Welcome to my new website for “Web-Based Public Relations.” As many of you know, for the past 20 years, I have made my living as a PR consultant for private practitioners and other professionals – experts, all. As I wrote in my first posting to this site, through PR for Professionals, I help my clients to promote their practices by getting them:
• Targeted placements before their potential clients, patients and customers
• Speaking engagements before community and professional groups their target markets attend
• TV and radio appearances their potential clients and customers are likely listen to and watch
• Articles both by and about them in publications that will likely be read by their potential clients and customers
For 15 of these years, my husband Tim was struggling with the side effects and complications from the several surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation he underwent as a consequence of a very serious brain tumor. (You may read about our struggles in two articles here and here.)
As Tim’s advocate, I soon learned how to do online research. I also became increasingly aware of the shortcomings of the Medical System, and became passionate about educating people about the dangers of this flawed system.
After Tim died in November of 2005, I set up my first website, HonestMedicine.
HonestMedicine has become a website that I’m proud of. After a few months, I began to feel strongly that the information on my site needed to reach the public. But I had never really marketed a website before. The marketing of my clients’ sites had always been handled by someone else, or by a combination of experts – usually a webmaster, who often subcontracted with an expert in search engine optimization.
I was definitely not an expert in web-based marketing – yet.
But, with my own site, I felt strongly that these “mass market” promotional approaches would NOT be effective at getting my information out there – and getting me known as an expert.
I decided to experiment with promoting my own site through my own, very new, brand of marketing – which I would come to call “Web-Based PR.”
I found that I was right: Marketing an information-packed site was, indeed, very different from marketing a “salesy” one. I decided to try some innovative techniques to market HonestMedicine -- and hopefully, my own expertise, as well.
One technique I used was to go on other people’s blogs and leave well-written, well-thought-out, information-packed comments.
The other was to interview leading experts in the fields of Integrative Medicine and Medical Advocacy, and to post the audios on my site. I then promote the interviews, of course, by leaving comments about their content on other people's blogs. (You may listen to two of my interviews here and here.)
Both methods turned out to be excellent ways to promote my site -- and my expertise. In fact, leaving comments on other people’s blogs has led to several sites linking to mine, and to some site owners writing articles about HonestMedicine. These efforts also led to my being quoted in a Chicago Tribune article, which was, in turn, syndicated all over the country. For more examples of these successes, please see my article, “Why Communicate With Your Market Via the Web?” on this site.
Struck by how effective this kind of marketing was turning out to be for me, I started doing it for one of my clients. I don’t feel comfortable sharing the “trade secrets” I used to promote her website, but I can tell you that, because of my new-found web-based promotional skills – including leaving comments and conducting audio interviews -- her site is now being linked to by one of the top environmental websites.
However, I do feel comfortable sharing my own “trade secrets,” -- i.e., the kinds of things I am doing to build HonestMedicine -- and have set up this site to do that.
My intention is to work as a consultant to help other experts whose missions I believe in, to reach more people through their own, individualized web-based PR. (As you can see from my masthead, I now refer to Web-Based PR as “taking PR for Professionals to a new level.”)
I hope you will enjoy your visits to this site. Please take a look at the articles, as well as the links I have provided on the left-hand side. In the future, I will be posting other articles, adding more links, and sharing new case studies with you.
If you would like to talk with me about how I might be able to help you promote your own expertise via the web, please email me at JuliaS1573@aol.com, and I will be very happy to offer you a free initial consultation.
