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Being a force multiplier is where I get my kicks

Being a force multiplier is where I get my kicks

I read with a pen in my hand at all times. The real trick is to not only underline the good ideas and passages, but open up a notebook and write down the idea and develop an action, identify who else needs to be brought in, identify a completion date and deploy the action plan to turn the idea into a reality with benefits. Even if it is inspirational, fiction or non-business related, identify the good stuff and share it with someone. Sharing and caring someone else’s life’s work can bring joy to the world. Being a force multiplier is where I get my kicks.

Advice to politicians about how to get more and better media coverage

Advice to politicians about how to get more and better media coverage

A political staffer for a member of Congress asked me for advice on how to get more coverage and better coverage. Here’s what I recommended:

1. Stick with the important facts and keep it short and to the point. I know that’s hard for politicians, but that’s what media want.

2. Get rid of all pithy quotes and remarks, all self-laudatory praise, any tedious, boring and useless blather, and anything you can’t prove with the facts. Nail it with style, using the smallest tool needed every time.

3. Tackle controversy head on, state your position distinctively and with precision, but avoid partisan platform brown bag advocacy, being pedantic, winey, or argumentative. Express passion and emotion when it is called for, but don’t go overboard and rant and rave. Be aware for your previous positions and explain the reasons for any change of heart, position or direction.

4. Indicate the vehicles for people to send comments, express their opinion and to provide feedback and the express an active and sincere willingness to listen to the people. You may find that funny and scary, but it really does impress people.

5. Offer media what they need to do their job (factual validation, photos, Q & A’s, interview opportunities, and visual aids). Make it fit the format of the media you are working with and make it unique for them.

6. Offer media easy access to the people that matter but not intermediaries or to people who don’t matter. Make it easy not hard to do interviews and schedule news conferences frequently. Give media the lead time they need to schedule and deploy the resources needed to give you what you want. Media coverage is valuable so use it wisely and get good at it.

7. Target the media who matter. Identify the people who will be interested and affected and pitch and feed to the media that they watch, read or listen.

Knowing When You’ve Created Your Purple Cow

Knowing When You've Created Your Purple Cow

A question was presented to me today:

>> If CNN does decide to interview me, or if I’m scheduled for an interview on
>> any of the other cable news networks I’ve approached, I’m going to want the whole world to watch and learn about my concept.

>> I need to hire someone who knows how to use the Internet to make that happen.

Actually, I don’t think you need to hire anyone. I can’t imagine lots of people being motivated by a message that says ‘watch me on CNN!’ Think about it. You might send out an email to friends, colleagues and your mother, but most media won’t tell their audience to go watch you on another channel or network.

What I think you really need to do is refine your idea until it flies by itself when you present it to anyone and to everyone.

You’ll know you’ve got what it takes when it happens repeatedly and reliably and a level that produces a sustainable yield.

I call this the miracle of the microcosm. If you create something good and can communicate it so that people want it in your little neck of the woods, then when you go on CNN and say the same thing, it will have the same effect on millions of people.

But if what you created isn’t all that great, and what you said to people to get them interested wasn’t all that persuasive or galvanizing, then it won’t matter at all what you say even if you are on CNN.

You can develop your ‘mar-com’, script, or that magic sequence of communications yourself right in your back yard. You create the interview script that goes A-B-C-D-E and produces action XYZ.

This works because we are a nation of people who have been raised to respond to media communications the same way. We laugh at the same jokes and cry at the same sad stories, we cringe at the same pictures of tragedy and disaster and squeal with delight and water at the mouth when promised something sweet to eat.

Here is an article which describes a method for developing your own galvanizing communications sequence and testing it till you know it works.

