When sixth-grader Sophie Paterson of New Zealand announced that farting was the topic of her speech during a speech competition last fall, the audience snapped to attention.

With her younger brother, Ben, nearby, ready to hold up diagrams that further explained her topic, Sophie launched into her speech:

Most of the time, when friends email me things like this, I try to ignore them. But I couldn’t resist looking at this one. As I read Sophie’s speech, I struck by how many lessons it offers for authors, speakers, writers and others who want publicity. Here are the lessons I found buried in her winning speech on farting:   
   

1. Get outside your comfort zone.

Write about, speak about, and be passionate about topics that are controversial, prickly or yucky. A sixth-grader can certainly muster a lot more enthusiasm for the topic of farting than you and I could, but she not only loves the topic, she embraces it. 
     
     
2. Use visuals.

Whether you’re speaking from the platform, writing ebooks, hosting webinars, or writing press releases, visuals make words come alive. I don’t know what the diagrams looked like on the cards that Sophie’s little brother held up in front of the audience, but I’ll bet they were a scream.     
   
   
3.  Use lists. 

Sophie’s Top 10 list of animals that fart was educational. And priceless. I love how she included “Zebras and my pony Free” in the Number 3 spot.
   
   
 4. Use statistics.

Who knew that the average person farts 14 times a day, expels a half liter of gas, or that hydrogern sulphide is the compound that makes them stink?

Statistics give your topic perspective. The Internet makes it easy to obtain statistics on any topic, within seconds. 
   
   
5.  End with a funny poem:

A fart can be useful
It gives the body ease,
It warms the bed in winter
And suffocates the fleas. 

Did you see any other lessons in her first-place speech about farts?  

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Host me either on Thursday, March 8, or Friday, March 9. I need a room big enough to hold about 30 people for a public workshop. It doesn’t have to be a hotel. Corporate conference rooms or university classrooms work just fine.

I’ll be speaking on Saturday, March 10, at the Independent Book Publishers Association’s annual Publishing University on Saturday, March 10,  at the Sheraton Fisherman’s Wharf Hotel. I’ll be on these panels:

Advanced Techniques for Creating Websites/Blogs That SELL at 9 a.m.

Using Facebook and Twitter to Jump-start Sales at 1:45 p.m.

Getting Attention: Promoting Your Titles to Bloggers and Online Communities at 3:15 p.m.
Register here for that event.

I love piggybacking my own public workshops onto others where I’m speaking in the same town. So if you’re in or near the Bay Area, and you’d like to partner with me, email me or call 262-284-7451 and let’s talk!

Lyssa Beyer and Matt Schroeder, her associate regional editor, were stopping shoppers and asking if they knew about Patch, which operrates in 22 states in the U.S. and the District of Columbia. Two weeks earlier, I had pitched a story about my local garden club to Beyer, and she said yes. They’re interviewing one of our members this week. So this was a good chance to meet her in person.

Here are her tips on how to use Patch:
  
 
1. Share your blog posts.

If you have your own blog, or even if  you don’t, you can register to be a blogger at your local Patch site. Go to Patch.com, click on the state where live, and then the Patch community where you want your blog to appear. Scroll down and look for the “Want to Blog on Patch?” button in the middle column. Introduce yourself, tell the editor a little about your blog, and wait for instructions.

You can share all your posts, or some of them. I recommend you tweak your posts to give them a local angle.  

Your post won’t appear until the local editor approves it. Patch welcomes moderated comments at all blogs. So check back periodically to continue the conversation if people comment on your posts.

Local nonprofits, this is a great opportunity for you, too!
   
  
2. Pitch news and feature stories to your local editor. 

Beyer responded to my pitch within 48 hours. Remember, local news is their bread and butter, so don’t be shy. 

When you pitch, let the editor know if you can offer contact information for other sources, or photos and graphics.
   
  
3.  Invite your local editor for coffee.

Beyer says she meets regularly with people in the community, usually at local coffee shops.  This is a great chance to start building the relatonship. Invite your local editor for coffee even if you don’t have  a story to pitch. See 18 ways to schmooze with reporters and Magic phrases to use with the media.
   
  
4.  Claim your free listing for businesses and organizations.

Patch includes a free directory of local businesses and organizations. Listings include details such as hours, payments and more, tools for owners, original photos, a description, and customer feedback.  If you’re squeamish about people reviewing your business, get over it. They’re probably already talking about you somewhere online. Read about 11 ways to use Yelp to respond to bad reviews. Much of that applies to Patch, too.   

5. Post your event on the calendar.

One of the reasons I love Patch is because readers can sign up for daily email alerts. When I get mine, I usually drop what I’m doing and head on over to Patch to see what’s happening in my community.
   
  
6.  Share your photos and videos.

The Gallery section is a great place to upload photos or videos that promote an upcoming event, or photos or videos you took at an event.  Remember, stand-alone photos and videos are welcome. You don’t necessarily have to have a big news story.
   
