The Value of Media Mentions

In today’s highly competitive environment, you need to employ as many marketing arsenals as possible to increase awareness to your business and get the word out about your products and services. One of the best ways is to get mentions from the media.

Getting mentioned in a newspaper, TV or radio can benefit your business in a number of ways:

• Branding – the fact that a respected publication mentioned your business gives it credibility
• Prestige – getting mentioned by the media particularly the top guns like Wall Street Journal or CNN is certainly prestigious
• Marketing tool – some even go to the extent of ordering reprints of the media mention to showcase to existing and prospective customers that a major media outfit mentioned them; while others include the link to the media web site in their PR pages on their website

So how do you get mentioned in the media? Some of the strategies to get your business in the radar of these media organizations include:

• Hiring a PR firm to help pitch your expertise to media outlets
• Sending press releases
• Contacting editors and letting them know how your ideas can help the articles and stories they are working on
• Creating great content in your website

PowerHomeBiz.com mainly relies on the quality of its content to get the attention of media. Most recently, some of the mentions we received include

• Forbes.com “Differentiate or Die” article
• Long Island Business News
• Essence Magazine “Make Your Day Pay Off” article

One main caveat though: media mentions hardly give you live links. So if you think that being mentioned in Forbes.com can result in huge traffic, unfortunately, they did not give a live link back to PowerHomeBiz.com. So traffic wise, you can’t expect a huge upsurge in traffic as these organizations are very stingy in giving hyperlinks. Though if they give you a link, such as a Wall Street Journal article that previously featured PowerHomeBiz.com, the traffic can be amazing.

So if you are looking at traffic building, you’re better off working with bloggers than the media as bloggers tend to give live links — hence traffic — to sites that they mention in their blogs. But if you want prestige, bragging rights and credibility, strive to get mentioned in a major or local media organization. Better yet, do both!