free publicity

3 things you DON’T need to get onto big TV shows

2/8/2012 By Joan 2 Comments

Dying to get onto one of the big TV shows like the “Today” show?

Of course you are. Just one appearance can send your book flying off the shelves.

If you’re a small business person, it can mean thousands of people rushing to your website.

If you’re an expert in your field, it can mean more consulting assignments.

To get onto TV, here are three things you do NOT need:

A big, expensive PR firm to pitch your idea to the producers.
A highfalutin degree like a Ph.D.
A long track record of publicity successes.

What you DO need is a compelling story idea, delivered in such a way that the producers know the audience will love you.

A former NBC producer who booked guests for “Today” and “Dateline NBC” will explain what it takes to become a regular guest on national TV and even get offered your own show, during a webinar at 2 and 7 p.m. Eastern tomorrow, Thursday, Feb. 9, with my friend, Steve Harrison.

Steve will interview the producer and explain how to brand yourself for the media in a way that celebrates your uniqueness while also separating you from all the other experts in your field.

You’ll learn about publicity superstars like Jennifer, who became a regularly featured lifestyle expert on Fox News Channel and “The Early Show,” and scored coverage in hundreds of print media outlets including O the Oprah Magazine, Redbook, US Weekly, Success and Entrepreneur.

Register for the webinar “How To Become A Regular Guest On National TV And Other Secrets Of The Publicity Superstars” by clicking here.

If you can’t attend because the times are inconvenient, sign up anyway and find someone who can listen and take notes for you.

Please note, this is NOT my webinar. It’s Steve’s, and I promote it as an affiliate. He usually doesn’t record these, so show up, or risk missing it.

Filed Under: TV Publicity Tagged With: entrepreneur, free publicity, O the Oprah Magazine, redbook, success, the today show, tv publicity, TV talk shows, us weekly

Nice year-end gift for your clients and more tweets

12/30/2011 By Joan Leave a Comment

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow me on Twitter.

Prevent the “lago effect” from dooming your CEO who tries to “help” during a crisis. http://paper.li/clayedwardspr/pr-pros-paper

How Restaurants Are Using Social Media to Their Advantage. http://tinyurl.com/8xbuyuo

How to Use Great Testimonials, Once You Get Them. http://ow.ly/8b2LS

Get Blog Results for Business | Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad | Writing On The Web. http://tinyurl.com/7dzodzr

Top 50 Women Entrepreneur Experts to Follow on Twitter. http://ow.ly/8dj2U

Nice year-end gift for your clients. Free ebook with 2 dozen publicity/social media tips. http://ow.ly/8dj8Z

5 clever uses of LinkedIn’s brand new “group polls” feature. http://ow.ly/8dkJL

5-part strategy for cashing in on content and social media marketing in 2012. http://ow.ly/8dTU6

Freelancers: Pick up some extra cash in 2012. Pitch articles to these paying markets. http://ow.ly/8dUTu

Authors: Compare major print-on-demand companies. http://ow.ly/8dV2u

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers, Blogs, Crisis Communications, Social media marketing, Social networking, Twitter, Writing Articles Tagged With: author marketing, Blogging, free publicity, LinkedIn, pitching journalists, Twitter

3 ways to customize a pitch to journalists & get a “yes!”

8/18/2011 By Joan 2 Comments

The next time you pitch a journalist, will he read your pitch and know that you know who he is, what he covers, and why his audience should care about your story?

He will if you customize it.

That means sending a pitch that you can’t send to any other journalist because it’s unique to his media outlet, his beat or his audience. Those kinds of pitches prompt a journalist to think, “This is perfect for us!”

During the webinar I’m hosting at 3 p.m. Eastern Time today, Aug. 18, on “A Simple 5-Part Formula for Delivering the Perfect Media Pitch and Hitting it Out of the Park,” I’ll discuss how to customize a pitch. Here are three approaches:

Piggyback off a previous story the media outlet covered and pitch it as a “follow up.” That’s media lingo, and it will attract his attention. I gave an example in this post I wrote earlier this week about a candy shop in a mall.
Pitch a story idea for a specific section of his newspaper, a specific department in his magazine, or a certain portion of a radio show. Example: “This story is a perfect fit for the Consumer News Round-up segment of your show.”)
Pitch a story that appeals to a personal hobby or interest that ties into his beat. Let’s say you sell decorative corks and stoppers for wine bottles, and you’re pitching the food and wine editor of a magazine. His Twitter profile mentions he’s a wine collector. You could add this to your pitch: “Your wine collection will be as pleasing to the eye as it is to the pallet with a selection of wine stoppers from whimsical to elegant.”

Today’s webinar also includes handouts that explain how to customize the same pitch for three different media outlets, 27 story ideas you can pitch when the idea well is dry, and examples of great pitches that have generated mountains of publicity.

If the time is inconvenient, register anyway because I’ll send you the link for the page where you can download the video replay, the handouts, and all the other materials.

You can also sign up after the webinar is over and you’ll be led to the download page.

Filed Under: Magazine Publicity, Newspaper Publicity, Pitching the Media, Radio Publicity Tagged With: free publicity, pitch reporters, pitching journalists, story ideas

How to generate publicity from Pi Day

3/14/2010 By Joan 4 Comments

Piggybacking publicity onto popular or obscure days, weeks and months of the year is one of the easiest ways to find your way into the media, and I give lots of examples in my ebook, How to be a Kick-butt Publicity Hound.

Here’s one of the more obscure days of the year. It’s Pi Day, and it’s today, 3/14. It celebrates pi, which is 3.141592653589793, the mathematical constant that goes on without any repeating patterns, right into infinity.

Columnist Jim Stingl of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote a column in today’s paper about two local businesses that are celebrating:

Discovery World Museum is giving prizes to math wizards and Einsteins who can recite from memory the most digits of pi.
Each year, Whole Foods Market in Milwaukee gives away free slices of apple, cherry or blueberry pie, starting at 3:14 p.m. It also sells pies for $3.14.

Your business doesn’t have to be tied to food, or math, in order for you to generate a little publicity from Pi Day. What can you sell for $3.14? Or what challenge can you issue to your customers that ties into the numbers 3, 1 and 4?

Update:

Someone who commented on Stingl’s column another great publicity idea:

“When I used to work as a medical researcher, our department celebrated Pi Day every year by bringing pies into work on that day. A lot of people would bring in pies and we’d set up the pies on a credenza in the hall outside of the labs along with plates and forks, whipped cream, etc. On the wall above the pies there were fun facts about pie.”

This is something ANY business or nonprofit can do. Try it, and invite the local TV stations and newspapers.

For more ideas, see Special Report #45: How to Generate National Publicity from Your Own Holiday (or Day, Week or Month of the Year). Or if you don’t want to create your own day, you can always piggyback onto someone else’s.