Timothy Carter

Chief Revenue Officer at SEO Company

Industry veteran Timothy Carter is SEO.co’s Chief Revenue Officer. Tim leads all revenue for the company and oversees all customer-facing teams for SEO (search engine optimization) – including sales, marketing & customer success.

He has spent more than 20 years in the world of SEO & Digital Marketing leading, building and scaling sales operations, helping companies increase revenue efficiency and drive growth from websites and sales teams.

When he’s not working, Tim enjoys playing a few rounds of disc golf, running, and spending time with his wife and family on the beach…preferably in Hawaii.

Over the years he’s written for publications like ForbesEntrepreneur, Marketing Land, Search Engine Journal, ReadWrite and other highly respected online publications. Connect with Tim on Linkedin & Twitter.

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How to Rank for Competitive Keywords
Timothy Carter

How to Rank #1 for Competitive, High Volume Keywords

Ranking for competitive, high-volume keywords is the holy grail of SEO. Wikipedia has nailed the strategy perfectly: Create timeless, evergreen content worthy of attention Regularly update and improve your old content Recalibrate and reformat your content for specific niches and industries Promote your content It is not as easy as we make it sound, however. Here’s our internal process for targeting and ranking for competitive, high-volume keywords in Google search: 1. Identify the competitive keywords This should be the foundation of your content marketing strategy. One simple way to do it is to do deep keyword research yourself. The keywords must be relevant, have a high potential to funnel traffic, and must be intent-driven. But the search volume should also be substantial. The purpose is to maximize your returns not just on the money but also on the effort you put into your campaign. So, how many do you think is the ideal number of keyword variations? Five? 20? Nope. Try 1,000. But do not forget your competitor as well since you will benchmark your SEO strategy with theirs. For example, which of their keywords are most successful? Apps like SpyFu are valuable tools to spy on your competitors. Then you can reverse engineer the process to develop your own. In the same vein, you can also spot gaps in their campaign where you can take advantage, understanding that sometimes the advantage to you may be targeting no or low-volume searches. 2. Map the landscape Now that you have an idea of the competitive keywords in your field, the next step is to look at the big picture. Conduct a more exhaustive audit of the competitive keywords in your specific industry. You need to identify the reasons why some websites rank for high volume keywords and find some common grounds that you can build on. You can ask yourself the following questions: What are the competitive keywords they are using? What are they using for their title tags? Why are these effective? How did they produce their content? Which content is getting the most engagement? How can you implement best practices to your SEO campaign? 