The Publicity Hound’s Blog  

Ever since the news of Michael Jackson’s death, my brain won’t  stop humming his songs.

The news—and his music—are everywhere.  I’m a huge Michael Jackson fan, and I’m devouring the musical tributes on cable. But enough is enough already.

My sister says the same thing is happening to her. Some nights, it’s so bad she can’t fall asleep. In my own brain, the annoying “ABC” keeps trying to drown out “Rock with You,” my favorite Michael Jackson song.

I know we’re not alone. So how about turning it into a publicity opportunity?

This is a perfect time for psychologists, sleep experts, music teachers and even musicians and band members to offer some tips on how get certain songs out of our heads.

Pitch the story to morning drive-time deejays. It would make a fun call-in topic. I remember listening to several shows like this in which callers were encouraged to name the WORST song they’ve ever heard—you know, the one that just won’t stop playing inside their heads. These shows are hysterical. See How to Get onto Drive-Time Radio Shows.

What’s the worst song you’ve ever heard, the one that makes you crazy?

Posted In: Celebrity tie-ins, Radio Publicity
posted On: 6/30/2009: 11:42 am: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment

When a producer calls you and needs you to fill in for a guest who has canceled, move a mountain if you must, and say yes.

That’s what I did when Jon Missall of VoiceAmerica Business Network called yesterday afternoon and asked if I’d serve as a fill-in on the PRInsider show this morning with Maureen Kedes. Someone canceled, and they needed confirmation, within 30 minutes, that I could appear along with a guest of my choosing.

Of course, I said yes.

I invited Michelle Tennant of Wasabi Publicity, who has a string of A+ media hits to her credit, along with a really fun style. We’ll be a great team. And I know we’re on the same track because she was in The Publicity Hound Mentor Program for several years.

We’ll talk about a half dozen or so of the most important things Publicity Hounds must do to generate online and offline publicity. Michelle will share recent successes she has had getting her clients—including authors, nonprofits and small business owners— onto NBC in Dallas, AOL Canada, Good Morning America, the Colorado Business Journal, Dr. Phil and in other online and offline media.

The show will be at noon Eastern Time and you can listen here. I hope you join us.

Posted In: Authors & Publishers, Celebrity tie-ins, Newspaper Publicity, Nonprofits, PR Consultants/Publicists, Pitching the Media, Publicity on the Internet, Radio Publicity, TV Publicity
posted On: 5/22/2009: 8:35 am: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment

If you blog, the worst of your worries shouldn’t be how many times to post, or what to write about, or whether to use Wordpress or Typepad.

Your Number One concern—the question bloggers never think to ask—should be: “What if somebody sues me tomorrow for copyright infringement, defamation or invasion of privacy—what does that mean?”

Here’s what it means. It could cost you your house, your car and your future income stream.

Take it from me. Being named in a defamation suit that asks for a quarter million dollars in damages turns your world upside down, then drops the bottom out of your stomach.

That’s what happened last October. A reporter from People magazine had called, asking me to comment on a story they were writing about a lawsuit that had been filed by the former headmistress of Oprah Winfrey’s school for girls in South Africa. The plaintiff named me in the suit, along with Oprah and Huffington Post.

Nomvuyo Mzamane, the former headmistress of the Leadership Academy for Girls, cited comments to the media that Oprah made in October and November of 2007 after a dorm matron at the school was charged with assaulting and abusing students.

Mzamane named the Huffington Post and me for a blog item I wrote in November for this blog and for Huffington saying Mzamane was charged in connection with the scandal. She was not charged. I had erred. And the first I had learned about the lawsuit was when People called asking me to comment.

I responded quickly, and People used the entire statement:

“I’ve learned that in my November 7, 2007, blog post, ‘Oprah Scandal: A Lesson in Crisis Management,” and in a column I wrote for Huffington Post on November 19, 2007, I inadvertently erred by saying that the former head mistress of Oprah Winfrey’s Dream Academy was charged with a crime. I deeply regret that error and apologize to former head mistress Nomvuyo Mzamane.

“Journalists, including those on blogs, make mistakes, and if Ms. Mzamane had contacted me about that directly, I would have corrected it online — with an apology — immediately. I have not, in fact, been contacted by her or served with a lawsuit. I’m a firm believer in full compliance with the law, with the Public Relations Society of America’s Code of Ethics and with the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, and know that I was in compliance with all three in this case.”

