The Publicity Hound’s
Tips of the Week
Issue #437 Feb. 10, 2009
Publisher: Joan Stewart
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“Tips, Tricks and Tools for Free Publicity”
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In This Issue
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1. Don’t Make Yourself Sound So Boring
2. Cool Tool for Hounds & Journalists
3. 5 Tips for Hiring Interns
4. Bloggers Gush About Cleaning Products
5. How to Piggyback onto Book Publicity
6. Help This Hound
7. Hound Joke of the Week
8. And at My Blog…
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1. Don’t Make Yourself Sound So Boring
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I’m not mentioning any names.
But when I read the social networking profiles of some of my friends and business associates, I think to myself: “You’re really interesting. And you’re lots of fun. You even have unusual hobbies. So why are you making yourself sound so boring?”
Yes, that little snippet of information just below your photo on your Twitter or Facebook profiles can determine whether a visitor follows you, friends you, or decides that you have nothing to offer and leaves in search of somebody else who does.
On LinkedIn, that much longer profile will determine whether somebody wants to connect with you, or forget you.
I can’t begin to count the number of Twitter replies and direct messages from my followers who comment on my love for the Food Network and motorcycles, which I’ve mentioned in my Twitter profile.
What does that have to do with publicity?
Absolutely nothing. But if a fellow Food Network junkie follows me, and then one day hopes to generate publicity, she might look to me for advice, my products, or my mentor program.
Consider adding these topics to your social networking profiles, depending on the type of people you’re hoping to attract:
–Your hobbies
–Your pets
–Your favorite TV shows
–Your favorite movies and music
–The most unusual thing you’ve ever done
–Your biggest business accomplishment
–Your most unusual personal accomplishment
–What makes you an expert
–Humor!
A word of caution: Don’t treat all your profiles the same.
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2. Cool Tool for Hounds & Journalists
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I just discovered a new service that costs you nothing and helps connect Publicity Hounds with journalists who are looking for specific types of sources.
It’s called PitchRate.com and here’s how it works.
–Journalists write a query explaining the types of sources they’re seeking. If they’re from a top-tier media outlet, they have the option of cloaking their query and not revealing exactly where they work. When you sign up for the service, you can see all the journalist queries and decide which ones you want to respond to.
–The technology behind the platform automatically rates your pitch on a five-star scale. It then delivers all the pitches from a particular query to that journalist, who can then sort them according to how many stars each receives.
–Journalists will open the five- and four-star pitches first and, most likely, disregard all the others. This saves them valuable time.
–If they contact you for an interview, they can then rate your interview on your PitchRate.com profile so other journalists can tell instantly if you’re helpful and worth contacting.
Is that cool or what?
I’ve already signed up as both an expert and a journalist. Bloggers and newsletter editors, I suggest you sign up as a journalist, too. This is a terrific place to find sources.
Drew Gerber, who owns the site, tells me it’s in its infancy but that response from journalists has been so overwhelming that the site doesn’t have enough experts to respond to all the queries.
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3. 5 Tips for Hiring Interns
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If you’re laying off employees at your PR agency or in your corporate PR department, why not rely on a few interns to pick up the slack?
The current issue of My Midwest inflight magazine offers several
suggestions for making the most of your interns:
–Determine beforehand exactly what you want them to do for you, and then choose the best candidate according to their skills that dovetail with your goals.
–Consider paying them. This widens your pool of applicants simply because many young people can’t afford to work for nothing.
–Don’t waste talent by using them to bring you coffee or pick up your dry cleaning. They won’t learn much and you won’t benefit. (The Publicity Hound’s idea: How about using them to research media outlets whose audiences are a perfect match with your pitch? This one task will help you save time because you won’t be pitching media that have no interest in your topic. And that means you’ll have time to customize those pitches.)
–Help them make connections at your company and at other companies, and introduce them to possible mentors. Long after they’re gone, they might return the favor and refer job candidates who would be a perfect fit.
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4. Bloggers Gush About Cleaning Products
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Household cleaning products don’t seem to be the kinds of things that would get the blogging community all excited, especially during the holidays, right?
But if bloggers happen to be stay-at-home moms who spend a good part of the day cleaning up after their toddlers, or bloggers who care about environmentally friendly products, offering a product sample to them can bring hundreds more moms to your website.
That’s what happened just before the Christmas holidays when Sweeney public relations launched a publicity campaign for Weiman Products, a cleaning products manufacturer.
Publicity Hound Jennifer Manocchio, a Sweeney VP, said the campaign invited bloggers to review products that help keep the home clean. Sweeney offered each participating blogger samples of products such as stainless steel wipes that can be used to make kitchen faucets shiny, and Weiman E-tronic Wipes that can be used to remove fingerprints from computer screens.
