Learn How to Write an Effective Press Release in 4 Steps

Press releases provide an additional solution for building backlinks, increasing online exposure, and gaining web traffic.

Though, if your press release doesn’t deliver the right message, it won’t be effective. A press release isn’t the same as a blog post or sales page. You need to pay attention to a few important details.

Here’s some advice on how to write a killer press release in just 4 steps.

Choose the right topic for your press release

You need to choose the topic before you start writing. The topic needs to have a newsworthy angle. This means that the topic should be relevant and current.

Examples of common press release topics include:

• New store opening
• New business launch
• New product or software release
• Major update or development

Always ask yourself if the topic is something that you’d read about in a newspaper or in a blog. Searching for press releases will provide examples to give you a better sense of common topics and writing style.

Introduce the newsworthy information

Write two to three paragraphs discussing the topic of your press release. Don’t worry about an introduction. Just jump right in and start writing about the details of the news release.

Remember to write in the third-person (he, she, her, him, they, and them).

These paragraphs are the main body of your press release. This discusses the newsworthy topic in a straightforward manner.

Don’t use any hype. Stick to the facts.

You need to address the following details with your press release:

• Who will be interested in this topic or who is it about?
• What is the subject of the press release?
• Where can people find more information?
• When will this event or product release occur?
• How does this benefit the reader?

Answering these questions will help you stay on track. You have limited space.

The press release will typically be between 300 and 700 words. This doesn’t provide an endless word count to go into great detail.

Write the Introduction and Conclusion

After you’ve written the main body of the press release, you can write the introduction and conclusion. The intro paragraph should summarize the body in several lines. It introduces the topic and your business or personal brand.

The conclusion offers a short bio for your business or brand. You can discuss your area of expertise and provide some background information.

At the end of the conclusion, you’ll typically have a spot to provide contact information, such as your email address, web URL, and phone number.

Create an attention-grabbing headline

The headline should be the last thing that you write. You’ve already written the body of your press release, so you already know the exact message or story that you’re promoting.

Summarise the main message of your press release in a single sentence. Press release headlines are often longer than a typical blog headline. Make sure that it fully explains the topic.

You may also have the option to include a sub-headline. The sub-headline should provide further information about the topic of your press release.

It’s an extension of the headline. Don’t repeat what you’ve already stated in the headline.

Before submitting your press release for publication, make sure that you check it for spelling and grammar errors.

You should proof read it by reading each line aloud. This is the best way to catch errors and also to find ways to improve your content.

Writing an effective press release isn’t difficult. Take it one step at a time. If you’d like more internet marketing tips and suggestions, and a method for generating conversion-ready internet traffic, click here to learn about my done-for-you system.

Creating an Effective Social Media Posting Schedule

The frequency of your social media posts can directly impact the number of followers that you get and keep.

If you post too infrequently or frequently, you’ll lose followers. You’ll also have trouble getting people to take notice of your social media accounts. For this reason, you need to come up with a schedule.

A social media posting schedule takes into consideration the following factors:

• The best time of the day to post
• The best day of the week
• The topics you should post about
• The percentage of promotional content

Determine the Best Time of the Day and Best Day of the Week

The best time of the day to post will vary, depending on the social media platform that you use. Also, your target audience may have different internet preferences.

Don’t forget to take the time difference into consideration. 80% of the US population are in the Eastern or Central time zones. If you’re in California and want to target the largest audience, you’ll want to plan your posts based on EST time.

Engagement tends to peak at the following times during the weekdays:

• 9 AM EST – overall engagement
• 1 PM EST – most shares
• 3 PM EST – most clicks

Next, consider the best day of the week to post. Monday through Wednesday, people are less active on social media. The majority of the population is too busy getting into the work week.

By Thursday, people are looking forward to the weekend and are more likely to spend time browsing on social media.

User engagement peaks on the weekends. This goes against previous studies that showed higher engagement during the weekdays. But, trends change over time.

The bottom line is that you should post between Thursday and Sunday to increase engagement. You should also plan at least one post for 9 AM, and subsequent posts around 1 and 3 PM.

Find Topics That Your Target Audience Will Enjoy

Along with considering the time of the day and the days of the week to post, you need to consider the topics of your posts. Find topics that your target audience will enjoy.