3. Internally link to your blog posts But not just any blog post. Remember the three elements of a good content post stated above? Using analytics, audit your content and determine which ones resonate with your audience better. However, make it relevant to your new content thematically and not just link for the sake of rankings. In this way, you can ramp up the activity on your website. You can also get some of that juju from your most successful blog and into your new post. If you’re in need of someone to help, our link building services should be a good match. 4. Optimize for voice Voice is going to be the future of online search. More than three billion people today own a device equipped with a voice smart assistant. About 5 in 10 people are using online voice searches. You can expect the figure to rise since voice search is faster and more convenient. Unlike with text, voice search is characterized by several elements: The long-tailed keywords are longer, perhaps five or more words The tone is more conversational, like you would talk to someone in front of you More geared toward local listings The keywords are simple and direct to the point Designed for question-type keywords They tend to include filler words It is not to say that you should focus your resources on targeting voice search. For now, text search is still the standard. But it is nice to have this strategy in your back pocket that you can pull out during emergencies. 5. Focus on Industry terms Your homepage should generally target a broad spectrum within your specific industry. However, you have to hone in on your target market with surgical precision. To do this, you need to create sub-categories containing products, articles, infographics, videos, or images. The main goal is to address the pain points of your audience. In this way, you can create contextual links to each post–both internal and external links–whenever necessary. Once they rank for the keywords they want, your life becomes easier since they will naturally attract organic links like bees to honey or raccoons to trash. 6. Content as a blank canvass Think of your blog post as a blank canvass and you, the crazy and struggling artist. Once you have finished the template–a well-researched article that addresses the pain point, it is now time to do the analytics. You have to audit your work to gauge its success. Auditing your work will also enable you to tweak the content to make it better. You can scale up and scale down, depending on the need. But you must be deliberate with your actions. You continue to open your ears to listen for content demand so that you can immediately deliver the desired content. Using your brush, you can then add more colors, wash away some of the tints, perhaps add some more birds if that is what your audience wants? Updating your content is necessary because some new information might have surfaced that makes your assumptions obsolete. The goal is to make your post the best available resource on the topic to force Google to sit up and take notice. Believe us; there is a method to this madness. 7. Proper Keyword Placement In the early days of SEO, marketers found a hack to outrank in the SERPs. They simply flooded their content with keywords, and the result was a heap of nonsense. Thankfully, we have come a long way since then. Google constantly updates its algorithms to make sure that the results would be most relevant to the search. Google constantly moves the goalpost, so marketers are always playing catchup.  It is the primary reason why it is difficult to rank these days. Now, Google does not want you to pepper your blogs with relevant keywords. In fact, that is the

