TV/Radio Talk Show Guest Directory Deadline March 26

March 23, 2013 by 3 Comments

dating service of pr2

Dozens of radio and TV talk shows are looking for guests right now, and you might make the perfect interview for one of them, or several dozen of them!

But many of the producers and guest bookers aren’t wasting time listening to people pitch them over the phone.

They’re going straight to the RadioTour.com website and the printed Talk Show Guest Directory to find people who have the expertise that’s tied to the topic of their shows. When they find a perfect match, they contact the experts directly and invite them onto the show.

The deadline is Tuesday, March 26, for your profile to appear in the 2013 edition of Talk Show Guest Directory. You’ll have until Friday, March 29, to get your text and photo loaded for publication.

This directory will:

  • Help the news media know and understand your expertise.
  • Show them that you’re media-savvy and that you welcome interviews.
  • Explain all the ways to reach you. (Include your day and night phone numbers. These broadcasters work round the clock and if news breaks, they’ll need you ASAP.)

The directory will be mailed to the 100 top TV and radio talk shows. It will also be distributed at the giant Talkers.com Conference in New York in June.

You’ll get:

  • A Press Room page at ExpertClick.com.
  • The chance to distribute up to 52 of your own press releases a year at NewsReleaseWire.com WITHOUT per-release charges. I also use this valuable service to post individual issues of my twice-a-week ezine, “The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week.”
  • Your releases will be syndicated to Google News & LexisNexis.
  • Video & audio clips will be included on RadioTour.com so producers can see exactly what you look like and how you sound.

Rave Reviews from the Media

The media are giving rave reviews to this directory and to RadioTour.com and Expertclick.com.

***PR Week says its “a dating service of PR.”

***The New York Times calls it a “Dial-an-Expert.”

***CNN considers it “an invaluable tool.”

Mitch Davis is the brains behind the directory and Expertclick.com. He’s a stand-up guy who answers his own phone at (202) 333-5000, and he gives top-notch customer service. He knows press releases inside out and understands Google’s quirks and how to get top search engine ranking for your releases.

Again: The deadline is Saturday, March 23 — text and photo by March 29.

Special Deal for Publicity Hounds

I’ve worked out a special deal with Mitch for Publicity Hounds like you. You can save $100 on an annual membership or $10 on monthly if you use this affiliate link:

Mitch will be happy to answer all your questions. Call him at (202) 333-5000.

And tell him The Publicity Hound sent you. He’ll take care of you. I promise. (My paw is resting on my Bible.)

P. S. I’m on Expertclick.com. C’mon over and see The Publicity Hound’s profile. 

Filed Under: TV & Radio Tagged With:

Pros and cons of generating online publicity

February 1, 2013 by 2 Comments

httpwwwThis is the third in a three-part series on the advantages and disadvantages of print, broadcast and online publicity. The other two posts in the series are The Pros and Cons of Free Publicity in Newspapers and Magazines and The Pros and Cons of TV and Radio Publicity.

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Hands-down, online publicity ranks as my favorite form of publicity because it’s the most powerful and long-lasting. The list below should convince you. 

Advantages 

You can create online visibility for yourself through a variety of formats. Promote yourself through a blog, a YouTube channel, a podcast, or an archive of email newsletters. In other words, YOU are the media.  

It’s instantaneous. With print or broadcast publicity, you have to pitch your idea for a story and wait for someone to cover it. When you’re the media, you can write a blog post and publish it within minutes.

You can repurpose your own news in a variety of formats. Take a blog post and slice and dice it into 20 tweets. Record it and turn it into a podcast. Create a slideshow and upload it to a photo sharing site. Turn it into a video, or a series of videos, for your YouTube channel. Take the same information and use it to answer a question in a LinkedIn group, or on a Q&A site like Quora.com.

You can target a niche very easily. Whether you’re promoting yourself, or you want to generate publicity in an online media outlet, you can find places to target within seconds. One of my very favorite ways of finding lists of blogs or news outlets is to Google “top 10 small business blogs” or “best marketing ezines” or “most popular mommy blogs” or “aviation magazines.” Chances are pretty good that a blogger already has compiled a list. If you’re an author and you want book reviews, you can target niches very easily at the wide variety of book review and recommendation sites.