The first place to start is with the platform that you’re using. Facebook makes it easy to share just about anything, but Instagram and Pinterest are more image-centric. This means that content with a compelling image included in the post will be more effective on these platforms.

The topics should also be related to your niche and provide real value to your readers. This could include:

• News
• Tips and tutorials
• Advice and suggestions

Essentially, it needs to contain beneficial information.

You can explore the most popular topics by performing searches through each social media platform. Each of these networks, including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, includes a search box.

Type a keyword into the search box and look at the top results. View the profiles of the original posters of the top posts. Look for posters that tend to share content related to your niche and see what topics receive the most likes, shares, and retweets.

Balance Your Promotional Content

Along with your schedule and topics, you need to balance the use of promotional content. It’s a perfectly acceptable business practice to use self-promotional posts on social media. But, if you use too many promotional posts, you’ll lose followers.

20% appears to be the median where engagement increases or decreases based on the frequency of promotional posts. This means you should plan one promotional post out of every five posts.

If you post once per day, this is one promotional post per week. If you post several times per day, you’ll share a promotional post every other day.

Start using a social media posting schedule to increase the effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts. Along with these suggestions, you can get more internet marketing tips and a system for generating more internet prospects by clicking here to learn about my done-for-you system.

4 Ways to Use Social Media to Obtain High-Converting Sales Leads

Being able to obtain high-converting leads is an essential part of online marketing. There are many tools at your disposal, but one of the most cost-effective tools is social media.

With the power of social media, you’ve got the ability to reach millions of internet users that are ready to buy.

You’ve probably already started using social media. But, with a few simple tips, you can leverage your existing tactics to gain more high-converting leads.

#1 Choose the Right Social Media Networks

The first way to gain better leads through social media is to streamline your efforts. You shouldn’t spread yourself out too thin. You don’t need to have an account on every single network.

Stick to the basics. Every online marketer needs a Facebook business account. In addition to this, you’ll probably want Twitter, along with one or two other networks.

When choosing your 3^rd and 4^th options, consider your target audience. For example, Pinterest contains a lot of content related to DIY projects, crafts, fashion, beauty, hobbies, and entertainment. Instagram is becoming more of a platform for driving brand awareness.

#2 Target Your Audience with Paid Ads

Social media paid ads have become just as beneficial as traditional pay-per-click advertising. You can get thousands of impressions or dozens of clicks for a fraction of the cost of Google PPC ads.

Whether you use paid ads on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, you’ll want to use targeted ads. All of these social media sites allow you to target your audience based on their interests or other criteria. This simple step helps boost conversions but limits your reach.

#3 Share More Video Content on Social Media

You should also start sharing more video content on social media. It’s known that video drives engagement, which results in higher conversion rates. So, use more video when sharing posts related to your products or services.

Posts and tweets containing videos are more likely to get noticed. They get more shares, clicks, and likes. You can now even use video in Instagram paid ads.

Creating a video to market a product is easy. You can create a short customer testimonial featuring satisfied customers. You could create a demonstration video highlighting the benefits of your product or services.

Use these videos to drive traffic to the relevant landing page. The higher engagement will lead to higher conversions.

#4 Use Keyword Research to Choose Your Tags

You should put the same care into choosing hashtags on your social media posts that you give to keyword research for blog posts and paid ads. Conduct keyword research to find the right terms and then choose 4 to 5 relevant keywords to use as your hashtags.

Place your hashtags at the end of your content, instead of using them as word replacements. This makes it easier to read your message.

The hashtags act as search filters when people use the search features on their favorite social media network. It also helps the social media network provide relevant suggestions to users. So, using the right hashtags can help you attract the right audience.

These tips are intended to help drive high-converting traffic from your social media accounts to your website. Make sure that you’re using these suggestions in conjunction with a social media marketing plan.

You should be posting a mixture of promotional and non-promotional messages to your followers on social media. If you do this and continue to use these tips, you should get a spike in referral traffic from social media.

Social media provides a great opportunity to gain more leads. If you’d like to gain even more marketing tips and suggestions, along with a complete solution for generating high-converting traffic, then click here to learn about my done-for-you system.

