The Publicity Hound’s Blog  

Book publicist Penny Sansevieri, never lacking for a creative ideas, wants authors to start promoting their books even if they’re on a shoestring budget.

She has 50 ideas for under $50. They include:

1. Buy your domain name as soon as you have a title for your book. You can get domain names for as little as $8.95.
2. Head on over to Blogger.com or Wordpress.com and start your very own blog (you can add it to your website later).
3. Set up an event at your neighborhood bookstore.
4. Write a few articles on your topic and submit them to the Internet for syndication.
5. Check out your competition online and see if you can do some networking.
6. Do some radio research and pitch yourself to at least five new stations this week.
7. Ready to get some business cards? Head on over to Vistaprint.com. The cards are free if you let them put their logo on the back.
8. Put together your marketing plan.
9. Plan a contest. Contests are a great way to promote your book.
10. Google some topic-related online groups to see if you can network with them.

For the 40 other tips, email Penny at fiftythings@getresponse.com   

Posted In: Authors & Publishers, Radio Publicity, Writing Articles
posted On: 8/27/2006: 8:22 am: By Joan
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Knowing what tools journalists use to do their jobs can help Publicity Hounds, who need to do research for articles, opinion columns, letters to the editor, and sometimes even pitches to journalists and bloggers.

Amy Gahran, content strategist and info-provocateur from Boulder, Colorado, lists her Top 3 Online Tools for Journalists for Poynter Online.

1. Furl, a free service where you can store a complete copy of any webpage to create your own personal online full-text-searchable library of interesting stuff.
2. RSS feeds—A way to “subscribe” to content on the web and have it delivered directly to your desktop, bypassing email and spam filters.
3. Feed search engines, such as Technorati, which lets you stay on top of the blogs.

Amy shares the handout she’ll distribute this weekend when she speaks at the Society for Professional Journalists conference in Chicago.

Posted In: Authors & Publishers, Pitching the Media, Publicity on the Internet, Writing Articles
posted On: 8/25/2006: 4:03 am: By Joan
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Anyone who’s been following this blog for awhile knows what I’m referring to when I use the term Media Mutt.

It’s somebody who doesn’t belong in the same league as a
Publicity Hound. MMs do silly things like call reporters and ask,
“Can you tell me if you got my news release?”

MMs order TV reporters and camera people to “get out of my lobby immediately or I’ll have you thrown out.” This usually happens when the TV station has caught the MM doing something like selling tainted hamburger, and the reporter wants the MM’s side of the story for tonight’s newscast.

Then there’s this week’s newest MM: Google. The search engine giant has fired off a series of legal letters to the media, warning them against using the word “google” as a verb.

Are they nuts or what? Nobody, not even Google, has enough money to buy that kind of publicity.

What do you suppose Dogpile–the metasearch engine that “fetches” information from places like About.com, Ask.com, MSN and Google–would do if people suddenly started saying, “If you’re looking for information on the benchmark index, just dogpile and see what you find.”

I doubt they’d go running to their legal department. I don’t care what the trademark attorneys say. Telling somebody to “just google the phrase and see what you can find” is the very best kind of PR imaginable.

If my competitors told their followers “Now be a good publicity hound and take a reporter to lunch,” I’d do back flips.

The worst part of this whole mess is the bad publicity that’s
already resulted. The bloggers are yucking it up with each other at the very thought that Google will threaten them–or sue them.

Mirriam-Webster, by the way, has added the verb “google,” with a small g, to its dictionary. So it will be interesting to see how this ends.

Posted In: General
posted On: 8/22/2006: 1:15 am: By Joan
Comments: 2 Comments

Business travel is so bad, these days, I’d rather have a root canal.

I’m dreading going through security tomorrow morning at the Milwaukee airport because of the new security restrictions. 

But I wouldn’t miss this business trip for anything. I’m headed to Virginia Beach, Virginia, where I’ll continue to learn how to get the heck off the road and keep making money in my jammies.

I’ll be attending my annual daylong session with one my mentors, Tom Antion, at his Great Internet Marketing Retreat Center. He’ll bring me and others up to speed, for an entire day, on what’s new in the world of Internet marketing since we last met a year ago. 

It’s one of the many benefits of being in the Internet Association of Information Marketers, the trade group run by Tom and Gayle Carson. I joined at the highest level, called the Outer Circle, which is specifically for members who make most of their money online through things like information products and electronic newsletters. (Anybody else would have called it the Inner Circle. But Tom, always the contrarian, created a catchier name.)

Anyway, I’ll report back after our session on Wednesday.

If you hate your job in corporate America and want the freedom that only Internet marketers know, join the association for as little as $15 a month if you’re a newbie. Or check out Tom’s “Click” ebook. It’s my bible, and I refer to it about a half dozen times a week.

If you hate your job and your boss, what are you waiting for?

P.S. Tom’s sweet girlfriend, Kay, a health food nut, is an absolute delight. Because she keeps us well fed, I’m surprising her with a loaf of Sunny Millet bread, her favorite, made by Natural Ovens, one of my Wisconsin clients.  

Posted In: Information Products, Publicity on the Internet
posted On: 8/21/2006: 10:30 am: By Joan
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I’m thrilled to be a new columnist for SOHO Business Report, a quarterly magazine for Canadian small office/home office business owners.

My first column is due September 1, and I’m looking for publicity success stories from Canadian SOHOs.

Tell me:

• How you got publicity for a product, service, cause or issue.
• How you pitched a story idea that intrigued a journalist.
• A technique you used to form relationships with journalists and broadcasters.  
• A clever tactic you’re using to create a buzz online.

Email me with details. Who knows? Your idea might generate even more publicity for you in SOHO Business Report.

Posted In: Business Promotion, Magazine Publicity, Newspaper Publicity, Publicity for Niche Markets, Publicity on the Internet, Radio Publicity, TV Publicity
posted On: : 8:05 am: By Joan
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