It has staying power. Often, blog posts, online news articles, videos and other content live online for years and can be found by the search engines.

You can gather and analyze statistics. What’s the Alexa ranking of a news site you’re targeting? How many people have subscribed to the RSS feed at your blog? How many people opened the press release that was distributed through out of the online services? Which websites, news or otherwise, are referring the most traffic to your website? How many people retweeted your content yesterday? How big are the LinkedIn news groups that include your target audience? Promote online, and you have statistics galore at your fingertips.

Social media builds relationships. On sites like LikedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+, you can meet people, share valuable content with them, and encourage them to follow you. If you do it right, some of them will eventually buy from you. 

Let Google do the work. Create great content, and the search engines will find it and deliver the content to whoever is searching for it. A service like Google Alerts will even send your content into the email of people who ask for it.

You can link to it. When you get publicity online, link to it from the Media Room or Press Room at your website. This gives you instant credibility.

It works for you round-the-clock. People can access articles about you, blog posts, video, etc. 24/7. With traditional media, like TV for example, a news show’s ratings will often determine whether or not someone sees your story.

Bloggers are often easier to pitch than traditional media. Bloggers are passionate about their topic, unlike many reporters who hate their beats and their jobs. Bloggers also have loyal followings. And they love to link to other blogs. Newspapers and magazines seldom refers to articles in other publications. 

 

Disadvantages

People can steal your content. If you’ve created Google Alerts for your important keywords, it should be fairly easy to find thieves who duplicate your content for their own websites or blogs. This happens to me occasionally, and I don’t always go after them and ask that they remove the content, either because the website looks like it gets little traffic, or I simply don’t have time.

You open yourself to scathing criticism whether or not your deserve it. Whether it’s a comment on someone else’s blog, or a book review on Amazon, the Internet makes it possible for anyone to say anything, often anonymously, and never have to face the consequences. Sleazy freelancers make money writing bad book reviews under fake names. Flamers go wild in the Comments section at blogs. And folks with a resentment against you can say whatever they please, for attribution or anonymously, even if their facts are wrongs. (See the next bullet point.)

Errors don’t have to be corrected. When you find a factual error written about you online, good luck trying to get it corrected. Most reputable bloggers will correct an error. But it’s often impossible to identify the owner of a website and obtain contact information. Errors can be cut and pasted into someone else’s article or blog post within seconds, multiplying the error. Others can link to articles or blog posts and never know that  they include errors.

That’s my very long list. I know I’ve missed many more advantages. Please add yours below. 

If you liked this series, please share it with your friends, followers and fans. 

Filed Under: Publicity Tagged With: ,

Pros and cons of TV and radio publicity

January 31, 2013 by 2 Comments

on_airThis is the second in a three-part series on the advantages and disadvantages of print, broadcast and online publicity. Part III will be featured next and focus on online publicity.

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Earlier this week, I listed the pros and cons of publicity in newspapers, magazines and other print media.  

Today, let’s look at publicity via broadcast media, a very different opportunity.  

Advantages:

  • You can do radio interviews at home, in your pajamas.  That’s what Alex Carroll does frequently, even when he gets booked on big radio shows in the Top 20 markets. 
  • Radio and TV are instantaneous. If news breaks, and you have something compelling to offer, chances are good you can call the station, offer your expertise and be on the radio or TV within minutes.
  • It’s much easier to share recordings of TV and radio interviews. I’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. But I seldom hear about TV or radio stations that hassle you for including, at your website, a segment in which you’re interviewed. I also haven’t heard about broadcast outlets requiring hefty fees similar to the fees for reprint rights that big newspapers and magazines require.  
  • TV and radio frequently welcome back guests they like. If a talk show host loved your interview,  don’t be surprised if the program invites you again.    
  • Radio stations sometimes offer live remotes. These can help your publicity campaign if you’re sponsoring a major event or opening a big business in a small community. 
  • If you’re passionate about your topic, you’ll be a hit. But that same passion might not come through in a printed story because the reporter has complete  control.

