A viral PR stunt can cause your brand, your website and your products to spread virally. Of all the different kinds of viral traffic you can try to get, viral PR is one of the toughest. Instead of just convincing people to “Share” a piece of content, you need to create a stunt so compelling that a journalist will actually pick it up and print it in a physical newspaper.

If you can achieve that, then your viral PR stunt was a success. Naturally, if you create a stunt good enough to get press attention, you’ll also get a ton of shares, likes and blogger mentions.

How do you create a viral PR stunt that grabs media attention?

==> Make People Say “What?”

When people hear about your idea, their first reaction should be “what?” In other words, their heads turn, they stop in their tracks and have to re-read that headline just to make sure they heard it right.

It needs to be outside the box. So far outside the box, in fact, that it’s never been done before.

Take the “Peanut Protest” for example. Mark McGowan, in protest for his student debt, pushed a peanut for two weeks from his school to the Prime Minister. He used just his nose the whole time to push the peanut as he pushed it down the sidewalk. He asked the Prime Minister to take the peanut in lieu of his debt.

He got a ton of press coverage for this stunt. Camera crews followed him everywhere. One big reason for it was that it was just so outside the box.

==> It Has Several Iterations

The best PR stunts are ones that have several iterations.

In other words, it shouldn’t end after the first news cycle. Instead, journalists and bloggers should be able to talk about it again and again and again.

You can do this by making the event an annual event. You can also do it by stretching an event out. Taking the “Peanut Protest” example, Mark McGowan got a solid two weeks of coverage instead of just one news story because of how long the challenge took.

==> Link It to Your Business

It’s hard to come up with a PR stunt that grabs attention. It’s even harder to come up with one that links well with your business.

Your goal isn’t just to do something off the wall that gets people to write about it. Your goal should be to generate a lot of buzz and press for your business.

If you own a cake shop, perhaps dress up as a giant edible cake. If you run a car dealership, sell a car for $1 in some sort of contest. Link the viral PR stunt to your business somehow.

Before you launch, ask your friends and family how outside the box the idea sounds. If they think it sounds absolutely nuts, you’re on the right track.

When it comes to building a brand in a specific industry, especially if the brand is B2B, there are few avenues more powerful than through working a trade show. At a trade show, industry leaders from all over the world will be there looking for new ideas and connections.

If you can leverage this opportunity to put your brand out there and communicate what you have to offer, it can boost your brand in unimaginable ways. You can walk away with powerful connections, immense goodwill, more credibility, more brand recognition and often actual orders.

Here are a few different ways you can leverage trade shows.

==> Networking

The most basic way to leverage trade shows is through networking. Wander from booth to booth and introduce yourself. Let others know how you can help them and look for new strategic partnerships.

Also, try to meet as many high profile influencers as possible. Be brief with their time; but if you have a value proposition for them, put it on the table.

==> Host a Side Event

A much more powerful way to leverage a trade show is to host a side event.

Book a conference room in the same hotel or in an adjacent restaurant or large bar. Then market the event through the trade show’s Twitter hashtag, through flyering, through Meetup and through your own email list.

For example, if there’s a large marketing conference, perhaps you’ll host your own side event with just one big name speaker. If you’re at a renewable energy show, perhaps you could invite three manufacturers to give talks about upcoming new technologies.

By taking this kind of leadership position, you’ll drastically increase your own brand and credibility. You’ll also make important connections. Instead of seeking connections, people will come and connect with you.

==> Be a Speaker

You can build a lot of credibility and brand awareness by getting on stage.

Talk to the event organizer early on about the possibility of speaking at the event as early as possible. Make sure you have a good amount of credibility and speaking experience built up before approaching large conference organizers.

==> Should You Get Your Own Booth?

If you’re serious about building your brand, you should absolutely get a booth.

Getting a booth at a trade show could require a large investment – generally upwards of $10,000. However, having a booth means literally two days of having business come up to you and listen to your sales pitch.

Can you get a lot from a trade show without a booth? Of course. If you have a small outfit, you can just go booth to booth and introduce yourself instead. However, if you can afford it, having a booth is a tremendous brand building opportunity.

As far as B2B branding and sales opportunities go, trade shows are very high on the list. If your target market is other businesses, map out a strategy for trade shows early on to leverage this powerful branding medium.

With so many different possible ways to promote a blog competing for your attention, it can sometimes be tough to figure out exactly which techniques to implement and what to skip. Guest posting is one of the most powerful marketing tactics out there; here we’ll illuminate why.

No matter what kind of blog you’re running, you can drastically boost your traffic and your exposure through guest blogging. Here are five of the main reasons why every blogger should guest post.

==> Targeted Traffic

When you write a guest post on someone else’s blog, anyone who clicks through to your site is going to be highly targeted traffic.

Writing a post for another high traffic website is all it takes to get a flood of high quality web traffic coming your way.

==> PageRank and SEO

Getting backlinks from guest blogging checks off just about every item on an “SEO factors” list.

