A reporter at a national publication is examining what happens when a person who is emotionally available and expressive pairs up with someone who is not. She is looking for people to interview.

Are you an emotional “giver”—someone who is comfortable expressing your love, affection and feelings? Are you married to or dating someone who is more emotionally reserved? (Maybe he or she is comfortable with receiving affection but has a hard time expressing it.) How do you become comfortable with this dynamic and make the relationship work? Have you had to work through your differences? How?

If you have interesting stories to tell about this topic, please write as soon as possible to aceb5@aol.com and send details of your anecdote and contact information. Anyone quoted will need to be willing to use their name.

Deadline for contacting the reporter is noon Tuesday, Feb. 14.

A reporter at a national publication is exploring the phenomenon of how smart people sometimes feel dumb in intimate social settings and needs sources to interview.

Have you ever clammed up in a business meeting, at a cocktail or dinner party, on jury duty, or at some other small social event—-even though you know you’re as smart (or smarter) than anyone else in the room? And is this a departure from your usual personality?

If you have funny or interesting stories to tell about this topic, please respond as soon as possible to aceb5@aol.com with details of your anecdote and contact information. Anyone quoted must be willing to use to use their name.

A columnist who writes about relationships for a top-tier media outlet (you or your PR clients will want to get into this one) wants to develop relationships with people who do research on psychology or relationships, particularly psychologists or academics.

“One of my frustrations in my column is that I don’t often hear about the research early,” the columnist says.

Respond in the comments section below and explain why you’d be a good source.

Should you pitch?

Nope. She, like other journalists, wants exclusive material. Just give what she asked for and let her decide if you’re worth pursuing.

Don’t be surprised if the newspaper, as we know it today, is gone a decade from now.

But before it disappears, let’s give the newspapers that do an exceptional job their due. If you have a favorite local, regional or national newspaper that achieved something noteworthy in at least one area this past year, nominate it for Editor & Publisher’s “10 Newspapers That Do it Right” award.

The annual award spotlights newspapers that have done an oustanding job at things such as sponsoring community events, offering hyperlocal content, covering high school sports or introducing a Groupoin type of “deal of the day” program. Ideas can be for editorial coverage, advertising or circulation campaigns, or anything else you’ve noticed. 

Winners will be featured in the magazine’s March 2012 issue. You can see winners from last year. Deadline for nominations is Jan. 24.

Publicity Hounds: If a newspaper you nominate wins, it’s just one more way to build a relationship with a media outlet that might cover you later.

Create a buzz all over town long before your store opens.

These days, in a sour economy, businesses opening just about anywhere are major news. So don’t shy away from publicity. Here six ways to promote your retail business before you open.

1. Display a large banner or sign outside your building letting people know you’ll be opening. Thanks to Alyson Stanfield, a business coach for artists and an art marketing expert, for this idea which I read at her blog yesterday.
   
   
2. Pitch the story to the local media. Contact a reporter at your local newspaper, business journal or business magazine and pitch a story about the opening. Angles can include why you chose this time, when the economy is bad, to open a new business.
   
   
3. Write a press release. Post it on a site like Craigslist, which gets millions of eyeballs. Post it only in one category and only in the city closest to where your business is located.
   
   
4. Plan a fun grand opening celebration. Publicize it on a local event sites like Yelp, EventCrazy.com and MeetUp.com.  This list of 27 questions to ask before promoting your event will stimulate ideas and help you plan a more interesting event. Please, no boring ribbon-cuttings. You can do  better than that. Here are some alternatives to ribbon-cutting events.
   
   
5. Just before you open, create a business profile on Google Maps.
   
   
6. Contact related businesses and offer to cross-promote. Ask them to display flyers about your grand opening at the front counter. Tell them that once you open, you’ll be happy to promote something they’re doing. If you’re opening a pet store, contact owners of dog kennels, dog obedience schools and veterinarians.

What other ideas can you offer for ways that retail businesses can promote long before they open? Any examples in your own community?

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.

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

Publicity Hound Kate Farrall of San Diego, CA, writes:

“I need to get national/international publicity for my two muralist clients who are completing a five-story public art installation this November for the City of Davis, just outside of Sacramento. They have transformed a water tank into 360-degree kinetic art installation. You can see a short video that explains the project.

“My pitches have done well, thanks to your great advice. So far, I’ve gotten my clients a segment on our local PBS channel that will run for a year and a half, along with a few other news and print hits. The feedback on my pitches has been really good and I’ve tailored each one.

“How do I create a hook for national publications, especially art publications? Or even publications that are not so big but located elsewhere? Local has been a good hook for us so far, but that won’t work in the Midwest, New York or Europe. My clients want to be recognized as professional artists and to have a broader name recognition so they can expand where they work and the types of projects they do.