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Using Multichannel to Communicate with Customers
Timothy Carter

Using Multichannel to Communicate with Customers

Customer communication is one of the most important aspects of your business. Your customers will dictate the success of your enterprise—keep them happy and informed, and they’ll keep coming back to you for all their needs, telling their friends about the pleasant experience. Make a misstep, however, and you could permanently lose a potentially lifelong follower. Communication is the key to retaining this level of satisfaction. No matter how perfectly constructed your business is, something is eventually going to go wrong—you’ll miss a shipment, you’ll send out a defective product, or your service won’t go as anticipated. When those things inevitably do go wrong, communicating quickly, politely, and accurately is the only way to remedy the issue. We’re entering a new era of customer communication, and adequately preparing for the transition can position your company for success. The Old Model of Customer Communication For decades, most businesses have worked to turn their customer communication strategy into gigantic funnels, one for inbound communications and one for outbound communications. At the mouth of the inbound funnel, the entirety of the customer base would be ushered into one channel for further service. For example, a company would have a single “customer service” phone number that would accept all requests, no matter their intentions. This number would be listed on product packaging, promotional materials, emails, catalogs, ads, and would be given out to anybody who inquired using a different channel. Similarly, the majority of outbound communications would occur in a concentrated medium. For example, a company would work to ensure that every customer was signed up to receive email blasts, and then rely on the power of those emails to reach the entirety (or majority) of its customer base. The advantages of this model are clear; by concentrating all your effort into one channel, you save time and money and produce a much more efficient system. You can invest exclusively in your inbound customer hotline, making new hires and establishing new processes, and eventually, your team will become masters at handling inquires. But there are also disadvantages to this system. Because there is no redundancy, a failure in this line of communication is an instant and non-rectifiable failure across the board. Because you can never be sure that you’ve made this channel available to the entirety of your customer base, you’ll have a few stragglers that never realize its benefits. Why the Funnel No Longer Works Today, the disadvantages to the funnel-based marketing system have outnumbered the advantages. Too much has changed, both from a communications technology and from a customer needs perspective, to allow this approach to continue. Take, for example, the sheer number of communication channels available. In a world once exclusively dominated by in-person visits, direct mail, and phone calls, a funneled approach could be feasible. However, once you consider the following channels, that once-narrow path becomes much wider: emails online directories instant messages phone chats live chat chatbots video chats and about a thousand different social media platforms, Ostensibly, these channels are so diverse in function, advantages, and disadvantages, that it would be inefficient to forward each one to a singular final destination. Along with this, consider the fact that each individual customer has different communication preferences. A high school student might only use apps like Snapchat and Instagram to communicate with his/her peers. A young adult might rely mostly on emails, but jump on Facebook from time to time. A senior might prefer more traditional means of communication, or direct human contact. Each demographic and each individual will have unique preferences, so funneling them all to one communication channel will instantly alienate the majority of them. The sheer availability of technology has also created more problems for the funnel approach. The majority of modern users have a smartphone in their pocket at all times, capable of using multiple forms of communication instantly and reliably. This has created a generation of users that demands instant answers to common inquiries. If they are forced to go through multiple steps, or are forwarded to different communications channels, they may become impatient and abandon the process altogether. The Multi-Channel Approach The best approach for the modern era is to capitalize on the number of channels that are available. It’ll take some extra work up front, and in some cases, more managerial expenses, but the flip side is that you’ll be able to please a larger percentage of your audience a larger percentage of the time. At the end of the day, your customers’ happiness is all that matters. If you’re looking for a checklist of channels to make available, this one can get you started—but be sure to add your own preferred mediums to the mix: Printed how-to guides and troubleshooting documents Online troubleshooting and searchable FAQ sections Customer forums (with official moderation) Blogs and video tutorials Email (both inbound and outbound) Customer ticket logging Phone lines Instant messaging onsite or through Skype (or a similar program) Video chatting Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.) Begin your strategy by offering as many mediums as possible, but DO monitor their progress over time. You’ll likely find that some of your channels perform better than others, and some are flat-out duds. Feel free to eliminate the duds in favor of routing those expenses to your more popular channels. Having a multi-channel approach doesn’t mean you have to invest in all those channels equally—it just means you have to make those channels available. Typically in online communication, we provide our expert link building services to both SEO agencies–typically by white labeling link building–and direct clients who want to increase their brand’s exposure online. Contact us for more information!

