Promoting your business can be a difficult, time consuming, and expensive affair, but it need not be so. Local newspapers and magazines can be tremendously beneficial to small businesses. We all know that paid for advertisements raise awareness of your business. But these can be very expensive, and all too often, they do not produce the necessary results, and refunds for poor performance are unheard of.

Editorial coverage gives greater credibility, and it can be free. Local newspapers are always looking for newsworthy stories to fill their pages. But for them to use your information, you must give them something interesting to say.

Your press release should be locally orientated, up to date, and most of all, informative. They should not be an out and out sales pitch. If if they are, the chances are, the editor will consign them to the bin.

Everyone loves a human-interest story. If you can incorporate this style of information into your press releases, you will greatly increase your chances of gaining publication. Check out what the competition are doing, check out what the long established and successful businesses are doing. You can learn a great deal from the activities of long established organisations.

And another way to gain attention is to promote the use of a product, in an innovative way. Editors can rarely resist such an opportunity. Use your imagination. Come up with something completely different. If you can do that, you might be surprised at the extent of the coverage you could achieve.

Clued-up companies of every size use the press, both local and national, to publicise their businesses, and you should too, because it can be free, and produce excellent results. Make it your business to get to know the people who write and run your local publications. After a while, you might find them beating a path to your door on the lookout for space-fillers, especially in a quiet news week. It pays to always have something handy and available at short notice. If you don't, the chances are, your competitors will.

Never underestimate the power of the press. Local newspapers are read from cover to cover, week in week out, and those same readers could be reading about you and your business, for free.