Pot Roast and Public Relations (or, How Your Web Site Can Be Your Best P.R. Tool)

Recently I had a craving for pot roast. I racked my brain to think of a restaurant that offered a great pot roast (as you can see, I'm not a whiz in the kitchen). Anyway, I did what I usually do when I need to find information - I searched Google for "pot roast boca raton" to see what restaurants came up.

Well, only one restaurant's menu that featured pot roast came up. I had never eaten there before, so I phoned them to make sure they still had pot roast on the menu (alas, they didn't).

But here's the bottom line: I would have become a new customer at this restaurant -- because it offered what I wanted -- and I learned about it while searching the Web.

This underscores an important point: every business needs a Web site. Very simply, you never know when potential clients will be searching on the Web for something they need - and the name of your business or organization will come up.

Here's an example. The other night, I got a phone call from a writer in California. She was doing a story on P.R. and my name came up on her Internet search. If it weren't for my Web site, she never would have found me -- and I would have missed the opportunity for publicity.

Here's another example. One of my clients told me that a potential customer had decided to do business with his company because of the high quality of its Web site.

If you don't think your business or organization needs a Web site, consider this: quite possibly, this very minute, somebody out there is searching the Web for something he or she needs that you can provide.


By Margie Fisher