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Why Testimonials are Important for Online Marketing
Timothy Carter

The Critical Role of Testimonials in Digital Marketing

Helping leads feel comfortable with your brand and gaining their trust is a big part of successfully converting potential new customers. Although there is a plethora of ways to do this, strategically placing testimonials from previous customers is one highly effective way to do this. Many times, this is all a potential customer needs to get over the buying hump and actually make a purchase. But there are many more reasons why testimonials are important now and growing in importance in the online marketing strategy realm. Let’s discuss the other advantages of testimonials and how to utilize them in your marketing companies. Increases Credibility and Authority In a world where most industries have countless businesses competing for a piece of the pie, almost anyone can say that they’re an expert in their field. When prospective customers have little information to go on, they don’t really know who is authentic and who is merely a charlatan. That’s where digital marketing testimonials come in. By placing a quote from an actual customer who has direct experience with a business, it verifies the claim and lends an aire of credibility. It’s a simple and straightforward way to validate a business and can diminish skepticism substantially. When compared to a competitor without client testimonials, this can give your new business a sizable advantage. Explains Specific Benefits When potential customer is contemplating whether or not to buy a product or service, they’re wondering how it will solve a problem or benefit them. Many times, they will be swayed to make a purchase by simply seeing the package or photos of the product or service in action. Other times, they need a bit more convincing in order to take action. Digital marketing Testimonials are helpful because they provide an opportunity to state specific benefits from others who have experience with the product or service. If a business sells a product that relieves arthritis, it might include a testimonial from a customer stating “this product eliminated my arthritis within one week.” This would tell prospective customers about how the product improved their life in a highly specific manner. If they had any questions beforehand pertaining to the details, a testimonial would address them while providing direct proof that the product’s claims are legitimate. Offers Unbiased Evidence It’s only natural that a company will want to portray itself and its products/services in a positive light. As a result, consumers may be wary of a bias, which can lead to apprehension or distrust. One of the best ways to alleviate consumer doubts is to provide tangible evidence from an outside party who is unaffiliated with the marketing agency. Incorporating a statement from someone who has nothing to gain, but simply wants to provide their input stemming from a positive experience, it can be a powerful motivator that gets others to buy. Increases Conversion Rates When you combine all of these previous advantages, it results in the biggest advantage of all… more conversions. According to Visual Website Optimizer, a case study by WikiJob proved that A/B testing customer testimonials increased their sales by 34 percent. While it’s unlikely that all businesses will experience this high of a sales increase, it shows that testimonials have an undeniable impact on consumers. Now that we know that advantages of this tactic, here are three ways to obtain testimonials: Create a submission form -This is perhaps the easiest way and can be done by placing a form somewhere on your business’s website. Typically, this will be located underneath the header or on the sidebar so anyone with a positive experience can conveniently offer their feedback. Send an autoresponder – Every time someone makes a purchase, you can follow up via an autoresponder that asks for their input. This will automatically send consumers an email that gives them the opportunity to explain their experience. Picking a few of the top comments can provide you with some valuable testimonials. Contact repeat customers – If you notice that a particular customer has bought from your business multiple times, you can send them an email to thank them for their purchases and also ask for a brief testimonial. Obviously, they must have a relatively positive experience if they are a repeat customer, so they can be the perfect person to approach. Here are some tips for implementing testimonials into your digital advertising: Be Compliant with the Law First, you want to ensure that you’re acting within the law and not doing anything that could be considered unethical. Checking out this post from the Hubspot will provide guidance and keep your testimonials on the up and up. Some things they mention include getting written permission, the following the truth in advertising guidelines, and not misleading consumers. Never, for any reason, create your own testimonials or alter their content. If it doesn’t summarize all of the information you want to convey, it’s best to use another testimonial instead. Get Plenty of Information Whenever someone agrees to provide a testimonial, you should extract additional information to go along with it. It’s helpful to get a professional-looking picture of the person who gave the testimonial, as this helps establish its legitimacy. While a basic text quote is still helpful, including an image is ideal. Also, listing a person’s geographic location and/or company name and position is smart. According to Entrepreneur, A good testimonial is from someone your audience can relate to. You want your visitors to see that your product helped someone just like them. Make sure your testimonials come from someone with whom your target market can identify. Specificity As mentioned before, it’s important to be specific. Whenever using a testimonial, never be vague or leave any of the consumer’s questions unanswered. If you receive a comment that’s somewhat ambiguous, go ahead and ask the person to clarify so consumers will understand exactly how they will benefit from buying your product or service.   Placement Once you have obtained a few quality testimonials, it’s important to put them in the right

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Most Common Approaches to SEO
Timothy Carter

