2007 October

CVBs, chambers: Bring ‘Ellen’ to your town

10/29/2007 By Joan Leave a Comment

Here’s a chance for Convention & Visitors Bureaus or chambers of commerce to strut their best stuff and bring the Ellen Degeneres Show to their town.

Ellen is sponsoring a “Wish You Were Here” program. (This is not a contest for legal reasons, claims a PR rep.) It’s a 10-week project to find a city that’s special enough to earn a visit from DeGeneres in December. The winning city will be chosen based on stories, photos and videos people post at Ellen.AOL.com about places, things and citizens that make their hometown special.

Even if your city isn’t chosen, it still might end up on the show because she will feature some of the more interesting entries. Deadline for entires is Nov. 30.

Filed Under: TV Publicity

Find a writer with free classified ads

10/29/2007 By Joan Leave a Comment

If you’re looking for a freelance writer writer for your press releases, articles, a bio for your media kit, or anything else, Angela Adair-Hoy offers free classified ads in her excellent ezine, WritersWeekly.com.

Send her an email and let her know what you need. Her ezine is one of the few I stop to read, no matter what I’m doing. (Note: Don’t bother contacting her if you aren’t willing to pay.)

Don’t forget about Craigslist, the world’s largest online bulletin board which is also great for publicizing a product, service, cause or issue for free. (See “How to Use Craigslist as a Global Publicity Tool.”) , as well as my own Publicity Hound Resources List which includes a vareiety of other vendors selling publicity related products and services.

Filed Under: Media Kits, Press Releases/News Releases, Publicity Resources, Writing Articles

Learn 5 legal issues for online businesses

10/28/2007 By Joan Leave a Comment

If you write articles, create information products, blog or create, publish and distribute any kind of content online, you must know how to protect yourself from the scoundrels who might be tempted to steal your content.

My colleagues, Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff, aka The Blog Squad, are presenting a teleseminar on legal issues affecting online professionals.

You hear copyright infringement horror stories all the time—lazy and unethical people can steal your website copy and publish it as their own.

If you’re honest, the law is usually on your side. But sometimes it can go against you if you haven’t taken the time to protect yourself, your business, and your creative assets.

You need to know what the law protects and what it doesn’t. To ignore this part of your business is to risk losing it all.

The Blog Squad will interview Jay Hollander, an intellectual property attorney, during a teleseminar at 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, October 30. You’ll learn about the five key legal issues you must know and pay attention to if you’re doing business online:

1. How should one select and protect a trademark?

2. How does one identify copyrightable creative works and use copyright law to protect their work?

3. How do you identify and protect company trade secrets?

4. How do you secure legal ownership and property rights to websites created for you by others?

5. How do you reduce the threat of being sued for intellectual property infringement by you or those who contribute to your blog, website or information products?

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers, Blogs, Writing Articles

Radio-TV Interview Report gets good reviews

10/26/2007 By Joan Leave a Comment

RTIR cover Radio-TV Interview Report, the magazine that TV and radio producers read to find guests, gets mostly positive reviews from speakers who have responded to a question about the effectiveness of ads they bought in that publication.

In a recent issue of SpeakerNet News, a free ezine, speaker Jim Bouchard asked readers for feedback on RTIR.

RTIR is published by Steve Harrison, who sponsors several events for authors who need publicity. He is accepting applications now for his Quantum Leap training program for authors. He and his team work with for a year to help them generate more publicity, sell more books, brand themselves as experts, become a highly-paid public speaker, sell books and other information over the Internet, create spin-off passive income streams, and build mailing lists. You can apply here.

Filed Under: Publicity Resources, Radio Publicity, TV Publicity

Holiday gift guide tips featured weekly in free ezine

10/25/2007 By Joan Leave a Comment

Every year, newspapers, magazines, TV news shows, newsletter editors, the wire services and even nonprofits feature products and services that would make ideal holiday gifts for their audiences.

It isn’t too late to pitch your product for many of these special features. Newspapers, for example, typically plan several holiday gift sections in November and December. If advertising revenue is particularly lean during one of those months, they’ll throw in an extra gift section suddenly in hopes of bringing in more money.

For Publicity Hounds, this means knowing about every opportunity to get your consumer product or service in front of the right audiences. Sometimes all it takes is sending a press release and photo to the right contact.

One way is to subscribe to The Weekly Buzz, a free weekly ezine published by The Gift List, the subscription-based service that provides contact information for journalists and others looking for products and services that would make great gifts. To subscribe, go to The Gift List website homepage and click on ”Newsletter” on the left, near the bottom of the list.

Authors, if your books would make great holiday gifts, you should be subscribing to this ezine, too.