The next time you launch a contest or plan event for your jewelry store, you should consider issuing a press release as part of your announcement.
Most people think of press releases as a statement you send to your local newspaper in hopes that they will run a story on you. Although that might be true, in the digital world a press release is also a credible way to build links to your website.
Press releases have very specific formats for writing. You can find great beginner how-to guides on prweb.com under their "Learning" section. Make sure to review these before attempting to write a release for yourself. Of course if you have the money you should hire a press agent instead of doing this yourself.
Once you've composed your release, you should call all your local papers and find out their procedure for submitting it to them. Some will say they only accept newswire releases, and some may give you email addresses to send to. Go ahead and send it to them; the worst that can happen is they ignore you, but there's always a chance they will give you a call if your event is large enough or interesting enough.
For online distribution you could pay prweb.com to send your release out. They will charge you $89 for the basic service, but you should choose the $199 or higher plans.
For free release distribution you can start with these 3:
prlog.com
pressreleasenetwork.com
i-newswire.com
You can also search Google for "press release websites" to find other free services.
A few years ago press release submissions were very popular for website link building and search engine optimizations, and sometimes a press release would even appear on page one of search results. Google deflated much of their importance over the last year so you won't see press releases in the main search results much anymore, but that doesn't mean they are not still important.
Check out the press release directions on prweb.com and give this a try. It's worth the initial effort and worth a lot more if you do this every time you run a contest or store event.
