2010 April

How to get a recommendation from someone not on LinkedIn

4/20/2010 By Joan 2 Comments

When Scott Allen was my guest during the teleseminar “How to Use LinkedIn to Promote Anything—Ethically and Powerfully,” he urged LinkedIn users to collect as many recommendations as possible.

That’s one of the very best ways to flaunt your expertise and really stand out from your competitors.

But what if the person who you ask for a recommendation doesn’t have a LinkedIn profile and doesn’t want the hassle of creating one?

Here are two options, which I discovered today in the Linked Strategies group on LinkedIn.

If you live near the person who you want to recommend you, you can visit his home, help him set up an account, and show him how to post the recommendation he has written for you. (Then, buy him lunch.)

If he lives too far away, here’s the next best solution. Create an account at Box.net, which lets people access and share their content with others, from anywhere. You can sign up for a free trial.

When your account is created, you upload the recommendation in a secured PDF to Box.net. Follow these instructions if you want the site to post the recommendation to your LinkedIn profile:

Log into your LinkedIn account.
Privacy Settings.
Authorized Applications.
Find Box.net in the list of applications.
Hover your cursor over “about” and click.
In the lower right corner, you can check the box that says “Display on my profile” or “Display on LinkedIn homepage,” or both.
Update settings.
You’ll see your “My Box” folder. You can upload files here.

If someone is searching your profile and you’ve clicked on “Display on my profile,” they can download the recommendation. Then Box.net sends you a notification that your file has been downloaded.

Watch a demo of how Box.net works below. If you get confused, like I did, call their technical support desk at 1-877-729-4269. The woman who helped me get set up was wonderful.

It’s worth noting that Box.net also has an application for Twitter.

A hat tip to Bruce Bixler, Russ Knight and Glen Loock on LinkedIn for sharing these tips. Watch this video to understand how Box.net works:

Filed Under: LinkedIn Tagged With: box.net, bruce bixler, glen loock, LinkedIn, Linkedin recommendations, russ knight, Scott Allen

Columnist needs ideas on ethnic minorities & updating job skills

4/18/2010 By Joan 1 Comment

Here’s a chance for publicists to generate some super publicity for their clients who are experts in workplace issues.

Mildred Culp, who writes the syndicated column called WorkWise, which appears in newspapers from The Miami Heralds to The Modesto (CA) Bee, needs sources in two areas:

Ethnic Minorities

She wants pitches by or about ethnic minority sources from any part of the United States on ideas related to:

Emerging trends in the workplace
On-the-job issues (people at work)
Job-hunting.

Please don’t pitch stories about an ethnic business that has nothing to do with workplace trends or job-hunting.

Updating job skills

Updating skills may be a condition of employment, and everyone knows that lots of people want to work. WorkWise needs sources to identify those skills, other than highly technical ones, and how to proceed.

Mildred says:

“This column doesn’t cover small business issues, although small business owners and their employees who have employment-related ideas are featured. It also doesn’t cover job sites, non-profits, public relations or internet-dependent topics. It’s all about people at work. You will be asked to provide an action photo to editors’ specs, which a colleague or friend should be able to take.”

Email your ideas to her at Workwise at Comcast.net.

Filed Under: Newspaper Publicity, Pitching the Media, PR Consultants/Publicists Tagged With: ethnics in the workplace, job-hunting, on-the-job issues, updating job skills, workplace trends

Prepare for the mobile gold rush with your new mobile site

4/13/2010 By Joan 5 Comments

In the last several issues of my newsletter, I’ve been writing about the gold rush that’s about to occur in the world of mobile marketing.

Imagine you’re in San Francisco in 1848, but you’re the only one with a gold-sifting pan. That’s what mobile marketing is like right now.

It IS a little like the Wild West, and Dan Hollings is the new sheriff in town. He’s the creator of StomperMobile, the 10-week class that meets for the third time at 7 p.m. Eastern tonight. We’re only in Week 3, and it isn’t too late for you to register. More about that in a minute.

In only two short weeks, after only two classes, I’ve created my own mobile website, one of three primary URLs I’ll use in my mobile marketing campaigns.

After managing my traditional websites and blogs for almost 10 years, I had to shift mental gears and understand that building a mobile site and marketing to people on their cell phones is completely different than marketing to them in the ways that feel most comfortable for me.

Why mobile marketing is so powerful

Here are the two biggest (and most profitable) reasons to pan for mobile gold:

First, of all the people who give you permission to send text messages to them on their mobile phones, about 95 percent will open the message. Ninety-five percent! Publishers of ezines are lucky if their open rate is 10 percent.

It gets even better.

The response rate runs between 35 and 55 percent. That means about half the people who received your message will do what you want them to do: click on a link, use a coupon, call your office, access a free special report, stop by your store for hot bagels that just came out of the oven, or reach for their credit card.

Dan says there are more mobile phones on the planet than credit cards, cars or PCs. And within two years, he says, one in three people who search online will be searching from a mobile phone. That means that one-third of the potential traffic that you can drive to a business or to your site will be coming from mobile search. You need to learn the strategies for getting yourself listed in mobile directories and locations.

It takes an average 52 minutes to build and publish a very basic mobile site, without all the bells and whistles. But building it is just the beginning. Tonight, we’ll learn about text messaging, including the Big Four success secrets that are rarely understood, even by technical experts. And what we learn, we can teach.

