How to increase PR of sites?

What Awesome PR Ideas / tactics / campaigns have you implement recently to boost your media exposure & increase sales?

• Looking for Awesome PR Ideas that you have used recently to boost your media exposure & increase sales. Please share exactly how you have done this in your own business, explain any challenges you have had securing PR for your business and how you overcame them. Also how did the PR success affect your bottom line profits and how you verified it? Also give your advice for entrepreneurs looking to score awesome PR exposure for their businesses.

• Answer:

  The best thing small business owners can do to increase their media exposure is sign up for (and regularly respond to) HARO reporter queries (http://helpareporter.com). ProfNet, PitchRate and SourceBottle are other options, but HARO has the biggest selection and best opportunities in my experience. Via HARO, we've gotten ourselves and our clients coverage at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes and many other publications. We've also gotten live interviews on CNN, the Today show, FoxBusiness and CNBC - it's all about how compelling your pitch is. There's a good "how to" guide to pitching reporters here: http://www.contentfac.com/online-pr-ebook-excerpt-how-to-pitch-the-media-like-a-pro/. This type of PR coverage is extremely valuable for several reasons: It can produce a ton of high quality backlinks, which can have a major impact on your website's SEO. There's a quantifiable value in the coverage itself - typically this is calculated at three times ad rates. So if you get a reporter to write a one-page article in a magazine about your business, the value of that would be three times the cost of a full-page ad (since editorial content carries more weight than ad content). HARO can literally get you millions of dollars worth of PR coverage. It can drive leads to your business. For online businesses, converting those leads into sales is up to your website's copy, design and user experience. For brick and mortar stores, it's up to your sales team. For both types of businesses, having quality goods or services that people actually want to pay for is critical. As for tracking the effectiveness of your media coverage, nothing beats Google Analytics.