Issue #915 May 13, 2015
Publisher: Joan Stewart
“Tips, Tricks and Tools for Free Publicity”
In This Issue
- Why Email Lists Are Like Gold
- How to Use HARO
- #DomainGate and You
- Hound Video of the Week
This Week in the Hound House:
I’m still smiling from the phone call I got on Sunday, Mother’s Day. It was from a friend who’s a dog breeder and knows how to communicate with dogs. She knows I don’t have kids. And she told me my dog, Bogie, asked her to call and wish me Happy Mother’s Day. Isn’t that sweet?
1. Why Email Lists Are Like Gold
Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, knows the value of an email list.
For three years, he did nothing with his list that eventually grew to 250,000 fans.
When he finally started emailing regularly, he realized that he had been sitting on Fort Knox.
Hunter Boyle, who worked at AWeber, the email management company I use to deliver these tips to you, told that story last week when he spoke at the Author U Extravaganza in Denver. He said other successful authors who are AWeber clients made the same mistake Ferriss did.
“They told us that if there’s one thing they would have done differently, it’s that they would have learned about email marketing earlier,” Boyle said.
Of all the marketing tools, my email list is, by far, my biggest revenue generator. All my fans, and my SuperFans, are in one place. I can send them free tips whenever I want, as well as a promotion or two. Ka-ching. Ka-ching.
Give your readers high value, and you can turn them into SuperFans who are happy to buy every book, product and service you offer–and tell the world about you.
Yet most authors don’t have a clue about email marketing. That’s why I created a cheat sheet “10 Profitable Ways to Use Email Marketing to Create SuperFans Who Help You Sell Books.” You can opt in with your name and email address.
Let me know what you think of it, and feel free to email me with questions about email marketing. I’ll be happy to help.
2. How to Use HARO
Savvy Publicity Hounds already know about HARO, short for Help a Reporter Out.
It’s a free service that delivers dozens of media leads from live, breathing journalists and bloggers three times a day, Monday through Friday. All of them need specific types of sources for stories they’re covering. You respond with a short pitch on why you’d be an ideal source, and then hope they call or email you.
But do you know all the ways to use this service not only for publicity but for search engine optimization?
Jarred Carrizales, the founder of Heroic Search, has written the ultimate guide to How to Use HARO to Earn Valuable Mentions and Links. He explains how the service works, the nitty-gritty of getting your pitches to journalists accepted, how to research journalists before you respond to a query, and examples of perfect pitches that led to valuable publicity.
If you don’t have time to wade through all these HARO leads, Dan Janal offers a similar paid service that will send you only leads that pertain to you. Go to PRLeads.com.
3. #DomainGate and You
Here’s what you can learn from #DomainGate.
That’s the the dust-up between GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina on one side and Chuck Todd from “Meet the Press” and late-night talk show host Seth Meyers on the other.
When Fiorina failed to buy CarlyFiorina.org, and was roundly criticized in the media because one of her detractors did, she bought ChuckTodd.org and SethMeyers.org before going onto their shows.
HillaryClinton.org, by the way, also directs to Fiorina’s website.
Lesson: Buy your domain names .com, .net and .org before someone else does. And keep buying them. At less than $10 each per year, failing to do so can turn into an expensive and embarrassing mistake.
4. Hound Video of the Week
There’s no water in the wading pool. But these 5-week-old Golden Retriever pups don’t seem to mind. I tried counting them all but they’re moving too fast.
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