Business Promotion

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How can I promote issue Number 500 of my free newsletter?

The Publicity HoundAlmost every Tuesday during the last decade, my readers and I have been sharing our best tips in “The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week.”

If it’s Tuesday, and it’s Christmas, the ezine arrives via email on Christmas Day and the other 51 weeks of the year.

On April 16 this year, I’ll published Edition Number 500, and I’m looking for a clever promotion or contest that will engage current readers, create a buzz on the social media sites, and attract new subscribers.

Because I’m knee-deep in three other projects, I’m not even sure I’ll have time to pull this off. But I’d be crazy not to ask my Hounds for help.

What can I do to promote the newsletter, pull in new readers, attract attention for the archived issues, encourage people to submit questions for Help this Hound, and make this a really fun celebration?

Posted In: Authors & Publishers, Business Promotion, Contests, Publicity Resources, Publicity on the Internet
posted On: 3/16/2010: 11:26 am: By Joan
Comments: 6 Comments

How to generate publicity from Pi Day

Pi symbol on a blue circle

Piggybacking publicity onto popular or obscure days, weeks and months of the year is one of the easiest ways to find your way into the media, and I give lots of examples in my ebook, How to be a Kick-butt Publicity Hound.
  
Here’s one of the more obscure days of the year.  It’s Pi Day, and it’s today, 3/14.  It celebrates pi, which is 3.141592653589793, the mathematical constant that goes on without any repeating patterns, right into infinity.
    
Columnist Jim Stingl of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote a column in today’s paper about two local businesses that are celebrating:
  • Discovery World Museum is giving prizes to math wizards and Einsteins who can recite from memory the most digits of pi.  
        
  • Each year, Whole Foods Market in Milwaukee gives away free slices of apple, cherry or blueberry pie, starting at 3:14 p.m. It also sells pies for $3.14.

Your business doesn’t have to be tied to food, or math, in order for you to generate a little publicity from Pi Day.  What can you sell for $3.14?  Or what challenge can you issue to your customers that ties into the numbers 3, 1 and 4?

Update:
    
Someone who commented on Stingl’s column another great publicity idea:
    
“When I used to work as a medical researcher, our department celebrated Pi Day every year by bringing pies into work on that day.  A lot of people would bring in pies and we’d set up the pies on a credenza in the hall outside of the labs along with plates and forks, whipped cream, etc. On the wall above the pies there were fun facts about pie.”
    
This is something ANY business or nonprofit can do.  Try it, and invite the local TV stations and newspapers.
    
For more ideas, see Special Report #45: How to Generate National Publicity from Your Own Holiday (or Day, Week or Month of the Year). Or if you don’t want to create your own day, you can always piggyback onto someone else’s.

Posted In: Business Promotion, Holidays, Newspaper Publicity, TV Publicity
posted On: 3/14/2010: 10:07 am: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment

Ideas needed on how to promote an expert on mold

connie morbach, scientistSusan Murphy of Pleasant Ridge, MI writes:

I’m looking for some interesting avenues in which to promote our client, an environmental scientist who specializes in toxic mold education, detection and remediation.

Connie Morbach, M.S. CHMM CIE, is a respected national authority in indoor air quality (IAQ) who has performed over 10,000 residential/commercial air tests and environmental evaluations.

Since 1994, her team has witnessed the illnesses and devastation caused by many ill-equipped and unscrupulous IAQ/Mold ‘professionals’ in their industry, and they continue to help so many who have suffered from these injustices. She has just started a blog and is tweeting to share her knowledge as well.

Connie has been featured on a half dozen indoor air quality investigative segments for NBC’s the ” Today” show (“Why your gym may be making you sidk” and “Watch out for hidden germs in supermarkets”) , as well as “Rachael Ray” and “Extreme Makeover Home Edition” in the past but she hasn’t had a PR firm since then.

She’s looking to get the word out again about her expertise and I’m hoping your loyal Hounds can suggest some thoughtful ideas.

Posted In: Blogs, Business Promotion, TV Publicity
posted On: 3/9/2010: 12:27 pm: By Joan
Comments: 21 Comments

Job-hunters, publicity-seekers: Wake up your boring bios

Boring bios are more potent than sleeping pills.

Yet you read them all the time in people’s online press rooms, in their books, and even on the mini-profiles they write on their Twitter and Facebook pages.

Sometimes job-hunters include a useless paragraph of incredibly dull information on their resumes.

Publicity expert Nancy Juetten hates boring bios, too. The arrogant ones really get under her skin. They include sentences like this:

“Complimenting her extraordinary capacities as a prodigy composer of collaborative entrepreneurial masterworks is her former multi-disciplinary career as an entrepreneur and corporate executive, encompassing 34 years of exemplary achievement in well over twelve industries, including…”

She wrote about those kinds of bios at her blog, and  just created the Bye-Bye Boring Bio Action Guide ($49), which should be must-reading for every author, speaker, entrepreneur, coach, consultant and expert who needs to rewrite a bio or make over their current one, and for every job-hunter who really wants to stand out from the crowd.

It includes handy templates, examples of great bios, and work sheets that will help you inject life, fun and even humor into even the most boring bio. 

Nancy is running a special promotion that ended on Sunday. But she said that anyone who writes  “Joan Stewart” in the comments section of their online order form throughout the month of March 2010 can get an anniversary bonus gift, her Publicity Express Digital Workshop which is a package of audio files and other goodies. The bonus applies to the Bye-Bye Boring Bio Action Guide and her DIY Publicity Success System.  Order here.

Here’s Nancy’s own bio:

Nancy Juetten Nancy Juetten (rhymes with “button”) is a passionate and engaging publicity trainer who shows business owners across America how to get seen, heard, and celebrated in their own backyards … and beyond.  She created the NEW Bye-Bye Boring Bio Action Guide to help job and publicity seekers wake up decision makers and open doors fast.  Her essential advice: “It’s your story.  Tell it well.”

Posted In: Authors & Publishers, Business Promotion, Facebook, PR Consultants/Publicists, Twitter, Writing Articles
posted On: 3/8/2010: 2:10 am: By Joan
Comments: 3 Comments

Expert needs to reach Texas Boomers who want to downsize

Man working in workshopPatti 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.” 

Posted In: Advertising, Business Promotion, Publicity for Niche Markets, Social media marketing
posted On: 3/2/2010: 11:12 am: By Joan
Comments: 4 Comments

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