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I hope you find my writing and business tips and observations useful. My business and blog are dedicated to helping businesses communicate clearly and reach their potential. Read, subscribe to my newsletter, enjoy!Tash

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Getting free website PR

There are many ways to get PR – run an event, host a competition, support a worthy cause, just to name a few. Of course, you then need to let the media know about your PR so they can spread the word to a larger audience – this is generally done through a media release (although now days blogs, twitter and other social media outlets are useful, too).

However, being mentioned in the media is more effective if your bsueinss name and URL are also mentioned. For example, “Tash Hughes believes SMS text is wrong on a website” is not bad but for PR purposes it would be much better as “Tash Hughes of Word Constructions believes SMS text is wrong on a website”. Even better is a link (for online media) and URL to make it easy for people to follow through.

Joan Stewart has created a great list of ways to get your URL included in any media coverage – most are free, too.

Have you had your URL mentioned in any media exposure? What impact did it have on your business?

When commenting…

If you leave a comment in a blog, you presumably want to contribute and have your comment included on the blog site. So make sure this is going to happen by getting it right.

Recently, I have received a few comments and pings that aren’t spam but have faulty links so I have not approved the comments.

In one example, the same person gave two comments and had a URL starting with http://http://www so the link obviously didn’t work. The lesson here is to check whether you need to add http:// or not when completing a form – don’t assume every blog/website owner will take the time to fix this error.

Another example if a link that takes a very long time to open and then goes to a page that doesn’t display well or completely. The credibility of the site, and therefore the comment, is reduced. In my case, it meant I couldn’t see how they had linked to me so I wasn’t comfortable accepting the link in my comments.

The result? Your comment is not approved or is only approved once the link is deleted.