The Publicity Hound’s Blog  

Now is the time to start pitching if you’re hoping to convince journalists to feature your consumer product or service in holiday gift coverage.

Gift guides appear in many forms:

—As special sections in newspapers, like holiday gift guides printed by USA Today and the Wall Street Journal.

—As special holiday features in magazines like Redbook, Allure, Wired, Stereophile, Fast Company, Organic Gardening, Cooking Light, Shape, Atlanta Magazine, Cottage Living and Elite Traveler. Because many of these magazines have early deadlines, you must start pitching now.

—As special segments on TV such as Oprah’s “Favorite Things” show each year in which she lists her favorite holiday gifts.

—As special radio promotions.

—As columns, reviews or special holiday features in online magazines.

—Even bloggers feature their favorite things to give as holiday gifts.

If your consumer product or service would make the perfect gift, getting a placement in some of these media is easy—but only if you know where to look, whom to pitch, when to contact them, and if they want photos.

The Gift List can make your job easy.  Its staff contacts the top 250 daily newspapers, all the major wire services, and television shows like “Filter,” “The Look for Less,” and, of course, MTV, “Ellen,” “The View,” and hundreds more.

It doesn’t bother with media outlets that won’t mention products by name or those with circulations under 25,000.  Broadcast outlets must reach a national or significant regional audience.

Already, The Gift List has compiled a whopping 400 leads for this year’s features.  You can buy a subscription to either the Gift List for Holiday 2008 Print & Broadcast, or The Gift List for Holiday 2008 Web & Blog, or both.

What if “Oprah” or USA Today changes its feature focus the week before a deadline?  Not to worry.  The Gift List will notify subscribers who sign up for their ezine and email alerts.  You won’t miss a beat.  And you’ll be miles ahead of the competition.

Take a free test drive.

Posted In: Advertising, Blogs, Business Promotion, Holidays, Magazine Publicity, Media Leads, Newspaper Publicity, Pitching the Media, Radio Publicity, TV Publicity
posted On: 6/24/2008: 10:00 am: By Joan
Comments: No Comments

Flooding in the Midwest. Wild fires in California. Snow in the Northwest. Scorching heat on the East Coast.

And it’s still only spring.

This is the time to pitch weather stories. If you sell or give away a product or service to help people cope with the weather, let the media know. They’re hungry for any tie-in.

Several years ago, after terrible flooding in the Midwest, the president of a Minnesota company that sells dehumidifiers called a local drive-time radio show on a popular Milwaukee station. It was during a week when homeowners had bought every small engine and generator in the state, which they used to remove water from basements. On that afternoon, there wasn’t a generator to be found in a store anywhere in Wisconsin.

For at least 10 minutes, the host interviewed the company president who explained how his machine works. The host even repeated the company’s toll-free phone number several times. I remember thinking, “Now THAT’S smart!”   

What story idea can you pitch to help people cope? As I explained in my “Special Report #37: How to Tie Your Product, Service, Cause or Issue to the Weather,” piggybacking onto the weather is one of the easiest ways to get into the news, yet few Publicity Hounds take advantage of this opportunity.  

Start today adding weather stories to your 12-month publicity plan or media plan.

Posted In: Advertising, Business Promotion, Pitching the Media, Radio Publicity, The Local Angle
posted On: 6/17/2008: 12:01 pm: By Joan
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If you’re a member of your local chamber of commerce and the only thing you have to show for it is the receipt for your annual dues, don’t even think about dropping out.

Because you’re a smart Publicity Hound, you have an opportunity right at your fingertips to be a star in the organization and generate so much publicity for yourself that all the other members will be scratching their heads, wondering how in the world you’ve done it. Nonprofits, this applies to you, too.

Here’s what to do.

The next time the chamber has an event that the local media won’t cover, act like a reporter and cover it yourself. Buy an inexpensive Flip video camera and interview people at the event. (The camera shown in the photo above isn’t a Flip.)

If it’s a routine chamber breakfast meeting with a speaker, interview the speaker after the presentation for a segment of two to three minutes. At the same breakfast, create another short video. Ask the chamber president to provide a brief infomercial of upcoming chamber events like the annual golf outing or street festival.

