The Publicity Hound’s Blog  

Here’s a clever tip from Tom Antion’s teleseminar last week on  “How to Get Instant High Rankings on Google Using Short Videos.” 

Find very popular videos at video-sharing sites like YouTube. Then create your own video commenting on that video. Lots of people who care enough to watch the YouTube video will be curious about the comments, especially the video comments. And if you’re clever about how you create the video comment, you can pull traffic back to your own website.

One of the most popular video series is “Will It Blend?” in which a geeky-looking guy in a lab coat blends everything from an iPod to a stun gun in his industrial-strength blender. Some videos in the series have gotten more than 1 million views. You can post a written comment, or, as Tom suggests a video that comments on it.

During your video comment, of course, you will explain subtley how visitors can get to your own website. Tom explains three ways to do that.    

He recorded the teleseminar and turned it into a CD. You can order it here.

Posted In: Business Promotion, Publicity on the Internet, YouTube
posted On: 3/4/2008: 2:37 am: By Joan
Comments: 2 Comments

When consumers want to buy a flat-screen TV, take a vacation to a place where they’ve never been, or see a movie at the local theater, who do they turn to for advice?

Their friends, family and experts.

Yet only one in four communications professonials have a word-of-mouth program in place. An article in the February issue of PR Tactics includes results from a survey called Myths & Realities, conducted by Ketchum and USC’s Annenberg Strategic Public Relations Center.

It says that despite strong evidence that friends, family and experts play a key role in influencing decisions, only 24 percent of communicators have a word-of-mouth program in place.

Those programs might include:

• A company blog.

• Posting comments at other blogs that discuss a company’s product, service, cause, issue or interest. (See “Let bloggers create publicity for you.”) 

• Content sharing sites like Squidoo and HubPages.

• Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.

• Something as simple as a “tell a friend” box at your website.

• A contest in which consumers create a clever video of how they use your product or video, upload it to YouTube and compete for prizes.

• Encouraging customers to write a product review and post it at your website

There are dozens more ideas. Let’s hear yours.

Posted In: Blogs, Contests, Publicity on the Internet, Social networking, YouTube
posted On: 2/11/2008: 11:30 am: By Joan
Comments: 2 Comments

My blood boils when I see authors wasting time on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble best-seller promotions in which they rally their friends and their friends’ friends to buy their book on the same day so it jumps to the top of the list.

Unless you’re already a big-name author, these campaigns rarely bring lasting results. Besides, so many authors execute them so poorly. 

Barbara Rozgonyi got me all worked up again when I read her explanation of why she sees little value in participating by donating an info product that the author will give away as a bonus to anyone who buys the book. 

The enticement, of course, is that everyone who donates a bonus—and lots of marketers usually step forward—must agree to email everyone on their lists and push the book.  That means that in exchange forgiving away one of your ebooks or a special reports, you can get in front of thousands of people who might not know about you and convert them into your own newsletter subscribers or customers. Barbara writes:

“When I had the chance to participate in one of these book promos, I jumped on it. Dreaming about adding hundreds of names to a list overnight is heady.

“But, it’s just that—a dream. Almost every ‘lead’ that came in unsubscribed. Immediately. These people have no interest in a relationship, only collecting products.”

Here’s the comment I posted at Barbara’s blog:

I despise these Amazon and B&N campaigns.

Back when I didn’t know any better, I’d gladly give away my valuable product as a bonus, but I refused to do special mailings to my list. Why? Because my list of 40,000+ trusts me. And one book title will appeal to such a small slice of those people, anyway, that I can’t justify pestering the rest of them.

Today, I neither give away the product nor send a special email to Publicity Hounds on my list.  So authors, please leave me alone.

These campaigns are like stuffing the ballot box. They’re no reflection of the actual popularity of a book.

I wish authors would stop wasting time on this and spend it instead doing keyword research, then blogging, writing articles, submitting to content-sharing social media sites, creating videos about their books and posting them to YouTube—the types of things that pay huge dividends weeks, months and even years later.

Read what Steve Weber has to say about other disadvantages of these campaigns (use the arrows at the top of the frame to move to the next page). He’s author of the book Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors, and this is apparently excerpted from his book. 

If you participated in an Amazon or B&N campaign as the author or the person who donated the freebie, let’s hear your take on this.  Worth it? Or a waste of time?

Posted In: Authors & Publishers, Blogs, Information Products, Publicity for Niche Markets, Publicity on the Internet, Social networking, YouTube
posted On: 2/3/2008: 5:22 pm: By Joan
Comments: 3 Comments

Publicity Hound Meryl K. Evans reminds us not to use YouTube or podcasting as a replacement for any written content we currently provide.

“If you do, you could neglect a small but important audience– those with disabilities.  The deaf, like me, can’t follow the video unless it’s obvious from visuals.

“The blind miss out on visual cues.”

She said Jeff Crilley, the FOX News reporter in Dallas, includes a link to his video in every newsletter, “but thankfully he continues to provide content in the same newsletter.”The number of people with disabilities has grown, especially with Baby Boomers losing hearing and eye sight as a result of getting older.

Not using video yet in your PR campaign?  You should be.  Learn how. See “How to Make a Fortune with Video.”

Posted In: Publicity for Niche Markets, Publicity on the Internet, YouTube
posted On: 12/19/2007: 10:01 am: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment

My friend Bob Baker, an expert at marketing for musicians, created this neat YouTube video about how singer-songwriter Terry Prince, at left, has sold 15,000 CDs in only 18 months.

Prince, shown in this video playing keyboards on the Santa Monica Pier, says his strategy is simple: go where the people are. He’s a busker, someone who does live performances in public places.

If you do the math, you’ll conclude that Prince makes more than $8,000 a month, or about $275 an hour playing part-time.

He says: “Set the table and the hungry will eat.”

Baker, by the way, was my guest during a teleseminar we conducted called “Do-it-yourself PR Tips for Songwriters, Musicians and Bands on a Budget” and shared all kinds of incredible advice on how musicians can generate publicity online and offline.

Come to think of it, Prince ought to pitch a story about his success as a street musician to local and national music magazines and even his local TV stations.

Posted In: Business Promotion, Magazine Publicity, YouTube
posted On: 11/28/2007: 2:56 pm: By Joan
Comments: No Comments