Patti Chavet of Frisco, Texas writes:

“I’m a sales consultant and I want to brand myself as an expert in active adult lifestyle living in Texas.

“My target market is Baby Boomers, age 55 and older, who want to downsize to a maintenance-free home so they’re free explore personal hobbies, interests, public service, education, travel, etc., all in the company of others who share the same lifestyle.

“I work for Del Webb, whose communities traditionally have targeted retirees looking to downsize. I’m new to marketing, and I’d like ideas and advice on how to use traditional and social media to become the go-to person in Texas who can help Baby Boomers move from big houses to easy-to-manage single-family homes in Del Webb communities.

“Where should I begin? I’ve been in this niche market for more than 20 years, so I’m already an expert. My challenge is to now spread the word throughout Texas. I’d love to hear suggestions from your Publicity Hounds.” 

Jenni Bowring-McDonough of St. Paul, MN, writes:

“My husband, Tim McDonough, is a graphic artist who is now producing book trailers at Standard Book Videos.

“Because I work in publishing, I introduced him to our president who hired Tim to design several trailers (book videos) for us. That’s terrific, but Tim needs more exposure to attract more clients. He advertised in the event catalog for a regional publishers conference and he will be running an ad in ForeWord Magazine’s national online newsletter later this month. 

“We have reached out to other local publishers to introduce Tim’s business. He’s on Twitter, and we will be building a Facebook page soon. We have also reached out to other contacts via the local Book Publishers Association, but thus far, to no avail.

“I even pitched Tim’s story of reinventing himself after 20 years in broadcast news to several weeklies and dailies, but no one bit on the idea.  We have also begun branching out into web videos and hope to expand into promotional/sales web videos for small businesses. Thanks for any and all advice!”

If your organization publishes a membership directory, allow members to include URLs for social media sites like Facebook Fan pages, Twitter profiles, YouTube channels and LinkedIn profiles, not just URLs for their websites.

That would be a nice value-added feature for chambers of commerce, convention and visitors bureaus, health care associations, school groups, etc. and it would distinguish your group’s benefits from those of your competitors.

I just received a copy of the 2010 Business Directory for the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. While glancing through the members’ section, I noticed that all the companies, even mine, have only the URLs for their websites.

Can’t afford to let every member include social media URLs because of high printing costs? Then charge a small additional fee. 

Does your organization include these URLs in its membership directories? If not, why not? What other information do you include that members find valuable?

If you’re trying to get onto local radio stations, but you don’t have money to spend on advertising, offer the station free recorded 30-second  spots filled with valuable how-to information their listeners will enjoy.

Tie it into a month of the year that’s related to your topic, and you just might generate some valuable free exposure for next to nothing.

This is more difficult to do today than it would have been 10 years ago because radio stations, like their brethren in the print media, are seeing ad revenues plummet. But I know some local radio stations still do trade-outs with local vendors, so that might be an alternative to asking them to just hand over free air time.

I was reminded of this tip when Beverly Belury, who has been through my mentor program, wrote this week asking what I thought about an idea that her husband, leadership consultant John Hersey, was considering:

“Motivational speaker Earl Nightingale’s wife lives in our little town and having met her last week reminded John of a dream he had. He loves Earl’s inspiration thoughts that were frequently on radio stations.  They were quick spots that the station used as filler. 

“John would like to do something along the same lines.  John has developed oodles of thoughtful quotes and inspirational thoughts on self leadership over the last 12 or so years and we are thinking about giving them to radio stations to use as they want. 

“We would send out a dozen or so professionally done audio spots a month. First, is there a challenge in what we want to do. Would you recommend 30-, 45- or 60-second spots or even longer? Do you think this is a worthwhile project?”

Her question jogged my memory. I remembered a teleseminar I had conducted several years ago with Dan Collins, media relalations director at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore. It was called How to Make Hospital PR an Easy Pill to Swallow.