The links are targeted. They’re from real sites. They’re (often) in-context links. You can control the anchor text. And if you’re writing for high traffic blogs, the links will naturally have both PageRank and authority.

Many sites have gotten rankings purely by getting dozens if not hundreds of backlinks through guest blogging.

==> Building Relationships in the Industry

Having relationships in your industry will help you advance your business in many different ways.

When you’re launching a new product and need bloggers to write about it, who do you turn to? The people you have relationships with.

When you’re looking for referrals to press, who do you turn to? The people you have relationships with.

Relationships, relationships, relationships. Guest posting helps build relationships. If you provide something valuable for their audience, they’ll be eternally grateful.

==> Increase Your Reputation

Another way guest blogging can help is by increasing your reputation. This is especially the case in relatively small industries.

Let’s say someone frequents four different sites in your industry. On all four sites, they see guest blog posts by you. Just the fact that you’re all over the different websites in your industry is going to do a lot for building your reputation.

When you guest blog post on someone else’s site, that’s an implicit endorsement from them. It also gets you more exposure, which builds credibility.

==> Helps You Explore Different Ideas

Guest blog posting also helps you expand your own ideas.

Let’s say you run a management training company. If you’re invited to guest post for a Fortune 500 company, that’s going to require a different line of thought than writing for a mom and pop blog. You’ll also need to think differently to write for a company that outsources most of their work.

When you guest post, you have to stretch your ideas, concepts and identity to bring value to people who’re slightly different than your typical market. This helps you develop and grow your ideas and concepts.

These are five of the main benefits of guest blogging. It’s one of the highest ROI activities any blogger could take on.

When people think of TV advertising, they usually think of multinational brands like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. Television branding seems outside the reach of most small businesses. The reality is, however, that ever since the advent of cable television, advertising for the little guy is very much a reality.

In the past, to advertise on TV you had to book nationally. Your ad had to be spliced into commercial spots, which were then aired through the airwaves.

Since TV went digital and cable, however, TV networks are now able to splice in commercials on the fly. That means that if you own a marketing firm catering to Boston, you can have your commercial spliced just into the programming of viewers in the Boston area, rather than nationwide.

With this kind of targeted ad buying, even small and medium sized businesses can advertise on TV. Here’s how to do it.

==> Producing the Commercial

Producing a commercial can cost quite a bit of money. The amount you spend really depends on how high you want the quality to be.

The average large brand spends $350,000 to produce a commercial. By contrast, a small business can produce a commercial for as little as $2,000.

You’ll probably want to either buy a decent HD camera, or rent professional grade cameras for a few hundred dollars a day. Video editors, especially film students, can be hired for between $25 to $40 an hour.

For a small to medium sized business, $10,000 total for production should be enough to get you from start to finish.

Try to shoot both a longer and shorter version of the commercial. You can buy in 10, 15 and 30 second increments.

==> Making the Ad Buy

You can make the ad buy one of several ways.

The easiest way is to go through an ad agency. Agencies already have contacts with TV stations and can have you up and running in no time. Some agencies charge, some don’t, as they make money by charging you full price while receiving discounts from TV stations.

There are a lot of ways to bring the cost of ads down. You can buy remnant ad space, which can cut the costs of ads by as much as 65%. You can buy spots in several shows at once, which can drastically lower the price per ad spot. You can also buy several weeks or months of ads at once, which also lowers the price.

Remember that building a brand on TV is all about repeat exposure. If you have a $50,000 TV budget, don’t spend it all at once. Stretch it out over a few months and see how it impacts your business.

There are two primary ways you can do guest blog posts. You can write a base of guest blog posts and simply send them out to blogs and offer to let them post it. Alternatively, you can contact bloggers and offer to write them an article – without sending them the article itself.

The question is: is one method better than the other?

==> The Pros and Cons of Pre-Writing

One big benefit of pre-writing is that you don’t have to wait to write. If you had to get the green light for each and every article, there’d be a lot of waiting time. By contrast, if you just went ahead and wrote the articles, you could easily blast through a dozen of these articles all at once.

You can also outsource part of this process. Naturally you don’t want to outsource blog posts for high PageRank and high traffic blogs. However, the posts for smaller blogs can often be outsourced.

Once you have a steady system of getting guest blog post gigs, it’s not inconceivable to get half a dozen of these gigs every week. If that happens, it helps to have a whole bunch of these articles in your pocket ready to fire off.

==> The Pros and Cons of Getting Permission

The permission-based method of writing articles involves contacting blogs with a list of potential topics, getting the green light and then only writing guest posts once they’ve expressed interest.

The upside of this method is that you can really put some effort into writing a great guest blog post. Once you know someone is interested in a topic and will post it if you do a great job, you can really pour your heart into it.

The downside is the lack of scale. It’s much harder to scale up this method to get 30+ guest blog posts out there a month, for example.

If you have to correspond with 30 different blogs and keep track of where you are in the sales cycle of each one, then write articles only once you get the green light while making sure you deliver them quickly for the ones that want post, it can quickly get overwhelming.