The Magic of Business
http://www.directcontactpr.com/free-articles/article.src?ID=105

Here’s a link to another article I wrote with tips and ideas on:

How to Be Galvanizing- 22 ways to be galvanizing and interesting to media, prospects and customers
http://blog.directcontactpr.com/public/getting-more-publicity-getting-more-sales-how-to-be-galvanizing

To me and based on my experience with my own books, databases, inventions and clients, perhaps the most powerful thing you can do is make your presentation in the form of a helpful problem solving article or interview. Being helpful is the most important thing you can do to get people interested in what you have to offer. What you offer has to be truly remarkable and useful.

So here’s one more set of ideas for you all about:

Publicizing and Promoting by helping the People You can help the Most
http://blog.directcontactpr.com/public/publicizing-and-promoting-by-helping-people-the-people-you-can-help-the-most

If you do create a script that produces reliable action when you present it to people, of course, then it’s time to incorporate it into news releases and other business proposals and send it out to media and companies and organizations everywhere, so you can use the power of the media as a force multiplier.

I’ll be happy to see that ‘mar-com’ once you’ve created and feel like it’s ready to be pitched.

😉

Realistic chances of success for a memoir

Tips on how to help guide an author of a self published memoir

Here is my November 21, 2008 response to a post to the online discussion group Small-Pub Civil at Yahoo groups:

>>Hello, everyone! One of my authors has written a 250+ page book about his open-heart surgery. The bulk of it is autobiographical, including childhood memories, interviews with
everyone from the surgeon down to the cleaning staff and an entire chapter of get-well emails from his friends (he has their permission, BTW). Since he produces and hosts a long-
running regional TV show with a reasonably-sized fan base and is promoting the hell out of the book, I am confident he will sell a few thousand copies. But he’s expecting big-time
national success, including being stocked in the chains and selling on QVC. He is seriously counting on coverage in the NYT.

>> When I try to point out that this is unlikely he accuses me of negativism. Am I just being negative?

———————————

I encounter this with authors all the time. It goes with the territory. It could be a truly remarkable memoir. It might contain experiences that can make people smile, cry and laugh as they read. But then again, he may not yet have gotten any meaningful feedback from people, or the feedback he has received may be designed to make him feel good and congratulate him on his effort and accomplishment with having written a book.

I wrote an article to try to get people to grasp the significance of their dream and what it means to them if they really want to see other people appreciate their writing, especially if they really intend to now use that writing to achieve fame and financial success.

I work with hundreds of authors and publishing companies each year and really and truly, very few of them have really created a book that it good enough to achieve fame, glory and financial success for the author. Most are labors of love. There’s a sizable financial investment and personal emotional investment that’s required to go from “author” to “best selling author” and few really have what it takes to make it through the gauntlet of the marketplace.

What I recommend people do is go slow. Show and tell one on one. It’s possible to learn how to sell. That’s the miracle of the microcosm. If you learn what you need to say to people in your little neck of the woods, chances are you can then say the same thing anywhere and everywhere you go and you’ll be equally successful selling your products wherever you go.

But you need to learn those magic words first.

You have to write to sell, and the job of writing isn’t done until the book sells. This is where most self-publishers go astray. They publish their book without verifying it was really ready for market.

You have to test your ideas and test your product and test your mar-com (marketing communications) on real live people. You need to identify your end users and the people who will buy the book for your users. Then you need to learn what to say to get these people to take the action you want.

Write to sell and test, test, test. Do this in small doses till you get the right buy signals. Reliably. Not just once or twice, but repeatedly and reliably.

Do 25 to 50 POD versions and test it with these important people.

You’ll know by their behavior and response whether you are really ready to publish the book.

If you can’t get people to even look at it, then you’re not done.

If they look at it and put it down, then you still have work to do.

If people look at it and grab it, you might be done. It depends what happens when they then pick it up and peruse it. If they put it down, then you’re not done.

You may have to redesign and re-write it till you know you are done. You have to work with your prospective audience to get real feedback, and you must listen to what people say and address the issues you receive.

This may take a lot of reiterations.

But one thing is for certain, there is a point that you will reach when you know that you are done. It’s a wonderful thing when you get to this point and know it.

