10-point checklist for editing your own copy.
What do you include in your Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar Revision Checklist? What resources do you keep (and use!) in your writing space?

5 things that have changed in media relation, and 5 things that remain the same.
The public relations tactics needed to sweet talk editors and writers into covering your news have remained surprisingly constant. What’s changed more than anything are the pitching targets and pitchable opportunities. Here are five things that haven’t changed about media relations, and then five things that have.

How to close a LinkedIn account, or merge two of them.
If you find yourself with two LinkedIn accounts, you can close one and move your connections to the other account.You can close a LinkedIn account by logging into it, clicking your name at the top of the page and choosing Settings from the menu.

Comment on Facebook directly from Bing.
Users who have connected their Facebook accounts to Bing are now able to comment and like friends’ relevant status updates directly from the search page.

5 reasons your search traffic is declining. [And more in Comments section.]
You might have noticed that your website traffic is slightly diminished but can’t seem to put your finger on just why. Here are a few things that might help explain this decline.

Top 75 Must-Read Online Marketing Blogs.
75 MORE must read blogs for you to consume that cover marketing and business inspiration!

How Marketing Legend Guy Kawasaki Manages His Social Media Presence
This is how Guy Kawasaki manages his social media presence as of May 2013.

Short video on how YouTube’s new paid channel works.
YouTube just turned on their PAID CHANNELS program. That’s right, you are now able to pay for content at YouTube. What this means to future content developers is not yet known.

Helpful recap of major announcements at Google’s annual conference.
See what the critics have to say at Google’s IO conference. Last year’s over hyped skydiving was replaced by down to earth by grounded product enhancements.

So you think you write a great press release?

Here’s a chance to show off your talents, and experiment with a press release service for one month, for free, with a chance to grab $18,000 in prizes.

It’s the first-ever “News Release Contest” sponsored by ExpertClick.com, the two-pronged service that features guest experts on their own Press Room Page, and posts the experts’ press releases online while also distributing them to the media.  (The terms press release and news release can be used interchangeably.)
 
I’ve been promoting ExpertClick for many years because my Publicity Hounds have success stories galore about how they generated publicity from this service.

Here’s How to Enter

–Go to ExpertClick.com, click on “Join” and complete the registration form.

–Choose “Signature” and “Billed Monthly” for $59, even though this is free. You will get a comp account through June 14.

–Enter information for the Participant and Subscriber. If you are doing it for yourself, put your information in both places. (The Participant is who the profile is about and the Subscriber is the person who is taking care of the account. They have many PR Firms and ad agencies who, as subscribers, have profiles for their clients – the participants. One subscriber, in other words, may have many participants.)

–Do not give any credit card information. The contest is free.

–In the window that asks for a “special offer code,” type: “Guest of The Publicity Hound.”

–You’ll then be sent to a page where Mitch Davis explains how to create your profile, and you can begin sending press releases, once activated. Send as many as you wish. The only limit is one per day.

The releases need to be about the Participant who is profiled, but I think you’d be smart to post them on different topics. Don’t take the same release and simply rewrite it.

If you get stuck, you can watch a series of helpful videos. Or call Mitch at 202-333-5000 and they can register you over the phone. Their customer service is excellent.

Prizes in 5 Categories

Expertclick will aware a Premiere membership worth $2,795 and a Classic Membership worth $795 in each of five categories:

–Most visits to a Participant Press Room Page.

–Most visits to a news release where a YouTube video is embedded.

–Most visits to a press release that includes an email opt-in form.

–Most visits to a public service release for a nonprofit or pro-bono account.

–Most visits to Press Room and news releases of Publicity Hounds who register for the contest using the Publicity Hound guest code. This means that even though the contest is nationwide, you are only competing against other Publicity Hounds who register through me. That’s a much smaller group and you have much better chances of winning in this one!

Deadline:June 14

The contest ends June 14. If you choose not to buy a paid subscription after that, your Press Room Page and all press releases you have posted remain live on the Internet in the ExpertClick archive and indexed by Lexis—so you keep all the search engine optimization. Active member profiles and news releases are included at the Expertclick.com site and in their printed ExpertBooks.

