In my business I’ve spoken to hundreds if not thousands of small business owners who have switched from spending loads of money on public relations strategies off line to online PR instead. In just about every case the result has been less money spent on the efforts and a greater return on investment. There are several reasons for this.

If you haven’t heard, there’s a revolution going on. People are ditching the Yellow Page for the Internet and their mobile phones. If they use the Yellow Pages at all, it’s for a booster seat at the table for their toddler, or a stepping stool.

Yellow Pages ads cost money. In some cases, a lot of money. And I talk to small business owners every day who say they haven’t got any calls from their Yellow Pages ad in (1, 2, 3, 5, or fill in the blank) years. So why spend the money?

If you’re spending $500 a year on your Yellow Pages ad and you’re not getting any return on that money, why not take it and put it toward an online PR campaign instead? A couple of online press releases generally generate enough buzz to put that Yellow Pages ad to shame. I’ve seen it too many times.

In the future, every business will spend money online. The only question is how much.

If you are planning to do any public relations online then you’ll have to get a little creative and think outside the box on how to approach it. There’s more to online PR than sending a press release out to the distribution websites and waiting for a phone call. You’ve got to be a bit more aggressive and get your feet moving.

Certainly you want to send out press releases. I’m not saying don’t do that. But there are other ways to get the publicity you seek. Three sources of online publicity that you don’t want to overlook are:

• Bloggers
• Podcasters
• Videocasters

Bloggers will often interview or highlight a business professional with a particular expertise. But you don’t necessarily need a press release to approach a blogger. Often, just a short, brief e-mail explaining your pitch is enough. If the blogger likes it then you’ll get a mention.

With podcasters, if you’ll scour the podcast directories you may find a podcast show within your niche. There are online radio stations now that program shows by the hour or a particular time slot. See if you can find one that deals with your topic and pitch the radio show host the same way you would a blogger.

If you scan YouTube, Hulu, and other video websites for video shows within your niche you can often find video shows within your niche just like podcasts. A short e-mail to the video show host or producer may often produce some publicity for you as well.

Don’t hold back. Be relentless in your pursuit of online publicity and don’t be afraid to pitch people you’d least expect. Just be polite and courteous and professional.

Small business PR doesn’t have to be expensive. Many small business entrepreneurs never take advantage of the opportunities they have to expand their network and marketing opportunities through public relations either because they are under the false impression that their small budget cuts them out of the same benefits that the big companies get or they just don’t have the time to think about it. Let’s put in a nip in the bud of both of these false impressions right now.

First, good PR does not have to be expensive. You are not IBM or Burger King. Focus on the things that you do best and let a PR professional show you some easy, inexpensive ways you can get good PR.

For starters, you can include a media section on your own website (you do have a website, don’t you?). We call it a media kit.

An online media kit is an easy way to invite members of the press to find out more about you. You can include your bio and any positive news stories about your company in your online media kit. If you local media find it easy to contact you then you’ll get more calls from them, more interviews, and more free press exposure.

As far as time goes, if you just take 15 minutes a day to think of ways that you can increase your public relations exposure and devote 1 hour per week for implementation then you can have a solid PR strategy going within just a couple of months. Don’t let lack of time and a small budget hold you back from taking advantage of the benefits that other, bigger companies are getting. You deserve them too.

When it comes to public relations, should you do it yourself or hire a PR firm?

Many small business owners make the mistake of trying to do it themselves. It’s not that they aren’t smart people. And it isn’t that they couldn’t handle the work. The real issue for most small business people is that they can’t see their own businesses objectively. It takes a trained eye to be able to step back and ask the hard questions.

One of the requirements of a public relations agency is that they have a good slate of relationships already built. Many PR firms are successful at getting the results they want based on those relationships. Do you have established media relationships from which to draw to gain the leverage you need to drum up publicity? If not then you should hire a professional.

PR firms do a lot of behind the scenes type of work that a small business owner can’t do for herself, or that she may not know she should do. There’s more to effective public relations that just writing a press release. And if you don’t have experience at running a successful public relations campaign from the ground up, perhaps you should hang up the hat and hire a firm after all.

Everyone wants recognition. And if you do business online and are looking for public relations from bloggers and marketers, there is a right way and a wrong way to approach them. Actually, there are several right ways and several wrong ways.

SEOmoz recently wrote a funny post about an e-mail proposal that missed the mark. And it was really so elementary that I’m surprised the person looking for marketing help didn’t step up and admit his wrong square in the face. So what the big sin? Simply this: A mass e-mail where all the recipients could be seen by each other.

Huge No-No!

The No. 1 cardinal rule for e-mail proposals is this – make them personal and individualized.

If you are going to approach any number of people and ask for a quote or estimate or publicity of some kind, any kind of assistance or partnership, don’t send out an impersonal mass e-mail. That’s just plain tacky. Find out who the contact person is, by name and title, and address your e-mail to that individual. Also, send each person a separate e-mail. And don’t expect people to jump through hoops for status or money. That’s not what business is about. It’s about relationships so build good ones right from the start.

One of the best ways to build links back to your website and drive targeted traffic is to be a guest blogger or article writer for another website in the same niche. But how do you get those gigs?

Well, it’s not hard. The first thing you need to do is find them.

One person said she conducted searches for “guest blogger” and “submit your article”. I don’t recommend that approach. Instead, do a simple search for a topic related to your niche. For instance, if you are into cloth dolls and you want to find other cloth doll websites then search for “cloth dolls”. Try searching for “cloth doll blogs” or “cloth dolls blogs”. You could also search for “cloth dolls articles”. Try a few variations of that sort within your niche.

