Use Your Virtual Assistant for Free Publicity: Submit articles

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Free publicity is the best publicity!

Submitting articles on the web is a great strategy to gain free Publicity for your business. journalists frequently surf these article sites when looking for new information to write about. Article sites only require that when quoting an article, that credit is given to the author—and journalists will adhere to these rules. It lends credibility to their article to quote an expert. Often journalists will follow up by contacting you and asking you to be a resource for future articles.

To get started, do a Google search (or better yet have your assistant do a Google search) for free article sites. A good way to tell if the article site is worth the time and trouble of posting is by checking the Google page rank for the site’s homepage. This will tell you how often that site is visited or how important it is to Google—thus how well journalists will find the site when searching for articles. The only paid service I would recommend is newsreleasewire.com which for a small amount sends your news release to all of the major media outlets up to 52 times per year. A great free site is ezinearticles.com

Second, Google articles relative to your industry. I’m a Virtual Assistant, so Virtual Assistant Articles is what search terms I would type in. Visit the websites and take a look at the types of articles the site publishes to make sure that this where you would like your articles to be posted. Then look for a link to “Submit Articles”. Some websites require that you register, which is common and should not raise any alarms unless they ask for payment or financial information. If the website does not have a submit article link, but has a good Google rating, find the Contact Us page and send an email to the website owner asking if they will accept articles along with a brief informative bio establishing credibility (why should they publish your article? What can you offer? Why would people be interested in what you have to say?) Many times these article sites will take as much material as you can offer—they want a dynamic website with lots of information too!

About once a week have your virtual assistant post an article to each of these sites. This should only take them a few hours and it’s well worth the effort.

500 word articles are easy to write 3-5 at a time if you have the right Virtual Assistant handling the mundane everyday tasks that consume so much of your time. Just set aside a few hours each month when you are feeling creative and can have some peace and quiet (send the spouse and kids to a movie). Throughout the month collect headlines and articles from the web and print in a “swipe file” that you can refer to for topics, quotes, or inspiration—better still have your virtual assistant do the research for you!

Have your assistant subscribe to Google alerts. This free service from Google sends an email to you every time Google search engines find a new web post on a certain topic. First, make a Google alert with your name, then an alert with your business name, and then a few alerts on topics relative to your industry. Registering your own name is important because you want to see if you are quoted in The New York Times and show it off on your website. The same thing is true for your business name. You want to see who is talking about you or more importantly if someone is doing business in your name. Google alerts on topics relative to your business will help you build your swipe file and you can go one step further. Write to the author of an article and offer an opposing viewpoint with the reasons why, “there’s more” to the story, or your own expert advice based on experience. Offer to be a resource to them and they will ask you the next time they need an expert in your field. Google alerts allow you to jump on these topics while they are hot and contact the author right away instead of weeks later when they are onto the next thing.