The campaign resulted in a whopping 44 positive reviews from bloggers, like this one from the My Trendy Tykes blog:
“Weiman Stainless Steel Wipes shine, polish and protect all stainless steel surfaces. They leave NO streaks, and the strong odor?? Well, it’s not there. It’s actually a pleasant smell for my nose. Oh, and get this…It actually repels fingerprints, water marks and dirt. Now that’s what I’m talking about!”
Blogger Rockin’ Mama gushed about how the floor polish made her laminate floors super-shiny. And at the Chocolate Fingerprints blog, Andrea McMann said she could tell the e-tronic wipes are “a high-quality product” and my screens still aren’t dusty or smudgy.”
The campaign also resulted in 172 clips, 196 direct links to the Weiman website, and 772 website visitors who stayed an average of two minutes and five seconds.
When you launch a publicity campaign, are you targeting bloggers who reach your ideal customers? If not, you’re leaving money on the table. Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff can show you in step-by-step detail how to identify bloggers who reach your target audience, pitch them, interest them, and encourage them to review your product or service. They were my guests during ateleseminar on “How to Pitch the Best Bloggers & Create a Publicity Explosion.”
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5. How to Piggyback onto Book Publicity
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This week, three Publicity Hounds have tips for astrology blogger Michele Lessirard of Vero Beach, Fla. who wants to know how to ride on the coattails of author Stephanie Myers’ popular series of vampire novels and the upcoming movie.
From Dal Jeanis:
“Be very careful of attempting to ride the coattails of a popular hit, especially without knowing what it’s really about…Before doing anything else, find out what it is that you are attempting to leverage off of. See the first movie, at the very least.
“From understanding the phenomenon, you can then move to figuring out what products or services you can provide to that demographic. Next, you can research to create a list of the keywords in the Meyers books, obviously including vampire, sparkle, romance, and so on, and figure out to what degree you can use those keywords in your own astrology posts to increase accidental traffic to your site.
“You could do mock-horoscopes for the characters just for fun, although that’s a lot of work and might not get you anything in return. The key to doing that well would be to get copies of the books and read them, picking incidents to warn about.”
From Christine Buffaloe:
“Create Google Alerts for keywords that relate to both Stephanie Myers’ topics and yours.
“Tell Google you want to receive the alerts once a day. Then follow them and see what Google delivers to you in the way of news stories, videos, blog posts, etc. In some cases, if a
blogger is discussing Myers’ books, you can post a comment and you’ll get a link back to your website or blog.”
From The Publicity Hound:
Go over to Amazon.com and review Stephanie’s books, which will let you link back to your blogs. You can also create “best of” lists dealing with your topic and all kinds of other content to attract the attention of her readers.
Randy Gilbert and Don Mitchell are all over that website and pull in tons of traffic to their own sites as a result. They were my guests during a teleseminar on “How to Make Amazon a River of Gold (for Authors, Speakers & Experts).” (This title is no longer available, see “How to Launch a Book, Promote It and Sell a Truckload–Without an Expensive Publicist.”)
And then read the complete responses to this week’s Help This Hound question, or add your own.
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6. Help This Hound
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Rose Strong of Springtown, Pa. writes:
“I am a volunteer for the Springtown Farmers Market and I’m looking for some marketing and publicity ideas.
“We started off with a bang last year but for some reason we lost our shoppers, and our vendors sort of dwindled down a bit. One week there’d be lots of customers, but not too many vendors, the next week it was a good vendor attendance and a lack of shoppers.
“This year, we were fortunate to receive a $10,000 donation from a local resident as well as applying for a Dept. of Agriculture grant. So we are planning a website, major advertising in a local weekly newspaper and rack cards for local businesses to have on their counters and hand out.
“What other inexpensive, creative ideas can your Hounds suggest to help us promote this year’s market from May 20 to Oct 28?”
The Publicity Hound says:
The bad economy should certainly be a springboard from which you can pitch all kinds of interesting story ideas to your local media. Let’s see what other ideas my Hounds can suggest. Hounds with suggestions for Rose can post them to my blog.
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7. Hound Joke of the Week
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A client brought a litter of Golden Retriever puppies to the local veterinary clinic for inoculations and worming. As the look-alike pups squirmed over and under one another in their box, the vet realized it would be difficult to tell the treated ones from the rest. So he turned on the water faucet, wet his fingers, and moistened each dog’s head when he had finished treating them.
After the fourth puppy, the vet noticed the hitherto talkative client had grown silent. As he sprinkled the last pup’s head, the woman leaned forward and whispered, “I didn’t know they had to be baptized.”
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8. And at My Blog…
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