Small businesses need PR too

Public awareness of PR as an industry has never been higher but many small businesses are unsure of what it can do for them. ‘PR is all spin and lies’ or ‘It’s not relevant to my business’ are comments I’ve heard many times over. I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with the first (by the way, the latest series of ‘The thick of it’ is just amazing) but if they think the second, they’re missing a trick.

Have you got a content rich website that generates traffic, keeps visitors there long enough to read about your products and services and makes them want to get in contact? Because that’s what PR can do for you. Advice, tips, case studies, discussion, general industry news, points of view, white papers - original, non-commercial content is what you need. It makes your readers think they’re getting something for nothing. But they’re actually buying into the idea that you are an authority in the market, with the ability to satisfy their very specific requirements and solve their problems.

Of course there are many other aspects to a top website but the effectiveness of blogs costing peanuts underlines once more that content is king. And if the discipline of generating a steady stream of interesting, well-written articles doesn’t appeal to you, briefing a good writer to ‘ghost it’ needn’t take much of your time - or cost a lot. And that’s just one of the reasons why small companies need PR.

Mini website audit

Over the next few weeks I’ll be looking at what you (an entry level audience) can do to improve your website’s performance. Each time I add new tips, I’ll overwrite the previous version. We’ll kick off with keywords, links and content.

First think of a list of three keywords that are important for your organisation and jot them down on a piece of paper - then put them into Google and see where you appear in the rankings. I’m guessing you’re not at the top, but not to worry. Make a note of three competitors that rank more highly than you and visit each of the sites in turn. For each click on the view menu in your browser and select source from the drop down menu. Most of the code won’t mean much but look for the lines with the terms keywords and description in them.

Now look at the number of inbound links that each site has. You can use a free tool like http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ to do this - all you need is a Yahoo account. While keywords and description is a quick fix, a programme of link exchange has to be ongoing so you might want to involve others in the organisation in this project and meet once a month to report on progress.

The same goes for site content. Look at what your competitors - or any site that you particularly like - are doing. The trick is to be content-rich. Give as much information as you can - without, of course, divulging any trade secrets! Show visitors that you really know what you’re talking about and they’ll be more likely to contact you directly. Again, pool your resources and ask colleagues from other departments to feed information through. Most organisations have huge untapped reserves of knowledge.