Create a Killer 2015 PR Plan

Issue #859 Oct. 11, 2014
Publisher: Joan Stewart

“Tips, Tricks and Tools for Free Publicity”

In This Issue

Create a Killer 2015 PR Plan
Contest for Authors
Become a Highly-Paid Speaker
Hound Video of the Week

This Weekend in the Hound House:

If you hate travel hassles, you’ll be thrilled to know about AirHelp, an advocacy group that helps passengers understand their rights and get money into their hands if they encounter unreasonable delays. If your flight is oversold, you could get up to 400 percent of a one-way fare up to $1,300. These are laws the airlines know about but won’t go out of their way to tell you. Check out the article in Fast Company magazine. I’m bookmarking it.

1. Create a Killer 2015 PR Plan

When you’re mapping out your publicity plan for next year, don’t skip this important step: Make it easy for people to find you.

That includes journalists looking for sources, and people in your target market who are searching for solutions online to the kinds of problems you can help them solve.

Let’s say they’re searching LinkedIn groups for people with a specific job title and a certain keywords in their profile. If you’re in only a handful of groups, you’re limiting your exposure, and your name might not pop up in their search results. That’s one reason you should be in 50 groups, the maximum number that LinkedIn allows. You can turn off notifications from most of them and participate in only a few. But joining them makes it easy for people to find you.

If you want major publicity, you must know the 7 essential things that will let people in your target market see, hear, find, follow, study, recommend and eventually hire you.

When someone comes to me with a publicity problem, it’s usually because 2 or 3 of these 7 elements are missing. You can’t cherry-pick which ones you want to do. You must do them ALL.

Making it easy for people to find you is one of seven. And if you start doing them all this month, you’ll be kicking some serious butt next year.

I’ll explain the other six, and share lots of resources that will help you create your publicity plan, when I present a free webinar from 4 to 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, Oct. 15. Register for “7 Things Your 2015 Publicity Plan Must Include.”

2. Contest for Authors

If you’ve been dawdling, dithering or delaying finishing that manuscript for your book, the “Draft to Dream” contest is the jolt you need to get it done.

It’s sponsored by book shepherd Judith Briles as a way for authors to finally finish their book, see it in print, and win thousands of dollars in expert publishing help for free.

Judith, who has written 33 books and worked with hundreds of author clients, moderates the lively AuthorU group on LinkedIn. AuthorU.org, her nonprofit, will award four authors a grand prize valued at $10,000. It will include copy editing, cover design, interior layout, ebook creation, advanced reader copies, global distribution, virtual assistance, and lots more.

Twenty finalists will win prizes valued at more than $500.

I’m a sponsor, and I’ll be donating my own products and services for the lucky winners. Give yourself a head start and enter early. Read all the details.

3. Become a Highly-Paid Speaker

At a business meeting yesterday, someone asked me how I got started in consulting and found clients.

Without hesitating, I answered, “They found me. They were in the audience at one of my speaking engagements.”

Public speaking turns up the volume on your promotion. It gives people a taste of what you’re like before they hire you for a project.

If you don’t do consulting, that’s OK. You can still make big money from speaking if you know the best ways to land speaking engagements and how to work with meeting planners.

Six successful speakers will explain how they did it when they’re guests on a 90-minute teleseminar. “How to Become a Highly-Paid Speaker as Quickly as Possible–Especially if You’re Not Famous Yet,” will be hosted by Steve Harrison. Register for the free call at 2 or 7 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, Oct. 16.

You will learn:

–How to find companies and organizations that already have a budget to pay speakers like you quite handsomely, even if you’re not famous or well-known in your field.

–How to be well-paid to deliver a spiritual message.

–5 critical steps for landing speaking engagements, especially when you don’t have a lot of time to spend marketing yourself.

–Why you don’t need a lot of fancy materials to land speaking gigs, but what you DO need to give them instead.

–Actual case histories of several successful speakers and how they got started.

–Specific things to do before, during and after you speak so that the audience loves you and you get invited back again and again.

4. Hound Video of the Week

Watch this compilation of videos showing what dogs do in boots, socks and booties.

Thanks to Publicity Hound BL Ochman of www.Pawfun.com for pointing out that the video of the little dog that delivered lost items to passengers traveling on KLM Airlines, featured here on Tuesday, was a ruse. Turns out it was an ad to promote the airlines that sometimes tracks down passengers before they even realize they’ve lost something.