Here’s where Publicity Hounds have a huge advantage over everyone else. I told Mitch that in order for me to promote this, I wanted a special category just for Publicity Hounds, and he agreed to add the fifth category above.
Remember, if you get stuck, you can call Mitch at 202-333-5000.

May the best Hound win!

P.S. I will be hosting three 30-minute webinars with Mitch, all free, in the next four weeks so you can watch how to perform some basic and advanced tricks on ExpertClick. You don’t need to attend the webinars to register for the contest. This is backup support.

If you have any questions about this contest, or how to write press releases, you can add them in the Comments section below.

Full Disclosure: Even though this contest is free, I’m a compensated affiliate for Expertclick and might earn a commission if you buy anything from them later.

How to link multiple editions of your book on Amazon.
Have you ever wondered what happens when you publish a new, revised edition of your book (with a new ISBN) and make it available on Amazon?

City of Cleveland using Twitter to communicate with journalists about story of 3 missing women found.
As the story of three formerly missing women in Cleveland develops Tuesday, the city’s Department of Public Safety is encouraging journalists to use Twitter to get credentialed for a press conference this morning.

Book marketing tip: Amazon lets you link to newer and older editions of your book.
Say what you want about how Amazon treats bookstore retailers and traditional book publishers. But one thing is for sure from my perspective … Amazon puts a priority on serving two types of constituents: their book-buying customers … and authors.

26 social media tips from the pros.
Are you looking for actionable tips to improve your social media marketing? Are you wondering what the common themes of social media experts are these days?

How to add video, photos to your LinkedIn profile. 
LinkedIn, the traditionally text-heavy social network for professionals, is getting visual with the launch of the LinkedIn Professional Portfolio, which lets you upload images, videos, presentations and documents to showcase your work.

17 reasons why you absolutely cannot afford to not be active on Google+.
If you’re resisting Google+ because you don’t have time, you don’t have patience to learn it, or you don’t think you need it, this should change your mind.

How to add a Facebook ‘Like’ button to every Google search result.
The web becomes more social every week as Google continues to evolve its search engine by rolling out  a new +1 button that attempts to play catchup with Facebook’s social proof  efforts and Bing displaying search results with links that have been Facebook “liked” by your friends.

2 southern Calif. newspapers inviting the public to sit back and relax in their newsrooms.
The Pasadena Star-News and San Bernardino Sun in Southern California are inviting the public to sit back and relax in their newsrooms.

Twitter Vines get shared four times more often than online videos, survey shows.
Marketers love them some Twitter Vines—and for good reason, it turns out. Unruly Media’s research reveals that branded Vines are shared four times as often as branded Internet videos.

3 great ways to show off in social media without annoying everybody.
As a word-of-mouth and social media marketer, it’s your job to help those stories get shared. But before you e-mail everyone that news release or tweet that #humblebrag, consider how these beloved companies show off without annoying their fans and followers.

She’s one of my Publicity Hounds, and she presented two fabulous sessions last week at Author U in Denver, where I also spoke. Even though I already hosted a webinar with Penny a few months ago on “How to Launch a Book, Promote It and Sell a Truckload, Without an Expensive Publicist,” I was taking notes like crazy. I want to share the foreword with you here so you buy the book! 

It isn’t only for authors, but for anyone who wants online visibility and online sales. If you’re new to it all and don’t even know how to acquire a domain name, you’ll love this step-by-step guide. If you think you know everything about building online visibility, you’ll be surprised by the tools and resources Penny recommends. 

Here’s the foreword to Red Hot Internet Publicity:

Most of the phone calls sound the same.

An author, usually self-published, is in tears. She spent three years writing her book, and a small fortune on a book shepherd, an editor, a proofreader, a publicist, a printer, brochures, bookmarks and tchotchkes. But she still can’t park in her garage. It’s filled with stacks of unopened cardboard boxes of books she can’t sell.

She’s calling me because I’m a publicity expert. And she admits she has no clue about what she’s supposed to do next.

“Who’s the target market for your book?” I ask patiently.

Remarkably, she isn’t sure.