Disadvantages:

  • If a news item about you is inaccurate, you’ll almost never convince the broadcast outlet to correct the record. The exception is when the error is so severe that it borders on slander. With print media, you can write a letter to the editor or an opinion column correcting the record. TV and radio offer no similar opportunity.
  • On TV, you must look and sound your best. That means crafting and practicing your sound bites, wearing clothing appropriate to the interview,  and paying close attention to your hair and make-up. 
  • Because TV and radio love those three-second sound bites, you might be quoted out of context. This has happened to me.    
  • Radio interviews require very short answers. You must learn to talk in “chunks.” If the host wants more information, she’ll ask a follow-up question.
  • If you have a voice that sounds quiet, meek or mousy, you might not be invited on the air. How do radio hosts know how you sound? They call you and do a “pre-interview.” They don’t refer to it as a “pre-interview.” They simply call and start talking to you. If they like what they hear, you’re in. If not, sorry.
  • Doing in-studio TV interviews is very difficult because of all the commotion on the set. The lights produce annoying glare. The cameras move back and forth. Somebody is holding up cue cards. The words are whizzing by on the teleprompter. And you need to be looking at the host, not at the camera.

I recommend two excellent books that go into more detail on how to deal with the media:

Winning with the News Media by Clarence Jones

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kudos to Clarence Jones, a former award-winning investigative reporter who worked in TV and newspapers, for constantly updating Winning with the News Media, now in its 8th edition. This is the book I wish I  had written.

 

Media Training Bible

The Media Training Bible by media trainer Brad Phillips, published a few months ago, concentrates on the media interview. It will prepare you for today’s media culture “in which a tweet can become newsworthy and a news interview can become tweet-worthy.”

If you’ve been interviewed on radio or TV, what do you think are the advantages or disadvantages? Add to my list in the Comments below.

Filed Under: TV & Radio Tagged With: ,

Pros and cons of free publicity in newspapers, magazines

January 29, 2013 by 5 Comments

news sections of a newspaperThis is the first in a three-part series on the advantages and disadvantages of print, broadcast and online publicity. Part II will be featured next and focus on broadcast publicity.

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When it’s time to launch your next promotion, and free publicity is an important component, know the pros and cons of print, broadcast and online publicity.

If you know the advantages and disadvantages of each, long before the campaign begins, you’ll be in a much better position to schedule your pitches in enough time for certain media to cover your story. You’ll also be able to react quickly and know which media can cover you just a few hours after they learn about what you’re offering. 

Here are the most important things you need to keep in mind for print publicity. This includes newspapers, magazines, industry publications, alumni magazines, business journals, print newsletters and niche publications like church bulletins.

Advantages:

  • You can take advantage of newspaper and magazine editorial calendars. Larger publications create these for the benefit of advertisers who need to know which topics will be featured in which issues. Even if you don’t advertise, an editorial calendar can help you determine where your story might be the best fit.
  • Readers clip articles and pass them along to friends. Or they pass along the entire issue. Consider what happens to magazines inside your doctor’s office. Or on airplanes, where inflight magazines are stuffed into the seat pockets. Or in libraries, where a year’s worth are bound in big volumes, and can be viewed by patrons years after they were printed. Magazines published every other month have the longest shelf life of all.  
  • You can target niches. Niche publications, like special interest magazines and newsletters, can have very loyal audiences and can let you target your message like a laser.
  • Daily newspapers have short lead times for news. If you’re pitching to a daily newspaper on Monday, it might appear in the paper on Tuesday if it’s newsy.
  • You can make reprints. Be very careful about this, however. Because the publication owns the copyright, you must ask permission to reprint. Some big newspapers and magazines have hefty fees for reprint rights. If you can’t afford the cost, buy as many copies of the publication as you can afford, as soon as it’s published.  Don’t assume you can reprint articles written about you.  

