publicity

15 magnets to help you capture & convert leads at your website and more tweets

12/23/2011 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.

PR Pros: When you write a press release, do you share it on social media sites? Experts disagree. http://ow.ly/8486v

15 magnets to help you capture & convert leads at your website. http://ow.ly/83XYg

Heading To a Trade Show in 2012? 5 Tips for Getting the Most ROI Out Of Your Event: http://ow.ly/859iM

Retailers: 17 ways to use Twitter to engage your audience. [No excuse not to tweet!] http://ow.ly/83UdR

Publicity Tip: Readers LOVE year-end lists, like this one, The 50 Best Workout Songs of the Year. http://ow.ly/83RUZ

The Essential word List for Lazy PR Writers.http://ow.ly/859s3

5 ways to master the new Facebook timeline. http://ow.ly/86rsi

When Business Blogging Works Too Well… | Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad http://bit.ly/ukgnlr

Do you have a form at your website? Add this clever tool to encourage people to promote you: http://ow.ly/85fX7

Local news outlets among Google’s most-searched terms: http://ow.ly/85ath

Filed Under: Media Leads, Pitching the Media, Social media marketing, Special Events, Twitter Tagged With: Facebook, public relations, publicity, SEO, social media, Special Events, Twitter

Create your own ‘Seal of Approval’ for branding, publicity

11/16/2010 By Joan Leave a Comment

The Good Housekeeping “Seal of Approval” has been reassuring consumers about product quality for more than a century.

It’s one of the most recognized consumer emblems in the market today. Two years ago, the magazine added the Green Good Housekeeping Seal to help consumers identify products that are effective and environmentally friendly.

What if you could have your own “Seal of Approval,” like the one shown here, that would underscore your expertise in your field? Just think of the publicity that you could generate!

You could award the seal to a certain number of products, services or companies each year and then pitch bloggers and journalists. Winners would imprint your seal on their products and use it in their own advertising campaigns, and then announce the honor as part of a publicity campaign. The seal could become a valuable component to your branding.

A seal of approval is only one of the several dozen promotion tactics I’ll discuss when I host the 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.

Can’t attend live? I’ll record it, so you can catch the replay at your convenience. Register here.

Also, 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!

Filed Under: Advertising, Business Promotion, Photos & Graphics, Pitching the Media Tagged With: branding, good housekeeping, marketing, product recommendations, publicity, seal of approval

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

New to publicity? Here’s a free 6-part email course

6/8/2010 By Joan Leave a Comment

If you’re new to publicity and you don’t know where to start, here’s one of the best places.

Sign up for a free subscription to PitchRate.com, a service that connects sources with journalists, bloggers and anyone who provides content.

PitchRate was created by Drew Gerber of Press Kit 24/7. I wrote all about here when it first debuted. I’m mentioning it now because Pitchrate has recently added a free 6-part course as part of its service. It covers:

Part 1: How to stand out from the crowd and brand what’s unique about it.

Part 2: How to make it easy for customers and journalists to find you online.

Part 3: Who wants your expertise? How to position yourself as an expert.

Part 4: How to grab the media’s attention by creating the perfect pitch.

Part 5: How to get to the point and use sound bites.

Part 6: How to maximize your publicity by leveraging the coverage you’re getting to attract more traffic and leads to your website.

“We developed this course to provide people with a basic knowledge of how to catapult their business using media coverage to get maximum results and generate revenue,” said Shannon Nicholson of PitchRate.

Throughout the six-session couse, they share resources that help you take it a step further. I’m promoting the course as a compensated affiliate.

When you visit the PitchRate website, you can log in as a journalist or a source. So keep this site in mind if you need to connect with sources to interview for a book or freelance writing project or a podcast. (Shutterstock photo)

Filed Under: Blogs, Magazine Publicity, Newspaper Publicity, Publicity on the Internet, Publicity Resources, Radio Publicity, TV Publicity Tagged With: creating the perfecft pitch, drew gerber, Pitchrate.com, presskit247, publicity, sound bites

9 of 10 pet owners say ‘I love you’ to their dogs & cats

5/1/2010 By Joan Leave a Comment

If you have a dog or cat, I’m betting that, at least once, you’ve looked it in the eyes and said “I love you.”

That’s because a clever survey by Iams, the pet food company, showed that 91 percent of customers it contacted several years ago admitted whispering those three little words to their furry friends.

The company wisely publicized the survey results to coincide with Valentine’s Day. Hundreds of newspapers, magazines and TV and radio stations picked up the story.

Surveys on topics that are fun, edgy, heart-warming, controversial, timely or compelling can generate mountains of publicity. They can also do something else.

They can tell you EXACTLY what products and services your customers want and EXACTLY how much they’d be willing to pay for them.

Surveys have been the best-kept secret among Publicity Hounds and successful entrepreneurs–the cute little trick that has boosted PR campaigns and let top marketers create products to order, get proof to convert prospects and keep customers buying, and find the ticking time bombs in our businesses before they explode.

Let the Survey Expert Help You

My business partner, Jeanne Hurlbert, PhD, is one of the world’s foremost survey experts. She’s so good at surveys that she’s helped people like The Tony Robbins Companies, Ali Brown, and Joe Polish. She also created my own customer profile survey last spring, and I’m using the results as a roadmap to guide my business.

She and Mike Koenigs are hosting a webinar called “Your Cash-Generating Crystal Ball: How to Use Simple Surveys to Read Your Prospects’ and Customers’ Minds, Build Lists, Create Products, and Make Money.” It will be at 2 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, May 4.

They’ll show you how to jumpstart your business by putting your publicity, and your profits, on steroids.

And if you don’t HAVE a business yet, the news is just as good: They’ll help you start one, create products that generate revenue, and build your email list, in as little as 2 weeks.

You will learn:

How you can use your own surveys and other people’s surveys to generate buzz in traditional media and social media.
How you can create and use good data that will capture the media’s attention and tie into your expertise.
The 3 key questions that can build a bond and trust with your customers, and spell the difference between falling victim to this economy or making a fortune from it.
How the first question can increase your click-through and conversion rates by as much as 45%–and how the next big wave in social media can let you increase those conversions even more.
How the second question will let you create products to order and how you can make your customers feel so invested in those products they’ll beg to buy them.
How the third question can generate 3 forms of “social proof” that convert prospects and keep customers buying, over and over.
Why thousands of online marketers are leaving money on the table and risking trouble with the FTC by relying on testimonials for social proof.
How you can use 3 simple skills to ramp up your profits through social networking, social media, and surveys.

And then, she and Mike will explain the secret weapon that lets you know who your prospects are, what they want and how they think.

P. S. When you sign up, you get 2 special reports—and one is about how a survey transformed my business. On the call, Jeanne and Mike are giving away two things to five lucky winners: a cool new product that will be sold for at least $97 and another helpful special report.

(Shutterstock photo)