“What have you already done to try to sell it?”

A speaking engagement here, she says, a book signing there. If she’s lucky, a profile story in her local weekly newspaper.

When I ask for her website address so I can take a quick look, I’m not surprised to hear, “My website is horrible! Besides, I’m an author. I’m not an Internet marketer.”
That one comment says it all.

When I explain that anyone who sells ANYTHING online is an Internet marketer, she mumbles something about technology being over her head. Then, she admits, “I’m lost.”
More and more, “I’m lost” seems to be a common refrain among authors, speakers and business owners.

I hear it in the halls when I speak at conferences. I see the words “I’m lost” in the Q&A box when I present a webinar on how folks can use social media to market their business and books. I heard it again last weekend when my friend said she couldn’t figure out how to get rid of her ex-husband on LinkedIn after she accidentally accepted his invitation to be a first-degree connection.

“I’m lost,” she said. “That’s why I don’t use LinkedIn like I should.”

Just when authors thought they had the world of publishing figured out, and business owners were settled on how to market their businesses, along comes Internet marketing, and then the mind-numbing chore of social media.

Book Promotion Expert to the Rescue

Enter Penny Sansevieri.

If marketing online was a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, Penny would be the one you’d want sitting next to you at the kitchen table. She’s an author, business owner, a publicist and a book marketing expert who helped create 11 best-sellers in 22 months. Rather than grabbing a fistful of pieces, she’d help you create a strategy for tackling the online marketing puzzle.

Jigsaw puzzle junkies say it’s easiest to pick out all the pieces with straight edges and build the frame first. Penny agrees. Even before you think about marketing your products or services, she’d want you to build the frame. That is, a list of your all-important keywords–words and phrases, all tied to the topic of your book or focus on your business, that you’ll use in your marketing to pull traffic to your website.

Then she’d help you gather together the inside pieces of the puzzle that look like they belong together—step-by-step instructions on how to build your website, tips on how to use words at your website, and advice on how to turn your website into a sales machine—so you could start assembling the puzzle in chunks.

Days later, when all the oddly shaped, interlocking puzzle pieces are in place, the completed picture of how to market online would finally make sense. Build the puzzle correctly and you’ll finally hear “ka-ching! ka-ching!”

But you can’t have Penny next to you. That’s why you need this third edition of Red Hot Internet Publicity—an insider’s guide to promoting your book online.

Great for Veteran or Newbie Authors, Speakers, Business Owners

If you’re thinking about marketing online, read Red Hot NOW, before you spend another minute online. It will put you miles ahead of all the other business owners, speakers and authors who are calling me for help, months after their books are published or their businesses launched. Penny will keep you from making the same incorrect assumptions others made. Costly errors, they later discovered, turned into marketing nightmares.

If you’ve already written your book, or been at your business awhile, her help will be invaluable because it can jump-start sagging sales.

Here’s what I like best about Red Hot: It’s written for the non-techie newbie who I sometimes fear is being left behind by the Internet marketing mentors and the social media gurus. While they’re teaching about Facebook’s Edgerank score, and how to measure your conversion rate from Facebook traffic at your website, folks who don’t know a Facebook profile from a Facebook page are telling themselves, “I’m lost.”

Penny assumes you are. That’s why she starts with the basics like the most popular search engines and how to choose a domain name. You’ll find simple worksheets and must-do checklists that help you keep the puzzle pieces well organized as you do things like hire a web designer and determine what the key messages will be at your site.

Gradually, she will introduce you to more technical aspects of Internet marketing and explain in drop-dead simple terms things like how to analyze your web traffic and create autoresponder campaigns for email marketing.

Red Hot is also a valuable reminder for experts like me who have been doing Internet marketing for 15 years. In the chapter on “Search Engine Optimization Tricks,” I had a half dozen of those slap-my-palm-on-my-forehead moments. For example, when I use Craigslist to advertise my rental property, I’m inundated with calls. So why am I not using it, as Penny recommends, to get sign-ups for my ezine and let people know about my new ebooks and special reports?

