The Publicity Hound’s Blog  

Action Sports Hub is looking for action sports enthusiasts who can write articles.

You can work you own hours from your home and at your own pace.

Email samples. Write to them at Action Sports Hub Inc., 7071 Warner Ave., Suite F-416 Huntington Beach, CA 92647.

If you’ve never written an article, see “How to Write How-to Articles.”

Posted In: General, Writing Articles
posted On: 2/12/2010: 6:50 am: By Joan
Comments: No Comments

I’m looking for about 10 Publicity Hounds to test my newsletter, The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week, before I start distributing it through AWeber, my new list management company, next week.

If you’re on a Mac and you also use MacMail, Eudora or Entourage, I need you as part of my test group. What’s in it for you? Two free special reports of your choosing, a $20 value, if you help with the test. I’m looking for testers to receive the newsletter in HTML, not plain text.

Interested? Email Scott Buffaloe, my assistant, and he’ll get back to you with details.     

Posted In: General
posted On: 8/11/2009: 11:16 am: By Joan
Comments: No Comments

I’m eternally grateful to the thousands of Publicity Hounds who read “The Publicity Hound’s  Tips of the Week,” my free ezine, every week.

You contribute incredible tips, helpful links, intelligent questions and doggone good dog jokes and videos, one of the most popular parts of the ezine. 

It’s time for me to change over to a AWeber, the company that will manage my email list. 

The switch to a new company will also let you choose whether you want to receive my ezine in HTML, or plain text.

 If you already subscribe,
I don’t want to lose you!

You must complete a two-step process for staying on my list.

First, subscribe to the new version of the newsletter by entering your name and email address into this form. Specify if you want the newsletter in plain text or HMTL.

Second, check your email inbox for a message with this subject line:

Click on the link inside the email.  If you miss this step, you’ll miss receiving the weekly tips and you’ll be like a lost puppy wandering the streets, looking for its mama.

If you have any questions about this process, please email me. If you ever suddenly stop receiving the newsletter, let me know and I’ll make sure you’re back on the list.

If you have a publicity dilemma you’d like help with, email the question to me and tell me where you live. I’ll consider it for the Help This Hound section of the newsletter. Each week, I include a question from a reader and invite my other Hounds to offer their best solutions and ideas.

And, of course, I’m always on the lookout for good, clean dog jokes, photos and videos for the “Hound Joke of the Week” section of the newsletter. If I use what you’ve submitted, I’ll thank you publicly.  

If you’re on Twitter or Facebook, how about giving your friends and followers a treat? Tell them about the ezine, and encourage them to subscribe at  http://www.PublicityHound.com/aweber/optin.htm. If they don’t care about receiving free publicity tips, they’ll love the dog jokes.

Posted In: General
posted On: 8/4/2009: 7:06 am: By Joan
Comments: 3 Comments

Cynthia Flash of Bellevue, Wash. writes this question in the Help This Hound section of the July 14, 2009 issue of The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week:

“I’m looking for a way to put a dollar value on web hits I get for my PR clients.

“For example, if a client is mentioned in a blog, is that worth anything in terms of dollar equivalents (like having an article appear in a newspaper)?  If an online-only newspaper does a story about the client, how much is that worth?  Certainly increased sales to the client is a great way to tell, but it’s difficult to know if that’s directly a result of the web publicity. 

“Are PR people putting dollar values on web placements or is that only something reserved for traditional media?  Thanks for the continued discussion.”

(If you need help with your own publicity problem or another issue related to publicity, email it to me, and it may appear at this blog, where my readers can help you.)

Posted In: General
posted On: 7/14/2009: 1:04 am: By Joan
Comments: 10 Comments

Thousands of people who are being downsized, right-sized and capsized during this bad economy aren’t waiting around for a job offer. They’re looking to the Web for their next career—and maybe even riches.

Enter e-Riches 2.0–Next-Generation Marketing Strategies for Making Millions Online, a new book by Internet success coach Scott Fox.

If you’re one of the victims of this economy and you want to start selling online, or you’re new to Internet marketing, you can learn all about the basics of what it takes to create a successful business online. If you’ve been selling online for several years, the book will bring you up to speed quickly on how to add social media to your marketing mix.

Here are Scott’s 10 recommendations on how to use social networking as a marketing tool.

1. Invite a half-dozen or more friends to get your network started. Practice using the tools of the social network to communicate with them. For example, you can “add” friends on MySpace, “poke” or “write on the walls” of Facebook connections, or respond to some questions in the LinkedIn “Answers” section. (See Social networking ROI: A testimonial more valuable than an ad.)
              
2. Start engaging, publishing, and interacting. Get to know some people—that’s  why you’re here.
       
3. Be authentic. A big part of being authentic is letting the “real you” out to play. Nobody wants to play with a “suit,” so don’t be afraid to be yourself (within professional and legal limits, of course). Mixing the personal and business sides of your life is more common than it used to be.
       
4. Only try to connect with others with whom you really do have common ground. Indiscriminate friend requests are “friend spam.” They are  no more appreciated than email spam or junk mail in the real world. (And if people you don’t know starting linking with you, your own network will soon be less valuable, too.)
                
5. Ask for help. Most social network users are online to be social, and most are happy to help by sharing their knowledge about how the systems work.
              
6. Use feeds to keep up with your friends’ activities and broadcast your own. Posting your own status constantly and cleverly is a great distributed engagement marketing tactic. This is one of the “missed opportunities” I discussed during the teleseminar I hosted this month on 11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook. 
      
7. If you have a blog, feed its posts into your profile page. This will automatically help keep your pages fresh and share your writings with a new audience, too.
      
8. Join some groups—learn the lingo and the tools of the network by using them and observing how others use them, too. Joining groups will also begin to create a natural dialogue with other users that will grow over time.
      
9. Be a good and involved citizen in those groups to cultivate new friends. There’s no better way to gain the respect of any community than adding value by sharing info, support, or companionship—and these tools will amplify the effect. If you are an expert, social networks are a great way to spread your reputation cloud for that expertise.
     
10. Create your own group. Once you are comfortable, start a group around your product or brand. Position yourself as an expert resource and offer to help and facilitate community. Members usually proudly display the names of the groups to which they belong on their profile pages. This can lead to lots more clicks (and members) as others see your group’s name or logo on friends’ pages and in their feeds.

Scott’s book includes more than a dozen examples  of real-life Internet marketing success stories, from a North Carolina furniture store that profitably captures high-end customers using pay-per-click search engine text ads on Google, Yahoo! andMSN (Chapter 21), to the article syndication strategy that has helped a Christian stay-at-home mom to attract lots of profitable traffic for her blog (Chapter 16).

The book  is $25 and published by AMACOM, the American Management Association.

Posted In: Authors & Publishers, Blogs, Business Promotion, General, LinkedIn, Publicity on the Internet, Social media marketing, Social networking, Writing Articles, YouTube
posted On: 6/30/2009: 7:59 am: By Joan
Comments: 4 Comments