If you’re new to hosting webinars, the team at SocialBrite.org has a very helpful summary of 10 steps for planning a successful webinar.

It includes nine ways to promote your webinar. I took their list and added to it. Most of these ideas will also work when promoting teleseminars. Here’s their list of suggestions on how to promote:

1. At your website.

2. On online event calendars such as Upcoming.com

3. Relevant listservs

4. In print and online newsletters

5. On Twitter channels

6. In Facebook groups

7. As a local event for nonprofits (SocialBrite.org specializes in teaching social media to nonprofits).

8. On Web pages that promote webinars in your industry.

9. At the end of current webinars.

Here are my own ideas

I added to their list and came up with 12 of my own ideas:

10. On Craigslist, but only on the list for the city that’s closest to where you live. (See How to Use Craigslist as a Global Publicity Tool.)

11. In the events or calendar sections in traditional media, including newspapers, magazines, trade journals and business journals.

12. In an online press release. (See Keywords: The Magic Magnets That Pull Consumers & Journalists to Your Press Releases.)

13.  On the websites of local newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations.

14. In videos, where you can excerpt tips and lead viewers to the sign-up page. Upload the video to video sharing-sharing sites.

15. At your guest experts’ blogs, at their websites, in their newsletters, and on their social media sites.

16. Create an Event on Facebook, and share with your Friends and Fans. (See 11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook)

17. In an email blast to your opt-in list, and the lists of your guest experts.

18. In a podcast.

19. At the end of a quiz you create around the topic of the webinar.

20. In targeted ads on Facebook and LinkedIn.

21. If you have an affiliate program, encourage your affiliates to promote the event, using their affiliate links.

Add to this list

Did I miss any? How do you promote your webinars and teleseminars, and which are the most effective?

What about paid ads? Have you used them,
and are they effective?

My Next Webinar: How to Use Twitter Lists

I’m presenting “How to Use Twitter Lists to Generate Publicity & Build Your Brand” at 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, Aug. 26.   This one-hour webinar is perfect for anyone who hasn’t yet started using Twitter lists, or for Twitter users who aren’t sure how to get the most out of their lists.

Everyone who attends will also receive a bonus special report I wrote on “How to Use Twitter for Business to Network, Promote, Sell, Recruit & Profit,” a $10 value, as well as slides of the PowerPoint presentation I’m using for the video, a link for the streaming video and the video download, and the MP3 recording.  So if the time is inconvenient for you, register anyway and you can watch it afterward at a time most convenient for you.

Register here.

The next time you’re looking for a topic for your blog, ask yourself these three questions, suggested by small business marketing coach Sydni Craig-Hart in 5 Simple Steps to Generate Relevant Content for Your Blog:

1. What’s keeping your clients up at night?
 
2. What’s the biggest challenge or problem they’re facing right now?

 3. What information and resources do you have to share to make their lives easier?

Here’s what I love about those questions. 

For each one, you can probably come up with more than one answer. Three answers equals three blog separate blog posts. Eight answers? Eight posts. 

Here are four more questions I’d like you to consider when trying to find content:

4. What question have I received from someone recently in my email?

Pay attention to ALL questions in your email. When you answer, cut and paste it into a new blog entry, and then elaborate and, if appropriate, link to resources.  

5. What’s the most frequent question beginners in my niche are asking? If I’m a speaker, I’d ask myself, what’s the Number One question that beginners in my audiences are asking? 

Keep a running tally of all these questions, and use them when you need blog content. Never assume that just because you know the answer, it isn’t interesting to others who follow you.

6. What’s the one issue I’m struggling with right now and searching for the answer?  

When I can’t find the answer to a question, I go to LinkedIn and ask. Sometimes, only one or two people respond. But often, I receive several great answers that can be woven into a blog post. I’m suddenly smarter, and so are my readers.  I’m careful to explain within the LinkedIn question that I want to blog about the issue.

7. What’s the “hot new thing” or controversial topic in my industry that everybody wants to know about? For example, people in my audience, mostly self-promoters, want to know what they need to do to get a great return on their investment of time with social media. They might know how to use Facebook. But they want to know how to use Facebook to make money. 

Patsi Krakoff, who was my guest expert on the teleseminar Time-saving Tips for Smart Business Blogging, partnered with me to create a list of 101 ways to find content for your blog, a handout we offered to teleseminar participants.