Social Media Tips Galore

As for social media, this third edition does two important things: It gives an overview of the most popular sites for building a community and marketing your books, and explains specific steps you should take to market.

Determine which sites will give you the best traction and which you most enjoy. I love LinkedIn and Twitter, but have been tempted repeatedly to bail out of Facebook. Struggling with its never-ending changes isn’t my idea of fun. And then there’s Penny, whose Facebook page boasts more than 60,000 fans, and you can tell she’s having a ball. Different strokes for different folks.

Finally, who better than Penny, creator of the Virtual Author Tour™, to explain why you need to blog, how to blog, and how to pitch bloggers. They can help you sell far more books than a book reviewer in a major newspaper.

Red Hot is a quick, easy read that scanners will love. Pay attention to all the “Red Hot Tip!” boxes scattered throughout the book. Pick and choose which chapters you need most. Or, if you’re new to Internet marketing, read it all the way through without taking notes so you can get a good idea of what the finished puzzle will look like. Then go back and make a to-do list of only three tasks. Tackle them all, and then make a new list of three more things, and so on.

If you know the types of people who are ideal buyers for your book or consumers for your business, but you don’t know how to use the technology to find them, you’re in luck. Red Hot shows you how.

*     *     * 

Free Book Marketing and Publicity Tips

I also recommend Penny’s excellent monthly ezine, Book Marketing Expert, packed with powerful promotion and publicity tips for authors and publishers.

To thank you for subscribing, she’ll send you her time-tested tips, 52 Ways to Sell More Books.

How to Write a Book Foreward

I’m a prolific writer. I worked as a newspaper writing coach for many years. But this was the first time I’ve been asked to write a foreward for a book  and I struggled with it because I wasn’t sure how to write it. Here’s a helpful article on How to Write a Book Foreward.

If you have your own book marketing or publicity tips, share them here. I’d love to hear them, and you CAN teach this old dog new tricks!

“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ***ranked higher*** than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”

Here’s how I interpret that:

“Ignore Google+ and Google will ignore you.”

Yikes! You absolutely cannot afford to let that happen.

Join me and social media strategist BL Ochman for a webinar today from 4 to 5 p.m. Eastern Time on “Why Google+ Matters to Your Business and How to Use It Wisely.”

Can’t make the live call? Register for the Google+ training anyway. I’ll email you the links to the video replay and all the other bonuses.

Google+ has 500 million users who don’t want to become irrelevant. Isn’t it time to join them? If you’re STILL not convinced that this for you, read yesterday’s post on 17 enormous advantages of Google+. 

If you’re resisting Google+ because you don’t have time, you don’t have patience to learn it, or you don’t think you need it, this should change your mind: 

1. Google+ gives you a huge advantage over your competitors when it comes to ranking higher on the Google Search results. All things being equal, a competitor who’s active on Google+ when you are not, will most likely rank higher.
2. Google+ is fast becoming the backbone of Google, and participation there is more important than your activities on any other Google platform. 
3. Google’s “+1” is similar to Facebook’s “Share.” The more +1’s your pages and posts, the better you look in Google’s eyes. All those “votes” let Google know that people are reading and passing along what you’re sharing. 
4. Google+ integrates seamlessly with other Go0gle services such as Gmail, Search, Documents and YouTube.
5. You can write about your business in the About section of your Google+ profile. Explain what it’s about, what you sell, why you’re the go-to expert, and how you help customers. Google will use this as your page’s meta description when it shows up in the search results.
6. The “Circles” way of segmenting friends isn’t as cumbersome as it is in Facebook. And this makes it far easier to target a specific market with your message and content.
7. Google+ makes it easier to share content with the right people.
8. Google protects your privacy far better than Facebook does. Just look at the number of news stories Facebook has generated because of privacy problems. 
9. Google always asks for customer feedback. Facebook tells you what you must do. And if you don’t like it, tough.
10. Many of your clients and customers, and others who might buy what you sell, are already on Google+.
11. Google’s activity stream is perfect for sharing rich media content such as photos, video and audio. 
12. Hangouts, the video calling/conferencing feature, allows a group of users to meet across multiple screens. And you can now share desktops! 
13. The web album provider Picasa can also be connected to Google+. 
14. On your Google+ profile, you can link to your other social media profiles on sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, thus giving those profiles more “authority” from Google.
15. When you comment on content other people have shared on Google+, you promote your expertise and encourage more people to add you to their circles, thus widening your audience.
16. Your employees can create their own Google+ profiles and post links to your website, share your blog posts and +1 your content. 
17. Google’s Authorship means you can get your picture to show up in Search results. This makes your content more prominent and more credible and encourages people to click on YOUR link rather than someone else’s. Even if you’re not active in Google+, Google Authorship will still work, but you do have to set up your profile anyway. So why not become active on Google+ and reap all the rest of these benefits?