Here’s what I’ve observed and experienced.

You know when you are done…

When people look at it, grab it, look at it again, look up to see where the cashier is, and then head to the cashier.

You show your book someone and they hold it close and won’t give it back freely.

You show them the book and they reach for their wallet.

They pick up one book, look at it, and grab four or five of them and head to the cashier.

One person picks up the book, grabs it and heads to find and show his or her friend the book, and they both grab one for themselves and buy it.

You know that you have something when kids pull it off the shelf and haul it over to their mothers and fathers with a look of desire and wanting and excitement in their eyes that says please????!!!!

I call this the hoarding syndrome. What you are witnessing I call a clutching response. It occurs when people touch something and decide that they want it.

This behavior in people clearly indicates to you that the book or object they are holding has such inherent value and importance that they are willing to pay for it. They know it and you know it instantly. They clutch the object of their desire in their hot sweaty hands and pull it in close to their body as if to possess it and protect it.

I know you’ve seen this and even experienced it yourself. You see it in stores and shopping centers all the time. I see it when my wife and teenage daughters shop. I know from their behavior when I’m toast. There is no arguing with them once they’ve experienced certain hormonal reactions to objects that they’ve been in close physical contact with. That’s they way we humans respond to certain material experiences.

Other people here have no doubt experienced this in a variety of ways. It would be very cool to hear from people about when they knew that they were done.

I work with a lot of authors and publishers, and I see success a lot less frequently that I wish I would see. I attribute this to people rushing through to publishing their books without making sure they have created a product that people will actually buy.

So this is my bottom line advice:

Write to sell. Don’t stop writing and re-writing till you know it sells, and sells easily and continuously.

Prove it with small test POD numbers. Use the technology that is available to all of us wisely. Then move it up through the publishing and promotion chain level by level.

In most cases, the author thinks the book should excite and grab people. But it doesn’t always happen that way.

So to me, they still have work to do. But they can’t speculate about what’s wrong, they need real data.

This is what I tell people to do – get the data. Figure out what you need to say and do to produce action that will satisfy your stated goals and objectives:

Go ask your candidate customers. Ask until you are blue in the face and get the hard difficult data and feedback you need to redesign and redo your project.

I had a recent publisher come to me with a book which presented his ideas on how to have a successful marriage by using a marriage contract.

Myself, I’m a former attorney and I would not pick up a book that had a marriage contract in it.

Do people want to run their marriage off of a contract? Like it’s a job or a construction project? Do they want to reduce communications and relationships to policies, procedures and stipulated provisions?

When we looked at our marriage vows, my wife said “strike the obey” and I said “and add in this here dispute resolution clause”.

And that’s what the minister did, and we still live by those words.

And that was the oral vows.

Put it in writing? Something doesn’t fit in the picture. Like ‘what’s love got to do with it?’

This is the type of process most people go through when they contemplate buying a book.

Do I want to get married to this person and his or her ideas? Even if I can get divorced from them later?

You are not done until people fall in love with your creation. You’ll know it only when it happens.

What to do when times are tough

thirteen ways to improve your chances of surviving tough times

This question was posted to one of the discussion lists I monitor. I just brainstormed this question and here’s what came to mind.

When time are tough:

1. Re-evaluate everything, top to bottom. Identify who are you best customers, your best income streams, your best products, your best services, whatever you have. Get the data and stare at it really hard. Make sure you truly understand what happens in each marketing process you use so that you can identify why customers buy what you sell and what you can control and influence by what you do.

2. Focus on only the most important sources of income. Analyze them until you can visualize every step and communication that produces these sales. Make sure that you spend more time protecting these income streams than anything else you do.

3. Document what works best. Make sure you have a real foundation to believe in. Identify the successful repetitious processes carefully. Make sure they are reliable and produce known results. Once you know which processes are producing what income, make intelligent mature choices as to where to stay and what to let go. Then do it. Change how you operate.