Here’s a sneek peek at six more ideas on that handout:

8. Invite your followers to ask you questions. Answer them at your blog. Become “The Answer Man” or “The Answer Woman.”  

9. Find inspiration in photos. Browse through photos on a site like iStockPhoto.com. Look for a cute animal photo, or a funny image, or a photo that makes you think, and write a post around it.

10. Industry definitions. Create a list of industry definitions, particularly those that confuse people.

11. Visit Craigslist. You might find interesting workshops, press releases or other material worth a comment in the small business, community or events categories for the cities nearest you. (See How to Use Craigslist as a Global Publicity Tool.)

12. Don’t do it all yourself. Recruit a guest blogger on BloggerLinkup.com.

13. Show readers both sides of an issue. Write about the advantages/disadvantages of something.

How about adding to the list? How do you find content for your blog?

If you’re looking for an expert source because you need to hire a speaker, or you want a guest for your podcast, or you’re doing research for a book, don’t get discouraged if you don’t find one on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, or by Googling .

There’s still a large percentage of people—even experts—who aren’t at those sites or who don’t know how to get good search engine ranking.

Check out this treasure trove of sources just waiting to be tapped: At the article directory sites.

Sites like EzineArticles.com, ArticleBase, ArticleDashboard and Expertclick: the Online Yearbook of Experts, have thousands of experts who would probably love an invitation. And most of them can be found fairly quickly because these sites are usually searchable by category.

Anne Graham of Vancover, British Columbia writes:

“I’ve developed a great toolkit for business leaders with 33 specific techniques they can use to lead their firms out of the recession.  It’s called “Recession Proof and Recovery Ready: The 91 Day Business Tune-up Toolkit.” 

It’s a 314-page physical product, stuffed full of every instruction, checklist, etc. that they’ll need to understand and implement each of the 33 ideas.  It’s designed to be implemented by a small team, so the product is actually a set of 10 binders (one for each team member), plus a DVD virtual seminar.

“I’m about to do a launch with a wonderful Online Launch Manager handling my tweets, blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, SEO, article marketing, the whole nine yards.  But I’d love to hear some creative ideas from fellow Hounds on how THEY would reach an audience of motivated business leaders in their city or town. 

“I have a compelling free ebook called Powerful Pricing Strategies: 10 High Impact, Low Risk Ways to Increase Prices…Even During the Recession, Even Before the Recovery, at http://www.recessionproofandrecoveryready.com/. It’s vailable to Hounds and those motivated business leaders I’m looking for.  All I need now is a stampede of traffic!

“Can your Hounds help?”

Freelance writer Angie Gambino, one of myLinkedIn connections, invited me to respond to her question on how freelancers can use Twitter.

I came up with several ideas and added more to the list:

• Follow journalists in your target market.  Regardless of whether they follow you, pay attention to what they’re tweeting. Retweet some of their content that’s of interest to people who follow you.
      
• You probably have a “dream list” of magazines, newspapers, etc. you’d like to buy your articles. Find out if the editors of those publications are on Twitter.  If so, follow them.  They may follow you back. Do your research at JournalistTweets.com, JustTweetIt.com, MediaonTwitter.com and TwitteringJournalists.pbworks.com.
      
• Search for journalists at Search.Twitter.com. Search by job title. For example, if you’re looking for assignment editors, search for “assignment editor” and “#assignmenteditor” and variations.
    
• Also use Search.Twitter.com to find sources.
           
• Do you review books? If so, discuss the types of books you review and some of your favorites.
           
• Offer advice on how the media can work with freelancers.
           
• Offer tips for people who want to make money freelancing. Is the market saturated?
           
• Link to your blog posts. (You ARE blogging, aren’t you? If not, see “Time-saving Tips for Smart Business Blogging.”)
           
• Which writers do you admire?
           
• Cast your net on Twitter for specific types of sources you’re seeking.     

How about it freelancers? What have I missed?

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:

If you’re releasing a report on the state of your industry, what’s the purpose of writing a press release? Why not just post the information to your blog?

In fact, why even bother with press releases? Can’t blog posts serve the same function?

That’s what law firm marketing expert Kevin O’Keefe asked at Real Lawyers Have Blogs.

He will be releasing a report later this week on the use of blogs by large American law firms, and he asked:

“My question is who do I send the press release to? Don’t I accomplish the same thing by posting a blog post with the report as I always have? As a courtesy to reporters and editors, couldn’t I just email them a link to my blog post? How does a press release help them?