Most Common Approaches to SEO

SEO (search engine optimization) is a big world, stretching across multiple online marketing strategies to become unified in a single, focused campaign. From on-page SEO and ongoing content to social media activity and off-site link-building services, (off-page SEO) the most successful companies are the ones that pay attention to every facet of SEO. There are a thousand “wrong” ways to do SEO, including spamming backlinks or writing fluff content stuffed with relevant keywords, but what many people don’t know is that there are actually several “right” ways to do it. Even as you do your best to follow best practices in every SEO-related vertical, there are three possible SEO approaches you can take for your campaign. Keep in mind, this blog post is not: An exhaustive beginner’s guide to SEO strategies  A guide that includes all strategies for gaining backlinks It’s a very basic overview that represents more of your own personal or business mission statement for how you want your company to approach SEO for your own website(s) or web pages. Let’s dive in! The Aggressive SEO Approach The aggressive SEO approach is generally used by companies looking to rank high in search engines and as quickly as possible. Sometimes, this is a startup doing SEO looking to make a big impact with a low budget, and other times this is a well-established company looking to break into the world of digital marketing for the first time. No matter the case, this company is either new to the scene or otherwise desperately motivated to get more online attention. The aggressive approach is all about rapid expansion. It involves the creation of multiple onsite posts—usually at least one per day—high-volume social media activity, and a sharply scaling offsite link-building process. The key benefit of this is the rapid build of rank and domain authority; taking all these actions quickly and uniformly over the course of as little as two months can have a substantial impact on your long-term rank. However, you must keep in mind that domain history plays a part in its authority—if you’ve just purchased your domain, don’t expect to build a great authority in your first year. There are two major downsides to the aggressive SEO approach. First, it costs money. Unless you plan on doing everything yourself, you’ll need to pay for all those high-quality blog posts and all the time that must be spent vetting external link sources. Second, it’s risky. Even if you prioritize the quality of your production, the fact that you’re working quickly leaves you vulnerable to errors and quality slips. If you choose the aggressive approach, take extra caution. The Competitive SEO Approach The competitive approach may sound similar to the aggressive approach, but it’s possible to perform work based on your competition without becoming aggressive. Usually, this company isn’t sure about their SEO efforts. They may not have specific goals, they may be wary of SEO’s effectiveness, or they may have no idea what they’re doing. In any case, they’re mostly interested in SEO only to gain an edge over their competition or stay afloat in the competitive digital landscape. Because of this, the competitive approach is all about using your competitors and gaining ground on them wherever possible. It involves looking at your competitors’ blogs and finding inspiration for topics of your own. It involves researching your competitors’ backlink profiles and mirroring those profiles the best you can. It also involves performing highly detailed long tail keywords and finding the target keyword valuable to your company that your competitors haven’t yet touched. It’s a way of analyzing your competition, mirroring their strengths and taking advantage of their weaknesses. In many respects, this approach is the most efficient. It doesn’t require the budget that an aggressive approach would, and it has a surgical focus intended to get you one rank higher in organic search results than your biggest competitors. However, this focus on beating the competition also has some drawbacks. First, positioning yourself in line with a competitor could damage public perception of your brand by making you indistinguishable. Second, you’ll be spending less time developing your infrastructure, which makes you poised more for short-term gains than long-term sustainability, thus reducing the total eventual value of your SEO campaign. The User-Focused SEO Approach Finally, the user-focused approach can be implemented without any prior knowledge of SEO strategy. You’ll still have to make some onsite tweaks, such as ensuring your meta titles and descriptions (meta tags) are in order, but for the most part, this approach can be implemented by anybody. It’s usually reserved for companies interested in gaining higher ranks in search engines, but aren’t concerned with meeting specific traffic numbers in the short-term, and aren’t too worried about the competition. Instead, they want a steady, long-term path for growth with minimal risk and a minimal budget. The user-focused approach is simple. Make moves and produce content that is going to make your users happy. Design your website so a visitor enjoys the experience. Write an SEO content strategy that is truly valuable for your users. Post on social media in a way that’s funny or entertaining. Dedicate yourself to making your users as happy as possible. Happy users will share your content, post links to you, and generally behave in a way that will naturally increase your domain authority—and you’ll never have to worry about getting penalized for sneaky or unnatural practices. This strategy’s biggest drawback is the fact that it takes time and commitment to execute properly. You won’t see the immediate pragmatic results of the competitive approach or the quick scalability of the aggressive approach, but you’ll also pave a risk-free road to steady long-term growth in the process. Which Approach to SEO is Best? The best approach is the one that does the best job of meeting your goals. If you have some extra money to spend and you’re looking to rise quickly, go aggressive. If you’re only interested in SEO to get a quick

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Strategies to Attract Links to Your Content
Timothy Carter