4 Tips to Dramatically Improve the Quality of Your Content

One of the biggest obstacles that every entrepreneur faces is generating fresh content. You can only go so far with paid ads and a strong social media presence. You also need to drive traffic to your website.

The best way to gain traffic, build backlinks, and increase your search rankings is to regularly publish new content to your site.

But, if you don’t have good content, you won’t get the traffic that you want.

For this reason, a lot of entrepreneurs rely on outsourced content. They pay writers to create articles. The problem with this is that it’s hard to find writers that can emulate your style and tone. It’s hard to get them to create content that perfectly matches your brand.

You don’t need to be a professional writer to create high-quality content for your site. Writing content for blogs, ads, web pages, and sales copy is a skill that you can develop.

With these 4 tips, you can learn how to dramatically improve the quality of your writing and drive reader engagement.

#1 Make a List of the Topics That You’ll Cover

Before you start writing your article, you should make a list of the main topics, tips, or ideas that you want to discuss. Use this list to create your subheaders.

This same rule applies whether you’re writing a blog post, website copy, a product review, or sales copy. For example, with sales copy, you’d make a list of the features that you want to discuss. These would then become individual paragraphs with their own subheader.

The subheaders break up the content and make it easier to read. This also helps you stay on track and remain focused on the initial purpose of your content.

#2 Present the Main Problem at the Beginning of Your Content

Always start your content with the main problem that you’re about to address. For example, at the beginning of this article, I mentioned that the biggest obstacle is generating fresh content. These tips help you learn how to overcome this problem by creating your own content.

Address the problem early, possibly identify a few pain points of your readers, and then mention how this article will help solve the problem.

That is the overall structure of your opening paragraphs. You’re getting the reader’s attention by identifying a problem and then you’re telling them how you’ll solve it.

#3 Use Short Paragraphs to Improve Readability

There are several factors that determine readability. First, you need to think about the structure of your content. As mentioned, including subheaders can help break up the content. Adding images and graphics can also help with this.

But, there are a few other ways to improve readability and they all have to do with your writing. You need to use short words, sentences, and paragraphs. Though, the paragraphs are the biggest concern.

Typically, you will want an average paragraph length of 2 to 3 sentences. Preferably, the sentence length should be less than 12 words. You can also replace long words with shorter synonyms.

Don’t make the mistake of over-explaining a topic. By using short paragraphs, you’ll find it easier to remain focused on the main points that you want to address.

#4 Don’t Edit Your Content Until You’re Done Writing

Hold off on editing your content until you’ve finished your initial draft. If you start editing as you write, you’ll find that it takes much longer to finish writing.

After you’ve finished writing, remember to proofread. Use the spell checker in your word processor and then read the entire content line by line. This will help you catch any grammatical errors that weren’t found by the spell checker.

You now have a few tips that can help you generate better content. It’s not difficult, but it will require practice. Along with these suggestions, you can get even more powerful internet marketing tips, and a solution for gaining conversion-ready prospects each month, by clicking here to learn about my done-for-you system.

How to Use Podcasts in Your Online Marketing Strategy

Despite the increase in video streaming, podcasts remain a popular medium. This means that you should consider using podcasts in your online marketing strategy. You can use them to repurpose old blog articles or to build relationships with influencers in your industry.

What is a podcast? Basically, it’s just an audio file. The delivery method can vary, based on your needs. For example, you can add podcasts to your website, link to them from relevant blog posts, or upload them to various podcast streaming services.

The use of podcasts helps with brand exposure and is a highly cost-effective way to increase your overall marketing strategy. Find out how to incorporate podcasts into your existing marketing efforts.

Invite Guests to Discuss Relevant Topics

The first example of using podcasts for marketing is to invite guests to talk about a topic relevant to your industry. This method is most effective when your guest is an influencer. This is someone that has a good reputation in your industry and a lot of followers.

By using podcasts to interview a guest, you can attract their audience to learn more about your brand. This also helps you build relationships with people that matter in your field. You’ve taken the first step toward building a relationship that could lead to further cross-marketing opportunities.

How do you record the interview? Typically, all you need to do is record a phone conversation. It’s just that simple. This is part of the reason that podcasts are so beneficial. They’re quick, easy, and affordable.

