2009 November

Author needs help promoting a book on Christian civility

11/24/2009 By Joan 6 Comments

Christian Civility Mitch Carnell of Charleston, SC, writes:

“My book, Christian Civility in an Uncivil World, has just been published and I need help promoting it. The other contributors from different denominations are all much better known than I am.

“The publisher sells mostly online and relies on distributors to get it into bookstores and on Amozon. The book is great for small group discussions in churches and college classes. Each chapter can stand alone. My chapter on “The Power of Words” brings everything together.

“Paul Raushenbush, associate dean of the Princeton University Chapel, wrote a dynamic foreword. I am doing all of the normal book publicity tasks but I need some breakthrough help. Can your Hounds offer their best ideas on how to market the book?”

If you need help with a publicity or social media problem, email it to me and I’ll consider posting it here and including the link in my weekly ezine, The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week. Selected comments will appear in the newsletter the following week.

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers

Speakers, publicize your speaking engagements these 9 ways

11/22/2009 By Joan 4 Comments

If you do free or paid speaking engagements, there are opportunities galore to get in front of audiences that need to hear whay you have to say.

But some Publicity Hounds don’t quite know where to begin. In Friday’s issue of the SpeakerNet News ezine, Michael Schatzki said he wants to give a new hour-long speech he has created at least 20 times so he can polish it before charging a fee.

His target audience is people in their late 30s to early 60s, business people or a general audience. His topic is on how to motivate people to fitness. Micheal asked for tips on how to let groups know that he speaks for free. He’s compiling all the results for the SpeakNet News archives.

I responded and offered these nine ways to publicize free or paid speaking engagements:

Contact local chambers of commerce, Rotary, Kiwanis, Business Networking International, and any other business networking groups.
Consider joining Toastmasters. You’ll get instant feedback. And Toastmasters know which groups in town welcome speakers.
Go to MeetUp.com and see what business groups are meeting near you. I belong to a MeetUp group for Internet marketers in Wisconsin, and at our last meeting, we discussed which speakers we could invite to speak for free.
Go to Craigslist and check out the community category. You’ll find sub-categories for classes, events and small business. Post a note in the best category offering your services. Make sure you don’t post the same item to more than one category. See How to Use Craigslist as a Global Publicity Tool.
Get a local business journal, daily or weekly newspaper or business magazine and check the section of the paper that announces local business events and who is speaking. You’ll find many groups you probably never knew existed. There’s usually a phone number to call for registration. Call that number and ask for the meeting planner.
If you’re Twittering (you should be), let your followers know about your topic and ask them for suggestions. If you’re speaking in a specific geographic area, use a hashtag (#) with the name of a city in your tweet, like this—#Chicgo— so people who are searching for information on that city will find your tweet. Learn more about how to use hashtags for publicity.
If you’re on LinkedIn (you should be), post the question in their Q&A section and you’ll probably get many responses from people who do business near you.
If you’re on Facebook, ask your friends to spread the word. See 11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook.
You probably won’t have to resort to paid ads. But if you do, you can target people in specific geographic locations with fairly cheap ads on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Do you do free or paid speaking engagements? If so, what are some of the ways you publicize them?

(Shutterstock photo)

Filed Under: Advertising, Business Promotion, Facebook, LinkedIn, Magazine Publicity, Newspaper Publicity, Social networking, Special Events, Twitter Tagged With: BNI, business journals, Business Networking International, Craigslist, MeetUp.com, Michael Schatzki, professional speaking, public speaking, SpeakerNet News, speaking engagements, Toastmasters

13 ways to use royalty-free stock images in a PR campaign

11/21/2009 By Joan 7 Comments

If you can’t afford your own photographer, or you take lousy photos, or you hate creating graphics, use a stock photo service to enhance everything from press releases to media kits in a PR campaign.

Royalty-free stock images can save you a lot of time and money trying to generate graphics on your own. Royalty-free means you can use the downloaded images forever and not have to worry about infringement issues.

Shutterstock has given me a complimentary subscription so I can try their service, and their photos come in handy at this blog. They’ve helped me compile this list of 13 ways you can use stock image photos in a PR campaign.

Blogs. Many bloggers are missing the opportunity to dress up their posts and make their blogs more attractive. Regardless of what topic I write about, I can usually find a stock image to accompany it.
Ezines and print newsletters. Stock photos and illustrations can enhance articles in company newsletters and ezines. Now that so many ezine publishers produce HTML newsletters, stock images come in handy.
Press releases. Most press release distribution services allow customers to upload several images at no extra charge. If the headline doesn’t call attention to your release, the stock photo just might. Adding editorial stock images of premier events such as concerts or sports competitions can add weight and influence to a related press release, blog post or ezine article.
Presentations. Whether you’re submitting a proposal for a client, or you’re a speaker who’s presenting to an audience, compelling stock images used to illustrate business presentations can help capture the attention of your audience. Highlight key points with photos and illustrations in PowerPoint.
Reports. Stock photos are a great way to add excitement to client reports and reinforce your accomplishments.
White Papers. White Papers often cry out for colorful stock imagery to break up text and hold readers’ attention.
Media kits. Including stock photos and illustrations when designing a media kit or media kit inserts to add extra visual appeal.
Event invitations and posters. Stock photos and illustrations allow PR professionals to create attractive event invitations. Stock images can also help create just the right mood for the event itself. Simply enlarge them to poster size and place them throughout the event location.
Social media. Use them to enliven your your social media presence on sites such as Facebook, Twitter (Twitpic), Wikipedia, and more.
Search engine optimization. By properly tagging a stock image within a release, blog or website, you can raise your site’s rankings. PR clients will appreciate the added value as well as your SEO savvy.
Your own website. Stock photos and illustrations are a great way to demonstrate creative flair and generate interest in your website, or your PR client’s.
Advertising. If you’re buying an ad, a good stock photo can come in handy.
For the media. Offer stock photos to journalists if they’re coving a story about you, and the photos are a good tie-in. Sure, the media have access to their own stock photos, but Rule #1 when working with the media is “Be helpful.”

