In this article on getting effective publicity, you'll learn some basic steps to begin the long road of becoming a name in your field. No matter what your career area, you can garner media attention with a winning campaign plan.

You might be surprised to learn that your web site is a great place to start for a successful publicity plan. And if you don't have a web site yet, shame on you - any business professional today needs an attractively designed and optimized web site in order to capture the interest of media and clients or customers alike.

Take a good look at your web site: Is it filled with graphics that take a long time to load? If so, remember that most site visitors will leave your site if your fancy, over-designed index page loads too slowly. Personally, I exit a site if it takes more than five seconds to load, because I simply don't have the time to waste.

After you (or your webmaster) have checked out the loading time for your web site, review your site traffic statistics. An excellent tool to use for basic site statistics is Alexa, which offers a tool bar (get it at Alexa.com) so you can see at a glance how popular a site is when you visit it.

How does your site rank on Alexa? If it registers as a high number (for example, anything over 200,000), you have a lot of work to do! A high number generally means fewer people go to your web site. The lower the Alexa number, the better your ranking.

I've seen some established sites rank as horribly as one million or more - a clear sign of trouble! A poor Alexa ranking simply means that few people know about you and what you have to offer.

If your Alexa number indicates that your traffic needs improvement, you have some options on how to fix the problem. You can hire an outside company (such as Sanborn Publicity Agency, whose services include web site optimization and promotion analysis and advice) or try to do it yourself by learning all you can on the subject.

Two excellent web sites that will give you or your web designer top tips on optimization and design are Site Pro News and Web Pro News. I recommend them highly for their expertise and valuable advice. Because of the ever-changing world of web site optimization and promotion, a site owner or webmaster must keep up on the latest techniques.

Web site optimization trends are fickle like the wind, but some basics still apply. In order to rank high in your chosen categories (keywords) on search engines like Google, you need to know how to target each of your web pages. The web sites mentioned in the paragraph above can help you or your web master to understand some simple optimization techniques to put you on the road to better traffic.

Part of an effective publicity campaign is making sure your web site is your online business card: clean, simple, and as professional-looking as you can make it.

Adding a "pressroom" to your site consisting of a virtual press kit can be an easy and efficient way to allow media access to your important information right away. It also can save you a tremendous amount of postage. Rather than mailing out press kits by the dozens to media folks, you can provide a link to your web press room.

Now you know the key elements of getting your web site to do what it is supposed to do: promote you and your business to the media and to the world!

© 2004 Kathy Sanborn

Kathy Sanborn is a career coach and author of The Seasons of Your Career. Visit her www.lifeandcareercoaching.com for more tips and articles for your success. Kathy provides publicity services at www.sanbornpublicity.com.

All Articles