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Let Your Work Speak for Itself
Subject Line: Let Your Work Speak for Itself
The Write Market Release
Vol. 3. Issue 10
Let Your Work Speak for Itself
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CONTENTS IN THIS ISSUE
1. Editor's Remarks
2. How to Build an Online Press Center- Part V:
Partners, Clients, Projects, Works
3. What's New at The Write Market
4. Get Your Ad in TWM's Release!
5. Administrative Information
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EDITOR'S REMARKS
Hello everyone!
Last month, I told you I was visiting Buffalo during the
aweful 7 foot snow storm. My husband thinks
I should have been a weatherman's wife, because
I seem to be preoccupied with weather, but here's a couple
more snow stories:
Here in Southern, PA, where we only have about
10 snow plows for the entire Philadelphia area,
we had a little bit of snow - about 6 inches.
Radio and TV newspeople were up in arms.
Batten down the hatches!
Stock up on water, bread, and batteries.
Hide your children in the basement!
Whatever you do, don't drive!
Well, I didn't drive, mainly because I was afraid of
people that don't know how to drive in 3 inches
of snow.
Terry tells me that down in her neck of the woods,
Washington, D.C., the weather people are more
disappointed than the populace when each storm doesn't
turn out to be the storm of the century. They actually go out and
measure "snowdrifts" (the piles the plows leave behind). Sorry,
but if you can't dig a tunnel through it, to play in, it aint a snowdrift.
Okay. Enough with the snow, it's February, in a few
months, we'll be well into spring. Now is the time to
start getting your site ready for Spring holidays.
If you have any type of product that can relate to
St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Passover, or any
other holiday during the months of March, April, May, and June,
get working right now. Take an hour of your time and rewrite a
page of your site for one or two specific keyword
phrases that relate to a specific holiday:
1. In a 200-300 word page, use the phrase about 6 times.
2. Include the phrase in the title tag. (The title tag appears
in the HTML code between the head tags.)
3. Submit the page to Google here:
http://www.google.com/addurl.html
(I'm recommending Google because it should only take a few weeks
to get your page indexed by this search engine.)
Need more specific advice for the search engines? Get our e-book:
Search Engine Optimization and Placement, it's an easy introduction
to SEO:
http://www.thewritemarket.com/seo-book.shtml
I finally put together an "examples page" of Online
Press Centers. If you are building your Press Center it will
help you to read as many examples as you can.
It will give you a starting point and you may just come up
with your own brainstorm!
http://thewritemarket.com/press/examples.htm
I'm still looking for more examples - if you have a good
one or you've run across a good one, send me the URL --
thanks!
Write on,
Renee Kennedy
rkennedy@thewritemarket.com
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ELEMENTS OF A PRESS CENTER
(This is a quick review to show you where
we're at and where we're going.)
1. Table of Contents
2. Backgrounder
3. History
4. The People Behind Your Business
5. Projects, Clients, Partners and/or Works **We're HERE **
6. Testimonials
7. Press Releases
8. Sample News Story
9. Articles by Other Sources
10. Contact Information
For more details on the elements of your Press Center see:
http://www.thewritemarket.com/press/index.htm
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PARTNERS, CLIENTS, PROJECTS, WORKS
If you are running a service oriented business, it is
necessary to show that you are "doing things" and "going
places," in your press center. The section, "Partners,
Clients, Projects and Works," can greatly enhance people's
opinion that you are a functioning, producing business.
If you are selling products, you may need a section that
explains who your partners are (if you have them) or if you
are working on any product development projects. Product
development projects can be extremely newsworthy and may
just be the "in" that you need to get noticed by the press.
You may not need all of these sections. For instance, you may
only need one, like "Clients." It will depend on your business
and how many of the sections apply to your business. However,
if they apply, use them, you want to use every advantage to get
the press interested in your business. You never know what will
strike a person as interesting. By providing a brief, clear
explanation of what each section is about within your Table of
Contents, your visitors will be able to choose the information that
most interests them.
Here is some of the information that you may want to include in
the Partners, Clients, Projects and Works section of your press
center:
PARTNERS: It will be beneficial to show your partners to prove
that you have support from other businesses. It will give credibility
to your business, especially if those partners are well-known.
Include a link to the partner's site, a brief description of the
relationship between your company and your partner (if appropriate),
or a quick explanation of what your partnering companies do.
For example - A decision to advertise on a search engine is going to
greatly depend on who the engine is partnered with. Therefore, it is
imperative for companies that lend out their expertise, technology,
or data to have a list of their partners. Check out Google's partner's
page. Very simple list with a link to the company and a brief
description of what the company does:
http://www.google.com/press/customers.html
CLIENTS: If you are selling business to business (B2B), you
definitely want to show a list of satisfied clients. If they have a web
site, link to them. If they are brick and mortar, include their business
name, address and logo. Also, you may want to provide a brief
description of their problems and your solutions to their problems.
If you are selling business to consumer (B2C), a better tact would
be to include testimonials from your satisfied customers. Perhaps,
you would call the section, "Customers."
For example - Here are a few different sites that show client lists
in different ways:
Extremely simple - because the company logos speak for
themselves:
http://www.sparklit.com/about/clients.spark?
Extremely complex - they show the "challenge" and "solution." I
think this is a little heavy for a press center, and this was probably
designed more to show prospective clients what they can do
rather than to get the press interested.
http://www.kpmgconsulting.com/clients/
Right on target - brief but professional:
http://www.diamondbullet.com/clients.html
PROJECTS / RESEARCH / CASE STUDIES: For the purpose
of this article, I'm going to define "projects" as non-profit jobs that you
are tackling in order to further the development of your products or
services. However, on our site, we use "projects" interchangeably
with "clients." You can have paying projects or clients and
non-paying projects or research and development programs.
Research and development can look very good in a press kit,
and may just be what the press is looking for.
For example - Microsoft has a whole site dedicated to research:
http://research.microsoft.com/
WORKS / PORTFOLIO: This would include any type of artistic
composition - painting, photography, writing, music, web art,
sculpture, etc. If it's a visual medium, include a good picture of
your work, a title, and a brief description. If it's a written medium,
include some excerpts and also a short description of your work
in general.
For example - Here is a gentleman that offers professional
voiceover services for radio, television and film narration. He
has several examples of his work on his web site. In any type
of sensory examples, let your work speak for itself. A link to
the work and a title, will be sufficient.
http://www.andygilmore.com/VoiceSamples.HTM
Here's Terry's portfolio - it's not quite finished, yet, but you get the
idea:
http://www.thewritemarket.com/terryresume/corporate/corporate.html
The thing that strikes me about the Partners, Clients, Projects or
Works pages is how dull the information can potentially be (if you choose
to write rather than "show.") In order to combat mediocrity, I recommend
that you "show" as much as possible, and if you do have to write, keep your
explanations concise. Most of the above examples were chosen for their
brevity. In an online press center, the idea is more to incite interest in
your company. It would really be the job of the standard,
offline press kit to expound on the details.
Here is an example of a nicely written clients/projects/partners
section. It is, in fact, broken down into 6 pages and does an
excellent job of leading people to only the information that they
need. It is clear and to the point. It does not overwhelm with a
lot of boring information.
http://www.vei.co.uk/main_partners.html
__________________
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________________________________
WHAT'S NEW AT THE WRITE MARKET
New Posters and Gifts:
http://www.thewritemarket.com/course.shtml
New Articles in:
Press and Public Relations:
http://www.thewritemarket.com/articledir/media.htm
Business Website:
http://www.thewritemarket.com/articledir/website.htm
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GET YOUR AD IN THIS EZINE
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webmaster@thewritemarket.com
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