Many of our loyal small business UnderstandingMarketing.com visitors have been asking about the best time to pitch a PR story with a holiday theme: “I am an author of childrens books and I would like the media to include them in any stories that talk about this year’s best new gifts. I’m confused on whether to pitch reporters now because we haven’t even reached Thanksgiving...

The role of a press release (also referred to as a news release) is to make an announcement of something that’s happened to or within your company. Companies that try to develop their own press are often tempted to use press releases as a promotional sales tool. Be careful as this can anger many of the media contacts you’ve worked hard to cultivate. Good press release topics include: &...

Sometimes you can get your small business or company great publicity and media exposure without pitching your company or products for a story. How? Instead try pitching yourself as a person who’s got the credentials to talk about a different story that’s going on in the news. To find an example of this I only had to open up the pages of my hometown newspaper, the Sun-Sentinel here in S...

Looking for a great way to generate some priceless publicity for your company? Breaking a world record and getting your achievement (and company) into the Guinness Book of World Records is always a good idea. Concord (NH)-based Nonni’s Italian Eatery was successful in its efforts to break the world record of the largest meatball ever made. Matthew Mitnitsky, owner of the restaurant, was boas...

The numbers of the third quarter GDP have been announced and it’s official: We’ve “escaped” the worst recession since the Great Depression. I place the word escape in quotes because, as we all know, it doesn’t really feel like we’ve escaped. Some pundits argue the strength of the economic turnaround, which has been fueled largely by government stimulus like Cash...

How are you different from your competition? If you truly have a totally unique product, you’re in good shape. But if there are hundreds of thousands of others out there that make pretty much the same thing as you (let’s say, sandwiches), then you’ve got to find a way to differentiate yourself. For example, The Mogul Mom wrote an article on the StartupPrincess blog and talked abo...