Look for the Hook. Here’s How…

 

Issue #1261 Sept. 25, 2018
Publisher: Joan Stewart

“Tips, Tricks and Tools for Free Publicity”

In This Issue

1. Look for the Hook. Here’s How…
2. Publicity Summit Deadline Friday
3. Your Facebook Page Can Join Groups
4. Hound Video of the Week

This Week in the Hound House:

It’s time for homemade spiced applesauce. Peeling, coring, cooking and canning a bushel of apples is such a laborious chore that I actually set up an apple peeling station in front of my TV. Once you taste mine, you’ll never ever eat store-bought again. My secret to making the job go faster: a hand-held, super-sharp old-fashioned potato peeler my sister bought at an Amish store. The fancy peelers that peel the apples when you turn the crank, and have a suction base, are more trouble than they’re worth. If you want my recipe, click Reply. You can freeze it.

1. Look for the Hook. Here’s How…

It’s called Help a Horse Day, sponsored the ASPCA to find good homes for horses.

When I first heard about it this morning, I figured it was one of those typical holidays on which the group goes after as many news stories as it can get. Turns out the annual event, announced in January, is promoted straight through to the end of August when winners are announced.

I stumbled across the group’s eight-page list of fabulous tips instructing members how to promote the event in their state. It includes these tips which you can follow, regardless of what event you’re promoting.

–Tell a compelling story of one animal—-a horse who beat the odds or a donkey who survived a difficult surgery—and then broaden it to the bigger picture of equine rescue

–Share interesting backgrounds of staff, volunteers or adopters. The human interest angle is compelling, too

–Have you reached a milestone, celebrated a birthday, hit a record number of adoptions? Think about a “Top 10 List” or even a “Top 3” format for your story.

–Seizing on what’s trending in popular culture is effective at generating buzz. One equine rescue played on the popular reality TV show “The Bachelor” and had a male horse choose his “soul mare” at a community event.

I was thrilled when I scrolled to the bottom of the tips and found “The Publicity Hound” mentioned as a super resource to learn about publicity.

To do: Read all the tips on how to create an aggressive promotions plan for your event in their article “Help a Horse Day: Resources for Amazing Events.” 

#EventPR #EventPublicity

2. Publicity Summit Deadline Friday

Media training, a must for anyone who’s going after major publicity–especially on TV–costs big bucks.

Without it, you’re left to experiment with a variety of pitches you hope will stick. Even if you hit on the right formula for a pitch, you have to figure out a way to meet journalists and top bloggers face to face.

You can do both–meet the people who can tell your story to the world and present a compelling pitch face-to-face–at the National Publicity Summit Oct. 24-27 in New York City.

Authors, speakers, and experts who have attended this popular event have appeared on “The View,” “Good Morning America,” the CBS Evening News, Fox News Channel and in Time magazine. Steve Harrison, who sponsors the event, accepts only authors who he knows have a product or service worth pitching.

More than 100 producers and journalists from America’s top media outlets will be at this year’s event.

Registration ends on Friday, Sept. 28. If you’re closed out, you’ll have to wait until next year or figure out how to meet and pitch the influencers on your own.

To do: Learn more about this popular way to meet the media and register for the National Publicity Summit using this affiliate link.

#NationalPublicity #NationalPublicitySummmit

3. Your Facebook Page Can Join Groups

If used to be that if you wanted to join a Group on Facebook, you had to join under your profile.

Not anymore. Within Facebook Group settings, a new option has popped up for group owners that enables them to “allow Pages to request to join as group members.”

What are the advantages? At least three:

• Actors, musicians, politicians and all other sorts of celebrities and public figures who use Facebook Pages as their main account might not make their personal Facebook profiles public. Others might not even have a personal profile at all.
• Page owners using the Page itself in Facebook Groups might see more likes once they start interacting with other Group members, as opposed to friend requests on their personal profiles from users they may barely even know.
• Page owners can use Groups to build their brand.

To do: Learn more about joining Groups, and the downside, in the Mashable article “Facebook Pages can now join Facebook Groups.” 

#FacebookGroups #FacebookPages

4. Hound Video of the Week

Here’s Tillman, the skateboarding dog, from the iPhone commercial.

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