4. Zero in on what works, with whom, and explore what you can do to a. get repeat orders, b. get larger orders, c. get expanded orders – all from the same people. Make sure you identify your most important target audience and stay focused like a laser on them. Forget trying to sell to the world. Focus on your crucial niche. Stay there and get known for real value.

5. Look for host beneficiary opportunities. If you sold to a HQ office, go back and see if you can get them to endorse a referral to all the branch offices. Look for the opportunities and be creative with business proposals to leverage who you know and have performed well for already. Then pitch and pitch some more.

6. Ask for referrals. If you have existing relationships, contact them and ask them who they know and then outreach to them with your best and freshest offer. If you don’t identify the people in your target who can buy the most the fastest. Then contact them one at a time

7. Stop spending generically. Spend surgically. Make sure that you can document what happens when you invest in a process. Make sure the metrics mean something. Learn to sell your product or service. Really and truly learn what it takes to be successful. Then repeat, repeat, repeat.

8. Stop communicating generically. Communicate surgically. Identify what you say that turns people on. Use these messages. Use technology to repeat these messages. If you don’t know, test, test, test till you do. Then repeat, repeat, repeat.

9. Drop almost everything that’s not producing serious reliable income. Focus only on the big ticket items or the ones that have tremendous potential if successful. The Long Tail only produces for people with lots of customers and the ability to sell and profit from lots of other people’s products. If you are not one of them, you have to focus on what produces solid income for you. Make choices that matter.

10. Same goes for your direct communications with people, your PR communications and your marketing messages. Identify what you did and what you said that turned media and people on. That message is probably laden with psychological activators. Re-use it. Repeat what you did till it stops working. Don’t break something that doesn’t need fixing. But let the data tell you what’s the right thing to do. Get the data.

11. Communicate with your customers like you never have before. Talk to them about what’s going on and how you can help. Get to know them and the personas they exemplify. Learn where they hang with and where they hang out when they get information that influences what they buy. Then go to those places and study how things are done.

12. Help the people you can help the most. Look at your customers. Consider that each one is representative of other people with similar interests and problems. This is part of the miracle of the microcosm. Solve the problems of one, and you have a solution for many others with the same problem. Identify the barriers people face. A barrier is an opportunity for problem solving.

13. Once you define a successful script for communicating, then you can use all the available technologies to get the word out and share your knowledge. Remember GIGO – Garbage in, Garbage out – can be replaced with MIMO – Magic in Magic Out.

Paul J. Krupin – Direct Contact PR
Reach the Right Media in the Right Market with the Right Message
http://www.DirectContactPR.com Paul@DirectContactPR.com
800-457-8746 509-545-2707
http://blog.directcontactpr.com/

Key questions for a galvanizing interview news release or problem solving tips article

Key questions for a galvanizing interview news release or problem solving tips article

OK you’re ready to write a news release or have me send one out for you.

Now what do you do?

The goal is to now get people interested in you and your writing. To do this we need to make you interesting, newsworthy and entertaining. We need some exceptional material. We need your best material.

This is what I need from you so that we are successful together.

Here’s what I recommend you do:

First go to Google News and study what’s being published YOUR KEY WORDS

http://news.google.com/

You may also want to do this at my newly patented custom search word pro web site. It operates like a channel changer for search engines:

http://www.searchwordpro.com/quick.src?Action=&T=130

Once you see the existing coverage think how we can use this knowledge to create similar coverage about you. We have to interest media by giving them what they are accustomed to producing entertainment and education-wise. Look at what the best authors and entertainers do and in response to what questions or issues. Learn and take notes. Find a few examples that you really are envious of. These become your models.

Now build a presentation like this:

Imagine being in front of 20 to 30 of the very best people you think would be most interested and who in your service. Describe these people to me.

Identify the most important and interesting topic, challenges, or problem situation that will interest the maximum number of people you can think of, that relate to what you can speak about based on what you have created.

