Biz Startz  ~>  Minding Your Biz  ~>   (End of Minding Your Business section)

Grabbing eyeballs is one of those big red items on the "to do" list of any ‘trep wanting customers. You can have the best widget in the field or have almost mythical powers at providing a service to customers, but if they don’t see you’re out there you won’t get the business. Sure you can buy advertising, but you may not have the funding for it. That 45-second spot during the Super Bowl may not be in the immediate future. If you’re looking to catch a glance, try getting in the news. But just like your customers, journalists have eyeballs, and you have to grab them.

Getting attention from the media gets your name and your company out to customers, but not in the same way as advertising.

"Advertising implies some kind of payment and total control over the content. Publicity is free, but the source doesn't have veto power over the way it's used," says Shel Horowitz, author of Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World. While you don’t have control about what’s finally said about you by the press, it can be better than an ad or press release where you’ve directed what gets said.

"The best kind of publicity is not a press release but is somebody else writing about you objectively," says Dr. Ralph Wilson, Editor of Web Marketing Today, a Web-based marketing newsletter, "and also I think prospective customers find out about you by looking at press releases and other stories about you and it builds credibility in your business." While a good ad catches the eyes of customers, a good piece of coverage by the media can catch the eyes of your market and build their trust in your business.

Just how do these journalist people find you anyways? According to Shel, there isn’t, and shouldn’t, be one primary way that journalists find people to contact about stories. Shel says he’s been contacted by journalists who have hit his Website, heard about him on the radio, read about him in print or online, heard about him from another source, or received a press kit from him. What’s this all add up to?

"The more places you are visible, the more likely you’ll be found," says Shel. So to improve your chances at getting calls from the press, you need to pop up where they look for you.

While you can’t tie a reporter to a chair and make them write about you, you can do some things to improve your chances at getting in the news. For those ‘treps with a Website, having a press kit online is a good idea for journalists, or customers, who visit your site. Press kits should be able to inform visitors about your business, and give them an avenue to contact you for questions. It may pay to have an e-mail address set aside for press inquiries, just be sure to keep an eye on it so you can catch an interview with a reporter quickly, they often have tight deadlines.

What else goes in this kit?

"Something to put your best foot forward," says Ralph of Web Marketing Today, "If there’s something written about you in the news, use that, and press releases." Ralph has helped create press kits for entrepreneurs before, one idea he had was to include a "vision and goals" statement for a company.

"I don’t see that often, says Ralph, "I thought it helped to let people know what drives and motivates the business."

Press kits are great, but you don’t want to bank on being able to sit back and have a pack of reporters dig through the jungle of Websites to find you. You have to venture out into the wild. Sending out press releases is one good way, but journalists can get buried in stories written by entrepreneurs talking about their biz. You have to make your release stand out.

Shel says it’s important to write a release that "actually contains news and is not buried under either layers of bureaucratic language or layers of overselling hype."

"Have someone else read your material before you send it out, someone with good knowledge of English and journalism and not too much knowledge of your subject, so they can flag jargon," suggests Shel.

Of course you have to get your releases to the journalists. A service such as Imediafax.com, can faxes press releases out to editors of magazines and newspapers. Also, you may start locally, with your hometown papers. Those local stories do land on the desks of bigger publications.

If you work to make yourself visible and accessible to the press, you can come out in the news. And that can beat paying for a TV spot and having your customers go fix a sandwich while you’re on.