Until the last few years, the only real outlets for all those lovely articles and announcements you crank out have been the trade magazines and perhaps your company newsletter or magazine if you did one. Nowadays there are far more opportunities to get your content published, and you’re far less likely to be able to maintain a list of them. I suspect, however, that you’re not making the most of what’s out there, because – as with so much online publicity – it’s all a bit new and a bit too much like hard work.
If you use a PR company, award them ten points if they’ve ever managed to get your content placed in a blog, not because it’s hard to do, but because it shows they’re aware of what’s going on. Sure, Widgets International Magazine has a circulation of 25,000 and Jim’s Widget News Blog looks more like it’ll only have 250, but I tell you what: Jim’s Widget News Blog is going to be a lot cheaper and easier to get into, I bet the readers take it very seriously, and the link you’ll get back from it will be far more valuable in the search engines than the article on paper in Widgets International if you were to get it published there.
If you’re thinking: “Chris, we make large blue widgets, nobody’s going to be running a blog on that”, have you actually had a look? And it doesn’t have to be a blog about large blue widgets exclusively anyway – perhaps someone’s running a blog on equipment for hospitals, or clever British inventions, or …well, anything where your large blue widgets might prove relevant.
How do you find them? Start by having a read of 3 Creative Ideas to Use Google for Link Building Search on Search Engine Journal, which should get you thinking. Getting inbound links to your website is a vital task for marketing nowadays, and placing articles on other sites (with links back) is an approach you can take which uses the skills you’ve learned from the world of old media. If you aim to get, say, at least one good link a week to your website (and you should), then guest articles on blogs can go a long way towards reaching your target.