Think about being entertaining and informative at your story telling best. Use what you learned to guide you. You can use my 3 I Technique. Identify a success story. Imitate it. Innovate with your own information.

Then give me your ten best tips, problem solving actions or stories and ideas or lessons learned for your target audience. Can you give these people your ten commandments? Your best quips? The most important things you learned by writing?

I want you to pretend you have three to five minutes to give these people ten absolutely phenomenal show stoppers. That means for ten items, you have less than 30 seconds for each one, plus a one minute
intro and a one minute ending.

The goal is to create a vision for the media that clearly illustrates and allows them to visualize in their minds — How you can help them put on a good show and entertain and educate the people you can help the most.

Focus less on ideas than on actions that people can take to deliver immediate or tangible real time or near term benefits, impacts, or predictable consequences. Use real stories about things that happened to you or other people to add human interest.

These show stoppers should be “Do This Today” types of actions if it is advice you are giving to solve a problem or “Get a Load of This” type of emotionally engaging stories that are dramatic and personal and illustrate some achievement in the face of adversity.

This forms the core content to the news release/show proposal pitch.

These will also be publishable as an article with some caveats we can add to the beginning and ending of the core content to turn it into a proper news release offering. It will also become the core script
for a Q & A style interview, so they serve many purposes.

You can do five do’s and five don’ts or whatever. I just want you to be your wittiest and most galvanizing self. You can be humorous and/or serious, just be good and make them memorable. Keep them G Rated.

If you follow these instructions, please do send me these in an email message. No more than a single bullet plus a single one or two sentence inspirational explanation per bullet.

I’ll do the rest.

And then we’ll get you a bunch of media publicity, in the right place, so you are viewed and seen as helping the people you can help the most.

Paul J. Krupin Custom Targeted PR
Helping People Reach the Right Markets & the Right Media, with The Right Message
www.DirectContactPR.com 800-457-8746 509-545-2707

What is personal development? How does personal development relate to getting publicity?

What is personal development? How does personal development relate to getting publicity?

What is personal development?

In the world of PR that I work in, personal development is a crucial element. The media responds to people at their peak. Driven people seeking to achieve their best attracts interest. What people create and achieve when they are out there pushing themselves and striving for incredible heights is galvanizing. You can be maximally effective in attracting media attention when you offer something that represents your best.

So I am constantly asking my clients to tell me what they can do or say that will help the people they can help the most.

When you give people your best, people will give you attention. They will respect what you say or offer. This is one of the most important rules of getting publicity. Be your best. Offer your best. Give your best. Entertain, educate, advise, help, do the very best you can.

And pack these golden nuggets of wisdom that you can offer into a news release of about 250 words or less so that you can communicate your best in ten to thirty seconds.

Okay, it’s not that easy to do, but if you focus on personal development, you’ll understand what I mean. This is a very powerful and important tactic. This is what lies at the core of the problem solving tips article or the talk show interview.

It’s worth the time and effort it takes to develop yourself personally and professionally.

It takes guts and time and effort. You also have to look inward and acknowledge your strengths and weaknesses.

You also need to decide to do something to better yourself. This is a choice. You choose to improve. You act to improve. You get better.

Of course, the alternative is to do nothing, and stay the way you are.

When you develop yourself you improve how you behave with other people. You communicate better. You deliver better advice, information, problem solving analysis, and you also learn to be more useful and more effective in a wider range of situations.

This makes you versatile and capable. People listen. They act upon your advice. They learn to trust you. This is what expertise and a track record of successful performance brings to you.

This is what comes from personal development.

Media are attracted to confidence, energy, exuberence, and they know quality when they see it. This is why personal development is so important to your ability to get publicity.

This video packs a lot of punch in a very short period of time. Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Les Brown, Jeffrey Gitomer, Jim Rohn, talk about what it is you need to know to improve yourself.