The Publicity Hound’s Blog  

Rachel Mielke of New York, New York writes:

“I have a high-end designer jewelry company, Hillberg & Berk, that wholesales across Canada.  We have just broken into the U.S. market by being invited down to do a trunk show with Bloomingdale’s in New York City. 

“This is an unheard of opportunity for our company and could really change our business forever if the show goes well. Only problem is that no one in NYC has ever heard of my company. I want to do something to generate publicity and get some radio or news press the day of my trunk show but I have no idea what to do.

“I know it needs to be something huge and crazy to get the attention of the New York media. Can your Hounds help?”

Posted In: Business Promotion, Publicity for Niche Markets, Special Events
posted On: 11/25/2008: 4:41 pm: By Joan
Comments: 4 Comments

If you’re creating events on your Facebook page for speaking engagements, book signings, teleseminars or anything else you want to promote, don’t miss an important step—emailing the invitation to a select group of your friends, or all of them, using the email function on Facebook.

If you have thousands of friends, that’s a time-consuming chore. But it’s worth it. Here’s an example that shows how those invitations made my cash register ring the last few days (and it’s still ringing).

On Wednesday, I created an event at Facebook called “How to Promote on Twitter” because I wanted my friends to know about the teleseminar series I’m hosting on Oct. 13 and 14 on How to Use Twitter to Amass an Army of Followers, Customers & Valuable Contacts–and Promote. I have more than 1,500 Facebook friends, and it took Chris Buffaloe, my assistant, more than an hour to email them all and invite them to the event.  Facebook lets you invite only 100 people at a time, which can be tedious.

When one of my Facebook friends, Adam Urbanski, the Marketing Mentor, got the invitation, he RSVP’d:

 I haven’t seen Adam in several years so I went to his Facebook profile page and noticed he’s a pretty popular guy because he has more than 3,500 friends. And there on his wall was a one-liner, letting all his friends know he had written my wall for the Twitter teleseminar event. The link to “How to Use Twitter to Promote,” by the way, is a hyperlink. His friends can click on it, read my invitation and, if they wish, register.

As soon as Chris emailed my invitation, I received more than a dozen registrations for the teleseminar @ $77 each. That’s about $924 in revenue, just from sending one invitation.  Granted, the topic is hot right now, and lots of Twitterers want to know how to use the site to promote instead of posting lame tweets about what they had for lunch.  But emailing invitations and receiving RSVPs results in hundreds more eyes reading your invitation and even more mutual friends seeing the topic.

Boost attendance for your events

If you’re sending Facebook invitations for your events and seeing no results, these could be the reasons:

• The title of the event is boring.
• The copy on the sales page for your event doesn’t promise value.
• You don’t RSVP to your friends’ event invitations, and the only time your friends hear from you is when you have something to promote.
• You don’t have enough friends yet on Facebook who are willing to RVSP to your events, so that the one-liner like the one above, underlined in red, shows up on their walls. 
• You aren’t taking the time to reply to the messages they send you on Facebook. I made the mistake of letting several hundred email messages accumulate in my Facebook inbox before I went through them one by one and replied. Two of them were invitations to be a guest expert on other people’s teleseminars.

During the teleseminar I hosted earlier this summer on How to Use Facebook to Promote Your Business or Nonprofit, Jason Alba, my guest expert, discussed the importance of RSVPing to events and writing on your friends’ walls. The timeline he explained to us on how to promote almost any event will really make your cash register ring!

Posted In: Business Promotion, Facebook, Social networking, Special Events
posted On: 10/11/2008: 1:01 pm: By Joan
Comments: 4 Comments

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

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 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