==> What’s the Best Method?

The best method is a combination of both styles.

It’s absolutely a good idea to have a reserve of a dozen or more articles that you can just whip out. Use these for low traffic blogs or for blogs where you’re just doing a guest post for the backlink.

On the other hand, for high traffic blogs or for blogs whose backlinks you really want, custom write each and every article.

In other words, use a mix of these two techniques to get both scale and power. Use pre-writing to help land you a lot of backlinks, but custom write articles for the best sites.

If you do a lot of guest posts, at some point you’re going to hit the “I don’t know what to write” wall. Instead of trying to come up with a completely unique article concept every time, you can cut out a lot of time and frustration by using an article template.

Here are seven guest post article templates you can use to instantly come up with new post ideas.

==> X Tips

Post titles with a specific number of tips often do very well. For example:

101 Tips for Traveling the World
10 Tips for Training Your Pet
7 Tips for Raising a Healthy baby
55 Tips for Effort-Free Dieting

Make sure you pick a specific number of tips and place it in the title. Odd numbers seem to work better than even numbers.

==> How To

How to titles is another popular type. For example:

“How to Repair a Broken Desk”
“How to Meet the Man of Your Dreams”
“How to Write a Great Guest Post”

Ask yourself, “What does my target market want to know?” Then write a how to for them.

==> Pitfalls and Mistakes

Talk about the common pitfalls and mistakes people make in your industry. For example:

“The Seven Deadly SEO Mistakes Bloggers Make”
“The #1 Mistake Beginning Chefs Make”
“3 Common Pitfalls of Intranet Networking”

==> Tell a Story

Telling a story is a great way to attract an audience and communicate a message.

One of the most famous direct response ads in history had the headline:

“They Laughed When I Sat Down … But When I Started to Play!”

The piece then went on to tell the story of how nobody thought the main character could play – and were then shocked when he did.

Use stories to invoke emotions, convey a point and connect with your audience.

==> Share a Success

If you sold a website for $50,000, share how you did it. If you built a company from the ground up then put it on passive mode, share how you did it. If you learned how to play an instrument in a month, share how you did it.

People love to read success stories, especially if they’re filled with nuggets they can use in their own lives.

==> Image Tutorials

One great way to bring real value to someone else’s blog is to create an image tutorial for them. Creating image tutorials, which involves step by step pictures, takes quite a bit of effort. Most bloggers won’t go through the trouble.

That’s why if you’re willing to do it, they’ll be very grateful.

For example, if you’re writing a tutorial about how to get rid of squirrels, take pictures of securing your garbage, securing your house, etc.

==> Controversial Opinion

Finally, you can share a controversial opinion. If everyone is buying gold, share why you’re shorting gold. If everyone thinks paid backlinks are the way and you think guest blog posting is the way, share why.

If you’re ever at a loss on what kind of guest blog post to write, try using one of these templates.

When people think of branding through magazines, most people think of big brands like Toyota or Gucci that often buy huge spreads. There’s no way you could afford to do that kind of branding…right?

Wrong. With remnant advertising, even small and medium sized businesses can build their brand through magazines.

==> What Is Remnant Advertising?

Remnant advertising is unsold ad space. As a magazine approaches publication date, unsold ad space gradually loses value. Upon publication, any unsold ad space effectively becomes worth zero.

Remnant ad space is, in other words, last minute ad space that ad salespeople couldn’t sell.

Think of a grocery store. You know how they’ll often knock down the price of meats by as much as 50% as their expiry date nears, since they can’t sell it once it expires? It’s the same concept.

You can save as much as 40% to 75% off the cost of an ad. If an ad would have cost you $1,000, you could snap it up for a mere $300.

==> The First Thing You Need to Do

The first thing you need to do to use remnant advertising is create an ad that can run in (almost) any publication, at any time.

That means you can’t have information that caters specifically to one publication. You can’t have text that says the month or any other time sensitive information.

When a publisher calls you to publish a remnant ad, it’s often last minute. They might call you a few days before, but they could also call you just hours before. You won’t have time to edit up a new edition of your ad.

So start by getting your “ready anytime” ad prepared.

==> Let Publishers Know

Next, call up the ad sales department of magazines you want to advertise in. Ask them if they have any remnant space open at the moment.

If not, let them know that you’re interested in buying remnant ads and to call you if anything comes up.

Call up at least five to ten different publications. If you want to get decent brand exposure through remnant ads, you need to have your door open to quite a few publications.

Follow up with publishers on a monthly basis just to let them know you’re still interested in buying remnant ads.

Soon enough, you’ll be receiving calls from magazines. When you get that call, be prepared to act. Have the money and the ad ready to go. Don’t make the publisher wait, as they’re often short on time.

Remnant magazine advertising is one of the smartest ways for small and medium sized businesses to build their brand. Your brand will appear alongside other well recognized brands, without you having to spend big money.