London, Ink isn’t a PR firm but in order to help clients prioritize marketing/comm initiatives it’s a necessity to be familiar with a wide range of marketing tools, services, agencies, etc.   I’m also always looking for creative ways to promote London, Ink in cost-effective, targeted ways.

For those reasons, last year I started using the Vocus Small Business Edition (aka SBE–a version of PRWeb), an online pr management tool that is a scaled down version of Vocus’ widely-used flagship platform.  My hypothesis was that, without much investment in time or money, sending out a series of releases on London, Ink news (client announcements, speaking engagements, new hires) would increase the number of quality mentions of “London, Ink” across the web and of course quality (in the eyes of Google’s algorithm) inbound links to my site.

(A side note: I don’t rely on SEO for inbound lead gen, but ever since Discovery launched the hit tattoo/reality program called “London Ink,” my links have been pushed way down.)

Each release took a few minutes to queue up–Vocus allowed me to target by geography, topic of the release, type of reporter and name of media outlet. I was also able to incorporate a video interview I participated in with Shashi Bellamkonda, Network Solutions’ Social Swami.  I was able to easily link the releases to my various online channels, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and, of course, my site.

My hypothesis turned out to be correct.  After my second Vocus release, the search engine rankings for London, Ink improved and they continued to do so as I sent out more releases.

Now for the over-deliver part.  As I mentioned, London, Ink doesn’t typically provide PR services, but I did support a significant announcement by one of my client’s by doing some basic outreach to my media contacts and distributing the release via my Vocus SBE account.

My expectation was that the media contacts I selected may or may not actually receive the release; may or may not see it among the blizzard of releases they get each day; and/or won’t respond to it. I’m pleased to report that the client received several great media inquiries, including one from the major daily paper in their market and another from a key vertical news outlet. Both of these inquiries resulted in excellent print coverage, which the client of course loved.

So for resource-strapped organizations that need a cost-effective news distribution platform, check out Vocus SBE.