The fact that you’re on a tight budget should not stop you from creating your own publicity campaign for your business, product and services. These days it is easy and cheap to be your own publicist; all you need to invest is a little time. 

Here are seven essential tools for your publicity campaign toolkit:

1.) A  webpage which advertises your products and services. Even if it’s a free blogspot blog, you need to grab yourself a piece of online real estate and show everyone what you’ve got. Every website should include testimonials, an "About Me" or "About Us" page, a "Contact Us"  Page, and an "Our Products" or "Our Services", and, if appropriate, samples of your work. (You don’t have testimonials because you’re a brand new business? Do some work for free in exchange for testimonials.)

2.) A "Media Room" or "press room" page on your website. So you’ve never been written up in the press? No big deal. Hire a press release writer – ahem, I’m available – or go to PRWeb and see how they’re written, and then write a press release about your business, and put that press release in the "Media Room" or "Press" page. Write a new press release and add it to this page every time you hire someone, form a merger, release a new product or service, offer a holiday special, win an award, attend a conference, etc. Consider sending the press releases out to free press release distribution sites, or www.webwire.com for $19.95, or www/PRWeb.com for $80.

3.) A Twitter account, Facebook account, and Linkedin account, all linking to your website, with your company bio on each site. Visit those sites regularly and participate in the communities. The payback is HUGE. 

4.) A signature line in your emails that helps spread your message. Set up your emails so that your name, email address, website URL, and links to your Twitter, Facebook, & Linkedin accounts, are in the signature line of each email that you send out, along with a one line summary of your USP.  Mine is "We Broadcast Your Message To the World." 

5.) Other people’s blogs! Use them to grab some link love, traffic, and free publicity. How? Simple.  Find the popular blogs in your field and offer to write blog posts for them in your area of expertise. This gives you backlinks, traffic, and conveys credibility.

6.) An online and offline press kit with a photograph of yourself and/or your product,  a one-page bio of yourself, and a page about your services/product/company. When I say "offline", I mean a printed version, ready to mail or hand to a reporter or editor.

7.) A list of media who might be interested in writing about you. Contact them, find out what reporter or editor you should submit press releases to, or pitch stories to, and regularly follow up with them with timely story ideas. Odds are good that if you are polite, persistant and professional and are pitching good stories, sooner or later someone in the mainstream media will feature you. 

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