Using Press Releases to be a Trusted Expert

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In my previous posts in the Trusted Expert series (Starts Here), I’ve mentioned the importance of press releases and how they can help you become a Trusted Expert. Well, today I’m going to talk about them some more. That’s how important press releases are to you and your business. If you haven’t been taking advantage of them yet, you need to start. Now.

press_release_11 Press releases have a two-fold purpose: they give you the opportunity to reach your buyers directly with news about you and your business, and they are fantastic for improving your standing wit h the search engines.

The first thing you need to do is add a press release/latest news page to your website. This will be where you put all the press releases after you send them out. Not only does it give your customers a chance to find all the latest information about your company, but it also indexes like mad and the search engines love it. Just make sure that you keep updating it regularly – it won’t look good if the ‘latest news’ on your website is more than six months old.

A lot of people don’t send out press releases because they don’t think they have anything to write about. Here are some easy ideas that anyone can use to base their press releases on:

You’ve added a new product to your site
You’re speaking at an industry related conference
You’re sponsoring something or donating something
You’ve written some Trusted Expert content
You’ve found a new use for your product
You’re targeting a new segment.

Once you know what to write about, you need to start thinking about how you’re going to write your press release. When press releases were only written for the traditional press, all you had to worry about was making it interesting enough to be featured. Now you still have to try to please the news outlets, but you also need to make sure that your press release resonates with your buyer personas. One of the best ways to do this by including a special offer that appeals specifically to your personas and will compel them to take action, whether that’s going to your site, signing up for a newsletter, or buying a product.

So, to recap, here’s what you need to do to get started using press releases to make you a Trusted Expert:

Add a press release/latest news page to your website.
Come up with a list of reasons to write a press release.
Figure out what offer you’re going to use to compel your buyers to take action.

In the next post in the series, we’ll go over the more technical details of an online press release, like keyword targeting and density, optimizing the press release for search, and the social media release.

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