Guest Blog - How to do your own PR- for free - Noisette Marketing

Note: Noisette Marketing is a London-based Marketing and PR shop for Etsians and other small creative businesses. Isa, the founder of Noisette, has over ten years of experience doing Public Relations, Design, Promotions, and Marketing. She has worked in some of London's top ad agencies. I stumbled across Isa's blog, when I first started out on Etsy. Isa is one of my role models - not only a crafter, an advertiser, and a consultant, she's a new mom! I'm grateful she found time to guest blog for Zula May. - Laura

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PR for small businesses generally involves getting the word out about what you do. You generally don’t need to spend money on PR as it is all about providing a story for people to write about. Hopefully your story will inspire them to write about you, and then before you know it you’ll be featured in all the best blogs, magazines and newspapers resulting in more sales.

What’s your story?

In order to entice the media to write about you, they will expect a great story that their readers will resonate with. Think about why these people should write about you. What is it that makes your business different?

Cultivate your media list

Once you know your story you can start to cultivate your own personal media list. Your media list will contain contact details of all the blogs, newspapers, magazines and radio stations that you wish to contact about your business.

Submit- the right way

Depending on who you are pitching to you will have to follow their submission guidelines. Most blogs now have submission information on their site and newspapers and magazines will also have the relevant information available so you need to follow their directions.

Monitor response and evaluate

Keep track of who you submit to, replies and outcome. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t hear back immediately. Editors are busy people and won’t always be able to reply straight away. Instead focus on cultivating that list. You should always be adding to it and thinking of new places that may be interested in featuring your story.

It can take time to see results from your PR efforts and it is something that needs to be sustained over a period of time to get the best results.

Good Luck!