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Top 10 creative writing blogs and more top tweets

1/6/2012 By Joan Leave a Comment

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow me on Twitter.

Top 10 creative writing blogs. http://ow.ly/8gzJb

Top 5 New Year’s Resolutions for improving your presence on LinkedIn. http://ow.ly/8gBr9

10-point checklist for growing your blog in 2012. http://ow.ly/8gBY9

10 reasons why you might not be attracting the right (or any) Twitter followers. http://ow.ly/8i6tI

Authors, do you make these 3 disastrous book-writing mistakes? http://ow.ly/8i8gM

New to speaking? 5 great venues where you can book gigs and learn the ropes. http://ow.ly/8ikNR

How bloggers can use book reviews to connect with expert authors & tips on how to write reviews. http://ow.ly/8ikbh

3 big benefits to reading your articles aloud before publishing, from Ann Wylie. http://ow.ly/8jvrx

Get credit for your PR brilliance. Bulldog’s Media Relations Awards deadline is 1/16. http://ow.ly/8kuYP

Hospitals: Want Boomer business? Focus on content marketing & social media. http://ow.ly/8kw7n

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers, Blogs, LinkedIn, Publicity on the Internet, Twitter Tagged With: author marketing, blog content, Bloggers, Blogging, book marketing, Book Promotion, Book Publicity, LinkedIn, Twitter

24 juicy publicity, social media tips in free ‘best of’ ebook

12/20/2011 By Joan 5 Comments

If you haven’t made any resolutions for improving your publicity or social media efforts next year, promise that you’ll steal at least one tip from this free ebook, “The Best of The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week of 2011” and do it.

This is the seventh year I’ve compiled the very best tips from my weekly ezine and offered it to you as a holiday gift—along with my enthusiastic recommendation to regift it to your friends and clients.

Click here to download the book. (If you’re having trouble, try a different browser or a different computer, or email Scott Buffaloe, my customer service manager, and he’ll send it to you.)

Here’s what you’ll find in this year’s book.

Social Media Tips Galore

Tips on how to attract more Twitter followers by using Twellow, my favorite Twitter directory, to really drill down and identify people in your target market—and make it easy for others to find you
6 bios that need updating. Trust me. They’re either filled with stale information, or your bios are missing key links for new social media profiles you’ve created.
3 strong reasons for joining groups on LinkedIn, and the recommended number of groups to join.
How to create a link for a Facebook status update so you can pull more people to your Facebook page. This still stumps many Facebook users.
3 ways to use Twitter lists to save time, get in front of influential bloggers who write about your topic, and start to build relationships with journalists.
A big no-no that several LinkedIn “gurus” are teaching about how to write your LinkedIn profile. It looks bad, it smells bad and it can get you into trouble.
A new feature on YouTube that lets you edit your videos right in the browser!
Where to find a valuable template on how to write a product review that you can share on the social media sites or at your blog.
Where to find “52 Headline Hacks,” a handy cheat sheet for writing blog posts that go viral, or headlines you can use on articles.

Publicity Tips for Traditional Media

An important reminder if you’re planning an event so you don’t blow a big chance at publicity in a magazine.
6 ways to avoid corrections and what to do if a mistake in your press release or article slips through and ends up being published.
The one word to never use when you’re talking to journalists.
Angles for news stories you can pitch so you can get onto the most watched TV newscast of the entire week on your local station.
Why press releases are usually ineffective if you want a journalist to cover your story—and the one thing that works instead.
3 types of publicity photos that scream “We’re lazy. And we don’t mind boring you with this photo.”
The one person to follow on Twitter who can provide lots of hot leads from traditional media who are looking for sources to interview.

Tools for Online Publicity

A hyperlocal website that’s begging for neighborhood news in 16 bigger cities in the United States. This site is perfect for news from clubs and civic groups, schools, nonprofits, churches, political campaigns and neighborhood groups.
A news powerhouse that you should be pitching because its stories get high rankings on Google News and Google Blogs. You’ll also find a link to a valuable video that explains exactly how to pitch.
A local publisher that wants news from hundreds of communities in 19 states in the United States. They’re competing with local newspapers for stories, photos, videos and ad dollars.
4 tips for creating your 2012 Publicity Plan for online and traditional media.

Tips for Building Your Business & Nonprofit

Where to find step-by-step instructions on how to format a book for the Nook, the Barnes & Noble ereader, and Amazon’s Kindle—sometimes in less than 30 minutes.
Where to find detailed instructions on how to produce webinars that sell your products and services. Includes a recommendation for what webinar company to use.
Nonprofits, 9 ways to make it easy for people to donate at your website.

If you like these tips, you’ll love the newsletter. Today’s issue will be published this afternoon and it includes a cute dog video. Sign up here.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and a very Happy New Year!

Filed Under: LinkedIn, Press Releases/News Releases Tagged With: event publicity, linkedin groups, product review template

PR & Marketing Pros: How to find the most influential people online & offline—within seconds

10/7/2011 By Joan 4 Comments

It used to be easy to find the movers and shakers who were the most influential people within their topic areas. But not anymore, thanks to social media.

