You Have No Control

The Publicity Hound’s
Tips of the Week
Issue #447 April 21, 2009

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. You Have No Control

2. Help the Unemployed

3. Social Networking Annoyances

4. Dating Service of PR

5. Promote a Women’s Website

6. Help This Hound

7. Hound Joke of the Week

8. And at My Blog…

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1. You Have No Control
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If you work for a boss who refuses to let your company have a
blog or participate in social networking, you’ve already heard
all the lame excuses:

“We don’t want bad comments showing up at our blog.”

“We have to protect our brand.”

“We want complete control over what’s said about us online.”

Yeah, right.

Tell the boss there is no such thing as complete control. Or any
control.

Then, refer the boss to the ugly messes that Domino’s Pizza and
Amazon.com found themselves in last week.

A Domino’s employee videotaped a fellow employee doing nasty
things to food, and uploaded the video to YouTube. Within two
days, the video had been viewed more than a million times.

Over at Amazon, sales rankings and search results for a category
of books plummeted after titles seemed to disappear from the
website. The bloggers went nuts. So did those on Twitter,
Facebook and on the author discussion boards.

Neither company was prepared to weather the storm. Of all the
bloggers I read who weighed in on Domino’s and Amazon’s debacles,
social media expert BL Ochman nailed it. She offered these five
simple tips for any company that doesn’t want to see itself in a
similar mess:

–Monitor your brand 24/7.

–Establish a credible presence in blogs and social media.

–Acknowledge the conversation where it’s happening.

–Explain how you’ll address the problems to prevent them from
recurring.

–Have a crisis strategy ready to roll.

How many of those five crisis tools do you have in place?

If you or the boss fears social media, or you don’t have time to
participate, BL can help. She was my guest during a teleseminar
on “How to do Social Networking, Run a Business & Still Have a
Life.” We recorded it, and it’s available as a CD, MP3 or
electronic transcript that you can download and be reading as
soon as your order has been approved.

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2. Help the Unemployed
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If a clever idea can generate mountains of publicity for the big
car companies, it can work for a real estate office. And maybe
even you, too.

Decide what your business will do to help the unemployed. And
then pitch the story to the media.

Realtor Bob Shultz says he liked the idea of GM and Ford making
nine payments of up to $500 for any car owner who loses a job
during the first 24 months of ownership.

Bob, of the Century 21 Landmark Realty Group in Elkhart, Ind.,
says his office came up with its own offer. If anyone who buys a
house through his office gets laid off in the first 24 months, up
to $10,800 will be paid toward that person’s mortgage.

“I thought we might get a 30-second blurb on the local TV news
when I pitched the story,” he said. “WSBT Channel 22, one of the
local stations, jumped in with both feet. We were their lead
story on their Friday evening and weekend news. What a pleasant
surprise!”

The station also wrote a story for its website, which you can
read.

Real estate agents need every possible idea to generate publicity
when the market is flat. Real estate coach Jim Gillespie
interviewed me for my very best tips.

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3. Social Networking Annoyances
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Stuff I’m starting to hate in the social media world:

–The glut of invitations to every teleseminar on earth is bad
enough. I RSVP to all of them and comment. I explained why in the
blog post I wrote. But please, don’t write back and thank me for my
RSVP. Enough already.

–People who ask questions on LinkedIn but fail to give enough
information so I can offer an intelligent answer. If you want my
help marketing your book, don’t make me visit your website to
find out what the book is about. Tell me in one or two sentences
or I’m bailing out.

–People who invite me to connect on LinkedIn but don’t explain
how they know me. This results in back-and-forth emails that
could have been avoided.

–People who thank me for following them on Twitter and then
pitch a book, ask me to sign up for their ezine or–this is the
worst–buy a product that will help me get a zillion Twitter
followers in only five days. I don’t want a zillion followers. I
want only people who are interested in what I have to say. If
you’re promoting something right out of the gate, I will no
longer follow you. If you have interesting, helpful content,
let’s follow each other on Twitter.

