Just about every industry now has online magazines that can be used for publicity. I’ve seen them for real estate, technology, music, search engine optimization services, construction, insurance, and a host of other industries as well. These magazines often act as industry trade journals and serve the same purpose that off line trade journals serve. They can be used in much the same way.
There are essentially four ways to use these industry news magazines for online publicity:• Press release submissions
• Article and review submissions
• Sponsorships
• Advertising and link building
It’s no secret that the press release is an effective and powerful publicity tool. Whenever you have important news to send out about your company you should send it to your industry news magazines as well as the press release directories.
Another way to get publicity through online industry magazines is by submitting reviews and articles related to your company and its products. Reviews are better if written by another person not related to your company. Articles can be written by a staff member and you simply submit them to the industry news magazine staff asking them for their guidelines and whether or not they will publish such material. Many will. Some that do will only do so for their sponsors.
That brings me to the third way to get online publicity from your industry news magazines. Many of these magazines rely on sponsors to stay alive. They cannot do what they do without some form of compensation. The purpose they serve is to keep people in your industry updated on important changes and a lot of times they are owned by a competitor. That doesn’t mean they won’t let you sponsor them. You simply pay a certain amount of money every month or quarter for a link back to your website or a recommendation of your products.
Finally, you can also buy advertising or links from the magazines. In many cases, they will have a forum and all you have to do is join the forum for free. You can then post comments and reply to comments that others have made. This is often free. You may find a forum in your industry that allows comments only from sponsors or advertisers. If so, then consider it an added perk to your advertising.