During the call, Dan explained how he ad gotten thousands of dollars in free publicity for his hospital by doing something similar to what Beverly had asked me about. His strategy was successful, and there’s no reason why it can’t work for you, too, depending on the product, service, cause or issue you’re trying to promote, and the type of station you’re targeting.

Here’s an excerpt from the transcript that explains what Dan did an how he did it:

Dan Collins: I contacted WLIF, which is a leading light station here in Baltimore and I contacted the news director and I said, “Hey, where you aware about this being National Nutrition Week?” I called this particular news director because I happen to know that fitness was a pet thing for her.  In fact, she was seeing a personal trainer that I had recommended and that I’ve worked with here at Mercy and have done some media for. I knew that it was something near and dear to her heart and I said, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. If you think this is interesting, we can provide you with a dietitian who could come in and give you a series of tips, throughout the whole course of the month, about how to stay fit and what to eat and what not to eat. What would you think about that?” 

She said, “Well, that would be great,” because that way she could run a spot every day.  The person could come in and tape them all at once, do it in one shot.  “If it would be easier, do you want us to write it or do you want to write it?” she asked. ”Oh no, we’ll write it,” I said. 

Obviously, we’ll write the piece, that way we can control the script.  And so we did, and the dietitian recorded the various tips and made sure to plug Mercy in each spot and “if you’d like to find out more, call Mercy Medical Center at 1-800-MD-MERCY. 

They ran these every day for the whole month and it didn’t cost us anything.  If we had booked this as commercial time, it would have cost thousands of dollars, but because it was something that was near and dear to the news director’s heart, I was able to convince them that this would be a fun thing to do. It would be one less thing each day that they would have to worry about filling. So we looked at it from the station’s viewpoint and really got some nice publicity.

Joan: You had one spot aired each day?

Dan: Yes.

Joan: For a month?

Dan: Yes.

Joan:  Hospitals probably don’t even have to do that just during National Nutrition Week.  You can probably find all different kinds of days, weeks and months of the year to tie into.

Dan:  Oh, absolutely. I’ve got the schedule hanging up on my wall. I’m looking at it now.  We’re in August, which is Cataract Awareness Month. It’s also Medical Alert Awareness Month and Spinal Muscular Atrophy Awareness Month.  You’ve always got to look ahead and see what’s coming up.  Radio is an underutilized medium. 

The whole world of radio may change, but with this new sort of cable—you hear about cable radio, satellite radio—I don’t know how that’s going to ultimately change everything, but in the land of free radio, many stations have news directors and public service programming that they have to fill. 

Health is always a story, and as we’ve noted, doctors are hard to get a hold of.  You can call up a station and say: “Hey, it’s Healthy Lung Month and I have a pulmonary specialist who can talk to you about it. Did you know, for example, there’s enough nicotine in a single cigar to kill you three times over? And talk about things like that.” Then they’re going to say, “Well, you know, it’s great.”

Joan:  There are two really good resources out there for finding these special days, weeks and months of the year that you can tie your hospital experts into or your hospital into.  The first and probably the most popular is called the Chase’s Calendar of Events, and it’s about as big as a small phone book. You can find it at Chases.com.

There’s another book that was written by John Kremer called Celebrate Today.  I think you can even search by the month and come up with all kinds of interesting days, weeks and months of the year to tie your press releases and story ideas into.

Dan:  Absolutely.

As for John Hersey, he needs to remember that business topics generally aren’t a big draw for local radio stations. But because he’s a motivational speaker, he might offer inspirational messages for mass audiences, instead. Good luck, John! Be sure to let me know if you’re successful.  

Piggybacking onto hot celebrity gossip ranks right up there as one of the best ways to generate free publicity for your product, service, cause or issue.

But hurry. This story may be old news by the end of the week.

Here are the Top 10 ways to create free publicity for yourself by participating in the Tiger Woods conversation online and offline:

1. If you’re an expert in a topic that ties into this drama, pitch influential bloggers who are writing about the story. Explain your area of expertise and offer commentary.
       