Bonus Reason: Google+ currently has 500 million users! Can all those people be wrong?

Convinced? Join me tomorrow, May 9, when social media strategist BL Ochman explains the nuances of Google+ and helps get you on the road to more exposure and better search ranking.

Register for the Google+ webinar training here. 

If you’re not on Google+ yet, or you’re on it but not doing much with it, consider these sobering facts:

• Google+ is now the backbone of Google. Its profiles and content are now a very important part of Google’s new search algorithm. If a competitor is on Google+ and sharing content, and you aren’t, and all other things are equal, chances are good your competitor will rank higher than you.
• When deciding where to focus your time and effort, Google+ beats out Facebook and Twitter. (See the next three items.)
• Only two years after launching, Google+ already has 90 million active users, compared to the 100 million that Twitter has racked up in seven years.
• Facebook is a closed platform, and its “friending” model isn’t anything like real-life situations.
• Facebook blocks Google from indexing Facebook content, on purpose, and putting it on equal ground with Google+ results.

Social media strategist BL Ochman says, “Content is, indeed king, and any brand that isn’t producing content on Google+ that people want to read is going to find itself without traffic, fans, or—soon—sales.”

Join BL and me when I host a webinar at 4 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, May 9, on “Why Google+ Matters to Your Business and How to Use it Wisely.”

Register today even if the time doesn’t work for you. I’m recording it, and you’ll get the recording within 72 hours after the call.

Twitter Self-service Ads 101.
After spending a year in limited release, Twitter has finally opened its self-service advertising program to the public.

The ultimate guide to finding and using images online.
Images are a great way to enhance a website and compliment the awesome content that you’re already publishing on it.

600 journalists surveyed on how they use Online Newsrooms.
Each year the TEKGROUP Online Newsrom Survey Reports highlights the expectations that journalists have for organizations and and their online newsrooms. This year was no different, however, two key ares saw dramatic increases, socail and mobile. Download you free report now.

8 link-building no-no’s from Website Magazine.
While getting links is an essential task for website owners, they should also make sure that they’re doing it the right way. Otherwise, their brand can be seriously (and in drastic cases, even irreparably) damaged.

How to go the extra mile when answering a HARO query and increase chances you’ll be quoted.
What a difference it makes when authors, publishers and even some publicists go the extra mile. Here is a perfect example of what I am talking about: Just yesterday, I saw a journalist’s query on HARO. (HARO is a FREE service where journalists daily post their need for experts on a wide variety of experts.

7 tips on how to write sticky, memorable blog posts.
These 7 simple tips will help you write sticky, memorable blog posts. The kind of posts that make your reader say, “Hey! I gotta read this!”

Travel tips: How to work and relax while you fly.
Check out this handy graphic on travel essentials, tips for improving in-flight work efficiency habits and perhaps the hardest part of it all: Learning how to let go and just relax.

5 questions to ask PR job candidates. 
Hiring in the PR field seems to be picking up, as communications moves closer to the core of marketing strategy and both companies and agencies bring in new blood. And if the economy continues to improve, hiring in PR is likely to accelerate.With that in mind, here are five questions for PR managers that may help them determine the best job candidates

Scribd: Not Just Another Document Sharing Site
Scribd.com is the most popular document sharing site available, with over 50,000 uploads each day. Yes, that number is correct. This is key for those of us that use content marketing online to get found, get known and get clients.

