Business: Seven Steps to Getting Known - Guerrilla Public Relations for the Entrepreneur

Seven Steps to Getting Known - Guerrilla Public Relations for the Entrepreneur

Written by Jill Lublin

So you’ve started your own business and you’re ready to let repparttar

world (or your neighborhood)

know. Now it’s time to add public relations to repparttar 106684 list of your entrepreneurial skills.

Public relations is human relations and a critical aspect of growing your business. Everything

you say and do is part of your PR campaign. It is repparttar 106685 image you project every day to everyone

you meet. It is about you and your company becoming a force in repparttar 106686 public eye on a regular

basis PR that you undertake yourself can be a primary way to grow your business and become

known without major expense.

There are seven basic steps involved in mounting your campaign.

Step #1 involves figuring out who you are, what you do and how to express it in repparttar 106687 most

succinct and interesting way possible. There may situations such as networking functions

where you have only 30 seconds to introduce yourself and make that all important first

impression. Spend as much time as necessary practicing your "intro" until it truly flows in a

positive, strong, and confident manner. Remember that success begets success and great first

impressions will speak volumes about you and your business.

Now that you have developed repparttar 106688 most effective message possible, Step #2 is to determine your

ooh-ahh factor, repparttar 106689 “story” about you. It’s important to understand why you are news from repparttar 106690

media's perspective and how your products help people or your service gives value and benefit.

Once you know your “ooh-ahh” factor, you can begin to create materials, which will tailor your story to repparttar 106691 specific media, whose attention you wish to gain. And this leads to Step # 3 which is to define your audience and create a media list. Your list will,

of course, be determined by repparttar 106692 nature of your product or service, whether you are a local, national or international company and on which markets you are focusing your growth. If you are a “local” trying to build a business in your community, then you will focus on local media. On repparttar 106693 other hand, if you are pursuing national growth, you will want to check out major newspapers such as repparttar 106694 Wall Street Journal, entrepreneurial publications such as Fortune or Inc., or gender specific magazines such as Good Housekeeping or Men’s Health. There are sources for purchasing media lists such as Bacon’s in Chicago or repparttar 106695 United Way. It’s important to familiarize yourself with all repparttar 106696 media you contact and to make preliminary phone calls to get repparttar 106697 appropriate name for directing your release or media kit. Do an update at least every three months. At Step #4 it is time to put together a press release a simple 3-4-paragraph one-page document that tells your story clearly. It must be unique to grab media attention FAST. The first paragraph must contain repparttar 106698 “catch” phrase to grab them quickly. It should contain repparttar 106699 who, what, when, where, why, and how of your story and begin with repparttar 106700 city and state of origination. Techniques for grabbing attention include giving a statistic that shows that their audience needs this information, which makes it relevant to current events or business news. The second paragraph might consist of a quick biography or additional information and repparttar 106701 third should contain a quote from repparttar 106702 highest source you can find. Sometimes repparttar 106703 press will only use repparttar 106704 first paragraph so it must contain all repparttar 106705 relevant information.

Don’t Set New Year’s Resolutions – Take Action in The New Year

Written by Wendy Hearn

It’s that time of year again when we start talking and thinking about New Year's Resolutions even though they’re old hat and we instinctively know they don’t work. Because your friends, family and colleagues may chat about what Resolutions they’re going to make, do you find yourself wondering whether to make any? We know that within a few days or weeks, repparttar

Resolutions will be forgotten, nothing will have changed and yet for some reason most people still worry about them. So why do we still bother with New Year’s Resolutions? First, they're a custom and a New Year ushers in a new start, so what better time than now? There's even a small chance that we may stick to our Resolutions this year, so we have a go. The main reason some people think about New Year’s Resolutions is because they want to change things in their life.

There’s repparttar 106683 usual New Year’s Resolutions, such as I want to lose weight, change jobs, or earn more money but they tend to be repparttar 106684 same ones you’ve had for years and they’re still incomplete. These types of Resolutions are too vague. It’s this vagueness, coupled with a lack of action which means that most people don’t achieve their New Year’s Resolutions. For Resolutions to work, they need to be well thought out and have real meaning. If not, they become a vague item on your “wish list” instead of actually doing something concrete about them.

The word resolution comes from ‘resolve’ and means to make up one’s mind or decide firmly. Prior to New Years Day you may think of Resolutions you want to make and probably feel you’ve made up your mind, but what happens? Probably, very little or even nothing at all. Even though you know that Resolutions don’t usually work, it seems that most us still want to make them. Perhaps that’s because other people around you do it, so you feel you should follow suit because there are things in your life which you want to be different. The end of a year is a time for clearing out and completing things, to leave us with a clean slate ready to start a new year. There's something about a new year, a new beginning, and a fresh start which encourages us to make New Year's Resolutions. It’s a powerful feeling to know you have a year ahead of you and you can choose what you do with it. It’s a time for reflection about where you want to go next.

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