“Some law firms and companies use press release services such as PR Newswire or PRWeb for press releases, many in large part for Search Engine Optimization.  Getting links from such sites to your company website or blog using keywords describing your offering causes your website or blog to rank higher on such keyword searches.  But that feels a bit like a sham and I’m not looking for SEO.”
   

Write a release and a blog post

Do both.

Press releases are written much like a newspaper article would be written with “just the facts.” And, of course, you can link directly to the report and anything else you wish.

One of the big advantages of press releases is that journalists, bloggers and others can simply cut and paste from the press release and add what you’ve written to their own copy.  Blogs, on the other hand, are written in a more informal, personal style that make wholesale copying difficult.
  
A blog also serves as a great platform to comment on various aspects of the report, in one or more blog posts. So while that press releases is pulling traffic at PRWeb, your post is pulling traffic at your blog. 
         
  
How to publicize an industry report

I gave Kevin seven ideas for publicizing his report:

1. Write a press release and post it to PRWeb.  Journalists and others can also search the PRWeb site by topic.  I found eight RSS feeds at PRWeb just for legal news. So if the only place that somebody can find info on the report is at Kevin’s blog, they’ll miss it if they’re at the PRWeb site.
       
2. Let your Twitter followers, Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections know about the release. Just give an enticing headline and link to it at PRWeb. (See 11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook.)
       
3. Write a blog post that ties into the press release.  Why was the report written? Are the results surprising? Can you offer a behind-the-scenes look at the benefit of blogging for big law firms, something the press release doesn’t explain?
       
4. Post the same press release at your website, in your online press room.  You want to do this so that people who come to your website can find recent information about what you’re doing.
       
5. If you wish, you can now pitch the story to a select group of journalists and bloggers.  These can be people whose names you have collected and put into a database.  I’d create individual pitches for each journalists or blogger, customized for their audience, and then include a link where they can see the press release.
       
6. What about people on Twitter who “tweet” about law-related topics?  Don’t forget about them.  Sometimes you can get far more traction on Twitter than you can in traditional media, simply because of the retweets.
       
7. How do you find people who would be interested in the report and are most likely to retweet?  Go to Search.Twitter.com and search for #law, #lawyers, #legal and other related words, using hash tags.  Twitter will return a list of tweets written by people who have used those keywords in their posts.  You can then go to each person’s Twitter page and decide if they’re worth following.  If so, follow them.  They might follow you back.  You can then send them a direct message and let them know about your report, and link to the press release on PRWeb.
       
8. Finally, how about creating a short video, about two and a half minutes, discussing the report?  You can do this with an inexpensive Flip video camera and upload the video to YouTube, which can pull more traffic to your blog or website.

Kevin might also consider a subscription to Expertclick, the Online Yearbook of Experts. A subscription puts you in their experts directory and lets you post up to 52 press releases per year.  You can then link to these releases from your blog or the online press room at your website. That’s what I do.  Learn more at Expertclick.com.

How do you use press releases in conjunction with your blog?

When a business associate told me last week that she couldn’t understand why LinkedIn froze her account, especially because she invited only a few dozen people to connect within several months, I had a pretty good idea how that happened.

Three out of four of the people who invite me to connect with them on LinkedIn make the same mistake she probably made. They fail to explain on the invitation how we know each other, or how they know me.

If somebody invites you to connect and you don’t know them, LinkedIn gives you the option of clicking on “I don’t know this user” and “Report as spam.”

Scott Allen, who was my guest during a teleseminar on “How to Use LinkedIn to Promote Anything–Ethically & Powerfully,” said that if too many people say they don’t know you, LinkedIn can freeze your account.

I always give the person who’s inviting me the benefit of the doubt. If they send the standard “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” invitation, I always reply and ask, “How do we know each other, or how do you know me?” I ask that question so often that I’ve even created a macro key for it so I don’t have retype it hundreds of times.

Often, I learn that many of those people read my newsletter or heard me at a speaking engagement, or they were referred to me by a friend who follows me. So I usually connect with them and we start a conversation. If there’s no connection between us, I don’t connect.

Other LinkedIn users might not be so patient. It takes only a second to click on “I don’t know this user” or “Report as Spam.”

But it takes only several more seconds to type “I read your newsletter each week” or “I heard you speak when you were in Dallas” or “we worked on a project together at Bowling Green State University.”

What about you? Do three out of four people who invite you fail to explain how they know you? Do you click on “I don’t know this user” or “Report as Spam,” or do you probe like I do?

What’s the most annoying mistake you see people making on LinkedIn?

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?