2. Post comments at high-traffic blogs like Huffington Post that are discussing the story. Ditto at blogs written by journalists, like sports columnist Jason Whitlock whose post on Tiger’s Real Crime? Not Playing the Media’s Game attracted more than 500 comments in about two hours this morning. Weave into your comment information about your expertise. If appropriate, lead people back to your website where they can find tips, advice or a quiz that ties into the topic.
        
3. If you’re a divorce attorney who can talk about prenups, an ad agency executive who’s an expert on branding or celebrity endorsements, a crisis counselor or PR pro who can discuss PR 101, and even a minister who can offer tips on how to forgive, write a letter to the editor of local, regional and national publications where the stories are appearing.
         
4. Call your local TV stations and offer yourself as the local angle to this international story. Offer a list of short tips.
         
5. Create a short two-minute video offering advice on what others can learn from Tiger’s mess and upload it to YouTube and the other video-sharing sites. Tag it with keywords that people are using to search for information on the story.
         
6. Subscribe to free media leads services like HARO and PitchRate, or paid services like ProfNet and PRLeads, so you know about the types of sources journalists are seeking for their stories.
           
7. Offer to write a guest blog post about it, with tips and advice. BloggerLinkUp helps guest bloggers and bloggers who need guest posts find each other. 
       

8. Pitch clever angles to this story to drive-time radio show hosts. Example: A cell phone expert can pitch a story on “Got a dirty little secret? 5 ways to cover your tracks on your cell phone.”         

9. Write your own blog post that ties into Tiger Woods, include lots of outbound links, and then bookmark it at sites like Digg and Delicious. The “Top 10 Tips…” headline works well. I got the idea for this post while reading Tip #3 in Bryan Eisenbertg’s blog post on Top 3 Problems of Social Media.
           
10.  Do all of the above, and link to them from Twitter and Facebook.

If you’ve piggybacked off the Tiger Woods is story to generate free publicity for yourself or clients, or you’d like to add to this list, join the conversation.    

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:

1. Contact local chambers of commerce, Rotary, Kiwanis, Business Networking International, and any other business networking groups.
     
2. Consider joining Toastmasters. You’ll get instant feedback. And Toastmasters know which groups in town welcome speakers.
     
3. 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.
      
4. 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.
           
5. 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.      
      
6. 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.
      
7. 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.
     
8. If you’re on Facebook, ask your friends to spread the word. See 11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook.
     
9. 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)

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.

1. 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.  
       
2. 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.
         
3. 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.
       
4. 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. 
       
5. Reports. Stock photos are a great way to add excitement to client reports and reinforce your accomplishments.
       
6. White Papers. White Papers often cry out for colorful stock imagery to break up text and hold readers’ attention. 
        
7. Media kits. Including stock photos and illustrations when designing a media kit or media kit inserts to add extra visual appeal. 
       
8. 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.  
       
9. Social media. Use them to enliven your your social media presence on sites such as Facebook, Twitter (Twitpic), Wikipedia, and more.  
       
10. 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.
        
11. 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.
        
12. Advertising.  If you’re buying an ad, a good stock photo can come in handy.
        
13. 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.  

If you sell anything online, from dog sweaters to corporate training programs, StomperNet is the single best resource for Internet training.

I’ve been a member for two years, and there’s no way I could possibly do what I’m doing today without this group. One of the biggest complaints from my own followers, however, is that Stompernet’s $800-a-month fee is too far out of reach for most business owners. 

StomperNet has reworked its fee structure, added a whole bunch of terrific tools and resources, and they’re opening up membership tomorrow for as little as $197 a month. This is a STEAL. Depending on your level of membership, here’s what you can get:

—They’ll train you in every facet you need to be successful online, whether it’s how to make sense of the millions of social networking sites to the quickest way to edit video.

—You’ll have access to their library of more than 14,000 pieces of training, including thousands of videos that show you how to do everything from optimize your website for the search engines to make your Google pay-per-click ads convert to sales.

—They’ll teach your their strategy that’s critical to online success: the proper business model, the most profitable niche, and ensuring that you understand which are your “money” keywords.

