If you own a local business, there’s good news when it comes to online PR. You can win big with online marketing and localised public relations to generate free messaging or promotion for your business.

When a local organization produces its own online news content, it almost always results in increased search engine rankings, traffic, and business. The more education and informative the content is the better your results. Here are three easy ways to get started with local online PR:

Put a News Section on Your Website

If your business has a news section on its website, you’ll have a place to publish and manage content about events, new products or services, and community involvement of your business. It’s unlikely to gain mainstream attention of major media outlets, but it does help improve your repeat business and build a loyal following of customers. They like being informed. In addition it boosts search engine rankings, especially if you are using keyword-rich titles and writing news tailored to the region you do business in. Before you know it, you’ll organization will be known for it’s great communication and you’ll be ahead of your competitors in the search engines.

Use Press Releases To Generate Buzz

Writing press releases about your website/business is one of the best ways to generate a buzz for what you are doing. It gives journalists something to report on, as you are providing them the key information they need to generate a story. Charity involvement is perfect for these kinds of things –newsworthy content for local papers. It could gain exposure for your business in the community section or events of your local paper, or bigger publications depending on the news.

Connect With Your Customers Socially

With the ever-increasing popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you can place your company’s name in front of a captive audience absolutely free. The key is to be personal and provide value to your friends or followers. Local food outlets are having great successes with Twitter. Instead of just sending out offers, which people see as spam, they are providing their followers with special offers created daily. My local Pizza outlet on Enoggera use their facebook page to post photos of their newest pizza toppings and load on new prices, images and offers daily. This listing for them also helps them come up in the top 5 when searching Google for pizza outlets in our area. Their content is always updated.