  
7. Write an announcement.

Just married? New baby? Make the honor roll? Spread the word in an announcement. This is for personal news only, not promoting your business. 
  
  
Those are my tips for using Patch. What are yours? If you’re using Patch, what kinds of results have you seen? More people attending your events? More people saying, “I saw you on Patch”?

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.

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“I am the Founder of Pin-ups for Vets, an award-winning non-profit organization that supports hospitalized veterans and deployed service members.

“We produce World War II-style pin-up calendars that raise money for hospitalized veterans. We use the money to buy rehabilitation equipment to help our veterans in their physical, occupational and cognitive therapy sessions. Although we have won a number of community service awards, we have never been funded. We’re using hundreds of volunteer hours to keep the organization operating. 

“Our biggest challenge has been to get the word out there to the rest of the U.S. about our small organization with the big heart so we can help more wounded warriors . 

“As the 1940′s-style calendar girl in the Pin-Ups for Vets calendar, I have made thousands of personal bedside visits to ill and injured vets in VA and military hospitals across the U.S. and overseas to present the donated calendar gifts from my supporters . The response to the hospital visits has been overwhelming!

“We would love to find a way to spread the word about our organization and have had some publicity on FOX news, in Stars & Stripes and in other media, but we need more. We can’t afford a publicist right now. Can your Publicity Hounds give us some ideas on how to spread the word about what we’re doing so we can sell more calendars and help more injured vets?” 

****

I wrote my first press release decades ago, on an IBM Selectric typewriter. Back then, press releases were viewed as disposable documents created for one purpose – and only one purpose: to convince a small group of media gatekeepers to share something with the audience they controlled.

My boss had lots of rules about press releases. We were told how long they could be, what had to be included, what was never included, how many we could send in a month, and exactly how long the process should take to write it, get it approved by a client, get it distributed via fax, postal mail or press wire service, and how to follow up on it by calling the targeted journalists.

I was pretty good about following those rules for years, but I threw them out the window as the new century dawned. Good thing, too, because as the first decade of the 21st century came and went, it became crystal clear to me that the good old press release had been completely reincarnated in a new role – and anyone who hasn’t yet rethought the press release is missing a tremendous opportunity for low-cost content marketing.

What’s changed? Here are the four most important things that have changed in the way press releases function in today’s connected world:

• Press releases are read by anyone and everyone with access to a web browser or smart phone. They aren’t the “insider” documents they once were, and they have become one of the cornerstones of a company’s online reputation.
   
• Press releases aren’t disposable. Google never forgets – the release you post on your website or send via newswire today will be searchable for the foreseeable future. Maybe forever. And there are legal and customer satisfaction implications involved in how press releases are written that would have turned my old boss’s hair gray.
   
• Press releases now have hyperlinks, embedded photos and videos. I know, that’s old news, right? We’ve been adding web addresses to press releases for the last 20 years. But 20 years ago, those links weren’t trackable the way they are today – and any photos or videos we offered were completely separate from our press releases.
   
• Press releases have a whole new constituency. Bloggers, content aggregators and scrapers, and a global audience are eager for news they can use and share.

The truth is that I send out more press releases today than I ever thought I would in the days when I viewed them as a way to convince someone else to write about my company. Ever since I learned that the press release itself was a great marketing tool to drive traffic, increase customer engagement, and boost my search engine rankings, I’ve discovered dozens of new uses for them.
 
 
The Proof is in the Testing

In February, 2011, when I started a new job as director of marketing at a SaaS software company, I put in what I thought was a routine budget request for a media data base – Vocus, Cision, MyMediaInfo – I wasn’t picky. I just knew that I would need a good database in order to add PR to my multi-channel marketing mix. The chairman of our board suggested I try a new service called MyPRGenie instead, and he arranged a free trial for me of their premium service.

That gave me the chance to try something I’d wanted to try for a long time: a head-to-head test to see just how much traffic press releases by themselves could drive to a website or blog. One of the content marketing strategies we launched was a new blog designed to expand our reach and introduce the concepts behind our products and services to new audiences.

The Distributed Marketing Blog published its first posts in late March, and from April through mid-June, I sent out an SEO-optimized press release with half of the blog posts, and posted the others without a press release. All posts – those with and without a press release – were supported with the same social media out-reach: links to our company Facebook page, updates on my personal LinkedIn profile, and tweets on the five Twitter accounts our company uses.

The results are clear in the graphic below: the posts supported by a press release got twice as many visitors as the posts without a press release.

Of course, the June numbers presented here are just a little bit misleading – I had to remove about 200,000 unique visitors to our blog that month because one of those press releases we sent out resulted in pick-ups from PC World, CNET, BNET, Fox Business, Forbes, Fortune, and the Wall Street Journal (along with several hundred smaller blogs and publications).
 
