Start forming relationships with freelance writers if you want publicity.
Many of them write articles for a variety of publications, which increases your chances for publicity. If they interview you for one article, they might rely on your expertise for another article for a different publication.
Stacy DeBroff, also known as The Mommy Expert, got a nice spike in book sales at Amazon, and traffic to her website, this month when her book “The Mom Book” appeared in the May issue of Go, the inflight magazine for Airtran, shown at left.
Several months ago, her publicist, Christine Hohlbaum of Wasabi Publicity Inc., started pitching a freelancer who submits to inflight magazines. They stayed in touch periodically.
To make her job easier, Christine used the special contact management function that’s part of Press Kit 24/7, a PR product that lets Publicity Hounds create and maintain their own online press room, even if they don’t know HTML coding or the first thing about managing a website. (The two link above for Stacy DeBroff and Christine Hohlbaum both lead to Press Kit 24/7 pages. Don’t both look great?)
Christine’s follow-up is quick, and reporters love that. The freelancer interviewed Stacy for a story titled “Mind Your Manners” about how parents can teach manners and etiquette to their children by setting a good example. The pitch met quick deadlines and was well-organized–complete with a link to Stacy’s online press kit–making for a perfect placement around Mother’s Day.
Christine says many freelancers write for inflight magazines, a coveted placement for publicists because you have a captive audience. For example, just one inflight freelancer Christine knows writes for San Francisco Chronicle, Sights Magazine, MyMidwest (another inflight mag), Bottom Line Personal, Sales and Marketing Magazine, Incentive Magazine, Hemispheres (yet another inflight mag) and North Bay Biz.
If you want to pitch inflight magazines, you can save yourself hours of time. See my “Special Report #29: “Fly High with Publicity in the In-flight Magazines.”