Author: Ian Betteridge
Date: 27/01/2010
Every small business could benefit from a little PR - but how do you find the right media targets?
You probably know who they are already. The people in your industry who are constantly in the newspapers, always mentioned in blog posts, and even end up on TV or radio. They are the PR magnets - capable of attracting attention at the drop of a Twitter.
How do they do it? And, more importantly, how do they avoid the kind of PR mishaps that everyone else seems to wander into occasionally?
Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases, has written an excellent post which gives his seven secrets of highly effective PR magnets, which is well worth reading if you want to do better PR for your company. One of his suggestions is to ensure that you "know the media" - "understand who the major media players are, what type of stories their target audience likes, and where the conversations are happening."
However, it can be hard to work out exactly what media you should be talking to, especially online. So how can you find the most popular sites which address your market?
Google's advertising search tools can be a very good first place to start. Build a list of the kinds of keywords that your existing or potential customers are likely to be searching for. You might be able to get a head start on this by looking at the keywords which people are already finding your site on, with a site analytics tools like Google Analytics.
Next, go to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and enter some of your list. Find the most popular associated keywords, until you have a list of around ten highly popular searches related to your business.
Now, on Google's main search page, start doing searches based on your list of keywords. Look at the sites which come on the first couple of pages, and if there are any media sites on there, write them down. These are popular, highly-ranked content sites related to your business - and they should be top of your list of targets for PR.