The power of a National Press Release with Mickie Kennedy

What would you say if I told you it's easier for smaller businesses and entrepreneurs to get media attention than it is for large companies??

Well, if you don’t want to take my word for it, then maybe you’ll take the word of Mickie Kennedy. Mickie is the Founder of?eReleases, which he launched 22 years ago after he realized that small businesses desperately need a press release service they could actually afford. Mickie created eReleases to give small businesses access to the media and to a national newswire – all with a personal touch.?

What is a Press Release and How It Fits in Your Business?

To put it simply, a press release is an announcement to the media.?

When it comes to press releases, so many of us focus on a milestone that we're coming up on like a new product or a book,?But according to Mickie, you can use press releases for more than one thing in a way that gets media attention every single time.

For example, consider doing a survey or study of your industry. Those always result in 6 to 14 articles that are written about you. Not your press release on 14 websites, but actual articles that were written based on that press release and your findings. This might seem like a lot of work, but it really doesn't have to be. It's really just using a service like?Survey Monkey?or even some free Google forums, and putting together a few really intriguing questions that are relevant at the moment. And by putting together a survey and sending it out, then you can sort of publish the most intriguing results from the survey and you can actually turn it into two or three press releases, where you focus on different segments of the survey. You can send these to small and more independent trade shows to share with their members. And being the author of a survey, you're going to get mentioned every time an article is produced, so make sure you have a page on your website where all your data is available. people will be linking to that and sharing that as well and this is really going to help your overall SEO as well as you just getting noticed in your industry.

Also, you can do an audit of your industry for blind spots. Look at what people talk about at trade shows, what's the “watercooler talk” that you never really see in print because those are often the right opportunities to discuss. And this worked for many of Mickie’s clients, even in industries that are just so non-newsworthy.

How Often You Should Do a Press Release

Mickie explains that one of the biggest trends he has seen is that the people that are the most active with their PR campaigns and they do a series of say six to eight releases, don’t generally see the best results. Also, press releases sort of feed off of each other where maybe the first three releases didn't do very much but the fourth one starts to get some interest, and then you can explore that with a fifth one that might be similar and you get more pickup as a result of that. And once you crack that code, it becomes a lot easier to feed your industry what they really seem to be wanting at that particular moment.

When it comes to small business owners and entrepreneurs, Mickie believes that a minimum is to do one press release every 3 months. Any longer than three months, you lose momentum, and also the media doesn't sort of remember as much. Every other month is something that a lot of small businesses should strive for. And if you feel like you can do it monthly that's great, but that might just be out of the realm for many small business owners and entrepreneurs that are just doing a lot of things at once. So, every other month is a really great goal to strive for.?

The Power of a Press Release

One of the things that happens when an article is written about you is there's the perception of an implied endorsement; that a specific news outlet covered you and that's a huge credibility indicator. A lot of Mickie’s customers shared that they didn't get as much traffic as they were expecting, but almost all of them bought it. So, instead of getting 10,000 visitors, they got 300 but they also got 240 sales, which is just phenomenal. This is not unusual.?

Mickie also had some clients that actually sent paid traffic to an article that was written about them because they realized that people buy off of those articles. That’s one of the great things about PR –?it isn't perceived as marketing, it isn't perceived as an ad and people are much more likely to engage and buy.?

If you’re interested in doing a press release, but don’t know where to start, Mickie suggests you take a look at their free Masterclass at?https://www.ereleases.com/plan/?that helps you do an audit of newsworthy ideas for your business. Also, feel free to check out their other resources at?https://www.ereleases.com/?as well as their?Facebook?and?Twitter.

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