All business owners, both online and offline, could benefit from more publicity. As many business owners know, getting publicity through advertising can be expensive. Not only can advertising and marketing be costly, businesses have to be better than their competitors. After all, everyone knows the best marketer always wins! So, how can this be done without blowing a budget? The secret is free publicity through the mass media of radio, TV, Internet, and newsprint.

Using mass media can enable a business to reach a huge number of people at one shot. Imagine what would happen if a business were the topic of a popular radio talk show, had a spot on the Today show, Oprah, or Larry King! What would be the result if a business was on the front page of the business section in USA today? Are you beginning to get the picture? One appearance and you could be set for life!

Here are four tips on how to get free mass media publicity for your business.

1. Use the News Search Engines. The news search engines are Yahoo, Google, and Topics.net. Everything that happens in our world, in case you haven't noticed, ends up on the Internet. Information about any topic can be easily obtained by typing in a keyword. For example, if you wanted to search on a news topic related to your business on Google, you would go to news.google.com. Next, you would type in your keyword and then click on the links that show up about various stories. What is nice about this is that you will find reporters who have written stories in your area of interest in newspapers, TV, press releases, etc. With just one click, many times you will find information to contact them. One excellent method to use when contacting a journalist is offering a tip list. Journalists love tip lists since they are easy to plug in for stories they are working on. Plus, any free information is always appreciated!

You will also find that some journalists have a comments box. This is a huge gift to the business owner who wants to get free publicity. In that comment box you can talk about how you read their story, what you thought about it, and then offer the reporter additional tips. This also is a way to get to know them and if you continue to do this, be viewed as an expert resource.

Another great thing you can do is to sign up for News Alerts with Google and Yahoo. From the homepages of these search engines, all you need to do is to click on the link, give your email address, and then type in the keywords you are targeting. Google and Yahoo will then send you daily, weekly, or monthly (based on your preferences), all the stories that come across the Internet related to your business interest. This will give you a huge edge in finding reporters to contact.

2. Go to the home websites for publications such as USA Today, The Washington Times, Boston Globe, New York Times, and other major newsprint publications. Next, type in your keyword of interest. You will find a wealth of information and reporters who you can start building a relationship with.

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