Disadvantages:

  • Circulation has been plummeting at most major daily newspapers. If your story makes it into the print version of a newspaper, but not onto the newspaper’s website, it can be here today and gone tomorrow.
  • Many people under 40 don’t read newspapers. If people under 40 are a significant part of the target audience for your publicity campaign, you need to concentrate on online publicity. Most of those people read their news online.  
  • Lead times for various types of print media can be very confusing. While your daily newspaper might need only 24 hours notice, the big national magazine you’re dying to get into might want pitches a full six months before the issue is printed. Pitching a Christmas story? You’d better be working the phones in July. Weekly newspapers, on the other hand, sometimes want their stories a few weeks in advance.  
  • Errors appear in print forever. If a fact in your story is wrong, it’s there for all the world to see for months and maybe even years. Even if you call the publication to correct an error in a front-page story, the correction might run on the bottom of Page 27 three days later.

That’s my list of pros and cons. Did I miss anything? Please add to them in the Comments below.

Filed Under: Print Media Tagged With:

How to check references if you’re hiring a publicist

December 28, 2012 by 2 Comments

eboook cover of How to Hire the Perfect PublicistDon’t get caught with the Publicist from Hell.

That’s easy to do if you’ve interviewed several candidates in-depth, you’ve chosen your top candidate and want to get started, but you miss the critical step of checking references before you sign on the dotted line.  Don’t let yourself become so giddy with excitement over an exceptional candidate that you skip this step! 

Many people, especially authors, have. And thousands of wasted dollars later, they’re sharing all the ugly details in online discussion groups and at the corner cafe.  

 

Check References for Your Top Candidate

If you interview four or five publicists, don’t spend time checking references for each. Only ask for references from your top candidate, or the top two candidates if everything else is equal and it’s a toss-up. 

Ask if you can have the names, phone numbers and email addresses of three current or former clients.

Email first to arrange a good time to call. But don’t interview them via email. You can learn far more in a phone conversation. Here are questions to ask the publicist’s clients, excerpted from my ebook, How to Hire the Perfect Publicist:

  • What kind of job did the publicist do for you?
     
  • How many media placements did you get?
     
  • Of those mentioned, which were the most valuable and why?
     
  • What did those placements do for you? (A CEO might like the cover story he got in Business Week because it stroked his ego. But ask about the VALUE of the cover story. What, specifically, did it accomplish?)
     
  • Was the publicist knowledgeable about online publicity and social media?
     
  • How were the publicist’s efforts in those areas measured, and what was the result?
     
  • Overall, what measurable results did you see from the publicity campaign? 
     
  • Did the publicity build on itself long after the publicist was gone? If so, how?
     
  • What kinds of additional value did the publicist bring to your project?
     
  • What did you like best about the publicist?
     
  • What did you like least?
     
  • Did the publicist need improvement in any areas? If so, which ones?
     
  • What’s your best piece of advice on how I should work with him or her?
     
  • Would you work with the publicist again?
     
  • What other advice do you have for me if I hire him or her?
     

Another Sensitive Question

When you ask your top candidate or candidates for references, also ask for the contact information for any client that ended a project before it was completed. The publicist might not want to give you this information, but it never hurts to ask. 

But be careful here. A client’s expectations are sometimes far beyond the publicist’s abilities. I know an excellent publicist whose client stopped working with her after only a few months, after she got him excellent media placements. He was disappointed that the publicity didn’t reflect on his bottom line. I think that’s an unrealistic expectation. She did, too. A three-month publicity campaign barely has time to build traction.  

In asking for the name of a client whose project ended abruptly, you’re looking for information that might raise a red flag. Examples include disagreements over time billed on invoices, or the failure by the publicist to return phone calls within a day or two, or the inability of the client and publicist to work together harmoniously.  


Rely on Your Social Media Connections

Special-interest groups on sites LinkedIn can be excellent places to ask for feedback about a particular publicist. You can throw out the question there, but ask that anyone with information to share contact you privately. 

If your top candidate passes these tests, chances are pretty good you’ve got a winner.

If you’ve worked with a publicist, what other questions would you add to my list? If you work as a publicist, what other ways can clients make sure they’re getting the very best candidate? The Comments section awaits.    
 

Filed Under: Publicity Tagged With: ,

12 ways to use my free ebook on DIY publicity tips

December 21, 2012 by 10 Comments

the beest of the publicity hound's tips of the week ebook cover It’s my annual gift to you: “The Best of The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week of 2012″ ebook.

