The Publicity Hound’s Blog  

If you’re a retailer who’s looking for some clever ways to do fun in-store promotions in this sluggish economy, and you’re on a tight budget, pick up a copy of A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions by Carolyn Howard Johnson.

It’s part of her “How to do it Frugally” series. When it comes to marketing on a shoestring, Carolyn knows all the tricks.  

On Pages 67 and 68, she lists some “frugal oopmph builders” that will also create a buzz in your community.

Here are her ideas. Many of them cost nothing or nearly nothing.  Some of them will even make your event profitable. 

• Make your event so much fun or such a good deal that people won’t want to put off their purchase until later—or better can’t because the purchase is an essential part of goings-on. A Make It and Take It event falls into this category.  (A local ceramics shop that lets people make their own pottery can host a special “Make a Jewelry Dish for Mom” event just before Mother’s Day. Invite a local reporter to bring her kids and report on it.)
       
• Provide an ambiance that’s different. Include color and scent and sound. There’s nothing more delightful than a real Christmas party with wassail, carols, and the scent of evergreen. Forget those things and it’s just another hard sell. (Include a description of the colors, scents and sounds in your press releases!)
        
• Use a unique invitation. Send your customers one adorable earring for a Ring in the New Year party. (Include an earring in the invitation you send to a local reporter or blogger.)
                      
• Let your refreshments sell additional products. Put packets of the cider you use for the cider near the punch bowl with a sign announcing the price. Have the host who ladles the punch talk about how easy it was to make and mention that the do-it-yourself packets are available for purchase. Stack tins—festively wrapped and ready to go—of the rum cakes you served up in finger-sized cubes nearby. Good signs are a must. (Off the recipe for the do-it-yourself packets to the food columnist at your local newspaper, and let her know about the in-store promotion.
      
• Feature a tasting table of all kinds of other goodies you sell. If you don’t sell foodstuffs, get someone who does to set up a table in trade for publicity at your event. (Many people will JUMP at this chance to participate because they hate doing their own publicity.)
    
• Ask favored customers to help rather than hiring extra people. It is easy to get someone to be the honored punch ladler. Reward them with a gift and a public thank you. (Send a letter to the editor of your local weekly newspaper and include the names of people and businesses you’d like to thank. Also thank them on your Facebook page, by writing on their Facebook wall, and by complimenting them at other social networking sites where they hang out. See 11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook.) 

Bricks-and-mortar store owners can find lots more tips in my article on marketing tips for hardware stores and 13 publicity ideas for retailers. 

Carolyn, by the way, has three decades of experience as founder and manager of her own chain of stores. She has also been a New York publicist, and a retail consultant and journalist. Follow her advice, then be ready for the rush of customers.

The book, published by Thinking Store Press, is $17.95.

Posted In: Blogs, Business Promotion, Newspaper Publicity, Photos & Graphics, Press Releases/News Releases, Social media marketing, Special Events
posted On: 6/26/2009: 5:15 pm: By Joan
Comments: No Comments

If you own a restaurant, bar or nightclub, don’t miss the fabulous tips from Restaurants & Institutions on how to participate in social media.

Senior editor Alison Perlik offers sound advice on how to do more than just create a presence on Facebook and Twitter. 

Her tips are so valuable that they can be used by the owners of almost any business, not just restaurants.

She got me thinking about other ways restaurants can participate in social media. Some of my ideas also apply to owners of bars and nightclubs.
 

Go ‘behind the scenes’

• Use your Facebook Fan Pages to offer a few recipes from your kitchen. You don’t have to give away all your trade secrets, but your Fans would appreciate knowing that you’re passing along a recipe for your popular Sour Cream Apple Pie just to them. This is a great way to create Fan loyalty. And it’s a super way to start accumulating lots of Fans.  (See 11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook.)
       
• Ditto with mixed drinks. If your bartenders notice that customers are wild about your ice tea-based cocktails, for example, offer a recipe.
                
