Issue #824 June 7, 2014
Publisher: Joan Stewart
“Tips, Tricks and Tools for Free Publicity”
In This Issue
- Tell Your Story via Someone Else
- Off-topic Pitches
- New Posts at My Blog
- Hound Video of the Week
This Weekend in the Hound House:
Bogie and I discovered a 100-acre park near our home that almost no one else knows about, and they let dogs run loose! She’s even found a dead animal that she rolls in every day. She smells so bad, I can barely stand it on the 10-minute drive home. Then it’s into the tub where I scrub her down with her organic shampoo.
1. Tell Your Story via Someone Else
“People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.”
It’s a quote from leadership expert Simon Sinek, and it was the groundwork for a successful publicity campaign that WordWrite Communications in Pittsburgh created for its client, American Textile Company. The company manufacturers pillows and other bedding.
Instead of building an entire campaign around pillows or the company, WordWrite focused on the company’s commitment to U.S. veterans. It piggybacked onto the Pittsburgh Marathon and Team Red, White and Blue, a nonprofit dedicated to enriching the lives of vets by connecting them to their communities through physical and social activities.
They interviewed a team member who suffered a service-related injury, and turned it into a short pitch for local media. The story ran at the top of Page 1 in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and also generated publicity in other print media, and on local radio and TV.
In a guest post at my blog, Hollie Geitner of WordWrite, who created the campaign, explains more about what made it resonate with the media.
The next time you need publicity, think of a worthy cause or issue, or a nonprofit, that you can use to tell your story instead of telling it yourself.
2. Off-topic Pitches
Tuesday’s tip about providing a high-resolution photo with your press releases for the New Products section of magazines struck a chord with Publicity Hound Stacey Anderson, publisher of Getting Organized magazine. She writes:
“I am constantly looking for new products to feature, and often at the last minute. Having a description, price and photo of the product readily available makes it a no-brainer to feature the product.”
She adds this important caveat about off-topic pitches:
“How very frustrating it is to get off-topic pitches that clearly don’t match our publication. A few of those, and I no longer read anything you send me, which is a bummer when you actually send something I might want to use.”
Before you pitch anyone, do your homework. Take five minutes and visit their website or blog. Or Google their name to see what you can find.
The video replay of my webinar on “11 Fast, Free, Easy Ways to Research Journalists, Broadcasters and Bloggers BEFORE You Pitch” includes my best time-saving shortcuts on how to find juicy nuggets about the person you’re pitching, and how to weave the details into your pitch. It includes 5 sources for finding thosuands of leads from media who are looking for specific types of sources NOW.
Read more about the cheat sheet, the checklist and another bonuses it includes. Buy it before 11:50 p.m. Eastern on Sunday night, and get $10 off when you use the coupon code “research” at checkout.
3. New Posts at My Blog
11 ways to use this publicity cheat sheet with your PR team
5 smart ways to improve your internal PR
How a Pittsburgh pillow company used a marathon to tells its cause marketing story
4. Hound Video of the Week
Enjoy these four minutes worth of Vine (six-second) videos. Worth lots of laughs.
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