The Publicity Hound’s
Tips of the Week
Issue #557 May 31, 2011
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. Piggyback onto Gender-neutral Story
2. Three Nook Books in One Weekend
3. You Can’t Afford Not to Outsource
4. Don’t Forget Meetup.com
5. Inventory Closeout
6. Hound Video of the Week
7. And at My Blog & Mobile Site…
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1. Piggyback onto Gender-neutral Story
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Is your blood still boiling after you heard about the loony
Toronto couple who are keeping their baby’s gender a secret–even
from the grandparents?
The story, which broke last week, has resulted in a vitriolic
response that’s still feeding radio talk shows, the big shows on
morning TV, and blogs.
Here are five ways to piggyback onto this story for publicity:
–Parents, speak up. Share experiences raising your own children.
–If your business sells products and services for kids, comment
via a letter to the editor or opinion column.
–Create online video. You’ll pull traffic from many of the
people who are Googling “gender-neutral baby” or “genderless
baby.” Weave in the name of your business. If you missed the free
webinar I hosted on powerful ways to use YouTube, you can watch
the replay at http://tinyurl.com/62ajq65
–Day care center operators, do you see many baby boys who want
to play with dolls, or girls who like to play with cars and
trucks? If so, how do you handle that?
–Take a survey on this topic and poll your members, readers or
email list. Report the results to the media.
–Publicists, if you represent a client who can comment on this
story, start pitching.
Publicist Michelle Tennant, a master at generating publicity for
her clients when news breaks, shares the secrets of how she does
it on the replay of the webinar video “How to Tie Your Pitch to
Breaking News and Make the Media Interview YOU.” Learn more about
what she can teach you to do at
http://publicityhound.com/publicity-products/marketing-tapes/breakingnews.htm
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2. Three Nook Books in One Weekend
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When author Billie A. Williams finished participating in the
webinar I hosted last week with Daniel Hall on how to create an
ebook for the Nook, the popular eReader from Barnes & Noble, she
gathered content for her first ebook and, within 30 minutes,
finished the project.
“I’m ecstatic, and it was simple with his excellent instruction,”
Billie said.
So simple, in fact, that she created two more ebooks within an
hour and is awaiting approval from Barnes & Noble. All three
should be available for sale in a day or two.
All three books are for very different niche audiences. “Writing
Wider” includes advice for writers on how to find content.
“Adrift” is a collection of short mystery stories. “One Woman’s
Garden” includes her tips and experiences with organic gardening.
“I can’t believe I did this in one weekend,” she says.
If you have existing content in your blog posts, articles, or at
your website, creating your own ebook is as easy as cut and
paste.
Don’t have existing content? Daniel Hall will show you where to
grab existing content that’s in the public domain.
Nook authors keep about 60 percent royalties from the cover price
of their books–not bad for only 30 minutes of work.
If you missed the webinar, listen here. You’ll get full, step-by-
step directions in the first 90 minutes. The rest of the webinar
is all bonus material on how to create a best-selling book for
Amazon:
http://realfastbook.com/joannook.html
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3. You Can’t Afford Not to Outsource
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Projects like creating ebooks for the Nook are perfect for
outsourcing.
So are other publicity-related tasks like proofreading, editing,
uploading videos to YouTube, rewriting articles, creating
graphics, uploading photos and slide shows to photo-sharing
sites, formatting a newsletter, and finding people in your target
audience on Twitter and Facebook.
These are only some of the tasks that can eat up hours of your
precious time. I’d rather spend my time creating new products,
coaching and participating on the social media sites. That’s why
I have an entire team of people to whom I outsource projects.
If you can’t afford a team, how about just using someone for an
hour or two a week? That’s how I started. Unemployed writers,
editors, photographers and graphic artists are looking for
projects every day on the freelance sites.
But unless you know what you’re doing, you can get burned. That’s
why I invited Leila McKinley to present a teleseminar on
“Outsourcing Secrets: How to Get the Best Quality, Price &
Teamwork from Freelancers.” Read more about how to get the monkey
off your back at
http://publicityhound.com/publicity-products/marketing-tapes/outsourcing.htm
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4. Don’t Forget Meetup.com
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Publicizing an event for a club, professional organization or
industry group? Don’t overlook MeetUp.com.
After creating a Meetup group for my local garden club, I
received an email from a gardener who lives nearby and wants to
come to the next meeting. She simply went to Meetup and searched
by topic and location. That’s how she found us.
Meetup boasts the world’s largest network of 79,000 local groups
and more than a quarter million monthly Meetups listed.
That’s why it’s one of my “Top 10” ways to promote events online.
You can find the full list of more than 50, and learn how to use
use them, in the replay of the webinar I hosted on “50+ Places
Online to Promote Your Live & Virtual Events to Reach Your Target
Market and Pull Sell-out Crowds.” Find out more at
http://publicityhound.com/events.htm
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5. Inventory Closeout
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If you’ve been eyeing my CDs and transcripts, and saving up your
money for one of my infrequent special offers, read on.
I’ll be announcing an inventory closeout of some of my older
titles that are gathering dust. Even though they were created
several years ago and are out of date, you can still find
valuable nuggets of information. The discount will be steep, and
I’ll practically be giving them away.
We’re sorting through the titles now to determine which ones will
be on sale and hope to start the sale next week.
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6. Hound Video of the Week
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Thanks to Publicity Hound Christel Hall of Minden, Nevada, for
this YouTube video of a dog at the park, trying to persuade a
statue sitting on a bench to throw a stick:
http://www.wimp.com/throwstick/
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7. And at My Blog & Mobile Site…
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9 ways to use Hubspot’s free marketing charts & graphs
http://publicityhound.net/?p=8531
How to format your blog posts, articles into a Nook ebook
http://publicityhound.net/?p=8555
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Joan Stewart
The Publicity Hound
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