—Their state-of-the-art portal delivers has more than 200,000 forum posts, well-organized and easy to find, that probably have 95 percent of your questions already answered.

—The 21 faculty members, some of the most successful Internet marketers on earth, answer your questions via telephone Faculty Office Hours, patrolling the StomperNet forums, or backed into a corner at a live StomperNet live event.

–If, after that, you still have questions, StomperNet members and moderators will gladly help you out in the portal.

–If you need more strategic guidance, you can get it from a StomperNet coach, either in a group setting,  or via a Mastermind group, or one-on-one.

–Live events several times a year for hands-on, in-person training.  They’ve even announced the StomperNet World Tour—18 cities next year—and StomperLocal to bring StomperNet to the rest of the world.

That’s what StomperNet WAS for three years.  And that was enough for many members to build great businesses.

But tools were missing…

But StomperNet concluded that if one thing was missing, it was tools. So they hand-picked the software and tools they considered to be MUST HAVES for online success and to create competitive advantage for your business. They’re called StomperTools and they’re included in a StomperNet Membership:

—Market Samurai: Best-in-class Market and Keyword Research tool
                     
—Traffic Geyser: An automated video submission tool to social media sites
                                 
—StomperStorm: An incredibly easy-to-use split testing and Taguchi testing tool. Use this to test two sales pages against each other to see which of two headlines, graphics or copy converts more sales.

—StomperCommerce: An easy-to-use, SEO-friendly shopping cart.

—SEOQast: A semi-automated massive ranking-oriented syndication tool.

—ArticleQast: Send your articles directly to a network of over 17,000 subscribing sites with YOUR links and link text defined

—StomperQast: Add text messaging to your integrated marketing efforts with this platform that includes text messaging, email, and social media

—CommuniQast: A telephone platform for EACH member (not VOIP). Includes a personal 800 number for inbound calls, plus conferencing, and 21 other features

—ReviewQast: Ethical reviews of your products or service from third parties, that get posted to Google Local or other review sites.

—StomperSocial: Like Tweetdeck on Steroids + Twitter Twenius training program

These tools would cost you well over $500 per month if you got them separately, and that doesn’t count over $1,000 in setup charges and fees.

Shock and Awe

But there’s more. StomperNet is piling on even more tools—worth more than $26,600—which they’re referring to as their “Shock and Awe” offer. You get ‘em if you sign up. Review them now, give StomperNet your email address, and they’ll contact you when membership open tomorrow.

Hope to see you in the StomperNet forums, on the faculty calls, and at the live events.

If you’re a man 60 or older and your career is taking on a striking new dimension, from a career change to national recognition, here’s a chance for some super publicity.

Mildred Culp, who writes Workwise, a syndicated column, might want to interview you for a column. These people are disqualified:

• Women (already represented)
• Business owners or other self-employed workers
• Men in education

She’d like public relations, advertising and marketing firms to promote their clients.

WorkWise is syndicated to national media, uncovering emerging trends in the workplace. Its papers range from The Miami Herald, a major daily, to Four Corners Business Journal in Farmington, N.M.

Lori Feldman of St. Louis, Mo.  writes:

“My client is a home and garden show that’s produced in four cities—Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Indianapolis and Portland—from late February through early March.

“We’re launching a social media plan for this company that has done nothing but traditional advertising for the last 50 years!  Last year was the first time they even attempted to collect email addresses from attendees, so we have a list of 20,000 we can use.

“As you can imagine, ad costs significantly increase each year with significantly declining ROI.  So the challenge was to find alternative media to combat the ineffectiveness of old media.  They also face these hurdles: Home starts and real estate are way down.  Young people have not supported these live shows (but this could be due to a lack of an online presence).  All marketing is local—you’re not going to jump on a plane to attend.

“Because time is short, I’d like to get as many suggestions from your readers as possible to consider every option to increase traffic.  The pre-show promotions site is http://www.ImproveYourHomeAndGarden.com. We’ll be press releasing, tweeting, and social networking between now and show day.  I can do a shopping spree contest winner.  Thoughts?”