Of course, maximising the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) of your website (if you have one) is a great way to start, and if you imagine your business as being in a field in the middle of nowhere, then SEO can help people find their way to your particular field. However, the problem with just using SEO is that your potential customers still need to be looking for you. Wouldn’t it be great if they could just find you and once they see your product or service, they’ll know that you are selling exactly what they wanted- even if they didn’t know it yet!

Public Relations, or PR, is a valuable marketing tool for your business. If you can get someone to bring people on a guided tour to your field, and your business, for free, why on Earth wouldn’t you?

At its simplest level, PR involves getting journalists at newspapers or magazines to write about whatever it is you are selling. Sound easy? After all, journalists need things to write about and all you are doing is trying to help them out, right?

Unfortunately, it is far from easy. Good press coverage can be worth its weight in gold, and journalists know this. One way to earn their favour is to ply them with copious amounts of wine/ piles of cupcakes in the hope that they remember you when they are doing a feature on your particular niche. Another way is to pay lots of money to a PR company who may have already built up a relationship with the relevant journalists, and so may be able to have the right word in the right ear at the right time. Or maybe not.

But if you don’t have the time, money or inclination to woo journalists, either directly or indirectly, what can you do? Well the first place to start is with a great press release.

Although journalists know the value of PR to you, they do still have a job to do, stories to write, features to flesh out. And that means that they do need good quality information from you. However, as you can imagine, journalists can receive loads of press releases every day/week/month, and the trick is to make yours stand out.

I write press releases for a living, and know the huge exposure that even the smallest businesses can get with the right press release. But not everyone can afford even my reasonable prices, especially when times are so tight people are cutting back on grocery shopping.

That’s why I wrote this short, easy to read, and even easier to implement guide to writing a press release for yourself, to try and help people on a very tight budget get hold of some of that valuable free PR. The full guide can be purchased from Amazon for just £2.01 – just search ‘press release’ in ebooks- it’s the top rated and most popular! If you are still not confident, then why not take avantage of our skill (and reasonable priciness) and ask us to help you out- it could be the best few £ you have even spent!

Happy Press Releasing!

Anyway, new year always brings renewed vigour and we are busy beavering away on some exciting (new) projects and will be announcing some exciting (ish) things soon. And watch out for a Flashy February…

And if you are looking for some fantastic copywriting work, if you send us a query quoting the secret codeword “Chocolate Cake”, you can get 20% off our standard prices until 31 January 2012. You can even tell your friends.

After four days of staring at a blank screen you come up with something that even you’re bored with. And if you find it boring, why on Earth would anyone else think it’s worth writing about, thereby denying you that gratis publicity in the process?

So here we have it, the Clarity Top 5 Tips for writing a press release to get you noticed…

1. Quality not Quantity

Journalists are busy people. They do not have time to read pages and pages of your life history, what your first dog’s name was, and how the idea came to you on holiday in the Algarve. Be short, sharp and to the point- no more than a page and a half of 1.5 spaced A4 (in an 11 or 12 point font!)

2. Hook ‘em

You need a snappy title and a great first paragraph that summarises your message- if you’re not interesting by four lines down, you probably aren’t going to be.

3. Tell a story

No one would buy newspapers or magazines if they were full of stories like “Small Business has new product” . Tell them a story- “do you wish you could xyz? Now Small Business can help you!” or even better, link in to a current news story- this type of press release is far more interesting for everybody!

4. Who are you talking to?

Tailor your release to your audience. If you are sending it to local papers, highlight the local elements; if your target is women’s magazines, make sure your release will appeal to their target demographic- Just 17 readers are not going to be interested in stairlifts, no matter how good the release!

5. Do it right

As you can see, writing a press release takes skill, flair and creativity, so our top tip is to get a professional to do it for you. Like claritycopywriting, say, who offer the most reasonably priced, but stellar quality releases starting at just £50. Come on, you knew the plug was coming…

Jump to our press releases page…

Now you may want to design your whole signature as an image (like mine, pictured) or you may just want to add an image, perhaps your logo, on to some carefully chosen words.

After much hair-tearing-out and head-bashing-on-desk I have worked out how to do it, and now I am going to share the secret with you all!

Before we start, I am going to assume you have your Hotmail (or Windows Live Mail) account open on a webpage, and that you have the picture/image/logo you would like to include. In the right size- i.e. the size you would like it to appear at on the bottom of your emails.

The crucial first step is to realise that you cannot use an image saved on your computer. You need to upload the image on to the web somewhere. If you have your own website you can upload it there, add it to a post on your blog, or just use an online image repository like flickr.com. Open a webpage with your image on it. And off we go.

Step by Step

• Click on your id in the top right hand corner of the Hotmail window, and select Options from the dropdown menu.
• On the next screen click on Mail in the left hand menu
• Click Personal e-mail signature under Writing email. This brings up a new screen with a blank ‘page’ for you to design your signature in. If you are doing a signature with some text in too, add your text now (it will be easier to position your image if the text is there first)
• Click over to the web page containing the image or just load the image itself using its URL.
• Highlight the image — just the image — with your mouse.
• Press Ctrl-C (Windows, Linux) or Command-C (Mac).
• Go back to Hotmail, position the cursor where you want to insert the image and press Ctrl-V (Windows, Linux) or Command-V (Mac).
• If you have already inserted some text, you are now done, and can click Save. However, if you have a full image signature, you need to add some text in order for the Hotmail system to save it. I used a line of __________ , but you could use ******* or ——– or anything you like. If you do NOT add text, the image will not be saved in your signature.
• Click Save.
• Do a dance because you now have a pretty email signature in Hotmail. Simples.

And I have now done it! It is not an integrated vcard, but it looks lovely (in my opinion). Hope you agree?

Now, I would like this blog, and our lovely shiny new facebook page (www.facebook.com.createclarity) to be useful, so I have a question for you- would you like me to show you how I did it? From creation to inclusion in hotmail signature? Let me know below, or on the clarity fanpage wall.

We are going to contine to add information and resources over the coming weeks, post examples here on the blog, and link to any special offers or great deals we think you might find useful.

We have also just booked our first advertisement under the new brand so look out for us in the MumpreneurUK minimag coming your way soon. Our January special offers finish, well, on 31 January, when the extremely reasonable prices will go back being just extremely reasonable, instead of ridiculously reasonable, so get in there quick!

Apologies for our state of deshabille- we are busy finalising, tweaking and generally prettifying ourselves for our brand new shiny launch in January 2011. Please feel free to check back then.

In the meantime, please contact Sam on sam(at) samthewlis.co.uk if you have any questions and you are an eager bunny.