• You can also use your Facebook Fan pages to offer customers special coupons.
                   
• Share trends. Let people know what trends you’re seeing in your business. This article in New York magazine is a good example of cocktail trends that customers might want to know about.  
                
• Share with your customers and others what your chefs eat at home. Do they plop in front of the TV with a big bag of Doritos after a long shift? Or do they have a special healthy snack they can whip up in five minutes? If so, provide the recipe!
         
• Interview customers about what they like about your food and drinks, and upload those  videos to your Facebook Fan Pages.
         
• Upload photos of people having a good time (with their permission, of course) to photo-sharing sites like Flickr and PhotoBucket.
     
            

Make it easy for customers to find you

• Let customers know where they can follow you on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other social networking sites where they congregate. Print this information on your menu, in your paid ads, on flyers they can take with them, on direct-mail advertising, on coasters at your bar, and on signs in your window.
             
• Offer this information online, too—at your website, at your blog, in your email signature, and in videos.

Connect with journalists and bloggers

• Many journalists are now on the social networking sites, particularly Twitter and Facebook. If you’re dying to get in front of a particular journalist, Google their name and see if you can find them on a social media site. I Googled ”Allison Perlik” and found her on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
     
• Check out Harry Hoover’s wiki of media people using Twitter and media outlets using Twitter.

       
Ask your customers for suggestions

Your customers might have some great ideas for ways you can interact with them on the social media sites. But you’ll never know unless you ask them.

For more ideas on how to generate publicity in traditional media, see Publicity Tips for Restaurants, Chefs & Foodies.

Posted In: Business Promotion, Facebook, LinkedIn, Photos & Graphics, Publicity on the Internet, Social media marketing, Social networking, Video
posted On: 6/9/2009: 4:34 pm: By Joan
Comments: 2 Comments

If you want to create a video for an upcoming event as part of your publicity campaign, or for a product or service you’re launching, and you’re on a tight deadline, here’s a great alternative to a talking-head video where you have to look good.

Animoto lets you produce TV-quality music videos using your own photos, or stock photos, in just minutes. You don’t need any technical expertise. If you can click the mouse, you can create a professional-looking video that has a lot of pizzazz.

I’m doing publicity for my garden club’s annual plant sale May 23. Yesterday, I created this fun little video in less than an hour and uploaded it to YouTube:

 How I did it:

• First, I chose my still photos. I took photos with my iPhone at a garden club event over the weekend. We were planting annuals inside teacups to sell at the plant sale. 
      
• Then I searched Animoto’s limited photo archive for photos of flowers.
        
• Then I bought a few stock photos from iStockPhoto.com.
      
• In Animoto, I lined them up according to how I wanted them to appear in the video.
      
• Next, I wrote all the text boxes. 
     
• When all the photos and text boxes were in place on the tiles, I clicked and dragged to rearrange them. One thing that tripped me up: When you create a text box, it appears as the first tile, right at the beginning of the video. Once you’ve added text, click and drag it to whereever you want it to appear in the sequence.
            
• When I produced the video, I chose one of Animoto’s jazz soundtracks, Blowin’ in from Chicago, from Hank Hirsh.
     
• Animoto worked its magic behind the scenes and delivered a sharp-looking video with fun transitions.

If you don’t like the way the video looks, you can ask Animoto to remix it for you. No two videos are the same, so you never know what the second version will look like.
   
  
Share your Animoto videos

Sharing your videos is a cinch. Add them to your MySpace & Facebook profiles, on your blog, email them to friends, put them up on YouTube or download them onto your computer. I uploaded mine to YouTube, added it to my Facebook profile and sent it to everyone in the garden club. Later this week, I’ll upload the video to the local TV stations’ websites.

Some of Animoto’s founders used to produce shows for MTV, Comedy Central & ABC. They studied classical music in London, played in rock bands in Seattle and developed software in Japan. They developed a patent-pending, Cinematic Artificial Intelligence that thinks like an actual editor and director.
    