10 Strategies to Attract Links to Your Content

Link building is still one of the most effective offsite search engine optimization practices around—the more high-quality links you have, the better. But with the onset of advanced Google updates like Penguin 3.0, it’s becoming more and more difficult to build “natural” backlinks on your own. In most cases, it’s better and easier to let your readers and customers do the work for you, by creating content that naturally encourages people to build links pointing back to your site. That may seem difficult, but when put into practice, you may find it’s one of the easiest—and most effective—link building strategies around. Try using these 10 tactics to attract more links to your onsite content. And, if you simply don’t have the time, consider hiring our professional link building services. Show Something New People like to see what’s new, and if it’s new enough and different enough, they’ll want to share it to their friends and followers. Nothing satisfies social urges quite like being the first person to share something new and exciting. If you have a new product or service to unveil, write a post about it, and talk about how it’s going to change the industry. You can also share a new take on an old problem or share a new idea that has future potential. Anything you can do to share something new will pay off in spades. Tease Your Audience Build anticipation whenever possible. Anticipation leads to more attention, and the value of whatever you build to will correspondingly increase. You can build this anticipation by teasing your audience of a release to come—either in the form of social media posts, or by the creation of a webinar or content series. For example, you can make posts leading to a specific date like “We’ve got a big announcement for you next week!” and “only two days until the big reveal!” Your content, when revealed, will pack a much bigger punch, and your users will be far more likely to link to it as a result. Take a Firm Stance or Have a Strong Opinion Controversy can be a good thing. If you have the opportunity to take a firm stance on a major issue in your industry, or something else debatable, you should take it. Make sure your stance is in line with your brand standards, but don’t be afraid to firmly pick a side. Don’t be afraid to take a strong opinion but be prepared for blowback. You do run the risk of alienating some of your readers, but the remainder will be far more loyal and passionate about your brand. Those loyal followers will be highly likely to link to your strong, opinionated content—especially if they’re posting their own variations of it! Give Your Readers a Surprise Giving users exactly what they expect can lead to satisfaction, but if you give your users a surprise, they’ll remember it. Create content that offers something surprising—you can support an unconventional opinion, offer a unique solution, or simply have a sudden twist in your video content to evoke a surprised response. That surprise element is invaluable to facilitating interest from your readership. People like to share surprises to others, so your content will be far more likely to attract links from other bloggers and readers. Perform & Publish Original Research Original research is one of the juiciest and most attractive forms of content you can provide. Original research is—as the name suggests—original, and that means users can’t get your data anywhere else. Your data is also going to be valuable, at least to somebody, and many people will want to link to you simply to credit you as a source of their information. You’ll be the root source of dozens, if not hundreds, of secondary articles, most of which will link to you as the original source. The only problem with this strategy is the amount of time and effort it takes to perform original research properly. Let Others Guest Blog on Your Site (w/Discretion) This strategy is much easier, and can be done by any company in any industry. Make a public request for guest bloggers—most writers are itching to write guest blogs as a source of new readership and more brand visibility. While allowing guest bloggers within your industry to post on your blog might actually send some of your users their way, the benefits to your brand can be just as powerful. Your readerships will “cross over,” and your guest bloggers’ current fans will be likely to link to their content—plus, your guest bloggers will be more than happy to share the links to their content on your site. Conduct Interviews and Surveys Interviews and surveys are almost a type of original research that doesn’t take much time to implement or analyze. Surveys (like this one from Databox) can be extremely simple, but effective at gaining citations and earning links. Essentially, you’ll be borrowing the authority of an individual or group of people in order to substantiate your own content—either with new insights or aggregated data. This strategy will attract links, either because it’s interesting, because it’s informative, or some mixture of the two. And if you’re conducting an interview with an individual, make sure to ask him/her to share it with his/her current fans. Create Something Funny or Entertaining Funny content is self-explanatory—if your content makes somebody laugh, they’ll be far more likely to share and link to it. The trick is to find something funny to create. Amusing videos are one of the more popular options, but you can also write a parody post or something similar. If your brand voice is casual or flexible, you have a lot of room to work with—remember, that everybody loves to laugh deep down. Write Landmark Pieces Landmark pieces, like whitepapers or thorough “ultimate” guides, are some of the best types of content you can write. They are longer, more detailed, and more useful than typical blog posts or infographics, and usually come through a

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How to Find Great Press Release Topics Every Week
Timothy Carter

