2010

CEOs: Unusual hobbies, collections? Forbes wants you

12/28/2010 By Joan 1 Comment

Think beyond the office when you’re pitching stories about yourself or your company to journalists and bloggers.

If your CEO has an unusual hobby or collection, Kym McNicholas of Forbes wants to know about it. She’s an anchor/reporter for the Forbes Video Network and reports and produces mostly video business stories. She she also contributes to her blog and sometimes to the magazine.

“I love ‘unique’ entrepreneurial stories. I especially enjoy writing about executives who excel outside the boardroom with special hobbies, sports, charity, or collections.”

For example, she wrote this blog post about Tom Georgens, head of NetApp, a Silicon Valley data storage firm, who competes in ham radio contests, in what’s called “Radio Sport.” It’s where amateur radio owners try to communicate with as many people around the world as they can in 48 hours.

She also wrote about Paul Pluschkell, the CEO of Spigit, a Silicon Valley idea management software firm, who coaches his Babe Ruth World Series winning baseball team, made up of 14-year-old and 15-year-old boys from Pleasanton, California – just east of Silicon Valley. Between work, family and the softball team, Pluschkell is lucky to get 4 1/2 hours of sleep each night.

In my ebook, How to be a Kick-butt Publicity Hound, I include dozens of ideas on how people can generate publicity for themselves and their businesses. Check out the free sample chapter of publicity tips. If you don’t have an unusual collection, one of these ideas will click with you.

Filed Under: Business Promotion, Magazine Publicity, Pitching the Media, TV Publicity, Video Tagged With: ceo collections, ceo hobbies, forbes video network, kym mcnicholas, paul pluschkell, radio sport, tom georgens

Help! No one can see my Facebook Fan Page

12/27/2010 By Joan 37 Comments

Talk about frustrating!

For the past few months, I’ve had no activity at my Facebook Fan Page, despite the fact that I’ve been posting videos, notes, tips and photos.

If you click on that link or paste http://www.Facebook.com/publicitytips into your browser window, you’ll end up in your own account. Yet the page comes up in the search results if you do a search for pages under the keyword “publicity.” So I know Facebook hasn’t yanked the page.

When I post a note, I tag people. Under each note, I can see the number of impressions, so I assume those people can see the notes on their walls.

I’ve contacted Facebook twice through their “bug report” form but have gotten no answer. If you’re my fan and you can’t see my content, there’s no sense in posting content, don’t you agree?

Does anyone have any bright ideas about how to solve this problem? Publicity Hound DeeNice Rhodes suggested going to LinkedIn and connecting with someone from Facebook, then explaining my problem. I’m going to try that today. Are you connected to anyone on Facebook who might be able to help, and to whom you can make an introduction for me?

I’m also going to post the question to the techies on LinkedIn.

Help, please. Has this ever happened to you? What did you do to solve the problem?

Update on April 13, 2011:

My Facebook Fan Page is alive again! Please read this update about how someone helped me solve the problem and what you can do if this happens to you. If you can find your page, or if you can’t and you create a new one, start making up for lost time. See 12 More Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on the New & Improved Facebook.

Filed Under: Facebook

Hyper-local Patch.com covers 600+ communities

12/21/2010 By Joan 6 Comments

Here’s another website to add to your media list consider if you want publicity for local news.

It’s Patch.com and it already covers more than 600 communities and neighborhoods in California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

The site, owned by AOL and based in New York, hires professional journalists and contracts with freelancers to cover local news and events, business and government, police and fire news, and more. Users can submit their own announcements, photos and reviews, and participate in discussions.

Here are Patch’s AdvantagesThese have been mentioned in several articles I’ve read the last few weeks, including this one in today’s L.A. Times.

It hires experienced journalists, many of whom have been laid off by local newspapers and are already familiar with the communities they cover.
Patch makes it easy to find whoever covers your community. Just go to Patch and click on the state where you live, then choose the community where Patch already has a presence. Contact information for every Patch editor is at the top of every local site. All Patch contributors can be contacted via email through the local site.
It encourages participation. Send a news tip, put an event on the calendar or submit an announcement. If you’re a business owner who wants to be listed, just email them. Update: Submit information yourself via the “add it!” button at the bottom of directory search.”
It fills a void, created by the demise of many local newspapers.

Here are the Disadvantages

It pays many journalists far less than what they made before, and Some editors have suffered from burnout and left. Update: Janine Iamunno, senior communications director for Patch, said 3 out of 4 Patch employees make more money, or the same, as in their previous position.
Critics say it can strangle many other smaller local websites. But I think competition helps, not hurts, the news consumer.
It needs to make enough money to support all those journalists, and it’s growth might be too aggressive.

But you won’t hear me complaining.

Do Your Research

Most important: Local means local! The focus is very specific—news about the community or neighborhood served by the Patch site.

A smart Publicity Hound will want to develop story ideas that are directly related to a Patch.com community. As always, take the time to review each site before developing the pitch. Better yet, introduce yourself to the Patch editor.