PR and marketing pros who need to find the heavy-hitter journalists, talk show hosts, bloggers, authors, experts and Facebook users who are discussing a particular topic right now, can slog their way through a variety of tools.

They can use Klout, which measures online influence, but only for those who are on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Klout’s generic score ignores how often that person is quoted or discussed in traditional media.

Google Alerts can tell you instantly which bloggers are discussing certain topics. But the alerts don’t measure the blogger’s influence.

A new tool from Appinions, a New York company, tracks traditional and social media to round out a true picture of influence. It’s a subscription-based service that matches influencers to specific topics, based on opinions it finds from news reports, blogs, tweets, TV transcripts and social networks.

Give Your Clients an Edge

Within seconds, PR and marketing people can identify the most influential people who can move the needles of influence. Then, they can lead their clients to those experts to comment on a blog post, write a letter to the editor, pitch a story, offer background information for a journalist’s article, or offer commentary for an author’s forthcoming book—long before the client’s competitors are even aware that there’s a hot topic being discussed.

Watch this short video to see how it works.

Larry Levy, CEO of Appinions, will give you a free demonstration, perfect for PR and marketing pros, during a webinar I’m hosting from 3 to 4 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, Oct. 13. Register today because we have room for only 50 people.

Levy will explain the three key elements that the service measures to determine influence:

Are trusted writers and publications covering the influencer’s opinions?
Is the influencer’s opinion being shared, retweeted, quoted, requoted and linked?
When did a certain topic or issue first emerge, and who introduced it?

The ideal company for this service is a PR or marketing agency that has multiple clients and does at least $5 million a year in revenue.

After you sign up, email me the topics where you need to find influencers. I’ll forward them to Levy, and he’ll use as many as he can during the demonstration so you can see how this service applies to your clients. Full disclosure: I will earn a commission from all subscriptions sold.

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers, Blogs, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Newspaper Publicity, PR Consultants/Publicists, Twitter Tagged With: expert bloggers, find influencers, identify influential people, marketing programs, PR campaigns, top-tier journalists

7 ways to congratulate journalists—without brown-nosing

10/5/2011 By Joan 1 Comment

When a favorite journalist is promoted, leaves the newspaper for a new job, or wins an award, smart Publicity Hounds swing into action and deliver their congratulations, a very important part of building the relationship.

Be aware, especially, of things like writing, editing and photography awards. They don’t mean a hill of beans to the success of the newspaper, but journalists think they are a very big deal. I worked in newsrooms for 22 years, won many awards, and they were a huge deal.

How do you congratulate them without gratuitous brown-nosing? Here are seven ideas:

Send a handwritten note. Most well-wishers would cop out with an email. But you want to zig when everybody else is zagging. A postage stamp and a few minutes of your time are a cheap price to pay to stand out from the crowd.
Is the journalist on Twitter? If so, send a congratulatory tweet. Link to an article about the award so others who follow the journalist can read it.
Are you friends on Facebook? If so, post congratulations to their wall, and give the URL for the article announcing the award. You can also link to the winning article or project.
Create a short “way to go!” video and email the link. With a little editing, you can also provide the link for the winning project. Consider posting the video to their company’s website.
Go ahead. Ask the journalist if it’s OK to post the video to YouTube.
Is the journalist on LinkedIn? If so, consider writing a recommendation. But sure to explain what factors made their work so special, or what happened as a result. This is the place to recommend, not just congratulate.
Call and leave a short, cheery voicemail message.

Don’t do all of these, or it will, indeed, be brown-nosing. And never sneak in a pitch while you’re congratulating.

What Else You Shouldn’t Do

No flowers. Women reporters I’ve worked with love flowers, but they’d get the heebie-jeebies when sources sent them.
No gifts, gift cards or anything of value. Many newspapers have ethics policies that prohibit reporters from receiving these. Don’t put someone in the uncomfortable position of having to return a gift to you.
No tickets to sporting events, the theater or other entertainment venues.
Don’t invite the journalist to lunch and dive for the check. He might not be able to accept a free meal. See 18 ways to schmooze with reporters.

Don’t forget sports reporters, copy editors, photographers, graphic artists and other newsroom employees. Ditto for TV producers, anchors, sportscasters, meteorologists and radio talk show hosts. They love being congratulated, too.

What have I missed? If you’re a PR person, a journalist or a Publicity Hound, what ideas can you share that have worked well?

Also see: 12 ways to say “thanks” to a blogger or journalist

Filed Under: Blogs, LinkedIn, Newspaper Publicity, Pitching the Media, Radio Publicity, TV Publicity, Video, YouTube Tagged With: broadcast awards, build relationships with reporters, congratulate journalists, journalism awards, journalist relations

Add volunteer experience to your LinkedIn profile

9/27/2011 By Joan 3 Comments

You can now beef up your LinkedIn profile by adding any volunteer experience, a list of causes that you care about, and any organizations you support.

After all, volunteering is as good for your career as it is for those you help. And your volunteer efforts are one more way to generate publicity.

Here’s how to add this new section to your Profile.

Step 1: Log into Your Account.

Step 2: In the Menu bar at the top, click on Profile > Edit Profile.

Step 3: Scroll down to just before the Summary and click on “Add Sections.”