Publicity is one of the key components in any marketing and sales plan...because your customers and prospects have to KNOW about you in order to buy from you. Besides the traditional news release, here are 5 online publicity ideas to help you drive sales for your product or service:

--Use Others to Promote You

Create something "viral"--or something that people LOVE to pass on to their friends and associates--and you can really rake in the sales. When you think "viral," think fun, useful or something that everyone wants. For instance, the free email service Hotmail continues to grow because it is accessible from any computer and it adds a footer touting its free service on every email that is sent. Why does Hotmail do this? Because it gets all its users to come to the Hotmail website to retrieve their email. Hotmail can charge premium prices for its ads and create other revenue streams because it has so many users.

--Write Articles for Online Outlets

When you write articles for online publications and people then use a search engine to find out about you, your company, your products, or even the general subject, your article will likely be returned in the search results. That means that more people will learn about you, and the more who know about you, the more sales you will make. There are many, many places that you can write and submit articles that highlight your products and services.

Just go to http://www.google.com or another search engine and search for publications about your industry. Often, print publications also have an online outlet so start with these if you don't know where to begin. Remember to get and follow the writer's guidelines for greatest success.

--Post Comments on Listservs

It's likely that every industry today has some sort of listserv (or ongoing chat among members) that you can join. Don't jump right in to the conversations, however; "lurk" or read the ongoing emails for awhile before you begin to post comments. As time goes on, if you can add something to the conversation, do so whenever possible. Always remember to include your name, company, tagline and website in every post.

Most listservs restrict this signature to 6 lines, so be succinct. When people search for information about you, your company or your product (assuming all have been mentioned in the post), these listserv messages will be included in the search results. If you are interested in good PR and marketing listservs, check out the Adventive lists, http://www.adventive.com

--Distribute Your News Releases to a Wide Audience

Even if you never get an actual article written about you or your company as a result of using online distribution services, like PR Web, PR Newswire and Business Wire, it's a terrific idea to submit your releases through these services. That's again because search engines will find these releases when someone searches about your or your products.

But don't make the mistake of ONLY using these services. Continue to use your tried-and-true outlets and methods, as well.

--Use Linking Strategies to Improve Your Ranking

If you want people to find your website easily when they do an online search for your product or service, you need to have as many relevant "incoming" links as possible. This means you will want your business associates, friends and partners to put a link for your site on their website because Google, in particular, puts you closer to the top in the results based on how many incoming links you have. Of course, you will want to repay your associates by including their web links on your site.