The Publicity Hound’s Blog  

My friend, TV producer Shawne Duperon, has a terrific idea for tying publicity into the July 4 Independence Day theme.

Think of a “freedom from…” and use that in your pitch. Examples:

—A health department in the Midwest might pitch tips to give people “freedom from mosquitoes” after the recent floods.

—Credit counselors can pitch a story idea on “freedom from credit cards.”

—Tourist destinations can encourage people to have “freedom from the presidential campaign commecials” by escaping to a vacation get-away.

—A bicycle shop can pitch a story on how sales of bikes are giving people “freedom from high gasoline prices.”

During a teleseminar Shawne did with me on “103 Sizzling Story Ideas from July through December,” Shawne says TV producers love those kinds of tie-ins, even if they don’t relate directly to the July 4 holiday. I’ve seen this kind of an idea land in newspapers, too, but it’s of greater appeal to broadcasters than the print media.     

It’s also worth remembering that on long holiday weekends like the upcoming July 4 weekend, news departments are working with skeletal crews. That means that print and broadcast media might welcome decent-quality user-generated amateur video on topics they might not even consider reporting on during the typical busy weekday.

Posted In: Pitching the Media, TV Publicity, Video
posted On: 6/30/2008: 11:39 pm: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment

Savvy Publicity Hounds are already using Twitter for business and publicity.

Twitter has become so popular, in fact, that almost daily, people are creating a variety of tools and widgets to help you Twitter faster and more effectively, and locate tweets about you and your company. But with more than 350 Twitter tools from which to choose, where do you start?

Today’s issue of Larry Chase’s excellent newsletter “Web Digest for Marketers” includes the top 18 Twitter tools and resources.

Decide which ones you want to use, and then follow me on Twitter.

See “Special Report #52: How to Use Twitter for Business to Network, Promote, Sell, Recruit & Profit.”

Posted In: General, Publicity on the Internet, Social media marketing, Social networking
posted On: : 3:53 pm: By Joan
Comments: 7 Comments

About half the posts on the popular blog Gawker deal with pop culture and celebrity gossip. That’s why it’s all too easy to dismiss this blog as frivolous.

But Michael Sebastian, a former Chicago newspaper reporter who writes for Ragan Communications, says Gawker is must reading for anybody in PR. That’s because the other half of Gawker’s posts deal with the PR, advertising and marketing industries.      

In his blog post The blog PR pros should be reading, Sebastian says:

Gawker bloggers are talking about your industry—and so are the dozens of comments each post gets. ..Gawker is to public relations what The Huffington Post and Drudge Report are to politics: informative, thought-provoking, slanted, infuriating.

As for its celebrity news, every good Publicity Hound should be paying attention and piggybacking onto celebrity gossip every chance they can get. In my Special Report #50: How to Piggyback on the Celebrity News to Promote Your Product, Service, Cause or Issue, I give numerous examples of how other self-promoters have done that. One of the best is Debra Holtzman, a child safety expert who distributes online press releases via Expertclick: The Online Yearbook of Experts about topics like Britney Spears driving her car with her baby on her lap to tips on how Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes can create a safe nursery for little Suri.

Another reason to read Gawker. A tip of the hat to Dan Janal of PRLeads.com for this one.

Posted In: General
posted On: 6/25/2008: 10:34 pm: By Joan
Comments: No Comments

If you’ve hired a virtual assistant to help with your publicity campaign, or for any other tasks you don’t like to do or don’t have the talent to do, Tough Love & Accountability, or Four Golden Rules for Working with Your Virtual Assistant is must reading.

Denise Aday of Aday VA Solutions, a Dallas, TX based virtual assistance firm, reminds us to:

1. Pay bills promptly.

2. Respect procedures that our VA has put in place

3. Remember that we are the VA’s client. The VA is not our employee.

4. Communicate, communicate, communicate. That means picking up the phone and calling my own VA, Chris Buffaloe of Serenity Virtual Assistant Services, if I get the feeling that our email communication just isn’t working. She does the same. 

If you haven’t hired a VA yet, what are you waiting for? During the telseminar I conducted on “How to Hire a Virtual Assistant to Help with Your Publicity Campaign,” VAs Cindy Greenway and Diana Ennen, both excellent VAs, said the VA and the client are responsible for building the relationship. They stressed that VAs must set boundaries right at the beginning and let clients know when they can and cannot call, when they are available to work on projects, and how much lead time they need.

Publicity Hounds can hire VAs to write press releases, update their online media rooms, manage social networking duties, and write how-to articles.  

A tip of the hat to Chris, my VA, for alerting me to this. (Chris, are you trying to tell me something???)   

Posted In: Publicity Resources, Social networking
posted On: : 2:04 pm: By Joan
Comments: 3 Comments

A common frustration with media interviews results when the reporter, for whatever reason, never mentions your website.

Here’s a way to solve that problem.  

The next time somebody interviews you, and the reporter asks for the name of your company, use your website URL, not the actual company name.

Instead of me being the owner of “The Publicity Hound,” my company is simply PublicityHound.com.

That little trick won’t work every time, but it should work with telephone interviews, and especially when the reporter is rushed.

OK, but what happens if you can’t even persuade reporters to call? You pitch a story and it goes nowhere. Then what?

Have you followed up your pitch at least seven times?

If you haven’t, no wonder they’re not calling you.  Jill Lublin, author of “Guerilla Publicity,” says you shouldn’t believe journalists who say they hate follow-ups. They hate lousy follow-ups. When I  interviewed her during a teleseminar on “Failproof Ways to Follow Up with Reporters,” Jill said reporters often appreciate it when sources call a few days after they’ve pitched a story idea to offer something special like a graphic, or a photo, or an interview with a somebody who lives in the newspaper’s circultion area. 

I agree. I worked in a newsroom for 22 years as a reporter and editor and was grateful for sources who saved my hide.

Posted In: Newspaper Publicity, Pitching the Media, The Local Angle
posted On: 6/24/2008: 1:24 pm: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment