Posts from — February 2009

Get Free Publicity for Your Company

Have you tried HARO yet? It’s Peter Shankman’s free PR newsletter that connects reporters looking for sources with people and businesses who are experts in their fields.

He emails three times a day with queries ranging from local freelancers to nationally recognized TV, newspapers, and magazines.

Read them carefully, and respond to the ones that are a perfect fit for your knowledge and experience. If the reporter wants a source for organic vegetable farmers and yours are grown conventionally – don’t respond.

Follow the instructions (subject line, email address to use, etc). The reporter may filter the requests to a specific email box. Responses that don’t go to the right place may get lost.

Include your contact information (phone, email, name, address, cell) so it’s easy for the reporter to reach you.

Keep in Touch With Your Clients

Use it as a way to connect with your clients (and get them some publicity too). If you see something that’s appropriate for your clients or contacts, pass it on with a note about the source and the rules. It’s a great way to build loyalty and provide an extra service your clients will appreciate.

Sign up here

Photo gruntzookie

First of all, thank you for visiting! I appreciate your comments, support, and trust.

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Photo: DRB62

Nearly every interest, business, industry, and activity has a newsletter or a magazine. These publications focus solely on people in particular industries. And most of them are free.

Here are 5 ways to use them:

1) Keep up with what’s going on in your industry, your customers’ problems (or the problems that businesses like them are having), and get information that will help you better serve your customers, or develop new products and services.

2) Many have online forums or email newsletters. Use the first to make useful (not promotional) comments. Answer questions and, where appropriate, point to an article or a resource on your Web site that will be helpful. This is also a good way to get traffic to your site. Once on that page, offer an e-book, or other “ethical bribe” to sign up for your newsletter.

3) As a promotional tool. Submit articles and get your name, and your business, in front of readers who are potential prospects. Just remember, write something that offers information and solutions, not a sales pitch. Check their editorial calendars (usually posted on their Web sites) and also look at the masthead to find the name of the editor. Writing articles in trade publications will raise your profile among your target audience, and establish you as a believable expert in your field.

4) Write letters to the editor (see yesterday’s post)

5) Advertise in their e-newsletters or in the magazine (if budget allows). Many also have event calendars, which you can use to publicize an upcoming conference or seminar.

To find a list of trade magazines, and subscribe, visit my Web site at KaplanCopy Trade Publication List

Photo: mannhobai

I got 120 new visitors to my book web site yesterday (without spending a cent). There’s been a raging debate on Shelf Awareness (a book industry newsletter) about the pros and cons of e-books. I run a Squidoo lens arguing that printed books are better, so I decided to weigh in on the topic. I wrote a letter to the editor arguing that publishers (and authors) will have to change their strategies and interact with readers in order to survive, and included a link to my lens.

Shelf Awareness posted the letter in their newsletter, and the clicks started coming. 77 in the first hour and a half, about 87 by lunchtime and 120 by this morning. Letters to the editor may seem like a relic of the last century, but people still read them. And, with the Internet, instead of waiting days or weeks for the magazine to print, the response is virtually instantaneous. Even better, you can include a live link, so readers can click directly to your site for more information.

Remember, don’t be overtly promotional. Offer insights, useful information, and reasoned arguments for your position. Target the publications you write to. Keep them within your sphere of expertise. There’s no sense writing in to a neurosurgery magazine if you’re not a neurosurgeon. Then, sit back and watch the clicks roll in.

Photo: Laineys Repertoire

Two very different conversations about the same thing struck me today.

The first was Seth Godin’s post about the rational marketer (and the irrational customer).

He said “The most common frustration I see, and I see it daily, comes from marketers who can’t figure out why more people won’t buy their product…Let’s say, for example, that you have a service that can deliver leads for five percent of what it costs to get them via a trade show. Why would any rational business, particularly one that says it wants qualified leads, spend that money on trade shows and not on you?…The problem is that your prospect doesn’t care about any of those things. He cares about his boss or the story you’re telling or the risk or the hassle of making a change.”

The second was from a New York Times article about vitamins. It quoted a scientist who couldn’t understand why people buy vitamins (when study after study shows no positive effect from taking them).

“’I’m puzzled why the public in general ignores the results of well-done trials,’” said Dr. Eric Klein, national study coordinator for the prostate cancer trial and chairman of the Cleveland Clinic’s Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute. “’The public’s belief in the benefits of vitamins and nutrients is not supported by the available scientific data.’” (NY Times 2/17/09)

Vitamin-takers (and prospects) don’t care what the studies say or the statistics you can show. What they do care about it is how they feel about it. They “feel better” taking the vitamins. It doesn’t matter what the science says; the emotional payout is higher from taking the pills; plus it’s easier than changing your diet.

Many years ago, I joined The Economist and convinced the Managing Director to buy new computers. The system they had was the one everyone else bought. One of my colleagues had tried to get him to buy the new system before, without any luck. She told him she liked that brand better.

The system The Economist had at the time (big Linotype machines that output type in long strips) required complicated coding in order to input anything. It took hours and mistakes were easy (and frequent). The new system would eliminate a lot of the errors because it was drag and drop and WYSIWIG (yes, it was a long time ago).

I told him a story about my previous job. I described how we used the same system to impress several big clients. I told him how amazed they were when they saw what we had done, and how quickly we’d done it. I said we got the work out faster (even without formal training) and were able to save money because we could do more in-house (instead of sending it out).

It cost more upfront, but we’d save a lot of time (and money) long-term.

He bought it!

Don’t give statistics, write a story. A story about how your solution cuts their stress, or lets them go home earlier, or may get them a raise.

Photo: yogi