Traffic Target Surpassed
 
So 12 weeks after we launched our blog, I had blown our traffic target out of the water, and gotten global exposure for our company and our blog – thanks to that old standby, the press release. It was just the first of many similar successes we’ve had this year.
 
Although no other post has gotten more traffic than that very first one, we’ve had eight posts so far that have gotten awfully close – and if I was keeping an old fashioned PR clip book, it would have over 980 clips from major publications and broadcast outlets in it.

Those “clips” came straight off the press releases we’ve sent out. In more than nine months at my job, I haven’t made a single phone call to an editor, attended a single press event, or done anything else that even smacks of the PR skills I have no time to use. I don’t have a PR firm. The only thing I’ve done is post SEO-optimized press releases on a single service that sends the releases with an email cover note to journalists, bloggers and analysts in their database.
 
Press Releases and So Much More

So I stopped testing, and started writing a press release for every piece of content I wanted to promote. In fact, whenever I post new content, I write four things:

1. The new content itself (starting with a catchy headline, followed by an outline, followed by the SEO-optimized content).
    
2. The press release.
    
3. A series of 5-7 tweets.
    
4. An abstract for sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon.

Webinars, presentations, new blog posts, White Papers, trade show speaking engagements – you name it, we probably send out a press release about it. The distribution list for our releases ranges from a few hundred contacts in a particular industry to about 2,000 contacts for a more general topic.

Every press release follows a standard outline designed to boost search traffic:

• SEO-optimized title / headline
   
• Sub-head
   
• Two to three paragraphs promoting the content with a call to action (read it, download it, attend the event, etc.)
   
• A two-paragraph boilerplate (who, what, where, when, why – all the basics, including links)

Like other services, MyPRGenie has built-in SEO optimization tools, and that makes each release work overtime to drive traffic back to my content or website. The right words – the words my prospective customers use when they’re searching for products like mine – are critical in the strategy of using press releases to build traffic.
 
 
Don’t Forget Photos

Perhaps just as importantly, every single press release (and every single piece of content) gets its own unique photograph or graphic.

I’m a “word person”, and I was slow to realize just how powerful great art is in building traffic for content marketing. But I’m a true believer now. A press release titled, “How to Become a Legendary Marketer” illustrated with a photograph of a knight in shining armor (who just happens to be my son, so the photo is especially attractive) gets much more attention than a press release with the same headline and no photo. How do I know? Because I tested that, too.

Here’s a look at two weeks’ worth of press release titles and images from The Distributed Marketing Blog. (Our total cost for the legal, licensed images you see here, by the way, was $12 – most of them were free. For a look at great free or low-cost art for your content, check out this post from my personal blog.)

Last, but not least, we use the social media links available through the press release service extensively. Because all I have to do is click a button, I’ve been able to expand my social media outreach to services like StumbleUpon, Reddit and dozens of others that are well beyond the scope of my internal social media capabilities. 
 

No Such Thing as “Too Many” Releases

So here’s the bottom line for me: press releases work, whether or not they results in direct coverage.

Long ago, I remember being afraid to send out too many press releases. It was expensive, and I worried that I’d overwhelm the small number of journalists I was targeting.

That was then.

Now, I don’t have to worry about it. The people who read my press releases now do it because they want to. They’ve opted in to a distribution list, clicked on a link, searched for the keywords, or gone to a website where my release is featured.

As for the journalists, many of them are now paid at least in part on the number of readers they draw. From the standpoint of a blogger or journalist on a deadline, a press release offers:

• Fast copy that’s usually well written. (Your press releases ARE well written, right?)
   
• Freedom from copyright hassles or questions. (You wouldn’t send it to them if you didn’t hope they’d reuse it, right?)
   
• Fresh ideas that may be timely and topical. (Your press releases are timely, right?)

Nearly 75 percent of all the journalists working today are freelancers – a complete turn-around from a time 10-15 years ago when high-paying jobs in journalism were the norm instead of the rarity they are today. For freelancers at even the most prestigious sites, compensation is usually tied directly to the number of readers they attract to their online posts.

The more articles they post, the more opportunities they have to draw readers. So they’re hungry for fresh content and fresh ideas in a way that their predecessors never were. It’s a hunger I’m happy to fill – and press releases remain the most cost-effective item on the menu for everyone.

“I’d really like to use Flickr to host a competition. I’d ask people to submit photos of a variety of airports, highways, bridges and all types of buildings that the company I work for has or is currently managing or constructing.

“Potentially, I could offer a prize of photo equipment to attract interest.  It’s unclear whether Flickr would perceive this as  commercial use because I don’t plan to sell anything, but rather, generate community and interest in the company. 

“I’m also looking for any other suggestions your Publicity Hounds might offer on how to promote this.”

“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.