The Publicity Hound’s
\nTips of the Week
\nIssue #717 May. 21, 2013
\nPublisher: Joan Stewart
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“Tips, Tricks and Tools for Free Publicity”<\/p>\n
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\nIn This Issue
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1. Fast, Easy Research Tools<\/p>\n
2. Don’t Offer an Embargo<\/p>\n
3. Share Your Expertise & Coach<\/p>\n
4. Hound Video of the Week<\/p>\n
This Week in the Hound House:<\/p>\n
Prayers, prayers and more prayers going out to the victims of yesterday’s tornado in Oklahoma.<\/p>\n
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\n1. Fast, Easy Research Tools
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If you read this newsletter only on Tuesdays, and you skip the\u00a0Saturday edition, you missed a golden nugget of a tip I shared\u00a0over the weekend.<\/p>\n
“50 Tips for Pitching A Story to the Media<\/a>,” written by PR pro\u00a0Alison Kenney, an independent PR \u00a0practitioner, is must reading\u00a0for publicity pups as well as for grizzled Publicity Hounds who\u00a0have been pitching for decades.<\/p>\n The post is filled with a variety of tips, strategies and\u00a0creative ideas on how to connect with journalists. Here’s an\u00a0example.<\/p>\n Alison recommends that before pitching, you read a writer’s\u00a0LinkedIn profile, Twitter stream and acebook page, if it’s\u00a0public. I’ll add three more social media sites to that: the\u00a0writer’s blog, Google+ profile and Pinterest.<\/p>\n You don’t have to read them all. Two or three are better than\u00a0nothing. I blog, and I’m also on those five social media sites.\u00a0If someone pitches me without checking me out on at least one of\u00a0those resources, they haven’t done their homework, and it shows.<\/p>\n A blogger’s Twitter feed alone can give you so many leads about\u00a0what that person wants that your pitch can be right on target.\u00a0Social media profiles and feeds are fast, easy research tools.<\/p>\n Here’s another great tip from Alison’s list.<\/p>\n Follow the @AP_Planner on Twitter. That’s the feed for the\u00a0Associated Press Planner, the giant calendar of upcoming events.\u00a0You can buy a subscription to the package and get a heads-up on\u00a0the types of events that interest you.<\/p>\n Or, pay nothing and follow them on Twitter where they post\u00a0several times a day.<\/p>\n Yesterday, for example, I found this:<\/p>\n “100 days away: 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and\u00a0Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech (28 Aug)”<\/p>\n If you have a story or an expert who can tie into that\u00a0anniversary, knowing about it three months ahead of time can help\u00a0you craft a great pitch and be far ahead of your competitors.<\/p>\n If you need help building relationships with journalists BEFORE\u00a0you pitch, as Alison recommends, find out how to access the video\u00a0replay of a webinar of my best tips on “How to Use Social Media\u00a0to Connect with Journalists.<\/a>”<\/p>\n =================================== Nothing dates a Publicity Hound more than offering an embargoed press release or story pitch to the media or bloggers.<\/p>\n An embargo is an agreement between you and a news organization to keep a story secret until a specific date and time.<\/p>\n Giving a “heads up” to one journalist weeks before you want the news released lets the journalist spend time researching the story before it’s published. It also lets them have a scoop.<\/p>\n Two or three decades ago, PR people offered embargoes when they had big news to break, particularly on complicated issues. They’d choose a favorite journalist or journalists, and then work with them, to make sure the story was detailed and accurate.<\/p>\n If you were the journalist breaking the story, you loved the embargo. But everyone else who missed the story hated it. Besides, embargoes didn’t always work because some writers jumped the gun and released the news anyway.<\/p>\n Today, during our 24\/7 news cycle when anyone with a Twitter feed can scoop a professional journalist, embargoes don’t work at all. So don’t even think about putting an “embargo” notice at the top of a press release and then distributing it to your contacts.<\/p>\n If you really want publicity results, don’t treat all the media the same. Use “A Simple 5-Part Formula for Delivering the Perfect Media Pitch and Hitting it Out of the Park.” It’s a video replay of a webinar I hosted and it comes with 27 angles for stories, and an example of a pitch that’s customized for three different media outlets so you can see exactly how I’ve changed it, and understand why.<\/p>\n You’ll also get a list of “10 Magic Phrases the Media LOVE.”<\/p>\n Publicity Hound Mary Castillo watched the webinar, used my pitching tips and immediately got callbacks from two media outlets interested in her story. She said the webinar “empowered me to be more straightforward and peppy in my pitches.”<\/p>\n Grab the pitching tips webinar and bonuses here.<\/a><\/p>\n =================================== After speaking at two authors’ conferences in the last month, I was struck by how many authors rely only on their books for revenue. There are two big problems with that:<\/p>\n –The vast majority of books aren’t money-makers. They’re money pits.<\/p>\n –If you know enough about a topic to write a book on it, or speak about it, you can probably teach it. Teaching and coaching are far more profitable than publishing.<\/p>\n You can reach a lot more people with your message, have a greater impact, encourage others to promote you and your work, and sometimes enlist the services of people who can help you with PR and marketing for next to nothing. But it requires a shift in thinking.<\/p>\n Steve Harrison, who has worked with thousands of authors, has created a video on how “The Shift” can change everything.<\/p>\n His tips are free, and I’m offering them as one of his affiliates. Go here now to watch it.<\/a><\/p>\n =================================== A CBS news segment of Monday’s devastating tornado in Oklahoma<\/a> shows storm victim Barbara Garcia reunited with her dog, Cathy, during an on-air interview.<\/p>\n As a reporter was interviewing Barbara, someone off-camera noticed the dog under the rubble. Don’t miss this one.<\/p>\n The slideshow below the video shows pets being rescued during Hurricane Sandy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week Issue #717 May. 21, 2013 Publisher: Joan Stewart =================================== “Tips, Tricks and Tools for Free Publicity” =================================== In This Issue =================================== 1. Fast, Easy Research Tools 2. Don’t Offer an Embargo 3. Share Your Expertise & Coach 4. Hound Video of the Week This Week in the Hound\u2026 Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"content-sidebar","iawp_total_views":3,"wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[206,205,36,19,27],"class_list":{"0":"post-3081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tips-of-the-week","7":"tag-author-marketing","8":"tag-pitching","9":"tag-pitching-the-media","10":"tag-pitching-to-reporters","11":"tag-social-media","12":"entry"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Joan Stewart","author_link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/author\/jstewart\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n2. Don’t Offer an Embargo
\n===================================<\/p>\n
\n3. Share Your Expertise and Coach
\n===================================<\/p>\n
\n4. Hound Video of the Week
\n===================================<\/p>\n