Direct Contact PR, Internet media faxgrowth




 
amateurfetishist.com

writng news releases

Getting Books Reviewed (Favorably) and Getting Media Coverage That Sells Books

Book Publicity Strategies for Getting More Media Coverage That Sells Books

I’ll talk the point of view from someone who gets books reviewed day in day out as a book publicist. I do this for a living, so I’ll share with you how I do it and what it takes to do it well.

I’m not a fan of book reviews, I believe that they have their place and a certain amount of limited utility. But to date, my experience and that of my clients continues to show that feature stories sell more books. They have a broader deeper reach, have greater shelf life, and are people focused, rather than product focused. They brand the author and with the trust and interested they generate, they result in people being far more likely to buy everything the author may have available for sale.

For that reason, I’ll hope you can bear with me and I’ll work you through this process of selecting what to say to media if you are an author trying to maximize your return on investment and the time you put into being a person who hopes to profit from creative writing and publishing. I’ll cover both book reviews and feature stories. I will do my best to encourage you to only use book announcements and try to get only to get started, and to switch to pitching feature stories if you really want to maximize your sales. The reason is simple. People respond to media best when it affects them emotionally. People can be persuaded to buy things using media yes. But to do so means that you have to turn them on and get them emotionally engaged. If you want to use media to reach people, that’s what you have to do.

Think about it. When was the last time you read a book review in a newspaper and then grabbed your credit card? Now when was the last time you read a recommendation in a trade publication, a blog post or a technical forum discussion (like this one), and then bought something or hired someone? What sort of writing got YOU to take the action.

Basically an author/publisher really wants publicity that gets people to buy books, so when you contact a media person, the goal is to get coverage that makes a galvanizing impression on the reader of the publication, or the person who’s listening to the radio, or watching TV, or reading a blog, or a mailing list or discussion post.

So the message you want the person to receive has to be so good that it provokes them to ACTION. So not only do you first need to WRITE A GOOD BOOK, but then you need to know what to say about it that really turns people on.

That’s the content you need to place in front of your reviewer, whether you want to just get a book review or a galvanizing feature story.

To be maximally effective with media, you have to understand what makes them tick. You need to realize that media are publishers (or producers of shows) they make their living, they survive and thrive from two primary sources of income: subscriptions and advertising. Yes, they are publishers who sell their writing just like you are trying to do.

That’s what you offer media. You package it in something that they are accustomed to using as a decision document. It’s called a news release.

My definition of a news release is a little different than that used by many. I define a news release like this:

– A written proposal
– containing a request for media coverage
– and/or an offer to provide media the content needed to achieve that end.

You sent a news release directly to the right media decision makers or you place it where they can find it and use it. I’ll spend more time on this later at the end of this post.

The goal of a news release is to get media action that results in media coverage. There really are only two possible favorable things that happen when you send a news release.

1. They write about you or interview you.
2. They request more information (like a copy of your book and a media kit)

If you don’t succeed at this step, you simply fail. So it’s crucial that you get the door open and either get them to say yes to something once they read your news release.

Being successful at this is like going through a gauntlet. Media will not give you free advertising. They only publish news, education, or entertainment that their audience will pay for and that their advertisers won’t object to.

So you have to be very selective on what you present. You have to present copy that is strategically designed to:

– Interest and even expand the media outlet’s target audience.
– Provide news, educational or entertainment value.
– Be easy to verify, trust, and work with.

So what information do you give to media? You give media information that increases the number of people who will buy what they publish. You do this by studying what they publish. Day in day out, what you need to produce to be successful is right before your eyes every day. You simply need to mimic what you see and use what is being published as a guide to deciding what you need to create and offer. You can use my 3 I technique any time you want. It works very well. You can decide you want to use a magazine, or USA Today, or the NY Times Book Review Section. It doesn’t matter, you just pick a target that looks just like what you want, and create something that looks like it belongs there.

That’s why when 3 I technique news releases are submitted, so much of the content is readily used. It’s not that you get lazy journalists, it’s that you’ve done your homework so good that the editor sees that it looks like it belongs there and decides to use your copy with little or no extra expenditure of corporate resources. I can show you a news release for client Susan Casey for a book titled Women Invents, which was published in 1997. A year ago, we wrote a news release all about women inventors. The news release was turned into an article for the March 31 2009 issue of Fast Company Magazine with Susan Casey getting the byline for the article. Cut and paste verbatim for a book that was published over ten years ago.

The lesson learned is that the book doesn’t really matter to media. What you offer to their public matters to media.

