It used to be all so simple. Newspapers, television, and radio spread the news, and businesses used conventional advertising along with editorial advertising to generate revenue. Both editing and publicity "worked" and there was rarely a crossover between the two.

Now the mainstream media is threatened by the alleged hooliganism that the Internet has spawned, 'citizen journalists' compete with television and newspapers from behind the scenes, and advertising seems to have lost its effectiveness now that viewers, readers and listeners are leaving to pay attention.

This is bad news if you are a mainstream media outlet or mainstream News as a Business, but good news if you are willing to get into the news business, at least in terms of spreading the word about your business!

When people stop responding enthusiastically to sales messages, everyone continues to be interested in information, and more and more information, about 'stuff'. The Internet allows us to fully investigate products, services and companies before making a purchase decision. This means that prospects are now much more "qualified" when they (finally) contact you, having discovered most of what they needed to know. And the companies that win these clients are the ones that have the most information on the web about what they do. This information, in the broadest sense of the word, is 'news'.

So if you're currently in a position where there isn't much "news" about your business, how are you going to rectify the situation?

Start telling people your news
The easiest way to do this is with a regular newsletter or email update (ie at least once a month). It doesn't really matter what you call it, as long as it appears regularly and is primarily informational, it's not just a sales pitch. And if you put a signup box on your website with enough good reasons why someone would want to receive your newsletter, you can grow your list.

Start updating your website with this news
Search engines give preferential treatment to websites that a) contain a lot of content and b) are regularly updated. You can earn points on both counts by putting the full text of your newsletter articles on your website every time you send them out.

Start sending some of this news to 'the media'
Don't expect great results from sending press releases to your local newspaper or a national television station unless you've figured out why one of these outlets might want to tell your story. Instead, look at your story and find out which media outlets would really like it. The best places may be trade magazines or trade magazines or websites.

Any positive coverage online will not only drive people to your website, it will likely generate inbound links that will help your website rank in search engines. Any positive offline coverage will also draw people to your website (whether or not the web address is listed) and will raise your company's profile far more effectively than any advertisement.