“You can read a press release about the project and see photos on Flickr.”

Today is the last day to take advantage of a price break for attending Steve Harrison’s National Publicity Summit, Oct. 12-15, in New York City. Only three spots are remaining.

The price goes up by $1,200.00 after today, Friday, Sept. 23. Apply here.

Harrison is admitting 100 attendees who will get to personally  meet over 100 top journalists/producers who do stories and shows for major media like: ABC’s The View, CNN, Fox News, Today Show, Woman’s Day, MSNBC, Live With Regis & Kelly, 48 Hours, Fox & Friends, ABC’s 20/20, USA Weekend, Dateline NBC, Inc., Health, Entrepreneur, Family Circle and many more top outlets.

All those media were represented at previous Summits. Most of them will be at next month’s event,  along with producers and journalists from media outlets who will be attending for the first time.

“For the remaining 3 spots, we will consider all applications submitted through today,” Harrison said. “However, all things being equal, we’ll admit people in the order in which they applied. By the way, if you apply and for any reason I cannot accept you, I’ll give you a gift which will help you get more national media exposure.”

You’ll Learn How to Pitch

Harrison’s staff trains you so you can meet journalists face to face and pitch them with confidence.

After Rory Cohen, an expert in the psychology of success, attended the summit, she was booked on ABC’s “The View” and also got a cover story in Entrepreneur magazine.  That created a snowball effect.

“After I was on The View, I was able to get booked on CNN, which then led to a four-page spread in People Magazine,” she said.

As a result of the summit, author Linda Franklin appeared on the “Today” show twice, Fox & Friends, Fox’s “Good Day New York,” Hallmark Channel’s “New Morning,” and in MORE magazine, Essence Magazine, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Sentinel, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, MSN.com, The Huffington Post and at least 25 radio stations throughout the U.S.

Full Disclosure: I am a compensated affiliate for this event and for any other products and services you buy from Harrison.

If 8 out of 10 journalists prefer to receive pitches via email and not from phone calls, does that mean you should only pitch by email?

No, says Jeremy Porter, who wrote a series of Smile & Dial tips for the Journalistics blog recently. They’re an excellent primer for anyone who’s brave enough to call.  

When I worked in 20 years ago, we thought nothing of receiving phone pitches because we didn’t use email. People pitched either by phone, fax or snail-mail letter. Today, everything has changed and phone pitches have fallen out of favor with journalists.

But not with smart Publicity Hounds. Here are five more tips to keep in mind if you’re calling.

1. Don’t call on deadline.

If you’re not sure when deadline is, call the operator and ask. Or call the newsroom and ask whoever answers the phone, “When is the best time to call reporter Karen Phelps when she isn’t on deadline?”

2. Be considerate of the reporter’s time.

As soon as Karen answers the phone, ask, “Hi Karen, this is Joan Stewart and I have a story idea for you. Is this a good time to talk?” If not, she will say so. Ask her when you should return the call.

3. Pitch in 15 seconds or less

If you can’t pitch within 15 seconds, you’re doing something wrong. Write the pitch and practice it. But make it sound natural.

4. Think McDonald’s Happy Meal

My friend, Cleveland TV personality Connie Dieken, says all parents of young kids know there are four chicken nuggets in a McDonald’s Happy Meal. Deliver your idea in nuggets.

If your pitch is 15 seconds and the journalist asks for more, deliver the second nugget. If she asks you another question, deliver the next nugget, and so on. Don’t try to tell her the entire story as soon as you start talking.

5. Sidestep the gatekeepers

Here’s a really sneaky trick on how to get past gatekeepers. It’s used frequently by job-hunters who are trying to reach the decision-makers. 

Simply call someone in another department at the paper. You might ask for someone in the advertising department, for example. When an ad rep answers the phone, you say, “I’m so sorry. I’m getting tripped up in your confusing phone system. I’m trying to reach health reporter Karen Phelps. Can you please transfer me?”  The ad rep, who probably hates the phone system too, will feel sorry for you and transfer you.

Veteran PR pros have told me that even if they know a reporter prefers email pitches, they might call anyway, particularly if the pitch is strong.

What about you? What tips can you add to these about how to pitch by phone? What techniques have worked well for you?

More tools to help you:

A Simple 5-Part Formula for Delivering the Perfect Media Pitch and Hitting it Out of the Park

How to Tie Your Pitch to Breaking News and Make the Media Interview YOU 

116 “WOW!” Story Ideas from January through June

103 Sizzling Story Ideas from July through December