Media basically look at everything that comes to them and ask three questions:

1. How many people in my audience will be interested in this?
2. What’s in it for my audience?

These are pass fail questions. The answers have to be 1. Lots of people will be interested and 2. There’s great news, education or entertainment value.

If and only if you get a pass on these two questions, then you get to the next question.

3. How much time, effort, and money will this project require?

The answer has to be VERY LITTLE. In other words, the editor has to spend little money, time, resources, people, etc. to do their job.

Content is the ultimate determining factor to getting media attention. And to get media attention and interest you use a special communication called a news release.

Six essential parts of a Trash Proof News Release

1. The Call to Action
2. A Real Story That Relates to Real People
3. A presentation of The Value to the Audience
4. The Crucial Information
5. The Highlights of Qualifications
6. Access to Key People

You may think that you need to do more and when you send a book to the media you can add other information, but really and truly, all I recommend people send to media at the very least is a copy of the news release and a copy of the book. The book data, (cost, publisher, isbn, length, size, etc) is given in the Crucial Information. We tend to be pretty successful when we do this. You do not need to throw the kitchen sink at media when you send a media kit. You do have to be selective and send them what they need to do the job you want done.

Once you write a 3 I technique news release, then you target your media. I use Cision for my client projects, it’s perhaps the largest online real time reasonably maintained media database, and it now include newspapers, magazine, radio, tv and all sorts of online media and even associations. When I target, I focus on the message and ask who are the right media to receive this message? I also ask:

1. Who are your customers?
2. What do they read, watch or listen to?
>> Particularly when they are receptive to learning and are open to taking action.

This last little tweak to this question is crucial. There’s a big financial ROI difference one gets by getting a review or an article in a newspaper of general circulation compared to getting the exact same article in front of a topical newsletter with far fewer readers, but they are dedicated professionals with money and a desire to improve their lives and livelihood. The latter tends to outsell the former.

You have to communicate meaningfully with media decision makers. These days I use email to custom targeted media lists. You can also use fax, phone calls, street mail and in-person communication to present a pitch and a proposal. These are what I call direct contact methods.

There are lots of other less effective methods and places you can place your messages. Some are more direct than others. I mean there are web sites, blogs, media sites, libraries, wiki’s forums, ezines, discussion groups, and audio, video, podcasts, and now there’s social media and specialized search engines for all the above. To meaningfully communicate means you news release becomes a landing page and you use email, headlines, snippets, slices, blinks and tweets to get people to go to that landing page. Being persuasive now is a complicated process. The technology requires you to format the message to match the medium. If you don’t meet the media’s needs, then you won’t get coverage.

The online news release posting services (free and fee) are not as direct as email and other direct contact methods. They often times are just web based storage, with searchable links, based not on content but on headlines. Real decision making journalists will not receive these communications unless they find them first. I’m not impressed with the media coverage that my clients and I have experienced using the more passive methods.

The lesson learned here is that the more attenuated the technology, the greater the number of steps, the less likely it is that the right media person will receive a meaningful communication, and you are thus less likely to succeed.

You can read my book Trash Proof News Releases if you want to learn more about this style of doing news releases. It’s a free download at Smashwords. Book page to download Trash Proof News Releases Smashwords edition:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/5921

Differences between marketing, advertising and PR

Discussion of the differences between marketing, PR and advertising

Great discussion over at Yahoo Small PR Agency Pros

I’ll throw in a little twist here to focus on what a person who works for a living has to do to communicate and accomplish these various and distinctive roles and objectives.

Advertising: paying for the creation and placement of communications so that target audiences of the selected media take the action wanted (which for products and services is usually sales, but for politicians could be votes, or for organizations, could be social action).

Marketing: the creation and management of programs and people and the execution of strategies, tactics and actions to achieve sales and profits of products or services (or votes or social action).

PR: the creation and presentation of proposed content to media (publishers or producers) to persuade them to publish or showcase a story or information that is perceived as objectively reported by their audiences, that creates interest, desire and promotes and triggers desired action (sales, votes or social action).

And btw, if the latter is what you spend a lot of your time doing, my new book Trash Proof News Releases is up on Smashwords – it’s a free download. It’s expressly designed to be an immense help to anyone who even thinks about writing a news release. I basically spend whole chapters of the book trying to explain clarify and communicate the difference between PR, and marketing and advertising, since what I see day in day out is otherwise successful marketing people fail to realize the difference between these distinctive functions, and the different types of MarCom copy required for each.

Book page to download Trash Proof News Releases Smashwords edition:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/5921

The book can be viewed online or downloaded in ten different formats.

Getting more book reviews for self-published books

Getting more book reviews for self-published books

Self-published authors often complain about how hard it is to get book reviews. Many of my clients are self published authors.

