There are so many ways you can get free publicity. I will be sharing them on Sociatic but it will not be all at once. I want you to get time to savor and apply my tips to your business.

Writing is one way of getting free publicity…targeted ones of course.The trend towards online writing is on the increase. Those who actually take advantage of online writing are mostly bloggers. Businesses seldom use writing to promote their products. The keyword here is seldom.

However, there are some businesses that use this technique very often to promote their business.

If you are not already using writing to promote your business, you better start now.

Two reasons why you should use guest writing in your marketing:

• You don’t pay anything to write for a publication; whether it is online or offline.

• You get free promo to the blog’s audience (RSS readers, Twitter followers, Facebook pages; generally, people who love to visit and read that blog).

The web is not the only place you can write. You can also write for magazines and newspapers. You could try and get a column in a newspaper and share your expertise or in other words, help people solve problems related to your niche.

I have seen doctors and lawyers with their own columns in some newspapers and then in return, they get their byline (itsy-bitsy bio about the writer) published along with their article.

If you can’t get a column, you can contribute to an existing column in the newspaper or magazine. Just make sure you write something related to what you do. Also make sure you are writing for a publication your target market reads.

If you prefer web writing too, there are a number of blogs that accept guest writers. Writing online is an excellent way to get all the promotion you need. This is because, these days, things on the web are shared more than things offline.

For example, let’s say you write a very interesting article that gets lots of people’s interest. If you are lucky, your article may go viral when lots of people share it through email, Digg, on their blogs, facebook, et cetera.

Actually, some guest writers have experienced this with their articles and it shot their brand up and boosted their business.

Okay, so now you know why it’s shoe-string marketing. Now let’s look at what to consider before you guest post.

Things to check before Guest Writing:

• Audience: The publication’s audience (or readership) should be targeted towards your product or service. For example, if you are a web developer, write for a web development publication and if you are a business coach, write for a business blog.

• Numbers: Check the number of subscribers the publication has. You can find out by asking the publication. Some blogs share their RSS subscription number on their blog via a chicklet/widget (what’s the difference?). If that is not available, you can ask the owner of the blog. You can also check other stats such as Twitter following, traffic ranking(use Alexa.com), et cetera. This is to make sure you get many eyeballs to read your content and thus, drive traffic to your website.

• No Selling: That will turn people off.  Besides, many publications won’t accept a guest post like that. Your article needs to be original and should provide value for the blog’s readers by solving a problem. If you want to add a sales pitch, write a press release instead.

Oh, one more thing. Some publications give you a secondary benefits for your guest writing efforts; they pay you for writing for them. You can expect to be paid as much as $150 per guest article. That’s secondary benefit to us because what I want you to achieve is free publicity for your business.

Some online publications that accept guest writers are:

• Pro Blog Design – Graphic and Web Design niche
• Freelance Switch – Freelance and web Design niche
• Daily Blog Tips – Blogging Niche
• Small Business Trends – Small business niche
• Marketing Profs – Marketing niche
• Dumb little man – Productivity niche
• Make Use of – Technology niche
• TutsPlus Network – Graphic and Web Development niche
• Read Write Web – Web Technology niche

After going through all the processes and check lists, I can’t end this article without stating that you need to keep doing it to get the result you want.

A single article could get you some sales or leads but in order for you to achieve more valuable results (with “more” as the word of emphasis), you need to get published a couple of times. One article might bring in some showers of profits but several articles will bring in a flood of profits; that is, if you are selling a good product .

In my opinion, it will be better to write regularly for one particular blog so that the community over there gets to know you and trust you more to do business with you through your own site. After you establish some authority or relationships on that blog, move on to another one (also related to your niche) and build more relationships. It may surprise you that some of your friends from blog number 1 read blog number 2 too.

Give yourself some time to get serious results. You don’t always have to write the articles if you get frustrated along the line. You can always outsource your writing to professional writers on Elance or Odesk for a few bucks.

