Marketwired.com is the most cost-effective wire service and comes with the best analytics report to show clients what they received for their money such as what media outlets picked up the release, the number of press release views and the number of click throughs as well as the geographic response rate by country and shares on social media. As a former journalist, I can tell you that using any free wire service is the quickest way for a reporter to hit the delete button. Fraudulent people/companies like to use the free wire services and after getting burned a couple of times, reporters learn to stay away from free. Reputable companies are willing to pay the wire service fee.

The most important thing about doing a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign is to do two or months of prep work to build up your social media following and perfect your social media credentials/profile descriptions. For example, friend/connect/follow every reporter from your media list on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. You'll discover that this takes a lot of time, but it is certainly worth it. The goal is build relationships first, before you need something. Instead of trying to reach every reporter try to define the top 20 - 50 reporters that cover your subject matter often. On a daily basis check to see what stories they are writing and share their headlines and URLs via your social media networks and include their Twitter handle so that they see you post their content. Share a reporter's article once, they will notice. Start sharing their content once a week and they will consider you as a friend because you are marketing and extending their article's reach. Every once in while you might send 1 or 2 positive social media comments such as, "Check out this great article from @Crowdfunding_PR on xyz subject matter complete with the URL" directly to their twitter account. Just like anyone else reporters will look to see who shared their content as well as how large your following is. If you worked hard and have 5,000 or more followers on Twitter, you will soon be perceived as an asset. This process may take several months, but when it comes time to write a press release, issue it over a professional newswire, and then send them a media pitch. They will be much more receptive to your pitch because you have been working for them informally and they will know who you are. As long as you send them a well-written press release, in story format, that is easy for them to cut and paste, then make small edits and maybe call you for a personal quote, they may just write a great article for you. Also make sure that you story is a good fit for their editorial environment, which you should know because you have been reading every story they write for a month or more. Trust me when I say, reporters love people who know what they write and don’t send them irrelevant pitches, which they hate. As you get more and more press coverage, add both your press release, photos, and press articles to your company website. This makes it easy for reporters to find other snippets of information from other press releases and other press stories to beef up the press release you that sent them and maybe turn it into a feature article. When you launch your crowdfunding campaign, you should have a whole press kit full of stories. In your campaign updates, you can start sharing these articles one by one via the campaign update page once the crowdfunding profile goes live. To donors/investors it will look like your crowdfunding campaign is generating a ton of positive publicity and create the excitement needed to get them to buy one of your perks. But in reality, you generated a bunch of buzz and ink before the crowdfunding PR campaign even began. If you'd like to learn more, check out: https://crowdfundingpr.wordpress.com/about-crowdfunding-pr-campaigns/crowdfunding-campaigns/ My contact information is at the top right corner of this page.

One challenge that you may be facing is that Africa has a tremendous problem with fraudulent businesses running online and telephone scams. With that said, some industry experts say that Africa is still a developing country and offers many great opportunities such as commercial real estate. Hopefully, you do have a well-written "business plan" and a "pitch deck templates." They are many sites on the Internet that provide these templates along with advice on what investors like to see. The first step in the marketing process is to perform a competitive analysis to find existing competitors in the marketplace using Google. Go to their websites and start cutting and pasting content into a word document. Make a note of their title, description and keyword Meta tags. In today's digital marketing world, knowing what keywords and phrases your industry is using including your competitor's names, locations and sales/distribution channels is critical. The key is to develop website content that has the right keywords and phrases so that customers and investors will find your company website when searching for your type of business. Next, build a WordPress website, that reflects the who, what, where, when, why and how much, about your company's products and services. Do Google searches on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to learn how to structure and write content that search engines like to index. Also include a press room so reporters can find you. Each website page should have at least 400 words of text and a graphic. Make that you add "Alt Tags" descriptions for pictures and "Title Tags" for URL links. Also add numbered and bullet points with links to other pages on your website. Add about 25 pages of company content and around 100 posts, which are considered "News" by search engines. As your building your website consider it as an electronic salesperson that needs to answer every Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) that a customer might have about your product or service. The purpose is to remove all of the fear, uncertainty and doubt from the sales equation. So that when a customer or investor calls or sends an email that will be ready to do business. The next step is to begin marketing this content via Facebook, LinkedIn and Facebook. When you post a URL link from your website, Facebook and LinkedIn will automatically pull the first picture and 100 words of text into your social media post. In addition, you will have the opportunity to put in a small pitch about what information you are sharing complete with a call-to-action that tells customers what to do. This will drive a lot of interested customers/investors to your website that will sign up for "Free Information" or fill out "Contact Us" forms, which will help you develop business leads and a customer/investor email database. In addition to sharing information about your company, setup Google Alerts for the top 5 search keywords that represent your products and services. This will generate a list of news items that will be sent to you every day via email. Pick and choose the best articles/content and then share them via your social media accounts. This process will make you a subject matter expert in your field because you will be reading every single news story that is coming out. If you share the best content, others will see the content and follow you on social media because they will want to become subject matter experts too. Building large social media networks loaded with great information on your products/services as well as equity crowdfunding is great way for people to find you versus you trying to find them. For an example, visit http://crowdfundingPR.wordpress.com If you'd like to chat my contact information is in the upper right hand corner of the page. The added bonus for you will be the extensive content on how to conduct a successful equity crowdfunding campaign.