Leaked To The Press: A Weird Way To Get MLM Leads
Have you heard of Justin Herald? Here’s a young man who started a business as a practical joke for $50 and turned it into millions “almost overnight.”
His claim is that the label on his clothing, “Attitude,” has never paid for advertising.
Justin’s was an inspiring story of a kid with a bad attitude that became a hit. When the press heard his story, competed Who would interview him?
Getting an endorsement in the news gave him a competitive edge and lots of free exposure. So much so, that “Attitud” has become a household brand simply through the news.
The question is, how do you get its business from home to do News?
“Am I news?”
Are you news? Maybe not. But we can make you a story.
We need something with mass appeal. Something people who would normally never be your customers would talk about: Single because it’s exciting news.
Is your company mainly made up of women? Or do you have a large downline of 18-25 year olds? Are you a well known person in your area and people would be interested to know that you have a home business now?
Watch the news and read it. Find those stories about others in the community. Why did your story make the news?
Pick an angle you like and build a story around it. And make sure your story is real.
How to attract journalists and news stations to you
Trying to sell your product to the press is a stupid idea.
A “press release” is a mini article that tells your potential story in a journalistic style for the journalist. Is your story newsworthy? That is all the journalist needs to know.
If you have an unconventional method of getting more advertising power for the same price, for example, you could create a story out of it. Is it newsworthy for home business owners? You’re kidding, more customers for the same price, what advertiser would say no?
Anyone who advertises will want to read about it!
Drama, controversy, and “the unusual” are staples of storytelling. People want to hear about these things.
At the end of your story, you need a natural preparation to promote your website. I do this simply by referring to my company by name in the body of the article. After the name, put the website address in parentheses. Hopefully, your story is interesting enough that your prospects will go to your site.
“Hey Google, give us a hand!”
Before we write the press release and hand it out to journalists, we need to do some keyword research.
Why?
Because when we publish our story online, we want it to be easily found by journalists and potential clients in search engines.
Journalists will find your story through RSS feeds, Internet searches, or searches on social news networks.
Bloggers also often create content in the same way that journalists do. They are also valuable to you.
This is not the time to get lazy. Keyword research tools out!
You can use wordtracker’s free keyword tool. Type in the broad term you want people to find you with and submit to get information about related keywords they’re searching for.
Of these, it will choose the keywords with the highest number of searches and then find out from Google how many pages are competing for them. Ideally, you should stay with those with less competition.
You should have a small list of say 5 keywords now. Write a variant of your press release for each keyword.
Making News
People often browse through a list of news headlines and only read the summary of the ones that interest them.
Go to prweb.com or 24-7pressrelease.com and find the category or categories you want to publish your story in. Most of the people who post here are hobbyists. How can you stand out from the crowd?
Your title also needs one of your keyword phrases.
There are 5 keywords, so create five news headlines using those exact words. Then you can send the same press release to different websites and just change the headline. (Note: Submit only one press release per website or it will be rejected.)
Here are some other press release submission sites: http://www.express-press-release.com, http://www.free-press-release.com, http://www.openpr.com, http://www.i-newswire.com
Shouting it to the Word with Web 2.0
Most people stop at writing the press release. Most people don’t even bother to research their keywords. And most are so selfish that they use the press release as an advertisement.
We do not. We have made a deliberate effort to make the news for the news’ sake. But nothing adds fuel to a raging traffic fire like social media.
If our story is really newsworthy, people will discuss it socially on social media. Let’s share our news with them too!
Submit your press release URL to Digg and tell the story. Both the Digg presentation and the press release must have the same title.
Also remember to blog about the press release on all of your blogs. Be sure to always link to the press release.
If you’ve built a list of home-based business owners on MySpace, post a newsletter about your story. Use your MySpace blog to open the story for discussion as well.
Don’t have a MySpace list? To get one!
With multiple backlinks from your press release, it helps your story rank well in search engines. At the same time, you are capturing traffic from social networks while spreading the news.
Who knows, if her story is really powerful, maybe Today Tonight will cover it on primetime TV too.