Before paying anybody to write your articles for you, request that all the applicants (or bidders) submit a small introductory piece so you can assess their writing.

Oh, you will also need to make sure the writer has some knowledge about your niche for obvious reasons. It will make the work easier for both sides.

Which shoe-string marketing techniques do you use? Have you ever used guest posting to market your business? Let me know your experiences in the comments box below.

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A paid review is a promotional method used by many online businesses to spread the word about their products or service. It is a promotional technique used by both big and small business to get new business for new products and services. We are going to delve into its importance more but let’s start by defining what a paid review is.

What is a paid review?

A paid review is a review whereby one is paid to write about his or her evaluation or appraisal of a product or service. The reviews are based on personal knowledge or experience with the item being reviewed. It is a cheap way of getting news of products and services out.

If you don’t have enough cash to spend or if you have the cash but don’t want to take a lot of risk, you can pay someone who has a big follower base to tell their followers about your product.

Five reasons why paid reviews are great for start-ups:

• Your brand gets some recognition: Your brand will be put in front of an audience who may be having problems that your products can solve. If you find the right audience for your products, pay the leaders of your audience to tell their followers about your products or services.

• You will get traffic to your website: The readers of the blog on which your review is published will flock your website to find out more or take a free trial (if you have one available). Some readers might tweet about it on Twitter and some will share it on Facebook, Linkedin, et cetera.

• Other people will start reviewing your product or service for free: Whether you pay them or not, people will start reviewing your products on their blogs. I have seen this happen on a lot of blogs.

• You save a lot of money: You will save money since paid reviews generate free word of mouth marketing (the best form of marketing in world if you ask me).

• You get back links: This will help increase your website’s page rank and your search engine rankings. If your product or service is reviewed on an authority blog with high PR (page rank), your own page rank will get some credit and if other bloggers review your products for free, their page ranks add up to help increase your own.

You don’t need to spend a lot of money on reviews. You can have a small budget and still get it to work.

Before you pay someone to review your product or service, you need to do your due diligence. You want to get lots of traffic to your site right? 

Three tips you can use to help with you get great results:

• Make sure the blog has a lot of RSS subscribers: This will help you get more eyeballs to read the review, thus, increase the effectiveness.

• Make sure the blog’s readers are targeted or suitable for your product’s market: For example, if you are selling an eBook about internet marketing, make sure the blog is about internet marketing or internet business.

• Make sure you are paying a reasonable price for the review: Some bloggers charge higher than others but provide little value in terms of all the points I have made above. 

If you are lucky, some bloggers will share the review article with their email list. Most bloggers have thousands of newsletter subscribers and it will be your lucky day if they decide to share it with their email list too at no extra cost.

You can ‘manipulate’ readers and bloggers a little bit if you also offer an affiliate program. That will even spice things up more since people will get a commission just by telling other people about your product on their blogs, on Twitter, and all over the internet.

You can also spice things up a little more if your review includes a promo code or discount code with an expiry date. This will create some sort of urgency for people to buy your product before the price is regularized.

You can also try and add a competition to your review where you give out prizes to people who visit your website or who also write a review of your product on their website. Just play with ideas.

What do you think about marketing with paid reviews? Any experiences, thoughts or ideas questions? Let me know in the comments box.

We all love competitions and winning prizes don’t we? We certainly do. The businesses who organize these competitions and sweepstakes also love giving out their prizes.

That is why they spend money easily to organize these events. Hmm, I guess I have to explain more.

There are tons of benefits of organizing your own competitions and sweepstakes. I will be sharing the benefits your business can derive from organizing such events and also share some ideas on contests and sweepstakes with you.

First, let’s look at the difference between contests and sweepstakes:

A contest is an event in which individuals with required skill sets submit their work for judgment. For example, an art contest will require good art skills.

A sweepstake is an event which requires no skill at all to enter to win a prize. With sweepstakes, winners are chosen through random picking in the style of a lottery.