I don’t think that media distinguish books by whether they are from self-publishers or quality publshers that much any more. Some do, but it’s because they make an assumpition of quality. That is what they really seek to do anyway so as not to waste their time. They separate books that are quality books from books that are not.

Self published books get reviews day in day out. I will heartily affirm the advice from Jacqueline Simmons of Beagle Bay and Jim Cox of Midwest Book Review that a quality book is the first essential requirement.

But there is a second essential requirement you need to get down pat especially if you want to achieve financial success with your book.

That is this: You have to talk to your target audience and persuade them to take action to get your quality product. That means that the messages you create have to communicate meaningfully and incite and even galvanize these people to action.

There are many ways that authors can do that. The best way is to simply decide that you want to truly impress and interest the right people. So start with this question:

Who is going to be most interested in what I can talk about? This can’t be “everyone”. It has to be people in a pool or group that has similar interests. Then you have to think up how you are going to reach them and communicate with them. You have to identify the communications technology and pathway you will use.

Finally you ask yourself to identify what are you going to say in three minutes that will get them to come right up and hand you money.

You may think this is a crazy way to sell books or to get book reviews, but I do this for authors for a living. Authors are actually the best person to identify “the magic words” because when they start talking sincerely and openly and get spontaneous and excited about their writing, that’s when they say the things that interest people the most.

AND THE BEST PART ABOUT THIS IS THAT YOU CAN DO THIS ANYWHERE.

But you may need help with this. You may need to work with someone who watches your audience when you talk and notices what happens when you say certain things. What you are looking for is the sentences and speech that gets people to drill you with rapt attention.

You need to identify and capture what you say that really turns people on.

This is the exact language and information that you need to use in your news releases that get you book reviews. This is what you need to use so that you also get feature stories and interviews. You need to learn what you can say that really turns people on. It may or may not be inside the book you wrote. Don’t think that it has to be out of the book. It can be about you, your topic, your dog or your Aunt Tilly. It just has to be so good that people get so interested in you that they are persuaded to take a look at your creation.

From my experience with authors and experts of all types, what it really comes down to is a three to five minute piece that galvanizes people with you doing what you absolutely do the best. There is a method that I use to help people develop what they need. Here it is:

Imagine being in front of 20 to 30 of the very best people you think would be most interested you and what you do. Describe these people so that you have a picture of who they are and what they look like.

Now identify the absolute most interesting topic, challenge, or problem situation you can think of, that will interest the maximum number of people just like them.

NOW give them your five to ten best tips, problem solving actions, ideas, stories, jokes, or lessons learned. WHATEVER! Just focus your energy on your target audience and give them your very best. Can you give these people your ten commandments? Can you knock their socks off so that half of them come flying out of their chairs with their pocketbooks or wallets open? (BTW that’s a 50 percent response). That’s your goal. Do you realize that even if you only get one in ten to buy, that’s a ten percent response, and that’s still remarkable. Most business operate their marketing profitably at a much lower response rate. Less than 1 percent.

I want you to pretend you have three to five minutes to give a these people eight to maybe ten absolutely phenomenal show stoppers. That means for ten items, you have less than 20 seconds or less for each one, plus a one minute intro and a one minute ending.

This is what we put into your news release. This si what you offer to reviewers to get them interested in your book. Don’t think that all you need to do is describe your book. That’s not going to cut it. You need to prove that people will be interested. You need to communicate and demonstrate the value to the audience.

The goal is to create a vision for the media that clearly illustrates and allows them to see in their minds — How you can help or entertain or educate the people you can help or educate or entertain 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. These show stoppers should be “Do This Today” types of actions.

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. These ideas will also persuade media editors to ask for and review your book.

You can do whatever you can do. You just have 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.

This method works. I use it all the time to get my clients to stop selling and really create, develop and offer the media the news, education and entertainment they need to decide to give people media coverage. I used this technique with authors of all types.

Want proof? Create a Google News Alert on the words ‘book review’ so you can receive clips and see who’s getting covered to your heart’s content like this:

http://news.google.com/news/search?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=book+review+

Study the results each day and see how the media is writing about book authors these days. Evaluate existing coverage and use my 3 I technique.

So here’s the bottom line. I hope you take may advice. Self published authors do get reviews.

First WRITE A GOOD BOOK.

Second LEARN HOW TO TURN PEOPLE ON WHEN YOU SPEAK ABOUT YOUR BOOK.

Help the people you can help the most and offer the very best most educational and entertaining three to five minutes of talk you possibly can.