My ebook How to Use Photos & Graphics in Your Publicity Campaign offers thousands of helpful tips on how to incorporate images into your publicity efforts.

Filed Under: Advertising, Blogs, Celebrity tie-ins, Facebook, Photos & Graphics, PR Consultants/Publicists, Press Releases/News Releases, Publicity Resources, Search engine optimization, Social media marketing, Special Events

Bad press releases outed by journalists with blogs

11/21/2009 By Joan 1 Comment

stink2 In the old days, when we used typewriters to write press releases, and then snail-mailed the releases to the media, the worst that could happen would be that the media didn’t use our releases.

Now that many journalists blog, the occupational hazards of bad press releases distributed online are multiplied. Send a crappy release and the journalist could nominate it for “Bad Press Release of the Year” at his blog.

When one of your customers or potential clients Googles your company, the nomination pops up in the search results. Ouch.

This week, Don Mecoy, a business writer for The Oklahoman, a daily newspaper, nominated a press release from Isilon Systems for “Bad Press Release of the Year.” It was about a manager from Isilon who would be speaking at an industry conference. Mecoy targeted the boilerplate as particulalry agregious:

“Isilon Systems (NASDAQ:ISLN) is the proven leader in scale-out NAS. Isilon’s clustered storage and data management solutions drive unique business value for customers by maximizing the performance of their mission-critical applications, workflows, and processes. Isilon enables enterprises and research organizations worldwide to manage large and rapidly growing amounts of file-based data in a highly scalable, easy-to-manage, and cost-effective way. Information about Isilon can be found at http://www.isilon.com/.”

I commented at the blog and said that writing a press release about someone from your company who’s speaking at an industry conference is fine. The press release can live online forever, position your employee as an expert in his field, and generate a few lines of type in the back of a business journal.

I also offered several suggestions on how to write effective press releases:

Use short words people can understand instead of long words. Several long words strung together like “significant transactional performance” and “accelerating adoption of virtualization and ascendance”—phrases used in the Isilon release—make the problem worse.
Avoid using quotes that don’t sound like actual quotes. The long quote in the second paragraph of the release is incomprehensible:
“With the accelerating adoption of virtualization and ascendance of cloud computing, it’s critical that organizations deploy the best storage architecture for these environments to ensure long-term IT efficiency,” said Nick Kirsch. “While the data fragmentation and management complexity challenges of traditional SAN and NAS severely limit the potential of server virtualization and cloud computing, Isilon scale-out NAS unlocks the storage bottleneck and enables organizations to maximize their investment.”
Avoid buzzwords like “scalable,” “mission-critical” and “proven leader.” Play it straight and simply explain how you help other companies solve their problems.
Make sure your press releases include keywords that people would type into the search engines if they’re looking for the kind of information your releases provide. Don’t assume that the headline, for example, must include your company’s name. Often, a much better strategy is to use keywords in the headline.

If you struggle with press releases, take the free tutorial I’ve created on 89 Ways to Write Powerful Press Releases. It will help you steer clear of those nasty “Bad Press Release of the Year” nominations. (Shutterstock photo)

Filed Under: Business Promotion, Press Releases/News Releases

8 ways public speaking produces multiple revenue streams

11/17/2009 By Joan 2 Comments

If you aren’t speaking about your area of expertise, you’re missing valuable opportunities and multiple revenue streams.

Here are eight ways speaking pays, even if you stay in your own community and don’t want to hassle with packed airplanes, crummy hotels and crummier road food:

Audience members have invited me to be part of their books. I’m in more than 60 books on public relations, marketing and small business.
If you do a great job on the platform, you’ll be invited to participate in joint ventures because audience members will want to team up with you on a variety of projects. (You’ll have so many offers than you can afford to be picky.) Someone who was in the audience and heard me speak at the Glazer-Kennedy Inner Circle last week in Green Bay, Wis., called me yesterday and asked I’d be willing to do joint ventures with several other well-known Internet marketers. And he’s willing to make the introductions.
People who hear you and love you will refer you to meeting planners in their trade associations.
Some of those same audience members are program chairs for groups like Rotary, Kiwanis and the local Chamber of Commerce.
Audience members who have heard me speak have hired me to do consulting.
Others have invited me to present the same program, but customized, for their magement team.
Many groups let you sell products from the back of the room.
At every speaking engagement, and if the meeting planner allows it, I collect business cards from people who want to receive my free ezine, “The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week.” Many of those readers eventually turn into customers.

James Malinchak

If you can’t speak, or you’re afraid of public speaking, that’s OK. James Malinchak has taken even the most timid experts and turned them into dynamic speakers who wow audiences from the platform.

He’ll share many of his secrets when Steve Harrison interviews him during two teleseminars on Thursday, Nov. 19, on “What You Need To Know To Make $2,500.00 A Day (Or More) As A Public Speaker Without Being Famous!”

And what if meeting planners don’t want to pay you? James will explain why you should never speak for less than $2,500, even if you’re not very well known.

Learn how to change how to change people’s lives with your message, have a lot of fun, and get paid handsomely to do it.