Cream Puffs for Publicity

Issue #837 July 26, 2014
Publisher: Joan Stewart

“Tips, Tricks and Tools for Free Publicity”

In This Issue

Cream Puffs for Publicity
6 Reasons Blogs Won’t Die
Book Blurbs & Reviews
Hound Video of the Week

This Weekend in the Hound House:

Tomorrow is pesto day. My friend, Ann Dekorsi, joins me for our annual Pesto Extravaganza, which has been a rite of summer for almost 20 years. We’ll crank out close to 50 containers of the Italian delicacy, pack them in our freezers and dole them out to lucky relatives and friends. (I use them as barter for garden plants.) We do so much taste-testing that by the end of the day, we’re stuffed.

1. Cream Puffs for Publicity

For the last few days, radio deejays, TV anchors, meteorologists, sportscasters and other media people throughout Wisconsin have been babbling on and on about those luscious cream puffs that are the highlight of the Wisconsin State Fair.

The fair delivered a free six-pack of the delectable pastries to TV and radio stations throughout the state as a way to generate thousands of dollars in free publicity and build lots of buzz for the fair which opens July 31.

You can’t turn on a radio or watch local TV without hearing about them.

Our fair has its own Cream Puff Pavilion where eager customers stand in mile-long lines. Once inside, you can look through giant picture windows into the kitchen and watch thousands of cream puffs under construction. College kids dressed in white aprons and their black and white “cow hats” squeeze mountains of sweet cream onto pastry shells, and move them down the assembly line.

What this means to you: If you’re sponsoring an event that features unusual food or a signature dish, deliver it free to the media a few days before the event. If you aren’t serving food and you still want to build buzz, bake sheet cakes decorated with the logo for your event, and deliver them to TV and radio stations.

See “50 Places Online to Promote Your Live or Virtual Events to Reach Your Target Market & Pull Sell-out Crowds,” a paid video program that’s perfect for publicists or anyone who does their own event publicity. Grab it for half price by typing the word “summer” into the coupon code box at check-out.

2. 6 Reasons Blogs Won’t Die

Still not blogging? Or getting bored with blog you’ve started?

Website Magazine lists 5 Reasons blogs Will Never Die.

But they missed the most important reason.

A blog is your own property. No one can take it away from you as long as it isn’t hosted on Blogger’s or WordPress’s servers.

Your content on Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter and other platforms can disappear in an instant. Remember when LinkedIn removed all the “products and services” from people’s company pages, causing an uproar?

A blog is an ideal place to discuss your products and show people how to use them–something you shouldn’t do on other social media sites. But blogging takes time, energy and patience.

If you’re going on vacation this summer and you don’t want your blog to sit idle, write a few short blog posts and schedule them to be published while you’re gone. I’ve made it easy for you with my “21 Ideas for Quick & Dirty Blog Posts When You Don’t Have Time to Write.” They come with 10 cut-and-paste templates for when you’re really in a hurry. Just fill in the blanks, edit and publish. A few of them are so easy, you can delegate the work to an assistant.

You can order the package for half price by typing the word “summer” into the coupon code box at check-out.

3. Book Blurbs & Reviews

Authors, you need book blurbs. You need testimonials. And you certainly must have book reviews.

But which is which? Is a blurb just an excerpt from a review? (Nope).

Join us for the first of four free webinars to promote our 2nd Annual “Publishing at Sea” Cruise Jan. 18-25.

It’s from 6 to 7 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, July 30. Book distributor Amy Collins will present “Book Blurbs, Testimonials & Reviews: How to Collect Them and When to Use Them.”

We’ll give you time to ask questions and we’ll explain how you can save $300 by registering early for our cruise. We’re leaving from Fort Lauderdale aboard Royal Caribbean’s luxurious “Allure of the Seas.” When you aren’t learning about publishing, you’ll be visiting St. Thomas, St. Martin and the Bahamas.

I’ll be teaching on the cruise along with Amy, book shepherd Judith Briles and social media expert Georgia McCabe. Guest instructor Michele DeFilippo will teach you all about design, from books covers to author websites.

4. Hound Video of the Week

This dog mimics an ambulance siren. Laugh-out-loud funny.