What this does is bring up in the search results the best optimized sites within your niche. If you go down your keyword list and search for other sites that are optimized for those keywords then you’re on the right track.

The next thing you want to do is visit the sites that come up for those searches. Not all of them are going to be relevant to what you want to do. Your job is to find the ones that are relevant. When you do find them, make a spreadsheet of all the sites that fit your criteria then go down the list and contact the owners. Address them by name, be brief, and tell them what you want to do. Be sure to include a benefit for them. Some of them are bound to say yes.

Entrepreneur Magazine is always very helpful. I like the tips they offer for small businesses and big businesses alike. But these 10 tips for great public relations are absolutely essential for any business to keep in mind. Here they are in summary:

1. Know your market.
2. Identify the product benefits relevant to your market
3. Establish your product as unique.
4. Source and use testimonials.
5. Target the media used by your target market.
6. Prepare your press release to be used as is.
7. Sell your release.
8. Follow up.
9. Keep in contact.
10. Use a photograph.

Some of these are self explanatory. Some of them will require you to read the article to get the full grasp of it. And all of them were right on the money, essential elements in effective public relations. But I want to discuss one particular item just briefly. No. 5.

Target the media used by your target market.

Whether you are advertising or sending out press releases, this is absolutely essential. There is no sense in starting a relationship with an editor or publisher that won’t benefit you. And if your target market isn’t going there then neither should you. I find so many business owners making this mistake. Your just wasting your time. You should really take the time to study the market and learn where your target market hangs out. Then hang out in the same places.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

Good public relations begins with a media kit. And if you plan to do business online you should seriously think about developing an online media kit. But what should go into it?

Your online media kit should make it easy for members of the media to learn more about you and your team. What you do, why you do it, who your target market is, and anything related to community that you do as well. Your media kit is the resource that journalists and other media will refer to when they are looking for someone to interview or gain research and knowledge about a particular topic.

So does a good media kit consist of?

First, it should include your biography. Not a book, but a few paragraphs that say where you’ve been and what your credentials are. Ask the question, “Why am I the expert” and then give the answer.

Next, include some information about what it is you are trying to accomplish. The Small Business Mavericks media kit includes a backgrounder, which is a sort of online white paper that offers statistics and insights into the market that I’m trying to tap into. This can read as an HTML web page or a .pdf download. Something similar for your business that explains what you do and why should also be included in your media kit.

If you have other media mentions such as interviews, quotes in news stories, features articles, op-ed pieces – anything at all – then include those. Media people like to know that you understand what they are looking for and will be sensitive to the news cycle.

Finally, press releases. If you have any press releases that you’ve distributed online or have sent out to media in your local area or nationally then include those. Sometimes, a press release is all a media person needs to answer a question and they won’t have to bother calling you. They can just quote the release.

Other things you can include in your media kit are:

• Videos
• Podcasts
• Articles you’ve written
• Social media profiles
• Testimonials or endorsements
• Photos

Anything that will help a media person do his or her job and find information quickly is a good idea to have in your media kit. Take a look at the Small Business Maverick media kit.

One often overlooked method of link building is to use press releases to drive traffic to your website, but don’t make the mistake of using press releases solely for link building purposes. That’s not their primary purpose.

Still, a well placed press release can be a big boost to your search engine marketing by providing one or more high quality, relevant links back to your website.

The first thing to remember is to only submit a press release if you have something newsworthy to promote. Your sale on corned beef next weekend is not newsworthy. Sorry.

However, if you sponsor a community Corned Beef Hash banquet and invite the entire community then that could very well be newsworthy and therefore worthy of a press release. But make your event attractive before you start promoting it. Invite some local talent to give a show, have one of your employees dress up as the Corned Beef Hash Man and waslk around your store’s parking lot giving out free samples of corned beef and other goodies, and throw in some unique festivities and even games with door prizes. Make it a huge event.

The more spectacular you make your event the more likely you’ll get people to come, and the more likely you are to get your press release noticed. Once you start promoting your event, write up a press release with the pertinent information in it and submit it to several press release distribution websites. Get your press release in the right places and you’ll likely find some news agencies picking up and running it as is or calling you for an interview. Those activities can lead to inbound links to your website as well as high quality traffic to your event.

If you run a local business online or have an online presence for a local business – for that matter, if you are a local business at all – then you should work on your relationship with the local press. There are some great opportunities for free publicity just by becoming an expert in a topic that journalists might like to cover.

If you read your local newspapers you’re likely to find stories that touch upon what you do in your business. When you see those stories it’s a great opportunity to send a short note to the editor and offering yourself as a credible expert to call upon when more stories of that nature pop up. Newspapers reporters all have a list of resources to call for certain types of stories and you want your name on that list. But be subtle. You don’t want it to seem like you are begging and you don’t want to be too pushy. You want your initial communication with a news person to be short and respectful:

• Be friendly. Nothing annoys news editors and reporters more than a pushy person looking for free publicity.
• Be helpful. There is no substitute for helpfulness.
• Write a short note about how you liked an article on such-and-such topic. Be positive.
• Be specific about what you liked.
• Offer yourself as a resource in the future, but don’t be too pushy or aggressive.
• Wait. This is one instance where persistence doesn’t pay off. You’ve made your offer now wait for a call. There likely won’t be articles on your topic every day. If you see an article in the future that you could have been consulted on and weren’t, send a short reminder but nothing too pushy.

Being an expert consultant for journalists working on stories is one of the best ways to get free publicity, but you have to finesse your way into it. Being overly aggressive can kill your chances.