This year’s book includes 27 publicity and social media tips for businesses, schools, nonprofits, authors, speakers and experts, excerpted from my ezine, delivered each Tuesday and Saturday.

Right-lick here and save the book to your hard drive. You can also visit the ezine archives and subscribe in the box on the left side. 
 

How to Use the Ebook

1. Regift it to your clients and business associates.

2. Share the link on the social media sites.   

3. Excerpt a tip from the book for a blog post, with a link where readers can access the ebook. Please use this link: http://budurl.com/Bestof2012Tips

4. Write your own blog post with an “end of the year to-do list,” offering advice to your readers on what they can do to get their businesses ready for the new year. One of your tips would be to download my ebook. 

5.  Excerpt an item from the book in your own ezine, with the link.

6.  Email your list and let them know about the book. Encourage them to regift the book to their clients and business associates. Please use this link: http://budurl.com/Bestof2012Tips

7.  Include a link to the book in a Comment that you write at someone else’s blog.

8.  Pin the ebook cover to a Pinterest board.

9.  Read my tips and choose three that you want to take action on, before the end of the year. For example, you might want to create a new revenue stream for yourself by buying the nifty Marketing Graphics Toolkit I wrote about. And then start promoting it yourself as an affiliate so you get payments of $10.97 flowing into your PayPal account, just like I do, when someone clicks on your affiliate link.

10. Take advantage of the Recommended Resources section in the back of the book. Most of the resources are free, and I use many of them in my own business.

11.  If you have a membership site that offers content, make my ebook available there. Please use this link: http://budurl.com/Bestof2012Tips

12. Offer it to people in your mentor or coaching program.

13.  Link to the book, or to this post, from your own Recommended Resources page at your website.
 

More Tips for You

Many of the tips I’ve included in my other “Best of The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week” from past years are still good today. You can find those books here.

Have you thought of other ways to use the free ebook? Share in the Comments section below.   

Have fun with my tips! If you like them, don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter in the box on the left side. And if you have a great publicity or social media success story to share, email me. I’m always looking for content for my newsletter.

And who knows? Your tip might be in next year’s book!

 

 

 

Filed Under: Publicity Tagged With: ,

Copycat TV news story: Buy a diamond, get a gun

October 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment

It pays to be a copycat, especially if you’re after free publicity.

When jewelry store owner Harold van Beek, near Cedar Rapids, Iowa, heard that a jeweler in Georgia had gotten publicity for offering a hunting rifle to every customer who bought diamond jewelry, he copied the marketing tactic and found himself on the local news. Starting today, every customer who buys an engagement ring from his store, Jewelry by Harold,  will get a voucher to buy a Remington 870 hunting rifle at Fin and Feather in Iowa City.

Here’s the 50-second story on KCRG Channel 9 News in Cedar Rapids:

van Beek got the idea from Mike Geller of D. Geller & Son in Atlanta, who offered a $430 hunting rifle to any customer who bought $2,500 worth of jewelry from Sept. 20-22. Geller got onto the TV news with a story that was almost a minute and a half:

 

 

Moral of the story: If you see a clever trick somebody used to get publicity, try it, as long as it’s not in the same media market.

By the way, in the second news item above, the station talked to a wedding planner who said that even though the buy-a-ring-get-a-gun offer is unusual, she has seen all kinds of crazy themed weddings. Wedding planners: Unusual themed weddings is a great story idea, particularly at the end of this year and early next year, when brides are planning their June weddings.

What unusual publicity tricks have you seen jewelers, or other retailer, try successfully?

