Publicity Pros

How to Get Our Free Downloads

admin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:52:32 +0000

You can get all of our free, content-packed webinars and cheat-sheets right here on how to handle PR for your business, with tons of insider tips from the pros in public relations, how to set up a Facebook business page, how to manage your social media activities to cut down on time and get better results, two full webinars on SEO and other essential techniques to drive traffic to your website or blog, even how to promote your new iPhone app!

Just sign up for our email list (in the right hand corner of your screen) and we’ll email you the password that will unlock all of of these helpful small business secrets for instant download.

Protected: 5 More Steps to Drive Traffic to Your Website

admin — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 16:03:58 +0000

Awards Are PR Gold

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 15:00:34 +0000

If you win an award for your business, product, or contribution to your industry or to society, that’s PR gold, for two reasons: First, you have a perfect reason for contacting a reporter with real news, and second, you can add the award as a credibility enhancing footnote or addition to your boilerplate in future pitches.

So we could almost hear you ask: great advice, but how the heck do I go out and get an award so I have something to announce?

Ha. Here’s a fantastic resource for you: http://awardsync.com/. It’s a free service that allows you to search upcoming award competitions by keyword. For example, we typed in “leadership – women” in the search box and the site returned 99 awards, organized in chronological order by entry open date. The list also featured entry close and winner announcement dates, and for each award we could click on “details” to go to a separate page showing the company issuing the award, description, rules and guidelines, the URL of the award-giving organization, fees, and more.

So go forth and earn a gold star, or two – and then promote your newly burnished image to the world!

Protected: 5 Steps to Drive Traffic to Your Website

admin — Wed, 12 May 2010 20:48:53 +0000

Protected: How to Promote Your iPhone App

admin — Mon, 10 May 2010 23:25:07 +0000

Protected: How to Stop Spinning On the Social Media Hamster Wheel in Hell

admin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 01:27:48 +0000

Protected: 10 Easy Steps For A Better PR Plan

admin — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 21:38:29 +0000

Protected: Facebook! GRRR!!! Somebody Explain It To Me!

admin — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 21:13:46 +0000

Free public parking spot for your downloadable stuff

admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:00:42 +0000

So you have a great photo of your new product, or a one-sheet with pricing information about a special offer, or you’ve written a time-sensitive response to a recent event, or you have a date-specific announcement, or an almost-press release. You want to make this gem of information available to the media, or to anyone else who’s interested, for that matter, but you don’t want to go in and modify your website, then have to un-modify when the item is no longer timely. You also know well the rule about not including attachments when sending emails to the press (unless they’ve asked for them), so you don’t want to attach this file to an email bound for distribution to a group of media contacts.

What to do?

Well, “there’s an app for that.” I mean, an online solution. And it’s quick and it’s free.

One solution is Mediafire, a free online parking spot for documents and other files. There you can either create a free account, or upload files even without an account, and then share the URL for the file with whomever you please. Documents, presentations, videos, and images are all allowed.

Another option is to create a private page on your blog and then place your images, pdfs or other documents on this post. Simply add a new post, set its visibility to “private,” and then place your files into the post. You can share the URL for that page with journalists or whomever you wish to have access. They can go straight to the page to get your files. Since the page cannot be reached from elsewhere on your blog, you don’t have to worry about taking the page down if and when its contents become stale. Simply stop sharing the URL. Or, if you absolutely want to prohibit access after a certain date, even to those who’ve been provided the URL, go in and move the page to “trash” whenever you wish.

You can now include your URL linking to the mediafire posting or to your private blog post in your pitch. If you want a shorter or customized link to include in your email, you can take one further step. With the link still on your clipboard, go to the Tiny URL website. Click in the window under “enter a long URL that you want to make tiny” and paste your URL there. To the right is a small bar where you can enter a custom name element if you wish. Click “Tiny it!” and a new shorter URL appears, which you can now copy and paste into your email.

Never stick to a deadline – BEAT it. Beat the heck out of it!

admin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:00:16 +0000

Just like everything else in this world, competition for publicity gets stronger every day – and avenues of communication multiply and broaden. Whereas a reporter in the old days used to put out a few phone calls to find sources, now he posts his search on private services that PR firms scan multiple times a day, plus public online services, and perhaps industry-specific websites or e-list services as well. A request is likely to generate many more fit-the-bill responses than the reporter needs. In fact, on some of these services, we occasionally see a request summary appear for a second time, one or two days after it was first posted, with the notation “FULL STOP” added. Meaning, “everybody, enough! Stop sending me information. I’ve got what I need!”

So it’s not only important to be on topic, courteous, concise, and provide the right information or expertise that the reporter’s looking for – it’s also important not to be the twentieth person to do so. A reporter will stop searching after he’s found what he seeks. All others who follow, even though they might have submitted on point and before deadline, will lose out because they weren’t the first to hit the mark.

So be smart and be quick. As soon as you possibly can, after you get notified of a PR opportunity, send your pitch on to the reporter. The early bird gets the worm, capisce?