This is a guest post by Brett Stapper

The media can be a great marketing tool for your business and best of all, it’s free. There are several different media outlets to choose from, but the most useful and popular are newspapers and news stations. Nearly every city has a local newspaper and many cities have a local news channel. Here are the steps that you can follow to get your business in the news:

Step One: Identify something about your company that you feel is news worthy. This can be anything from the founding of a revolutionary company to an existing company that has recently added a unique service.

Step Two: Research your local papers and news stations and identify which is the most popular and which pertains to your story the most.

Step Three: Contact the editor or tip line. The most effective way to do this is to call; emailing is much less effective and will lower your chances of your story being featured. If you live in a larger city, they may not accept calls so you will have to either email or fax. As with calling, a fax will increase your chances much more than email. If you are calling, make sure to be prepared, as companies will receive up to hundreds of tips per week and will not appreciate their time being wasted if you are unprepared. If you are sending an email or fax, write out a press release. Try to keep your press release short and sweet and free of grammatical and spelling errors. If you do not grab the editor’s attention in the first couple of sentences, your story will be discarded. Research the format for a press release and be sure to follow it as closely as possible. There are also companies that you can pay to write your release for anywhere between 1 and 300 dollars.

If you follow these three steps and have a story that interests the media, you will have a good chance of being published. This will prove to be an effective marketing tool which potentially will reach thousands of potential customers at one time at no cost to you.

_______________________________________________________________

About the Author

Brett Stapper
Age 19
Located in Eau Claire, WI
Co-founder of Home Jotter Off-Campus Housing Solutions
HomeJotter.com
Home Jotter is an online service for college students looking for a place to live. Students often don’t have time to physically look for housing near campus or search through all of the online listings in a city just to find a few near their school. Home Jotter does that for them. With a few simple clicks, college students can find perfect off-campus living.
In the next several weeks Home Jotter will be adding between 40 and 50 thousand new properties thanks to a partnership formed with ForRent.com. This will make HJ the largest off-campus housing rental website in the United States.