Issue #833 July 8, 2014
Publisher: Joan Stewart<\/p>\n
\nThis Week in the Hound House:<\/strong><\/p>\n
Still chuckling over the sign on my bank teller’s counter: “My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
1. 5 Reasons to Follow Up Pitches<\/h3>\n
When you pitch a blogger or a journalist and after a week, hear nothing, what should you do?<\/p>\n
Don’t assume they don’t want a follow-up.<\/p>\n
They just SAY that. What they really mean is, “We don’t want follow-ups from pests who waste our time.”<\/p>\n
Here are five reasons to follow up your pitches:<\/p>\n
–Things fall through the cracks on their end.<\/p>\n
–Pitches get caught in spam folders.<\/p>\n
–They want a good story.<\/p>\n
–If you’re in PR or marketing, both of your jobs depend on it.<\/p>\n
–The squeaky wheel gets the publicity.<\/p>\n
If you can establish the relationship on social media, follow-ups for story pitches are usually OK. But never follow up after you send a press release.<\/p>\n
Michelle Tennant of Wasabi Publicity, who pitches top-tier media on behalf of her clients, uses a combination of tweets, texts, phone and snail-mail cards when following up. During the webinar I hosted on The New Rules of Following Up Pitches to Journalists<\/a>, Michelle and two other top-notch publicists I respect shared the process they use for following up pitches. They explain how many times they follow up and when they call it quits and move on.<\/p>\n
You can order the video replay today and save $10 off the regular price of $49.95. Use coupon code\u00a0FOLLOWUP at check out. <\/p>\n
2. Join the Food Fight<\/h3>\n
The fight over school nutrition guidelines is heating up, long before students return to school in a few months.<\/p>\n
This is a perfect opportunity for nutritionists, school administrators, parents, dieticians, cookbook authors and health experts to join the fray.<\/p>\n
The School Nutrition Association, which celebrated changes that requiring more fruits and vegetables and less sugar and salt in government-subsidized lunches, proposed by First Lady Michelle Obama, has done an about-face. It’s now leading a lobbying campaign to allow schools to opt out of the very rules it helped to create because students don’t like the new food and aren’t eating it.<\/p>\n
On the other side, the association\u2019s critics say dozens of food companies have paid millions in sponsorship fees to the School Nutrition Association, covering more than half of its $10.5 million annual budget.<\/p>\n
Who’s right?<\/p>\n
The media are working on back-to-stories right now. So this is an ideal time to contact local and national media outlets and offer your expert opinion.<\/p>\n
Keep you eyes on controversial national issues like this one–perfect for piggybacking your pitches. See these nine examples of how to be the local angle to national stories<\/a>. I wrote that blog post two years ago but many of the pitching opportunities I mentioned then are still alive.<\/p>\n
3. How to Promote Your Ebooks<\/h3>\n
Authors have been inundating me with questions the last several weeks on how to promote their ebooks.<\/p>\n
Publishing them has become so easy, that the much harder task, it turns out, is letting the world know about them.<\/p>\n
Here are three ideas:<\/p>\n
–Take advantage of websites like\u00a0Addicted to Ebooks<\/a> which let authors post a free blurb about ebooks that are free on Amazon.<\/p>\n
–For non-fiction, excerpt tips from the book and include them in a press release you send to national magazines. The ebook doesn’t have to be new but the tips still need to be timely.<\/p>\n
–Promote your ebook on BookBub, a leading service for publishers and authors looking to reach new readers through limited-time ebook deals. Millions of members turn to\u00a0BookBub\u2019s daily email<\/a> to find free and deeply discounted ebooks that match their interests. You’ll find submission tips at their site.<\/p>\n
I have dozens more ideas and I’ll present them all at a webinar I’m hosting on Thursday, Aug. 17. I’m telling you now so you can save the date. You can register starting next week.<\/p>\n
4. Hound Video of the Week<\/h3>\n
This\u00a010-minute compilation of short clips<\/a> shows a variety of animals–fur, feathers and fins–doing funny things. The first clip is for Publicity Hounds and it’s my favorite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Issue #833 July 8, 2014 Publisher: Joan Stewart “Tips, Tricks and Tools for Free Publicity” In This Issue 5 Reasons to Follow Up Pitches Join the Food Fight How to Promote an Ebook Hound Video of the Week This Week in the Hound House: Still chuckling over the sign on my bank teller’s counter: “My\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":"","iawp_total_views":1,"wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3,580,293,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-4326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tips-of-the-week","7":"tag-book-promotion","8":"tag-canonical-url","9":"tag-ebook-promotion","10":"tag-pitching-the-media","11":"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\/4326","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=4326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}