Businesses with a website can actually get journalists to do their PR for them - if they’re clever.

Jakob Nielsen cited research on his Alertbox website which revealed that journalists use the internet a lot, search a lot, but get annoyed when sites don’t help them out.

More importantly, Mr Nielsen said, is that journalists are working to “tight deadlines”.

While this may be a well known fact, he said that most websites do not appear to have been designed with this in mind.

“Most of the PR sections of sites we’ve studied fail to support journalists in their quest for the facts, information, and contacts they can use to write stories about companies and their products,” he revealed.

“Websites must be painfully clear about a company’s purpose, products, and services.”

Last month, research by Marketing Sherpa discovered that using paid search techniques were the best way of conducting a viral marketing campaign.

Viral marketing involves using social networks to spread a “buzz” about a product.