12 blog posts that will help you improve your customer testimonials.
These 12 posts will cover all your burning questions on customer testimonials and then some. Enjoy!

Holy Guacamole!

These two photos tell the whole story of Doggie Date Night each Monday at Fred’s Mexican Cafe in Old Town. The Publicity Hound gives this publicity idea “two paws up–way up” because they turned it into a Meetup, created a Fred Oldtown Facebook Page with lots of photos and distributed the two-sided flier you see above at four local pet-friendly hotels.

“I’ve got six dogs on the patio right now,” said Manager Greg Baderian when I called this afternoon, “and at least 20 dogs every Monday night.”

It wasn’t until I took Jeff Johnson’s “TubeTraffic Secrets” course that the light bulb went on: sometimes one or even two keyword phrases in a headline aren’t good enough. This applies to almost anything you write, so keep reading even if you aren’t on YouTube.

When writing headlines for YouTube videos, Jeff teaches, use every single allotted character to squeeze in relevant keywords. Don’t try to be clever, which often results in being vague. Concentrate on keywords that will pull traffic.

Step 7 in his seven-step course is called “Reoptimize Everything,” even crappy videos that I uploaded several years ago, before I knew what I was doing. That means I can go back and write longer headlines, beef up each description to about 5,000 characters (about as long as a 900-word article!) and add about 20 more tags (keywords!).

Last night, I returned to my YouTube channel and went to work re-optimizing this video which has a pretty good headline—or so I thought:

But here’s the problem: that headline is way too short! Using Jeff’s instructions about squeezing in keywords, I came up with three phrases that are relevant to this video:

• How to Rank High in LinkedIn Search
• Boost Business Networking
• Online Visibility

  I rewrote the short headline inside the red box, above, to this:

I also tagged the video with more than a dozen additional keywords and wrote a much longer description that now includes links to posts at this blog that discuss LinkedIn.  I linked to  How to strengthen your LinkedIn profile with benefits and value statements and How to add opt-in boxes to your LinkedIn profile and Company Page.

5 Tips for Writing Better Headlines

Use these tips from Jeff when writing headlines for any content that’s online:

1. Build the promise into keywords.
2. Front-load the headline with a benefit statement. Mine is “How to Rank High in LinkedIn Search.”
3. Put your primary keyword phrase in the title.
4. Use at least one secondary keyword phrase (two if they fit). You won’t always be able to do this because of limited space. But the wonderful thing about YouTube is that it allows about 85 characters for the title of the video.
5. Write your title as a compelling headline. Benefit-rich headlines that have keyword phrases but also promise believable rewards get more clicks, Jeff says.

Regardless of what you’re writing, your headlines or titles must be a good reflection of what your content is about. On YouTube, “watch time” is an important factor in Google’s new algorithm.

If You Need More YouTube Tips and Tutorials…

Jeff just opened up the doors to the newest version of “Tube Traffic Secrets,” his bestselling private membership site and training program. This is the one I bought, and I loved the course!  

It’s all about getting free traffic and free leads from YouTube and learning how to build your email list, your brand and your business by tapping into the marketing power of YouTube! A great YouTube channel is like having your own TV show, and it can also generate publicity galore.

You can take a look at what it includes by using this affiliate link. 

Here’s the best part:

Jeff is an AMAZING teacher. Simply follow the simple Step-by-Step Training Videos, and written Cheat Sheets, Checklists and Action Plans and you could see almost immediate  results in your business.

I got additional support in the form of periodic webinars where I could ask as many questions as I wanted. During one webinar, Jeff even offered to critique someone’s YouTube channel. I offered, and he made some great suggestions that I’m implementing now.

The Publicity Hound gives “Tube Traffic Secrets” two paws up—way  up!

 Yes, I’m Jeff’s affiliate. Yes, I earn a commission if you buy into this course and membership site. But you’re in for a treat, and you’ll thank me. this is NOT one of those $2,000 deals. It’s a fraction of that, and you can take advantage of the handy payment plan.

Finally,  I know what I’m doing on YouTube! You will, too.

(Dog imgae courtesy of Grant Cochrane, FreeDigitalPhotos.net)