Filed Under: TV & Radio Tagged With: , , ,

Dog Tweets–5 clever PR pitches that caught reporters’ attention

October 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment

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

5 clever PR pitches that caught reporters’ attention. http://ow.ly/e6j1x 

4 Pitches That Any Respectable Blogger Will Always Ignore http://ow.ly/ea9Gt 

Inside the PR campaigns of organizations that won Ragan’s 2012 PR Awards. http://ow.ly/eafTl 

Police in Pottstown, Pa. love Pinterest. Board of crime suspects has led to more arrests. [See Item #2] http://ow.ly/eamP3 

How to use Twitter for marketing and PR. http://ow.ly/ebsMF 

50 great tools for bloggers and freelance writers. [Love these!] http://ow.ly/ecj4u 

Bloggers: Can Kindle owners pay to subscribe to your blog? See item #1 at http://ow.ly/ebhoT

Alton Brown of the Food Network makes a public confession. [Foodies, you'll love this.] http://ow.ly/ecrDU

How to get media coverage for your start-up. [See my 3 tips in the Comments.] http://ow.ly/ecTE0

4 great examples of “story hijacking” in a PR campaign. http://ow.ly/edpaP

 

Filed Under: Public Relations Tagged With: , ,

Let your local media know about major publicity hits

August 24, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Free Publicity Tip 18--Recycle national publicity into local publicity

Publicity Hounds usually want to know how to graduate from local publicity to national publicity.

But sometimes, if you generate national publicity right out of the gate and you’re fairly new to self-promotion and DIY PR, you might not be able to figure out how to turn that big hit into local media coverage.

Easy. Write a press release and send it to your local media. (Subscribe to my free course on how to write and distribute press releases.)  

TV stations probably won’t do anything with it unless you actually call the station and pitch a story that ties into the reason you got national coverage in the first place. Example: You’ve created a product that won a national award in your industry because it helps your target market solve a problem that, so far, no other product has solved.

Let’s say a big trade magazine publishes a story about you and your product. Simply write a press release stating that, and include a link to the article if it’s online. Send the article to local newspapers, your local business journals and business magazines, editors of newsletters for groups you belong to, and your alumni magazine.

Also send it to Patch.com, the luber-local site that covers 22 states in the United States, and the District of Columbia.  See 6 tips for pitching Patch.com.

Then call your local TV stations and tell them about the award, and the product. If the product is unusual enough, they might cover it, even though business news isn’t a high priority for the local TV news. 

Share the link on the social media sites, particularly on LinkedIn as a status update and within your industry groups.

Don’t forget to mention the article and link to it from your online press room at your website.

Like this tip? It’s the latest on my 50 Tips for Free Publicity board on Pinterest.  Please share it with your friends and followers. You can also add it to your Pinterest board by clicking on red “Pin It” button to the right of the headline above.     

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Cover of Special Report 13 on how to recycle publicityNow that social media and online publicity are critical components in a publicity campaign, we have opportunities galore to recycle publicity by taking one hit and turning it into 10 or 12 hits online and offline. Learn about them all in Special Report #13: How to Recycle Your Publicity (for Serious Publicity Hounds Only). It’s one of 52 special reports I’ve updated this year.  Grab them all and save a whopping $518.

Filed Under: Publicity Tagged With:

Promising new startup? Apply for coverage on Mashable

April 25, 2012 by 2 Comments

An app called ThreeRing that creates and shares a digital portfolio of students’ work quickly and easily.

A new social networking site called MatchPuppy that matches up New York City dogs with furry companions according to size, age and energy level. 

A website called Parking Panda that allows you to locate and rent parking spaces, and rent out your own stretch of car-friendly turf.

All three promising startups caught the attention of editors at Mashable.com and are featured in the Spark of Genius series. Your company can be, too, if  it meets the following criteria:

  • Must be less than 3 years old.
     
  • Must never have received coverage on Mashable.com before.
     
  • Must have something like an active site or product to showcase to readers.
     
  • Generates less than $1 million in annual revenue.

A story about your company could be a huge publicity coup. That’s because Mashable is the largest independent news source dedicated to covering digital culture, social media and technology. Its 20 million monthly unique visitors and 4 million social media followers have become one of the most engaged online news communities. 

Mashable also syndicates its content to top publications including ABC News, CNN, Metro and Yahoo! News, amplifying its reach to many millions of additional readers each month.

If you want to be featured in the Spark of Genius series, complete the application. If you’re featured in the series, check back here and let us know the results.

Filed Under: Online Marketing Tagged With: