Access the media with an online newsroom: internet marketing tips from Hilary Topper

As time moves on and technology changes, it is important to keep your small business marketing strategy up to date. Otherwise, you could not only be missing the opportunity to get great media exposure for your business, you could actually be doing your reputation damage.

In this new business television show produced by yourBusinessChannel, popular blogger and social marketing expert Hilary Topper of HJMT communications shares her latest online marketing tips on getting your message to the media.

In the bad old days, says Topper, distributing your news release to media involved laborious envelope stuffing and high mailing costs. Later, mail was replaced by fax machines, then email.

Email is still a major tool for reaching media, of course. But according to Topper and other business experts, it is on the way out. The problem, says Topper in her small business marketing tips on the show, is that media organisations receive so much email nowadays that they often or ignore email press releases.

Fortunately Topper has a better idea, which she shares on the show. The internet strategy that she recommends to reach media more effectively is to create an online newsroom on your website. A newsroom is a webpage which contains all your press releases collected in one place.

The second part of Topper’s web strategy is to target specific reporters in the media with short teaser messages each time you have a new release. The advantage of this approach is that if someone in the media is interested in your message, they can easily go to your website and read the release. And if they’re not, you haven’t taken up much of their time.

In her online marketing tips, Topper also points out that if you don’t have the time or skills to microblog to journalists, then you could engage a specialist agency to do it for you.