Karen Kalisek of Escondido, Calif. writes:
“WomensMedia.com a seven-year-old website that has undergone a major overhaul and is in the process of relaunching.
“We pride ourselves in offering ‘expert advice for working women.’ Currently, we have 30,000 unique website followers each month (20% of those are overseas), 10,000 follow the blog, Women’s Lunch Talk, and, 1,000 listen to our podcast, Working in Heels.
“We don’t male bash, but do offer realistic advice concerning being a working woman. We also have a library with over 200 articles written by people such as Madeline Albright, Suze Orman, and many other notables. We also are proud of our Google ranking of 5.
“We have done all this with no advertising or sponsorship. With the new ‘look’ we want to increase our followers, create revenue channels, offer classes, provide speakers and build relationships. Where do we start getting the word out that we exist? Any suggestions for a media kit, PR kit, etc. would be greatly appreciated. We have no money, but we have a great message with a proven history.”
Have a contest or celebration. Get sponsors for prizes and let people qualify for entries in the following ways:
* Twitter: If they Tweet a link to your web site, they get an entry.
* Blog: If they mention your site, they get an entry.
* Digg, Stumble, etc. sites — if they vote for your site, they get an entry.
* Mention your site in a newsletter … entry.
… You get the idea.
I’ve done this before and I’m just one person. It’s doable. Have them email you a list of what they’ve done with their links or post a comment in an entry on the contest. A quick look at the site — I don’t see a way for people to comment on the articles. You’re missing out on interaction opportunities and giving people a chance to get their URLs on your site in exchange for a comment (like here).
LinkedIn and Twitter are great ways to meet like-minded people, many of whom will be interested in what you have to offer. Join groups on LinkedIn and you can post information on your classes that all the group members will see.
I’d also suggest signing up for some webinars on hubspot.com. They are all about inbound marketing (vs. traditional marketing methods which are outbound) and they offer a free information on using social media to build your business.
Karen will continue to do well by always remembering that women in the boardroom and the laundry room see, hear and feel with their hearts.
It’s the extra brain that never stops working for us.
Mary Jane Hurley Brant
Author of When Every Day Matters
Simple Abundance Press, Oct. 1, 08
I wouldn’t worry about a media or PR kit. PR kits are now digital.
Build an online newsroom on your site – with contact info for reporters, press release archive, and I’d suggest that you could provide stats related to women’s issues.
Also, in addition to any proactive PR outreach that you do, you also need to focus heavily on SEO. You have lots of great content, you have existing traffic, make sure that your content is titled and tagged correctly – so that Google and other search engines will index all that great content for organic search results.
Jeff Rutherford
Hi Karen and Joan:
I suggest you establish a youtube presence. It’s free and before you know it, you’ll be a youtube partner who receives 10,000 visits per month from people who are looking for your content, ie, they search for it. If you are teaching classes, you may be able to join YouTube’s education channel. If you are a nonprofit, you’ll receive free advertising from youtube.
You’ll find all the advice you need to do this right on youtube too. just search youtube for the subject you are interested in and you’ll find top experts willing to share their hard earned knowledge with you.
As for videos, 30 seconds to 3 minutes per video is about right! Good luck.
Thank you very much.
1) Congratulations on reaching this great point in your business!
2) However, a quick google tells me that you are underutilizing your existing relationships. For example, you have at least one article on your site by Madeleine Homan, the Chief Coaching Officer with Coaching.com, an affiliate of The Ken Blanchard Companies. And yet, as far as I can tell, there are no links in coaching.com or kenblanchard.com back to you! This lack of linkage both ways is reducing the Google rating of both womensmedia.com and coaching.com, while also limiting the exposure that Homan receives for providing you with content.
You should contact her and start finding ways to cross-promote traffic on your sites. Do the same with every guest writer you can beg, borrow or buy content from.
3) Of your 30K followers each month, how many are linking to you from their blogs? How do you strengthen that relationship? How about a “raffle” from among all the inbound links to your new content each month? It doesn’t have to be expensive – a coaching session, a facial, or just some cool acknowledgement can go a long way.
You can do it on an ongoing basis, or a one-time push. You can also do it by number of links or by traffic flow.
Karen:
I am Coach/Rep with Compass, a personal development company for women. We have alliance partners who share our mission and vision to support women in leading fabulous lives. Our alliance partners include Glam, Divine Caroline, Betty Confidential, many coaching schools, Choice magazine, coaching toys etc. An alliance with Compass may be something that would work for Womensmedia.com. Please contact me at joan@joanjesion.com and I can connect you with our Executive. I also partner with smaller companies who share our vision.
You can see a list of partners at http://www.mylifecompass.com/Partners.aspx?ID=joanj Please contact me know if you would liked to pursue this further: joan@justloveyourlifenow.com