Teach it to others

You know how they always say that the folks that made the most money in the gold rush were the ones that were selling picks and shovels? Well, a big part of the StomperMobile training will be to teach you EXACTLY how to provide mobile marketing services to clients whether you’re a book coach, a PR pro, or a web developer. Dan is encouraging us to add mobile marketing to our consulting services, which I plan to do.

Smart Publicity Hounds already know that more than half of the social media activity takes place on mobile phones. And they’re incorporating mobile into their publicity and PR programs.

You can too.

The StomperMobile course is closed to the public, but as a StomperNet affiliate, I can sell a special Back-door Pass to you for $1,797, and I receive a commission.

How to get started

If you start tonight, you can spend just a day or two getting caught up. Dan recorded the first two webinars, which you can access from a password-protected site, along with killer handouts that include 28 mobile traffic strategies, 7 worksheets designed to help you identify the best opportunities for a mobile marketing campaign in your business, and the dozens of questions he is personally answering in the forums, for members only.

On Saturday, he threw in a special two-hour webinar devoted only questions and answers.

The program comes with a 30-day, no-risk, money-back guarantee.

Take a look at my site, and you’ll get an idea of a few really cool features:

A “click to call” link. StomperMobile students will even get their own 800 number as part of the course.
Widgets that let you use PayPal on your mobile site.
Links to your social media profiles.
Opt-in forms so you can subscribe people to your ezine, or just bring them into your funnel.
”Tell a Friend” forms.
I’ve even include a smattering of dog jokes, quotes and videos taken right from my newsletter. (No need to create new content!)

Stay tuned for some cool offers that I’ll throw your way—for mobile subscribers only, of course.

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers, Blogs, Business Promotion, PR Consultants/Publicists, Publicity on the Internet, Publicity Resources, Social media marketing Tagged With: mobile marketing, mobile search, mobile subscribers, StomperMobiile, Stompernet

In-flight magazine editors and readers love these 7 topics

4/10/2010 By Joan 3 Comments

You won’t find a more captive audience for your publicity campaign than inside an airplane, at 36,000 feet.

Bored and restless, passengers often pull the magazines out of the pockets in front of them, flip through the pages, and then settle in for an hour or two of reading.

If your target market includes business travelers and tourists—in-flight magazine statistics show this a well-educated, affluent audience—these publicaitons are the perfect publicity venue.

Here are seven types of content they love reading, and the kinds of story pitches that in-flight magazine editors love receiving, excerpted from the 2010 update of my special report called Fly High with Publicity in the In-flight Magazines. It includes contact information and pitching tips for 56 in-flight magazines.

Management and leadership tips, including business books, from authors, speakers and consultants.
Calendar listings for events tourists would love like antique shows, museum exhibits, food festivals and sporting events.
“Best kept secrets” and “off the beaten path” destinations in a community or region, from restaurants to quaint shopping areas, but only in a city or region the airline serves.
Techie gadgets and new products for business people or travelers, for the New Products section.
Profiles of successful local authors, artists and community leaders, but only if they live or work in a city or region the airline serves.
Stories related to food and wine, from tours of local wineries to profiles of local celebrity chefs.
The history and culture of a city or region the airline serves, particularly if it can be tied to an upcoming event that tourists would love.

One way to contact editors or writers for these magazines is to look for them on the social media sites and start building a relationship with them there. The 2010 update of my report includes links to blogs and social media profiles on sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Filed Under: Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Magazine Publicity, Photos & Graphics, Pitching the Media, Special Events, Twitter Tagged With: airline mgazines, Facebook, in-flight magazines, inflight magazines, LinkedIn, Twitter

Speakers, tweak your topic for recession-proof college market

4/8/2010 By Joan Leave a Comment

Many professional speakers who charge a fee for their programs are giving far fewer presentations than they gave a few years ago because corporations, nonprofits and government agencies have cut travel and training budgets.

One way for speakers to rebound is to tweak their topic for the college market.

James Malinchak, “King of the College Speaking Circuit,” says colleges have a huge pot of money otherwise known as student activity fees, and it’s used to pay speakers. James will be my guest during a free teleseminar called “Discover the Secrets to Speaking in The Recession-Proof College Market.” It will be at 2 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, April 14, and you can register here.

He’ll discuss more than a dozen topics that are in demand at two- and four-year colleges, universities and technical schools. Here are four of them, and ways speakers can tweak those topics for campus audiences:

A speaker who trains corporate executives on leadership can take the fundamental points of the presentation and teach college students how to be leaders, whether it’s within their fraternities or sororities, student government or special-interest groups on campus.
An expert on corporate recruiting and retention can teach college fraternities and sororities how to recruit and retain members. Greeks, by the way, have their own budgets for hiring speakers, yet another recession-proof pot of money.
Speakers who specialize in motivating corporate audiences as convention keynoters can take their message to college campuses, where motivational speakers are in high demand.
Diversity trainers who target corporate America can teach college faculty, staff and students about diversity. At a four-year college, a kid from the inner city and a farm kid from Kansas can suddenly find themselves roommates, with all kinds of potential problems.

I’ll also ask James how speakers can benefit from all the PR and publicity that will come their way when they start speaking at colleges. Lucky for them, the school’s PR department does most of the work.

Hope to see you on Wednesday’s call.

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers, Business Promotion, Publicity for Niche Markets Tagged With: college speakers, james malinchak, professional speaking, speaking at colleges