggestions for the articles.
     • Don't send the same article to everyone. We don't like to find identical articles in different mailing lists, or on different websites. Some of us subscribe to many mailing lists regarding the same subject (e.g., internet commerce) so we will become weary of you if we are continually spammed with duplicate copies of your articles in these mailing lists.
     • Use "reciprocal articles." For example, a travel agency would write an article about travel for a luggage website, and the luggage manufacturer would write about luggage for the travel site.
     • We can write a column instead of a single article. This column will allow us to give our ideas (and our URL) to people on a regular basis.
     • We can develop a collection of our articles. If we display an assortment on our website, editors and webmasters can choose the articles that they want.
3. We can write press releases. This topic is covered in another chapter.
4. We can offer our products or services as prizes in contests. Some sites sponsor contests of their own, and some sites contain directories of sites which sponsor contests.
5. We can donate our product or service to the site of a nonprofit organization. In exchange, we can request a link.
6. We can join online organizations. Business associations allow us to network, just as they do in the non-digital world.
7. We can have special events at our site. For example, we can invite a well-known guest to participate in a chat at the site. Special events can be announced in newsgroups, mailing lists, press releases, and at websites which serve as calendars of daily internet activities (e.g., http://events.yahoo.com).
8. We can send email to website owners. Even when the website doesn't have a guestbook, or a blatant solicitation for comments, we can write an email to the website owner, to offer a pleasant remark or a compliment regarding the site. Our email (which has our sig at the bottom) might result in a new friend and a new customer.
9. We can send email for special occasions. For example, we can write to customers and strangers, to express congratulations, gratitude, holiday greetings, appreciation for a well-written message in an email discussion list, etc. However, our message must be sincere; a few months ago, I received a brief "I agree" email from someone after I posted a message to a discussion list -- but the message was shorter than the sig file so I suspected that the purpose of the email was simply to spam me with the sig.
10. We can get a listing in a "free stuff" web page. On our website, we advertise our products or services -- but we also have free material: our interesting reports, our comprehensive link directory, our free samples, etc. The freebies can be listed in "free stuff" web pages, and in other venues which do not accept advertising.
11. We can encourage "word of mouth" publicity. On our site, we can explicitly ask people to recommend our products or services to their friends. We can even provide a pre-written email which the people can send from our site to those friends. Some companies will store our form letters on their system; then, when our visitors want to recommend our site, they click on a button, and add their own remarks to the form letter, and type the recipient's email into a box, to send the recommendation. Those companies include:
    • Recommend-It.
    • Bravenet Web Services.  
    • Xavier's Site Referrer.  
12. We can put our URL into public view on other people's websites. The opportunities include guestbooks, discussion boards, chats, etc. Again, sincerity counts; we need to offer a genuine compliment regarding a specific part of the website, so that the webmaster (and the visitors who will read our comment) will know that we have actually looked at the website and we didn't come here simply to promote our business. After we show some true interest in the website, we can invite the people to visit our website because we have similar material.
13. Announcement sites. "What's New" sites allow us to tell people about our new website.