Repurpose Your Existing Blog Content

Another option is to repurpose your existing blog content. If you’ve got old posts that don’t attract any more visitors, you can convert the post into a podcast.

Use the blog article as the topic for your podcast. Don’t simply read the article word for word. Use it as a guide. This makes it easy to find topics for your podcasts and continue to release new podcasts on a regular basis.

Create Informative Content and Tutorials

You can also use podcasts to provide your audience with informative content. Podcasts should generally be kept to 15 minutes or less. This gives you plenty of time to offer tips and suggestions on a particular topic. This is the same as generating blog articles for your target audience.

You can even perform the reverse of the previous tip. You can easily convert your old podcasts into original blog articles. Transcribe your podcast and then edit it into an article for posting on your blog.

Continue to Release New Podcasts

As with any marketing strategy, consistency is key. You’ll want to create a schedule for releasing new podcasts. This helps you gain a loyal following. During your first couple of months of posting podcasts, you should try to publish new podcasts several times per week.

The podcast also requires many of the same SEO strategies as other content. This includes catchy titles and descriptions. This is how you get people to discover your podcasts on podcast directories.

You can also share your podcasts on social media and promote them to your email subscribers. Basically, it’s one more marketing channel for you to use to gain new followers.

Podcasts shouldn’t be overlooked as a marketing channel. One recent survey found that over 46 million Americans listen to podcasts each month. Don’t miss out on this chance to gain new followers or potential customers.

Incorporate podcasts into your existing marketing strategy. If you’d like to have access to even more powerful marketing solutions, along with a method for generating conversion-ready internet marketing prospects, all you need to do is click here to learn about my done-for-you system.

5 Ways to Find Content to Share on Social Media

If you want to succeed with internet marketing, you need to make the most of the social media landscape. This means attracting more followers with the help of shared content.

Curated content, or found content, should comprise the majority of your social media posts. The profiles that only put out promotional posts never gain traction.

At the same time, you should try to post at least once per day, during the weekdays. This means that you need at least 5 posts per week. It can be hard to find enough relevant content to keep up this schedule, especially if you choose to post several times per day.

But, there are ways to find content and simplify this process.

#1 Search for Content on Twitter

The first place to look for content is Twitter. Simply scrolling through your Twitter feed and seeing what people have shared recently could give you a few ideas. You might find at least one article that you could share with your followers.

When you do find an article worth sharing, visit the actual article and retweet the initial tweet. Then, share the article with your other social media profiles, such as Facebook or Instagram.

#2 Personalize Your News Feed

The next solution for finding content is to personalize your news feed. Google and other news aggregators make it easy to add categories for specific terms. You can include a category for your niche market.

For example, if you’re involved in internet marketing, you can add an “internet marketing” category in your news feed. The news aggregator should then grab the latest news headlines related to internet marketing each day.

#3 Search a Sub-Reddit for Content

Reddit is a great source of content. There is a subreddit for everything. Find the subreddit related to your niche and scroll through the latest entries.

#4 Check Facebook for Content

Of course, Facebook is also a good place to look for content. It’s the most used social media network, with over a billion users.

Look for unconventional sources of news and content. Don’t rely on the businesses and brands that you follow. There’s a good chance that some of your followers will follow these same accounts. You don’t want to just repeat the same content to the same people.

You can use the search feature on Facebook to browse niche categories. If possible, look for content hosted on a website, instead of an individual Facebook post. Then, visit the link and share the article from the original source.

#5 Use Buzzsumo to Search for Trending Topics

The final solution for finding content is to use Buzzsumo. You can test it out for free, but it requires a monthly fee after 14 days. Though, you’ll have quick access to the most shared content related to any topic.

All you need to do is enter a keyword or topic in the search bar. Buzzsumo will present you with a list of search results. They are listed in order of total shares. But, you can adjust the search criteria to fit your needs. You can limit the results to posts within the past day, past month, or longer.

The bottom line is that you need content to share with your followers. You can’t just rely on your own content unless you have the time or money to generate new content on a daily basis. Use these solutions to quickly find content and stick to your social media posting schedule.

Make social media a priority, if you want to grow your sales potential. For even more marketing tips to help you succeed, along with a proven system for generating conversion-ready traffic each month, click here to learn about my done-for-you system.