Think press releases are a thing of the past in today's internet world? Maybe not. Consider Barbara Kantor and her Vedante line of reflective products.

Kantor, a fashion designer, is a successful serial entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in the brick-and-mortar world. When she created her reflective Pop Bands (arm bands and leg bands) and pet collars and leashes to help motorists spot pedestrians and four-legged creatures at night, she planned to wholesale the products to retail stores.

Tap the bands, and they automatically wrap around an arm or an ankle. White and yellow bands--along with the collars and leashes--are visible for 1,500 feet. Other colors are visible from 500 feet away.

The product debuted late in 2007. "We did our first two trade shows in a row in Las Vegas. One for the pet industry, and one for the outdoor industry," she says. "And on the drive back," Kantor quips, "the economy crashed." Suddenly, the retailers she had placed her hopes on were scaling back--and Kantor was left scrambling. At least, that's what she thought initially.

But she'd done a couple of things that turned out to shine as brightly as her products. First, she signed on as a third-party seller on Amazon.com. And second, she hired a PR specialist who wrote a press release about Vedante and released it through PRWeb. "I was going to do online as a side thing," she says. "But in tracking my numbers, I did a 180."

What Kantor didn't know at the time was that shopping search engines--and bloggers-- crawl the web looking for products sold on Amazon.com. That's because Amazon has an "associate referral fee." In other words, Amazon pays for the referral if it ends in a sale.

"All of a sudden," Kantor says, "every shopping search engine started referring our products on Amazon. That's why I did so well." A second press release did even better. "Bloggers bought the product, tested it and wrote about it. It started having a very viral nature." She landed on the top-10 list for Amazon.com's "outdoor gear" category. Even Amazon noticed. It bought out most of Kantor's inventory for resale.

Kantor's advice for would-be entrepreneurs:

1. Use online press releases. "I do press releases every month, on average. And I do it with zero expectation." What she means by zero expectation is that she doesn't count on immediate results. Press releases sit online forever--and it might take months for the right person to find them. For example, a news reporter in Connecticut included Kantor in a 30-minute report on pet safety, based on a press release that was several months old. "I do know that every time I'm in the media, my sales go up," Kantor says.
    
2. When it comes to social networking, make your postings helpful, rather than self-promotional. Kantor says it's not a strategy in her case: It's her nature. After all, Kantor was inspired to start Vedante during an evening walk, when she witnessed a pedestrian being struck by a car while in a crosswalk. That's why her press releases typically are informative. "I'm happy if we're saving lives," she says. Past press releases include "8 Halloween Tips for Fido from Vedante" and "10 Tips on Nighttime Safety for Pedestrians, Cyclists and Motorists."
    
3. Take advantage of social networking sites, particularly Facebook and Twitter. A private person, Kantor says she was hesitant at first. But now that she's gotten invested, she appreciates the results. She has a worldwide following, and she counts members of the media among her followers.
    
4. "It's OK to not know how to do something. And it's OK to say you don't know. Because I went into this knowing zero about e-commerce--and I'm not doing what all the articles out there recommend." For example, she isn't concerned about SEO optimization. "I don't care how many hits I get on my website," she says. "It's the viraling and people talking that's mattered." Her website does show up on searches, but she attributes that to the viral nature of the internet and people referring others to the website.
    
5. Join some face-to-face networking groups, but be selective. "I only belong to groups of people I respect and admire who inspire me," she says. Her favorite is IBCircle, International Business Circle, because she wants to do business internationally.
    
6. Make sure you're in multiple market sectors that have different peaks and valleys. She hadn't planned to focus on the pet industry initially, but people asked for the product, and the industry is doing well despite the recession.
    
7. Don't get too attached to your product or your plans. "Look at the numbers and the facts," she says. "Do your market research. If you're not getting sales, test the product on Amazon.com. Be willing to refine the product; be adaptable." Kantor's training led her in one direction--brick-and-mortar retailers--but reality made her "go with the flow of where results could be found."

The game has changed for entrepreneurs, she warns. "This is a whole different world because of financing [or the lack of it] and social marketing."