With those two words defined, let’s look at the benefits of organizing them.

Sweepstakes and contests can:

• Drive traffic to your website or social media profile

• Build brand awareness

• Increase your social media following or fan base

• Make people (who may or may not be your customer) feel connected to your brand.

• Help you build some sort of collaborative bond between your brand and people. For example, let’s say you have a site with an API that you want people to develop into apps, one of the best ways you can do that is by hosting a competition or sweepstake to get people to start building an App community around your website.

These and many other benefits can be derived from hosting a sweepstakes or contest.

I want us to also look at how you can organize your own and also what criteria you can (or should) follow.

First, you must set rules for your competition.

Rules of the Competition:

The rules of your contest or sweepstakes must cover:

1. How to Enter:

State how people can enter; basically, the requirements and non-requirements.

2. Number of Entries:

You will need to state how many times participants are allowed to enter.

3. Prizes:

You will need to tell the participants about what they will win if they are chosen.

4. Disclaimer:

If you are going to use the winner’s name or photos in an advertisement or infomercial after they have won, you may need to ask them to sign a waiver that will confirm their agreement.

5. Liability Clause:

You may also need to state in a clause that your company will not be responsible for any injuries or damages that participants may incur as a result of entering the competition.

6. Other Rules:

You may also need to state other rules and guidelines you will want participants to adhere to.

You may need to advertise your competition so that more people will see it and participate.

You can buy advertisement or you can use free forms of advertising that may be available to your business.

If you don’t have any online influence (on Facebook, Twitter, your business blog’s RSS or email list), then you should consider paying for advertisement to get exposure for your competition. On the other hand, if you have online influence, you can use that influence to promote your competition.

I got the chance to get Maya Grinberg, Community Manager and Product Evangelist at WildfireApps to answer two questions about online competitions and this is what she had to say:

KWAME: Where do most businesses go wrong when they organize competitions and sweepstakes?

MAYA: Organizing competitions and sweepstakes is an excellent way to drive user engagement, increase awareness of your brand or product, and build up your fan base. Creating great, engaging, and fun promotions like these to accomplish your social media strategy goals is one thing though– there is another key step to the equation that sometimes gets left out.

Creating a promotion and sitting back to “hope for the best”  will not lead to success. Unless you’re one of the lucky multi-national companies who seem to have infinite brand awareness and tons of fans who send news on its merry viral way instantly, you’re going to have to kickstart the spread yourself a bit.

We wrote a blog post previously about some of our favorite advertising strategies that will help companies do that…and the good news is, many of these wont cost a single penny! Feel free to read that post at http://blog.wildfireapp.com/2010/03/25/7-strategies-for-marketing-your-facebook-fan-page-promotions/

KWAME: What makes a successful competition or sweepstakes event?

MAYA: A successful contest or sweepstakes depends very much on how relatable, engaging, entertaining, and interactive it is for your users. This is a relative thing– depending on what your brand or company does, your users may appreciate different things, like gardening tips for home improvement enthusiasts or pictures of babies for parenting communities.

The key is to listen to your audience, capture some of their interactions with your brand, and use that knowledge to create compelling promotions. For example, fan pages for products related to raising toddlers can almost always feel secure in creating user generated photo contests relating to cute babies. Parents just love to take photos of their kids, and the only thing they love more than that is sharing them.

If you know things like this about your audience, use them to your advantage. Have a dental office that needs a social media strategy? Consider a sweepstakes that rewards the winner with a free teeth whitening. Have a bakery? Put up a coupon for a dozen free cookies with any other purchase. The most important thing to increasing your odds at running a successful promotion is to try to understand your audience, and cater your promotion to their interests.

Thanks to Maya for providing this wealth of information. Anyways, you can follow Maya on Twitter @papayamaya

WildfireApps is an excellent service that can help you promote your competitions online if you don’t want to do it alone or if you need help.

You can share your thoughts or experience with contests and sweepstakes in the comment box below.