The Publicity Hound’s Blog

Special Events

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Gift expert needs product ideas for Pittsburgh Women’s Expo

Jennifer Melnick Carota of Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania writes:

“I am an expert bargain shopper and ‘give-ologist’ known as the Gift Therapist. I have a ton of fun teaching folks how find fabulous gifts on a shoestring budget.

“I recently combined all of my bargain shopping tips and gifting advice into my first book titled ‘Shop Smart, GIVE MORE’ and I have been asked to speak about it next month at a regional Women’s Expo in the Pittsburgh area.

“I have purchased table space where I will sign my books throughout the two-day event, but wondered if your Hounds had any creative ideas on what other types of informational products I could develop and sell at the Expo, as well as the upcoming gift giving season.

“The event begins October 11th. Yikes!

Posted In: Business Promotion, Information Products, Publicity for Niche Markets, Special Events
posted On: 9/23/2008: 11:52 am: By Joan
Comments: 14 Comments

Colleges hungry for experts who speak on 17 topics

These are gloomy times for many Publicity Hounds who are corporate speakers and rely primarily on speaking fees and back-of-the-room product sales.

Some companies, faced with huge expenses they can’t control such as the skyrocketing cost of gasoline, are slashing training budgets. Corporate speakers, competing with thousands of other speakers for gigs, are finding that the pot of money available to pay them has shrunk.

4 ways to tweak your topic

If I relied on most of my revenue from speaking, which I don’t, one of the first things I’d do is figure out a way to tweak my topic for the college market. Unlike private companies, colleges and universities have several sources of money, such as student activity fees, that are recession-proof. That means the college speaking market doesn’t go south when the economy does.

Here are four examples of how you can tweak your topic for colleges:

1. A speaker who trains corporate executives on leadership can take the fundamental points of the presentation and teach college stuents how to be leaders, whether it’s within their fraternities or sororities, or student government, or within a special-interest group on campus.

2. An expert on corporate recruiting and retention can teach college fraternities and sororities how to recruit and retain members. Greeks, by the way, have their own budgets for hiring speakers, yet another recession-proof pot of money.

3. Speakers who specialize in motivating corporate audiences as convention keynoters can take their message to college campuses, where motivational speakers are in high demand.

4. Diversity trainers who target corporate America should start thinking about how they can teach college faculty, staff and students about diversity. At a four-year collge, a kid from the inner-city and a farm kid from Kansas can suddenly find themselves roommates, with all kinds of potential problems.

Where to learn more about speaking at colleges

Leadership, fraternity and sorority issues, motivational and inspirational messages, and diversity are among the 17 categories of topics that are in demand at colleges, universities, two-year colleges and tech schools. James Malinchak, ”King of the College Speaking Circuit,” reviewed them all during a teleseminar I conducted with him today. You can listen here.

It’s a preview for his College Speaking Success Boot Camp Dec. 4-7 in Los Angeles, and attendees can save $750 if they register by Sept. 30.

Posted In: Authors & Publishers, Special Events
posted On: 9/18/2008: 8:23 am: By Joan
Comments: No Comments

New social networking site for New Age, spiritual communities

New Age Directories—sort of a MySpace or Facebook of the New Age, spiritual and alternative communities— has just gone live.

“Create your own online world and promote yourself, your ideas, your dreams; share your thoughts, expertise and advice; share your healing, love and gratitude; find, seek, look, listen, ask; make friends, business contacts, even romance – anything and everything New Age, Spiritual and Alternative. It’s worldwide and 100 percent totally free.”

The website features:

News about New Age, spiritual or alternative events, people or services.
Free music and videos.
Free classifieds. Advertise anything. Buy/sell/swap/barter.
Free business directory. Promote your business.
Forums, blogs and live chat. Make new business contacts, friends & companions.
New Age dating and romance section
Show your favorite photos, mp3s or movies
Have your say, get advice, ask questions
Create your own clubs, private forums and personal blogs.
Create your own free website
Create your own opinion poll
All blogs have public, moderate or private membership
Full social bookmarking access
Entire website has full email security and privacy
Public, moderated or private membership to all clubs and forums

This is a great site for anyone looking to connect with others in the New Age genre. If you’re promoting a product, service, cause or issue related to a New Age, spirituality or alternative lifestyle topic, add this site to your publicity plan or media plan.

Posted In: Blogs, Business Promotion, General, Press Releases/News Releases, Social media marketing, Social networking, Special Events
posted On: 6/10/2008: 9:13 am: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment

Create video for your chamber of commerce, local media

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

Help Promote Year of the Dawg in Big Rapids, Michigan

Lynne Scheible of Big Rapids, Michigan writes:

“Leadership Mecosta, our community leadership program, is sponsoring a community art project.

“Area businesses and organizations are sponsoring fiberglass statues of more than 30 bulldogs, 3 by 4 feet. We chose a bulldog because it’s the mascot of Ferris State University, our local college.

“Our job now is to promote the heck out of this so that people will come to Big Rapids and the surrounding area to see these dogs artistically designed by local artists. Our web page is at http://www.yearofthedawg.com

“Other communities have done similar projects. Chicago did cows. South Haven, Michigan did bears. And Midland, Michigan did Trolls.

“Can your Hounds come up with some promotion ideas to pull tourists to Big Rapids to see these dawgs?”