BY the way, if you do follow this advice, send me your best tips or talking points in an email message. I’ll be happy to comment and give you recommendations on what you’ve created and show you how to go the distance to create a news release that will produce the maximum results.

This is how you’ll get the most media response, the best book reviews and the most effective publicity you’ve ever experienced. You’ll also sell more books.

I guarantee that once you create and prove this little script of yours and once you really get it down and prove to yourself that it’s repeatable, you can use it again and again everywhere you go. That’s the miracle of the microcosm in America. We’ve got a country of 330 million media indoctrinated people, and once you learn how to galvanize them in your back yard, you can use technology to repeat the message and reproduce the response again and again.

Publicity Planning for Fall of 2009

Publicity Planning for Fall of 2009

If you want to get more publicity, then you need to look ahead and identify the opportunities that will be coming your way.

So get out your calendar and think about what sort of article you’d like to see come out in the months ahead.

Identify the holiday or date or season that allows you to create a tie-in.

Then craft a news release or an article that’s appropriate for that date or event.

Pay attention to the crucial lead times and transmit the pitch idea to the right media to ensure that your proposal gets the timely consideration and attention it deserves.

To help you identify what’s coming up, here’s a quick look ahead at the next few months of opportunities.

Today is August 19, 2008

Ramadan begins Friday

Labor Day is three weeks away
Columbus Day is three weeks away
Grandparents Day is three weeks away

Rosh Hashanah is one month away
Yom Kippur is one month away
Fall is one month away

Halloween is two months away
Election Day is two and a half months away

Thanksgiving is three months away

Christmas is four months away
New Years Day is four plus months away

Valentine’s Day is five months away

Critical lead times: Daily Newspapers, Radio and TV – seven to ten days. Weekly newspapers – four to six weeks. Magazines – four to six months.

Best days to transmit your news releases are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Plan and write copy Friday through Monday. Plan ahead and start writing early.

You can get your free 2009 Annual Publicity Plan download here.

Not all media are created equal – targeting the right media – targeted PR

Not all media are created equal - targeting the right media - targeted PR

Targeting the right media takes special skill.

They say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. It’s exposure in front of people in any case. Right?

But it can also be true that even good publicity in the right media may not be worth very much in the way of immediate direct sales.

When was the last time you read a newspaper article and ran and grabbed your credit card and the phone?

When was the last time you watched a TV interview or a commercial and felt compelled to buy the product or service featured?

Then again when was the last time you read a post to a blog or a forum or an ezine describing a solution or a tip and found it so good that you went to the web site and contacted the owner, or bought a service or product site unseen?

The point here is that the context of the message and the medium are both important.

The right message has to be in the right media and your audience also has to be in the right state of mind to be receptive and even open to taking action.

You target your media by asking what do my customers read, watch or listen to, especially when they are in the mood to hear and act on information related to what you are offering.

This leads you to the right media.

The right media could be prime media: newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, news services or syndicates.

Prime media are still one of the most powerful and trusted media for the masses. Each media is a business that makes its income from paying subscribers and from advertisers who also invest money in advertising because of the number of subscribers.

The right media can also be online: blogs, Internet online media web sites, articles sites, forums, ezines, mailing lists, discussion groups, and social media and networking sites.

The right media is media where enough of the people who see the message take the action you want them to take.

There is no way to know for sure which ones will produce fruit until you place your message out there and see what happens.

You find them where you find them.

Seven Key Types of Attention Grabbing Headlines, Email Subject Lines, and Tweets

Seven Key Types of Attention Grabbing Headlines, Email Subject Lines, and Tweets

I am constantly identifying micro-content that grabs attention. In a world where people have adult ADD (attention deficit disorder), getting their attention is an ever increasing challenge.

What is interesting is that if you study the mini-messages that work, you begin to see that there are special characteristics that fall into a small but important series of categories. Here they are:

1. Problem Identified
2. Problem Warning
3. Problem Solved
4. Someone in Trouble
5. Someone Saved or Rescued
6. Something Bad Happened
7. Something Good Happened

You can look at newspapers or magazines and news search engines and see these categories everywhere.

If you are trying to create galvanizing micro-content, these alternatives make it really easy to identify some ideas for you.

Simplifies things, doesn’t it?

Why book reviews news releases don’t work

Why book reviews news releases don't work

OK, you’ve written a book and now want to get some publicity?

I recommend that authors stay away from news releases that simply say “I’ve published a book and am marketing it…..” It may get you local publicity and it may get you some book reviewers, some of which my end up getting published.

But you do not see too many book reviews that result in stellar book sales and movie deals.

That’s what comes out of galvanizing feature stories and interviews that contains significant human interest or promise of tremendous value-added.