I also wrote a correction for my blog. That weekend, I started contacting business associates who might be able to tell me where I could turn for help defending the suit.

I tracked down an old college friend who had worked as a libel attorney in Philadelphia, where the suit was filed. She gave me two good leads:

—She told me about a segment she had heard the day before on NPR’s “On the Media” show. It was called The Calculated Risk of Blogging. It featured Robert Cox of the Media Bloggers Association discussing all the ways bloggers can get into trouble—from threats and cease and desist letters all the way up to federal lawsuits. The Media Law Resource Center, which tracks these cases, reports that there’s been over $16 million in judgments against bloggers. I went to the group’s website and emailed Cox, asking if he could help.

—My friend also referred me to an excellent libel attorney in Philadelphia, where the suit was filed. It would cost me about $10,000 up front for the attorney’s firm to take the case. The attorney recommended I go back to the Media Bloggers Association for help.

How to join the MBA

You can join the Media Bloggers Association for only $25. Even if you stay out of trouble, the membership fee is well worth the interactive, online crash course in libel and defamation, regardless of the topic of your blog.

The course was created by the well-respected Poynter Institute, and it ends with a multiple-choice quiz that you’ll have to pass before you can join. The course will take about an hour to complete and it’s actually fun.

After I passed the test and joined MBA, Cox referred me to Ronald Coleman, an attorney with Goetz Fitzpatrick LLP, whose office is in New York, for a free telephone consultation. Coleman took the case, worked on it many hours, and kept me apprised every step along the way.

Two months later, under a settlement agreement, the Huffington Post agreed to post an apology, in exchange for the dismissal of the claims by Mzamane. She dismissed the claim against me, too, because I already had posted a correction as soon as I learned I had been sued. Neither I nor Huffington were required to pay any money.

I paid nothing for legal counsel, but would have paid my attorney’s fee if the case had gone to trial.

“Had the case gotten to trial and had you lost, you would have paid the judgment,” Cox said. “So bloggers need to consider that to defend a defamation case, it might cost $50,000 or more, even more if appealed. And the blogger might lose and have to pay the plaintiff.”

The MBA does still offer access to its legal network “but we cannot promise the sort of support you got where Ron put in quite a few hours,” Cox said. It now offers members a discount on liability insurance through a separate insurance company.

What bloggers can learn

If you blog, you might consider yourself a writer first. Or a humanitarian. Or a passionate advocate for a favorite cause or issue.

But first and foremost, you are a content publisher. The second your finger hits the “publish” button, you’re as vulnerable to a lawsuit as a major newspaper. Unlike a newspaper, however, which often has an entire team of attorneys to represent it, the blogger usually ends up alone.

I’m not an attorney and this isn’t legal advice, just a few other things you need to know:

• If you make a mistake, correct the record as soon as possible and apologize.
• Even if you know that what you’ve written is 100 percent accurate, a jury can still find you guilty.
• Anyone can file a lawsuit. Even if you win, it could take months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend, and you could lose your personal possessions like your house and your car.
• Conducting your research online before you blog, and then saving time by cutting and pasting content you’ve found elsewhere into your own blog, website or article—without rewriting it—can invite a lawsuit for copyright infringement. (I hosted a teleseminar several years ago with intellectual property attorney Patricia Eyres on the topic of “Legal Issues You Must Know about Writing Articles for Fee or for Free.”)
• Understand what can get you into trouble and what can’t. Make sure you know what you can say about a public person and what you can’t say about the guy who lives next door.

During my 22 years of training as a newspaper editor and reporter, I learned how to always check facts, strive for accuracy, be fair, and tell both sides of the story. Yet all the training in the world can’t prevent mistakes, or a lawsuit.

If it happened to me, it can happen to you. Know your options and be prepared.

Posted In: Blogs, Celebrity tie-ins, Crisis Communications
posted On: 4/28/2009: 3:33 pm: By Joan
Comments: 19 Comments

Dear Oprah:

Welcome to the Twittersphere.

The 324,821 followers you’ve managed to amass in two days put to shame the measly 6,572 I’ve attracted in about a year.

But I can’t help myself. Please, please, do something a little more creative with your bio! ”Live your best life” is fine. Unlike the 140-character limit for tweets, however, Twitter gives you 160 characters for your bio.

Use them. Your Twitter followers, me included, are dying to know more about you.

