Why Even Obscure Holidays Go Viral

Issue #965 Nov. 3, 2015
Publisher: Joan Stewart

“Tips, Tricks and Tools for Free Publicity”

In This Issue

Why Even Obscure Holidays Go Viral
Event Speaker? Meet the Media
R.I.P. Dan Poynter
Hound Video of the Week

This Week in the Hound House:

Pomegranates, one of the healthiest fruits on earth, are back in the markets this month during National Pomegranate Month, and I’m hooked. Here’s a fun Pinterest board that features pomegranate recipes, artwork, products, posters, even holiday wreaths and decorations.

1. Why Even Obscure Holidays Go Viral

Two decades ago, if you wanted to create your own holiday or month like “National Pomegranate Month,” you had to cross your fingers and hope traditional media covered it. Or you got zero publicity.

Not anymore.

Today’s social media gabfest requires something interesting for people to talk about. Even your friends on Twitter and Facebook have slow news days. That’s why your own holiday, as whacky and obscure as it might be, can command attention.

Tie it into a book you’re launching, or a product or service that’s been on the market awhile.

Give it a hashtag. Create an enticing image with a free tool like Canva, and before you know it, everybody’s talking about it. And if you get a call from your local newspaper or TV station? Well, that’s just gravy.

Publicity Hound Jacqueline Whitmore created National Cell Phone Courtesy Month in 2002 and is still generating publicity every year during the month of July, including a column in USA Today by publisher Al Neuharth.

Anyone can create their own day, week or month of the year. But knowing how to get the greatest recognition possible for it can be tricky. Chase’s Calendar of Events, for example, turns down far more requests than it publishes. If you want to get in, you must know about their strict guidelines. But that doesn’t mean that if Chase’s says no to you, you’re left in the cold.

On Thursday, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time, I’m presenting a paid webinar that will show you how to create your own holiday and milk it for all it’s worth. I’ll introduce you to an author who doesn’t even have her own holiday but has gotten reams of publicity piggybacking her topics onto two other national holidays. You’ll learn where to register your holiday beyond Chase’s, and clever ideas for ways to promote it.

2. Event Speaker? Meet the Media

If you speak at conferences, conventions and big events the media cover, use every opportunity to touch base with reporters and bloggers before you arrive, meet them at the event, and help however you can.

These events are teaming with reporters, and publicity expert Dan Janal has a step-by-step guide for what to do before, during and after the event. (No email thank-you notes!)

He published his article to Pulse, LinkedIn’s magazine. Read it here.

3. R.I.P. Dan Poynter

Dan Poynter traveled more than 6,000 miles each week to share, inspire and empower authors to self-publish their books.

Yet he was never too busy to send book publicity tips and links to some of the funniest dog videos you’ve seen here.

Dan died Sunday of acute cancer. On Jan. 14, he suffered severe injuries after he fell off a 12-foot wall while photographing a car accident near his home in Santa Barbara, Calif.

The author of 130 books, Dan was an avid parachutist, an evangelist for books, an advocate for self-publishers, and the godfather to thousands of authors of fiction and nonfiction. Book shepherd Judith Briles shares fun facts about Dan in her blog today.

Dan, the publishing industry won’t be the same without you.

4. Hound Video of the Week

Cuteness Alert: Lots of little puppies going up and down stairs, and a few rolling down, too.

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