How much it costs

You can create all the 30-second videos you want, for free. Each can accommodate from 12 to 15 images.

An all-access, non-commercial pass costs $30. Or buy a non-commercial three-month pass for $99. I paid $249 for an annual commercial pass which gives me several nice options the two others don’t have. First, I can remove the Animoto logo from the video. Second, I can include a button at the end that lets visitors click and visit a website. 

Animoto supports not-for-profits and other humanitarian causes with free pro accounts. You can apply at the site. 

One other thing I’ll do differently the next time I create a video. When I produced the video, Animoto gave me the option of mentioning the musician’s name and the name of the song, which I did.  But after I uploaded it to YouTube, YoutTube notified me and said I might be violating copyright. It said I don’t need to do anything but I can refute that if I so choose. I decided to do nothing.

Also, when visitors click on the link to watch the YouTube video, YouTube gives them the option of buying the music while the video is playing, which is distracting. Next time, I’ll remove the artist’s name from the video.

If you create Animoto videos, share them here. And have fun.

Posted In: Business Promotion, Facebook, Nonprofits, Photos & Graphics, Social media marketing, Special Events, TV Publicity, Video
posted On: 5/12/2009: 12:09 pm: By Joan
Comments: 19 Comments

Publicity Hound Ruth Furman, a PR specialist and a speaker at this weekend’s World Tea Expo in Las Vegas will be among panelists who will discuss ways tea retailers can generate publicity.

She asked if I could provide some tips for her handout, and I thought I’d share them here.

These tips are written specifically for those who sell tea. But there’s no reason you can’t tweak them for your own retail business, regardless of whether you’re selling dog beds or industrial widgets.

Retailers, remember that the days are long gone when we concentrated only on pitching story ideas to traditional media outlets. The Internet provides opportunities galore for spreading the word about any product or service.

1. If you’re not Twittering about tea, start right now! Remember that many people searching for tea information on Twitter will be using Twitter’s search engine. Use a hash tag (example: #herbaltea) when tweeting. Learn more about how to use Twitter hashtags for promotion and publicity. And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter.
2. The topic of gardening is hot right now because of the bad economy. How can tea-lovers create their own tea garden, filled with herbs and other tea ingredients?
3. What’s the Number One flavor of herbal tea? Survey tea lovers at your website and on the social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Write the results in a press release that you post online and distribute to the media.
4. What’s the correct way to make the perfect cup of tea? Create a short video of from two to three minutes, include a link to your website, and upload to the video-sharing sites.
5. Listen to the teleseminar I hosted recently with David Mathison, author of the book Be the Media. He offers tips galore on how to use social networking to promote and to build an email list.
6. Create your profile on Facebook. Then promote your retail tea business by creating Facebook Pages. Click the “Ads and Pages” icon in the lower left corner. You can create a Page for each product, and then invite your Facebook friends and others to become “Fans” of your pages. Remember that your Profile has Friends. Your Pages have Fans.
7. Create a tea-lover’s group on Facebook. Email them each week with a “tea lover’s tip of the week.”
8. Upload photos of tea and tea-related products, tools and ingredients to the photo-sharing sites like Flickr and PhotoBucket.
9. Create a profile on LinkedIn and start answering questions regularly on tea. It will help promote your expertise. (See “How to Use LinkedIn to Promote Anything–Ethically & Powerfully.”)
10. Subscribe to “The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week” and receive the ezine every Tuesday. It’s loaded with tips on how to generate free publicity.
11. Sign up for the free email tutorial “89 Ways to Write Powerful Press Releases” at  so you can learn how to write and distribute press releases.

If you’re a retailer and you have your own publicity tips, feel free to share it here.

Posted In: Business Promotion, Facebook, Holidays, LinkedIn, Photos & Graphics, Press Releases/News Releases, Social media marketing, Twitter, Video, YouTube
posted On: 4/27/2009: 10:38 pm: By Joan
Comments: 2 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