If you're willing to court media, develop relationships and do whatever you can to make their lives easier, rewards can be huge.

4. Do I have newsworthy events happening at my business? (Newsworthy is something media personnel feel would interest their readers.) Or, if I don't, can I create them?

I'm not talking about making things up here. But there are things you can be doing to make your business more newsworthy. For example, you can do a survey and publish results. You can tie a feature of your product or service to something that's currently happening in news. You can hold an event. You can research a newly published study that relates to your product or service. There are countless ways you can transform aspects of your business into newsworthy story items -- creativity exercise below can help you come up with your ideas.

5. Do I want to build my credibility? Develop my status as an expert? Then get that PR campaign off ground. Nothing builds your credibility or expert status faster than having other people say you know what you're talking about.

6. Do I want to augment my other marketing efforts? Public relations definitely plays nicely with other marketing methods. You can be building your long-term expert campaign with PR and building short-term customers with advertising. Or you can turn your community relations strategies into PR campaigns. It's a great way to get most bang out of your marketing time and dollar.

Creativity Exercise -- How can you use PR in your business?

Grab some sheets of paper and pen (I like fun gel pens myself) and get ready for some brainstorming.

Start by listing everything you do or sell. Then write out all features or descriptions of your products or services. For instance, if you have a book, what is your book about? What does it offer people?

Now see if you can turn those features into something newsworthy. Is there a time of year when people are interested in your services? (Accounting and tax season). Are there any studies you can dig up? Is there something in news that ties into your product? Can you turn an aspect of your business into a human interest story? (Something like fitness tips for busy people or parenting tips for single parents, etc.) Write everything down that comes into your head, even if it's silly. See if you can come up with 50 story ideas.

Now look at what you wrote. Can you find a few in there that you think would interest media? Congratulations -- you just came up with a PR campaign.

Cross promote your product with other businesses' products in a package deal (joint venture). Include an ad or flyer for other products you sell and have other businesses selling for you.

When shipping out or delivering your product, include a coupon for other related products you sell in package, persuading them to buy more products from you.

Send your customers a catalogue of add-on products for original product they purchased. This could be upgrades, special services, attachments, etc. If they enjoy your product and find it useful they will buy extra add-ons.

Sell gift certificates for your products. You'll make sales from purchase of gift certificate, when recipient cashes it in. They could also buy other items from your web site.

Send your customers free products with their product package. The freebies should have your ad printed on them. It could be bumper stickers, ball caps, t-shirts etc. This will allow other people to see your ad and order.

The author Mike Linley was becoming seriously disillusioned with the standard JOB (Just Over Broke) and turned to the Internet to replace dependency on trading hours for money, eventually stumbling on a genuine opportunity that rewards hard work;

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