I was hoping to give you a good example of a clever bio written by somebody you’re following. But I checked out the bios for Ellen DeGeneres, George Stephanopolous and Ashton Kutcher and couldn’t find much. The best was Shaq’s description of himself as “Very quotatious, I perform random acts of Shaqness.”

Here are three examples of bios I love, written by people I’m following:

@JudySL, aka Judy Lederman, whose bio I wrote about here. Check out her “location.”

@whatsnext, aka BL Ochman:

@ShermanHu, aka Sherman Hu:

See what I mean? Here are five ideas for dressing up your bio:

1. Who’s the cute dog in the photo? Tell us its name and the breed.

2. Food might be a sore subject. Like you, I’ve struggled with my weight my whole life. But consider sharing your can’t-do-without comfort food.

3. What’s your favorite music genre, singer or group?

4. Who are your favorite leading ladies or men, or favorite movie?

5. How do you unwind?

The very best resource I’ve found for learning everything about Twitter is The Twitter Handbook by @WarrenWhitlock, aka Warren Whitlock, and @CoachDeb, aka Deborah Micek.

In the meantime, I’m asking my Twitter followers to use the comments section below to pass along their best how-to-Twitter-better tips and their favorite Twitter resources, like the Massive Twitter Directory I wrote about here.

Have fun on twittering, Oprah.

Joan Stewart
The Publicity Hound

Posted In: Celebrity tie-ins, Photos & Graphics, Social networking, Twitter
posted On: 4/19/2009: 9:11 am: By Joan
Comments: 7 Comments

Tying celebrities to your news story can generate publicity you never dreamed of. But if the celebrity responds, the publicity can multiply.

That’s what happened to Elliott’s Hardware in Dallas, Texas yesterday when former President George W. Bush stopped in for a one-hour visit, bought a few items and joked that he was looking for a job. The Associated Press, which distributed the original story to its member media outlets when the hardware store offered Bush a job, distributed yesterday’s story after the visit, and it appeared, once again, in many newspapers and at news sites.

Here are three tips about piggybacking onto celebrity news, taken from my “Special Report #50: How to Pibbyback onto Celebrity News to Promote Your Product, Service, Cause or Issue”:

1. Sponsor a contest that piggybacks off celebrity news.

For as long as I can remember, the tabloids have been reporting on Oprah’s roller-coaster weight. First it’s up, then it’s down, then it’s up, then it’s down. If you’re a weight loss expert, you can sponsor a contest called “How Oprah Can Take off Those Last 20 Pounds—Forever.” Then write a press release and post it online. Or if you don’t want to go to the trouble of sponsoring a contest, and you can still find a tie-in, go with it.

That’s what Author Laura K. Bryant did. She wrote a press release about her book, “Trust Yourself to Transform Your Body: A Woman’s Guide to Health and Weight Loss Without Diets” and used a clever tie-in to Oprah. (You can read the release which is part of Lesson 50 in my free tutorial “89 Ways to Write Powerful Press Releases.”)

“I sent the press release to all the local news stations in Chicago,” she said. “This particular release got an immediate (within 2 minutes of it being sent) call from a WGN News producer, who requested my media kit. Once the kit was received, my book was highlighted on WGN News, as a ‘Hot Summer Read.’”

2. Piggyback your stories onto hot movie titles.

When the movie “Anger Management” was in theaters, I saw all sorts of stories that tied into that title. Ditto with the “Mission: Impossible” movies. Sometimes all you have to do is incorporate a hot movie title into your pitch and you’ll catch the media’s attention. Example: Trying to lose weight to fit into that new bikini? It isn’t Mission: Impossible.

3. Piggyback onto a network Movie of the Week.

Keep your eyes on the big network movies during sweeps months in May, November and February. Pitch story ideas that piggyback off movies. For example, when “The Burning Bed” with Farrah Fawcett was a major TV movie in 1984, I remember the local women’s abuse shelter in my community was the lead story on the local news that night, right after the movie ended, because it tied into the movie. If your company or nonprofit is “the local angle” to a big TV movie, contact the TV station that’s airing the movie. You could be the lead story on the 10 or 11 o’clock news that night. Also contact the TV stations if you want to weigh in with an opinion about a controversial movie.

Posted In: Celebrity tie-ins, Contests, Pitching the Media, Press Releases/News Releases, TV Publicity, The Local Angle
posted On: 2/22/2009: 10:04 am: By Joan
Comments: No Comments