PR

Dog Tweets: How entrepreneurs decide how to post on LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter

2/3/2012 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.

How entrepreneurs decide how to post on LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter. http://ow.ly/8MvYM

4 easy tactics for becoming a must-follow account on Twitter. http://ow.ly/8MHte

5 Ways Writers Can Break Out of the Tired Old Social Media Box. http://ow.ly/8Mxlx

How to keep your face out of LinkedIn ads. http://ow.ly/8Mw6j

Don’t create your next info-product until you watch this cool video that explains a smart 5-step system. http://ow.ly/8Onwp

13 Ways To Get More Traffic & Publicity From Slideshare. http://ow.ly/8OA68

Top 30 PR Do’s and Don’ts. http://ow.ly/8OzE4

18-point checklist for proofreaders. http://ow.ly/8PTc9

Press Release Tip: Always include a strong call to action & explain EXACTLY what you want people to do (click, call, write…)

The Inside Scoop on Using Twitter Lists for Profit and Sanity http://ow.ly/8Rgbr

Filed Under: Facebook, LinkedIn, Social media marketing, Twitter, Video Tagged With: author marketing, Facebook, LinkedIn, PR, social media, Twitter

9 ways to use QR codes for PR, publicity & marketing

11/9/2010 By Joan 4 Comments

At first glance, it looks like a crossword puzzle that can appear almost as small as a postage stamp.

It’s a QR code, short for quick response. And it can be one of the most valuable tools in your PR arsenal.

QR codes, similar to bar codes that appear on packaged products, are used widely in Japan but are becoming a popular way for marketers to catch the attention of busy consumers. You can find them on everything from the sides of buses to the backs of business cards.

Mobile phones that have bar code scanning applications installed can “read” the code, which can have URLs and other information embedded. Within seconds, a visitor can arrive at your website to learn more about a product or service. The code you see at left should take you to Google.com. Make sure your phone can scan a QR code with its camera, either with an application that you download or via software that’s already installed on your phone.

How to Use QR Codes

Here are nine ways to use QR codes for publicity, PR and marketing:

Lead reporters to your online pressroom.
Point consumers to a press release.
Authors, use it to lead people to reviews for your books.
Speakers, use it at your website or on printed materials to send people who are considering hiring you to a short video demo.
Restaurants, print the code on your menus and let diners read about the specials of the day so they don’t have to wait for the waiter.
Take consumers to a video that demonstrates tips for using your product or service.
Nonprofits, you can use them to send visitors to a donations page.
Save money on expensive printed fliers or paid ads by taking people to a web page where they can find the same information.
Save money on ads in newspapers and magazines by inserting the QR code instead of a lot of text

Don’t Second-guess Your Customers

If you’re thinking, “But our customers won’t use this,” consider that there are more mobile phones on the planet than personal computers. If most of your customers aren’t using QR codes now, they might within six months. The ship is leaving right now. Hop aboard, or let your competitors stand at the helm.

I’ll share more tips on QR codes, including how to get them and use them, during my webinar “60+ Places Offline to Promote Your Product, Service, Cause, Issue or Event to Build the Buzz and Encourage Others to Promote for You.” It’s at 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, Nov. 23. The first 20 people who register get the free handout “13 Ways to Involve Journalists and Bloggers in Whatever You’re Promoting.” Those first 20 seats will be gone by the end of today.

Let me know about offline tactics you use to promote, and send a photo if you can. I can work the idea into my presentation and create even more publicity for you!

Promote Your Own QR Code Here

Do you use QR codes? If so, how? And what kind of response have you received?

Where can we find your QR code?

Filed Under: Advertising, Authors & Publishers, Business Promotion, Media Kits, Nonprofits, Photos & Graphics, Press Releases/News Releases Tagged With: nonprofit marketing, PR, product marketing, promote events, promotion, qr codes

5 ways to be included on other people’s Twitter lists

9/1/2010 By Joan 5 Comments

When I hosted the recorded webinar last week on How to Use Twitter Lists & Directories to Promote Your Expertise and Build Your Brand, I encouraged participants to get onto as many Twitter lists as possible because lists are a powerful form of free advertising.

One of my suggestions was to write a blog post telling readers the types of lists where you’d be a perfect fit, and then suggesting that they add you to existing lists on those topics, or create new ones.

But before you do that, it’s helpful to first find out how people on Twitter perceive you. This will give you other ideas to add to the list of topics on which you’re an expert, and some of them might surprise you. The instructions below are included on the handouts from last week’s webinar, and the entire package is available here.

To see whose lists you’re on:

Log into your Twitter account
Go to your Home page
Look in the upper right corner, near your gravatar, for the word “Listed.” It will tell you how many lists you’re on.
Click on it. You’ll see all the names of the lists and the gravatars of the people who created them. The names of the lists will be in bold.

Scan the list and you should start to see a pattern. The screenshot above shows some of the 668 lists I’m on. Many of the lists are devoted to PR, publicity, marketing communications, book marketing and social media.

Now that you have a good idea how you’re perceived, write a blog post like this one, suggesting that your Twitter followers add you to their lists on certain topics.

Add Me to These Lists

Here are topics for other lists you can consider adding me to, based on many of the other lists on which I appear:

Writing or Writers

Editing or Editors

Journalists or Journalism

Marketing

Authors

Business Women

Small Business

Online Marketing

Digital Marketing

Self-promotion

Shoestring Marketing

Book Publicity

Resources for Authors

Inspiring Quotes

Humor

Entrepreneurs

Advertising/Marketing

PR Pros

Press Releases

Blogging or Bloggers

Dog Jokes (I include a dog joke in each issue of The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week, my free weekly ezine, and often share it on Twitter)

Other Ways to be Included on Twitter Lists

1. Tweet helpful, relevant content frequently and forego the “here’s what I’m doing today” tweets. Help people solve their problems!

2. Add yourself to your own lists if you’re a perfect fit. Remember that other people will be subscribing to your lists. If you’re a small business expert, for example, and somebody is following your list of small business experts, you want to be on it.

3. Include a short blurb in your email signature suggesting that people add you to their lists, with a link to your Twitter page.

4. Ask! Don’t be shy about suggesting that people add you to a particular list they’ve created. They might be grateful that you’ve helped them grow their lists.

Be sure to reciprocate. Welcome requests from other people who ask you to put them on your lists.

What other ways do you use Twitter lists? Is there anything about lists that you don’t understand? Share your own tips here on how to get onto other people’s lists.

Filed Under: Advertising, Authors & Publishers, Blogs, Business Promotion, Press Releases/News Releases, Social media marketing, Special Events, Twitter Tagged With: Bloggers, Blogging, free advertising, online marketing, PR, public relations, self-promotion, twitter lists

Definitions of advertising, promotion, publicity and PR

6/16/2010 By Joan 2 Comments

If you work in PR, and you’re trying to explain to somebody what you do, and they look at you with a blank stare, explain it this way:

“If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying ‘Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday,’ that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed, that’s publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations.”

I can’t remember where that quote originated. But I used it once in my newsletter and receive requests every now and then from readers who remember the quote, but need the exact wording.

If you work in any of these industries, tuck away this saying in a safe place and use it the next time you need something fun for a speech, White Paper, or just to make a client smile.

Does anybody know who first said this? Was it P.T. Barnum?

Filed Under: , PR Consultants/Publicists Tagged With: bt barnum, definition of advertising, PR, promotion, publicity

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!