How to Find & Brainstorm Press Release Topics & Titles

Content writing for regular press releases is a valuable strategy. Although most legitimate news outlets nofollow most of their backlinks, with company news, you still receive: more brand visibility more attention earn a stronger reputation in your industry earn brand mentions build links from news publishers and other high-quality sites improved domain authority and SEO rankings There’s only one downside: press releases aren’t easy. Just paying to push your press release to various publishers can be expensive, and perhaps more importantly, getting your press release published is tough. Most publishers have incredibly strict standards and only let the most newsworthy posts onto their sites. That means you can’t just write about anything and submit it to the press—you have to have deep, meaningful, or otherwise newsworthy material to submit. If you’re trying to submit a press release on a regular schedule, perhaps weekly, this poses a critical problem. How do you go about finding topics for press releases on a weekly and consistent basis without compromising the quality of your final product? Responding to a Crisis This should be your first line for a press release, as it is the most urgent. However, this type of topic rarely, if ever, needs to be searched for. Crises appear randomly and without warning, but sending a press release off preemptively or in response to a crisis can be very helpful. For example, if one of your products is found to be defective, sending a press release is a perfect opportunity to explain the situation, clear your name, and get in front of the inevitable wave of negative attention that will come as a result. Legal Shifts and Public Information Also consider what legal shifts have occurred in the past week, or if any new information that’s publicly interesting has been revealed. For example, has your company experienced a transfer in ownership? Have you filed a lawsuit? Are you about to initially offer your stock to the public, or are you announcing any dividends? Any financial or legal information that you’re willing to publicly disclose could serve as a newsworthy press release, as long as you frame it in a way that emphasizes why it is valuable for the public to know about it. Upcoming Events If there are no crises or legal shifts in your company, consider what upcoming events your company will be participating in or hosting. For example: Does your company have any seminars coming up? Are you going to be appearing at a tradeshow? Will you be sponsoring an upcoming event? Keep in mind that these events don’t have to be large in scale, and they don’t even have to be in person. You could even write a press release about an upcoming webinar or online class series. Charity or Community Involvements These types of press releases are great because they’re about a local newsworthy event and they also portray your company in a very positive light. Take the opportunity to write a press release if your company makes a substantial charitable donation, or if your team is getting involved with some kind of charitable event. You could also write a press release if you sponsor a local event or team, or if you have any inspirational stories related to your brand that you could mention. Products, Promotions, or Contests Failing any charitable or community topics, you could move on to newsworthy events related to your products or offerings. Generally, these types of press releases are low on the totem pole; if you have something better to write about, write about it, and don’t just write about one of your existing products or your release is bound to be rejected. Instead, focus on brand new products coming out, major promotions you’re announcing, or a contest that needs a little help getting initial attention. Company Milestones Major milestones for your company are another potential press release topic, so long as the milestone is actually newsworthy. For example: Have you reached an anniversary for your company? Have you recently revised your brand or updated your website significantly? Have you hit a specific revenue figure or made significant personnel changes? Have you won any awards or public recognition for your efforts? Any milestone like these could be turned into a valuable press release. New Market Trends or Other Thought Leadership Material If you’re still hard-pressed for a press release topic after considering all of the options above, you can write a release on new trends in your industry, or any new information you’ve uncovered in the course of doing business. New market research, studies, or polls work great here, as well as any events or situations that illustrate your personnel as authoritative in the industry. Press releases may seem intimidating at first, and there’s no question that they’re difficult to take on. But with a little experience and a lot of patience, you can start collecting more, better ideas for your press releases and get backlinks from high profile news sites. Don’t be intimidated if many of your early press releases fail to make it to publication; it’s just the nature of the business. All you can do is write the best, most consistent material you can, submit it to the most relevant publication sources, and hope for the best. Even a handful of press links will make all your efforts worth it. Want more information on our content promotion or link building services? Head over to our comprehensive guide on content marketing here: The All-in-One Guide to Planning and Launching a Content Marketing Strategy.

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