Warren Whitlock’s how-to-Twitter tips, his etiquette advice and
the smart strategies he advocates for promoting on Twitter have
helped me offer a lot of value to my more than 6,600 followers.
Learn what I’ve learned. The teleseminar I hosted with him on
“How to Use Twitter to Amass an Army of Followers, Customers &
Valuable Contacts–and Promote” is available as an audio and
electronic transcript.

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4. Dating Service of PR
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Have you seen the “Dating Service of PR”? That’s what PRWeek
called ExpertClick, the site that connects experts and
journalists.

I’ve been a member for years, and my press room page has helped
me capture the first three spots on Google for the phrase
“publicity expert.” This drives my competitors crazy.

To celebrate their 25th year, Expertclick is offering great
benefits:

–Open access, without registration or purchase, to both
databases: the Expert Directory and the Journalist Directory.
You can open PDFs of both books live from their website.

–F*ree opt-in to get their feed of questions from journalists.
Just enter your email address in the top tool bar and you’ll
start receiving questions on your topic.

–You also have full access to experts, and their press
releases, on thousands of topics–great for bloggers and ezine
publishers who are looking for content. And you can see
journalist profiles.

–As one of my Publicity Hounds, you can get listed as an expert
and double-dip on the $100 Publicity Hound discount when you call
202-333-5000 and ask for the special rate today or tomorrow,
April 21 and 22.

Call Mitch, Randy, Robert, Phil or Brian at 202-333-5000. They
answer their own phones and give great customer service.

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5. Promote a Women’s Website
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This week, seven Publicity Hounds have suggestions on how Karen
Kalisek of Escondido, Calif. can promote the WomensMedia.com.

From Meryl K. Evans:

“Have a contest or celebration. Get sponsors for prizes and let
people qualify for entries. Example: If they Tweet a link to your
website, they get an entry. If they mention your site at their
blog, they get an entry.

“Have them email you a list of what they’ve done with their
links.”

From Jeff Rutherford:

“In addition to any proactive PR outreach that you do, you
need to focus heavily on search engine optimization. Make sure
that your content is titled and tagged correctly so that Google
and other search engines will index all that great content for
organic search results.”

From Mary:

“Establish a YouTube presence. Before you know it, you’ll be a
YouTube partner who receives 10,000 visits per month from people
who are looking for your content. If you are teaching classes,
you may be able to join YouTube’s education channel. If you are a
nonprofit, you’ll receive free advertising from YouTube.”

The Publicity Hound says:

My “Special Report #17: Powerful Ways to Promote Your Website to
Draw Traffic and Boost Sales” includes more than 70 tips, and
dozens of resources. A steal at only $15. Cherry-pick the tips
that will work best for you.

Read all the responses to this week’s Help This Hound question.

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6. Help This Hound
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Shametra L. Thomas of Dallas, TX writes:

“I have a new concierge business, The Savvy DFW Mommy, in Dallas,
Texas. The business targets professional/working moms.

“It serves the Dallas/Fort Worth area and specializes in on-call
personal assistance, corporate concierge services, home
organization, home improvement project management, event
planning, personal shopping, and style and decor consulting.

“This is a new city for my company and I have no previous ties.
How do I get the word out to potential clients and keep them coming in?”

The Publicity Hound says:

First, show your website visitors who you are. I searched your
website and couldn’t find your photo. Once you’ve done that,
start following the helpful advice my Hounds will post to my blog.

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7. Hound Joke of the Week
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Thanks to Erica Gorsuch of Thiensville, WI for this one:

Q. Why did the cowboy want to buy a dachshund?

A. (Said with a southern drawl) He wanted to get a long little
doggie.

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8. And at My Blog…
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Oprah, here are 5 ways to improve your Twitter bio

Am I stingy by not answering a LinkedIn question? You decide