Here’s a quick tip that I’ve used to my advantage many times.
In a nutshell, you go out and find companies that give you publicity in the when you write about them. It works best if you’re writing because you sincerely love them, and if that publicity is either in the form of a link or will be presented before a captive audience.
Here’s how to do it.
1 – Find the top companies that have some kind of parallel relationship to your site. A parallel relationship would be one that is in the same topic neighborhood but not competing.
I write about search and Google, but since I no longer do SEO, this is a good example.
2- Find the subset of those sites that link to sites that write about them.
You’re looking for something as simple as trackback, and evidence that trackback links are published. An even better indicator is an “In the News” clips column that includes blogs, or a specific section like the Media Coverage section at kyte.tv.
3- Write passionately about a service or product from that company.
You want to do this in a way that demonstrates how your audience can benefit, not just your own happy experience.
Your aim is to share something that talks about how great the other site is, like a review. Feel free to be critical, but remember that harsh feedback probably isn’t going to be republished by the bigger site. (This is part of why it works best if you’re sincerely enthusiastic or passionate.)
4- Promote the wicked hell out of your write-up.
Remember that the purpose of this promotion is to draw attention to yourself and get publicity from the folks you’re writing about. Best case scenario, you’ll get links from lots of people, and the publicity from the company in question will bring you a second round of links.
So you’ll want to guestimate what the response time is for the site in question – some popular one-man shops need a few days to notice you, sites run by corporations may need a week, active bloggers will likely spot you within 48 hours.
Why?
Because if they don’t notice you, you gotta nudge them. It also helps to find the least-used vehicle. For example, if you wanted to get in touch with me, email is a mistake. I have 7 accounts, and only one of them do I answer on my own.
But if you tweeted me or left a polite comment? You’d probably hear back from me that day. Remember that if you’re the one who wants a favor, it’s up to you to be as little of an inconvenience as possible.
5- Thank Everyone.
Very important missed step: once the big company talks about you talking about them, thank profusely. Thank people who commented, passed along, re-tweeted, help you network your way to the contact, the person who wrote the article, the department that responded to your praise, everyone.
The people who pay attention and take action are THE most valuable contacts in our new interactive web world.
Extra tip:
One smart company to write about if you’re a blogger is FeedBurner, because you can get republished in their Publisher Buzz section. True, Feedburner itself is not related to your site, but tens if not hundreds of thousands of blogger use their free service, and the topics of those blogs are as diverse as they come.
I don’t know if it’s still true because I can’t find the original link, but they use to track blog posts tagged feedburnerhowto at del.icio.us. (Something like this, if you could verify that last part, would count as something you could tag as feedburnerhowto, if you were the first to do it.)
Personally, I sincerely love FeedBurner despite their occasional problems. And the folks I know over there have always been really nice to me – in particular Traci Halipern. Shout out to my peeps at FeedBurner! Can you folks let me know if you’re still doing this?