If you have experience with getting news placed on Patch, or you have other comments to add, share them here.

Filed Under: Citizen journalism, Nonprofits, Photos & Graphics, Pitching the Media, PR Consultants/Publicists, Press Releases/News Releases, The Local Angle Tagged With: freelancers, government news, l.a. times, local news, local photos, patch.com

How to un-Google yourself & push bad news off Page 1

12/21/2010 By Joan 2 Comments

This month’s guest blog post is from Mark Macias, a crisis communications consultant. He runs a TV production and PR company that has consulted with restaurants, retailers, lounges and Congressional candidates. He also wrote the communications book, Beat the Press: Your Guide to Managing the Media. You can read excerpts at BeatthePressBook.com.

By Mark Macias
Guest Blogger

Everyone likes to secretly Google himself, but what happens when Google turns up results you don’t like? How do you get your name removed from the search engines when the material is damaging?

Alan Gottlob, an established New Jersey financial consultant, woke up one morning to discover his reputable name was falsely accused of ethical violations. Making it worse, the writer never called Gottlob for a response. Gottlob first learned of the article three months after it was published, when a client read it on the Internet and asked him about it.

These strong allegations can destroy nearly any person’s business, but in an industry built on trust – like the financial industry – the article nearly destroyed Gottlob’s private practice.

Gottlob reached out to me to manage his crisis communications after he didn’t get anywhere with the web publisher, Investment News. We applied several new strategies and within weeks, Investment News and its parent company, Crain Communications Inc., were in discussions to correct the article.

If you find yourself in this situation, there are several steps you can take to get the material removed from the Internet. Contrary to the popular saying, “the Internet is written in ink,” it is possible to modify the record if you apply some proven crisis communications strategies.

Here are some of the strategies you can take if you find yourself in a similar crisis situation as Gottlob.

1) Go after the power brokers or the people who finance the publication, which includes the publisher, city editors, Executive Producers, and most important: the legal counsel for the publication. Do a quick Google search to find out who owns the website or publication. Most people, like Gottlob, contact the writer when a negative article is published, but that’s like complaining to the sales clerk when the cashier gives you the wrong change. You need to complain to the people who control the money.

Your letter to these power brokers needs to state why this article is inaccurate and most important, how the article has financially harmed your business. If you can’t show any financial duress from the article, you won’t succeed in the court of law or with the publisher.

2)    Understand the difference between libelous, slander and opinion. If a blogger writes that you smell, you can’t take legal action to bring down the story. However, if the blogger writes a factually inaccurate article that accuses you of wrongdoing and harms your business. And you don’t always need an attorney for this. Sometimes a strongly worded letter that outlines the bullet points from above is enough to get the publisher’s attention.

3)    Don’t wait. Go after the website’s owners immediately. The longer the website is up, the more time search engines have to index the web page. Unfortunately, it took Gottlob several weeks to get ahold of the reporter and her superiors, which is sometimes the secret strategy many journalists take to diffuse the threat from any lawsuits.

4) Google will stop indexing the website if you can prove the website displays private personal information like Social Security numbers. However, you need to make a case to them if it involves other matters. You can find this page on Google here.

5) Push the article off the first Google page with new content. There is another strategy you can take to bury the article off of the first page from Google. You can accomplish this by writing your own blog or material and making sure it is indexed with the proper search engine optimization.

6) Once the page is removed, you need to write a letter to all the search engines to make sure the page is no longer indexed.

This form of crisis communications will only grow in the future as more bloggers and news organizations post articles on the Internet. If the article is false and inaccurate, don’t be afraid to fight back. Just make sure you’re not picking a fight over someone’s opinion because, luckily, the First Amendment still protects us from that.

* * *

Editor’s Note: Also see Manage your online reputation BEFORE bad news hits.

Filed Under: Crisis Communications, Publicity on the Internet, Search engine optimization Tagged With: alan gottlob, beat the press, crain communications, google search, mark macias

Manage your online reputation BEFORE bad news hits

12/20/2010 By Joan 1 Comment

A reader asked me to recommend a company that will help her manage her online reputation.

Here’s my advice, which every Publicity Hound should pay attention to, before the you-know-what hits the fan:

“I don’t remember recommending a specific company. Many companies do this.

“Of far greater importance, I believe, is being proactive long before something bad happens to harm your reputation. I suggest you listen to the recording of the teleseminar that Tom Antion, my mentor, conducted a few months ago on Reputation Management: How to Build & Protect a Great Reputation Online (affiliate link).”

Too many companies wait until they’re in the middle of a crisis to create a blog, or monitor what’s said about them in online discussion forums and at social media sites. Tom shows you how to create systems, like a blog, that will help you communicate with the public within seconds. He also shows you how to respond to bad reviews, nasty comments and rumors.

The added bonus to this program is the dozens of high-traffic, authoritative websites where he recommends you have a presence. They’ll help push bad news about you off of the first page of Google’s organic search listings when someone seaches for your name or your company’s name.

Filed Under: General