My name is Miloy Schwartz with Lemonade Marketing Firm in downtown Albany, Georgia. We hear a lot with small businesses that PR is not a place that they want to put their resources. And that's a hard pill for me to swallow, because my degree is in PR, and I worked as a journalist for several years as well. So I know how valuable it is, and how difficult it is to be able to get news coverage, which is essentially what public relations is. It is news coverage, as opposed to advertising. News coverage, editorial content, that's something that you don't actually pay for. Advertising is something that you do pay for. The biggest difference in the two is that advertising, the client has 100% control over. With public relations, you only have as much control as the reporter or the editor is willing to let you have.

Because of that, editorial or news coverage is valued by experts, depending on who you talk to, at three times or up to 10 times more than advertising. So, if you got a half page ad in the news paper and it was valued at $1,000, then a story that was done on your business in the same news paper that took up a half page would be valued at $3,000 or $10,000, or somewhere in the middle.

So, I think it's really important that people who are in small business, mid business, large business, whatever size your business is, to remember to take a look at what is news worthy about your business, and reach out to the reporters and editors and let them know what's going on.

Eventually they're going to get to know that you're willing to be a source for them and they're going to give you a call. That's how you wind up with news coverage. Again, when it's that much more valuable, it really is a place that you should consider putting your resources.

Again, my name is Miloy Schwartz with Lemonade Marketing Firm. You can find us on the web at lemonademarketingfirm.com.