At bigger events, like the annual awards banquet, interview the Business Person of the Year. If you really want to create a stir, choose a controversial topic that chamber members are buzzing about, like a proposed sales tax increase in your state. Interview one person on each side of the issue. You’ve just created two more videos.

Import the videos into your computer, which takes a minute or two, edit them, upload them to your website, give the chamber the links to the videos, and then watch what happens.

The chamber will probably email all its members and tell them to go to your website. Many of those members will share the links with their friends. The links will end up in the next chamber newsletter. And who knows where else.

Here’s the best part. You can offer that same videos to the local newspaper, magazine and TV and radio stations for use at their websites. Print media, in particular, are hungry for user-generated video, even if it’s of events that they’ve decided not to cover.

That’s what videographer John Easton does in Charlotte, North Carolina. He covers local business events and uploads them to his blog, or to his own streaming video channel, sort of like his own TV station, and then he offers the video to local media.

Too busy to fuss with all these details?

John says every community is teaming with people who you can hire for next to nothing to shoot and edit the video for you. He explained how to find them when he was a guest on a teleseminar I conducted recently on “9 Clever Ways to Use Video to Become a Publicity Darling in Your Industry or Community.”

If you’re not a member of a chamber of commerce, you can still cover events in your community and submit the video to local media that are hungry for user-generated content.

Posted In: Blogs, Business Promotion, Citizen journalism, How to Interview, Magazine Publicity, Media Leads, Publicity on the Internet, Radio Publicity, Special Events, Video
posted On: 6/3/2008: 6:35 pm: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment

Everybody, it seems, is Twittering these days. And for good reason. 

You can follow your friends who are Twittering, use Twitter numerous ways in your business (more about this in a minute), and even search for other Twitterers using specific keywords.   

Last week, Publicity Hound Harry Hoover announced that he started compiling a list of Twittering journalists and media outlets that Twitter.  They include reporters at Business Week, CNET, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, FOX News and the London Times.

And why would journalists Twitter? To keep up on the competition, of course.

Yesterday, he announced he has turned the list into a wiki for the benefit of PR people and other Publicity Hounds, and he’s asking anyone who knows of other journalists or media outlets to add to it.   

The list initially was compiled at our blog, THINKing, from information provided by Red66, CNET, Poynter, as well as Twitter keyword searches on terms such as “journalist” and “reporter”.

Notice how Harry used the search function within Twitter to build his list. If you’re already Twittering, plug in a few keywords or keyword phrases to see who you can find who’s Twittering about your topic. They might be worth following.  And perhaps even emailing if you have the solution to a problem they’ve mentioned in one of their posts.

In the next few weeks, I’ll be putting the finishing touches on my new special report on how to use Twitter for business.  

Posted In: Blogs, Business Promotion, Magazine Publicity, Newspaper Publicity, Radio Publicity, Social networking, TV Publicity
posted On: 5/11/2008: 8:07 pm: By Joan
Comments: 2 Comments

If you’re aching to get onto radio and TV, check out the five free teleseminars offered the last week in May by Web Business Ownership, devoted to teaching small business owners and entrepreneurs how to set up an Internet business.

You can register here for Media Week 2008:

Sunday, May 25: “Small Business Meets Big Media.”
J. Roger Powe of NBC will show you how to engage media professionals and explain why small businesses often miss out on media opportunities.

Tuesday, May 27: “Camera-Ready for TV.”
Shon Gables, host of Black Enterprise Business Report, will explain what producers and show hosts really want in a guest, and what it takes to be camera-ready. 

Wednesday, May 28: “What’s Right for Radio?”
Todd Bell, WPGC-AM will show you how to approach your local or national radio station with your pitch.

Thursday, May 29: “How to Be A Sought-After Newsworthy Professional”
Publicist Annie Jennings will explain how to tell your story.

Friday, May 30: “Getting On the Air - Online”
Stephan Jacob, executive producer of VoiceAmerica will show you how to tap into Internet radio as an information outlet to promote online!

Posted In: Radio Publicity, TV Publicity
posted On: 5/2/2008: 7:03 am: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment