free publicity

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.

Filed Under: Business Promotion, Holidays, Newspaper Publicity, TV Publicity Tagged With: Discovery World Museum, free publicity, holiday publicity, pi, Whole Foods

Publicity dilemma? Let Publicity Hound readers help—for free

1/26/2010 By Joan 6 Comments

Struggling to find a good story idea to pitch to the business reporter at your daily newspaper?

Wondering how to use your Facebook Fan page to promote your product or service?

Trying to catch the attention of the editors at Oprah’s magazine?

Help is on the way. Actually, it’s called “Help This Hound,” and it’s one of the most popular features in my weekly ezine, The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week, delivered every Tuesday.

Here’s how it works

Anyone who needs help with publicity or marketing can email a question to me, along with their name and town. If I use your question, I’ll post it here at my blog, and then print the question in my ezine.

Readers who are willing to help can offer their best ideas as blog comments. I choose the best ideas and print them in the following week’s newsletter. Authors, small business owners, PR people, publicists and nonprofits submit the most questions.

Here’s why “Help This Hound” is so popular

Most of us are too close to our own businesses to be able to see clever angles or unusual hooks that can catch a journalist’s attention.
Many Publicity Hounds are on razor-thin or non-existent publicity and marketing budgets. They appreciate the free ideas.
The blog posts live forever. That means that as the search engines pull in traffic, ideas will be accumulating here over several months or years. If I use your question, check back every few weeks to see who else has commented.
Even though I created this service to help you solve a problem, your question exposes you to my audience. Several people who have submitted questions over the years have gotten calls from journalists and bloggers who read about them in my newsletter. Others have even received additional business.

No anonymous questions, please. Be sure to offer enough information in your question so that my readers fully understand the problem. Explain what you’ve done that has or hasn’t worked. And include a link to your website. If appropriate, attach a photo of your product.

Right now, I’m short on questions, and I could really use yours. But don’t just email it to me. Help other Hounds by contibuting your best ideas when you see a question in my newsletter that you can answer.

How to subscribe

If you don’t subscribe to my newsletter, you can do so by typing your name and email address into the box on the right side of this screen, under my photo. Then check your email box (or spam folder) and click on the confirmation link.

By the way, have you downloaded the five free publicity ebooks that include the best publicity tips from my ezine in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009? They’re chock full of ideas, and there’s something there for everyone.

As you’ll notice in the ebooks, many of the best publicity tips, success stories, and dog jokes and videos come directly from my readers, with attribution.

I’d love to see yours. Bring ‘em on!

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers, Business Promotion, Facebook, Nonprofits, Pitching the Media, PR Consultants/Publicists, Publicity Resources Tagged With: free publicity, PR, PR resources, public relations

19+ story ideas to generate publicity, PR for your business

1/14/2010 By Joan 4 Comments

If you’re looking for publicity from bloggers or traditional media but can’t think of an idea to pitch to them, here’s a quick way to find several.

Longtime Publicity Hound Norman Lieberman reminded me about this yesterday when he emailed me to see if I had a list of questions that Publicity Hounds can ask themselves, designed to uncover nuggets of information that are possible story ideas.

I gave Norm two resources. The first is my “Story Idea Tickler List,” part of the handouts for my “Savvy Media Relations” workshop:

What’s new or unique about your business?
What do you offer that your competitors don’t?
How do you help people solve problems, save time or save money?
What business mistakes have you made that you learned from?
What new trends have you spotted in your industry?
Is there a social or political issue you feel strongly about? (Write an opinion column, letter to the editor or blog post.)
Are you sponsoring a contest or an award?
Can you piggyback your topic off a holiday or anniversary?
How are you using technology in your business?
Do you have any good visuals that tie into your story idea for television?
What about your personal life? (Hobbies, travels, food, clothing, etc.)
Have you formed an interesting partnership or alliance?
What how-to articles could you write?
What topics are good fodder for a tip sheet? (9 tips for….)
On what radio talk shows would you be a good fit and what’s the hot story of the day that ties into your expertise?
Are you the local angle to a national or regional story?
How are you using social media in your business?
How can you piggyback onto celebrity news? For example, here are 10 ways to generate publicity from the Tiger Woods mess and here’s how Connie Dieken, a Cleveland TV personality and media trainer, got publicity by piggybacking onto celebrity outbursts.
Do you have an interesting stand-alone photo you can offer the media? Newspapers and magazines often use these photos as fillers.

If those aren’t enough, you can check out the free sample chapter of my ebook, “How to be a Kick-butt Publicity Hound” where you’ll find more ideas, and a fuller explanation of some of the ideas listed above.

What ideas have you pitched recently that other Publicity Hounds could also use? Share them here.

Filed Under: Blogs, Business Promotion, Contests, Holidays, Photos & Graphics, PR Consultants/Publicists, Press Releases/News Releases, Publicity Resources, Social media marketing, TV Publicity, Writing Articles Tagged With: connie dieken, free publicity, media relations, Norman Lieberman, pitching to the media, PR, public relations, story ideas, tiger woods

Meeting a journalist? 9 magic phrases the media love

7/27/2009 By Joan 2 Comments

One of the best ways to generate publicity from traditional media outlets is to form a relationship with reporters, editors, broadcasters and freelancers.

That’s a critical step that 99 percent of the people miss!

And what a shame. If you know what they’re looking for, how to talk to them, how to help them, and how to stay on their radar screens, you’ll have a huge advantage.

When I worked as a reporter and editor for 22 years, I was able to tell within about 15 seconds if somebody pitching a story idea was genuinely concerned about helping me, or if their Number One goal was to simply generate free publicity.

If you’re meeting reporters face to face, or pitching an idea by phone or email, nine magic phrases can help you build a relationship with them. This video, created with a cool program called Animoto, explains all about the phrases I loved to hear when I was speaking with somebody who was either pitching a story idea to me, or wanted to get to know me better and genuinely help. It also explains one opportunity to meet journalists face to face.

What other phrases do you use when talking to journalists to help build the relationship?

Filed Under: Business Promotion, How to Interview, Magazine Publicity, Media Kits, Newspaper Publicity, Photos & Graphics, Pitching the Media, PR Consultants/Publicists Tagged With: author publicity, free publicity, media interviews, Media Kits, National Publicity Summig, press kits, promotion, publicity

Your media pitch isn’t dead until you hear the word ‘no’

6/2/2009 By Joan 2 Comments

Several readers saw the item in last week’s newsletter about getting onto “Oprah” and wrote to tell me that they pitched ideas months ago and still haven’t heard back from Oprah’s producers. Can they assume their pitches are in the “deleted” folder?

Never!

While getting onto “Oprah” is always a long shot, I’ve heard of cases in which journalists and broadcasters follow up on pitches as long as two years after receiving them.

I posted a Note to my Facebook page last night, telling my friends that publicists need to update themselves periodically on pitches that are still “out there.” Also, I advised, tell your clients not to be surprised if they hear from the media when they least expect it. Clients must be prepared on a second’s notice to discuss an old story idea.

Susan Harrow, creator of “The Ultimate Guide to Getting Booked on Oprah,” was on CNBC last week to discuss The Oprah Effect.” Several entrepreneurs discussed how they got onto the show, and what it has meant to their businesses.

I missed the show. If you did, too, you can see a short segment in which Susan gives two tips for getting onto Oprah. (Apologies for the commercial.)

Watch a clip of Susan Harrow discussing
how to get onto Oprah