That’s what you need to offer to media and that’s what you need to place into your news release.

Content wise, you must remember the differences between the media and make sure the needed elements are present or are offered:

Print wants the best information. Radio and TV want to be told why you have the best entertainment.

Notice the difference: To the specific information or topic is of lesser importance than it’s entertainment value to the producer. Print speaks to the head. Print requires more written words — it is intellectual and focuses on getting you to think.

Radio and TV speak to the stomach. Radio and TV focus on provoking emotional response. They speak to your heart and soul.

Did you know that radio provides out-pulls print and tv when it comes to motivating people?

Did you know that more people respond to audio speech than written speech? Did you know who proved this point better than anyone else in the entire 20th Century?

Adolph Hitler. His oratory motivated the Germans to start a World War.

Listen carefully to the speeches given by our President. Look at the powerful emotions they can evoke with very few words. The speech writers are media masters.

Ha! I know you may get bored after a few minutes, but oh well, they are the ones who are “on the air”, so pay attention as long as you can get something out of it.

You can learn a lot by listening to others, and paying attention to the powerful and successful people around you, especially those who are featured in the media. Study what they do. Learn what they do.

You can modify and improve your media success by learning from the masters all around you. They are in print everywhere you look, on the radio everywhere you go, and on tv day in and day out.

If you become a student of the media with the goal of improving your media success, you will seek to learn and apply what learn, especially if you focus on people who successfully pitched to media, and are now “on the air’.

When you pitch to media, you must ask yourself three simple questions:

What do they want?

What can I offer?

How can I present it so I can be more persuasive than others who are also vying for the space, or air time?

So if you have a fiction book, and want to find out ways of publicizing your book, what you must do is start studying the publicity that has been acquired by other fiction book authors.

You find the critical intelligence you need in the latest issue of whatever media you want to be in.

You can also use search engines to find and get you access to the online counterparts to media.

You can also use news search engines to follow specific key words on your topic and study who’s getting publicity and on what topics.

You can use my 3 I Technique:

1. Identify the success stories

2. Imitate the success stories

3. Innovate with your own information.

This simple process works so use it.

Start paying attention to what is out there. Head to the magazine rack. Open up the magazines you want to be in. Use the magazine search and news search engines.

If you are a fiction book author, start studying the publicity acquired by other fiction authors.

Identify the feature articles about fiction authors. Cut them out and create a scrap book. Then use these for ideas.

Watch TV and listen to the radio and do the same thing. Tape the shows, watch them or listen to them several times, and learn the behaviors. List the questions, study the good answers.

Accumulate enough examples from your particular target media that you can craft news angles, headlines, and content in a comparable style. Then prepare your own materials using the successful models and mentors as a guide.

There is another way to describe this process:

Search, Find, Match and Apply.

You SEARCH for the opportunity what you want.

You FIND — an opportunity or a place where you think the opportunity exists.

You make sure you MATCH their needs with the right content.

And then you APPLY by presenting your news release to see if you can be selected for the opportunity you identified.

This process works as well for searching for getting publicity as aweel as it does for creating letters, business proposals, getting contracts, agents, publishers, or even for a soulmate.

The articles and interviews you find will tell you to the types of news release you will need to create to pitch this type of feature article story, or get interviews based on the themes you discover. Analyze them. Identify the content, length, style, and other characteristics of the information. Then create information about your book that parallels what you have found.

If you pay attention, you’ll see the types of things that turn your particular media on.

And you’ll be able to do it, too.

Ten Essential Facts Needed in Your News Release to Get Publicity for a Book Award

Ten Essential Facts Needed in Your News Release to Get Publicity for a Book Award

Congratulations – You’ve Won a Book Award.

If you are going to create a news release and seek publicity for your award, then here my suggestions on the essential facts you need to include in your copy:

1. headline – Author wins prize/award

2. one sentence killer – knock their socks off description of what the book is about

3. unusual or interesting facts about the situation/the book/the author/the topic/the issues

4. the specifics of the award – what, where when, or how much and why is this award so important and prestigious

5. three to four paragraphs about the book, who it features, what’s amazing about it, why people will like it

6. basic book facts and marketing information so people can find it and buy it

7. author bio and information

8. book cover photo and author photo

9. contact information

10. offer for review copy and interviews if you want to offer these items.

Finally, once you have the news release written, it needs to be distributed to the right media.

Proper targeting will maximize your chances of getting the right type of coverage in front of the people you can interest and help the most. So a childrens book needs to go to childrens media and editors, and a travel book needs to go to travel book media and editors and so forth.

You’ve worked hard to get this award. I hope this helps you take a few more steps in a positive direction so you can make the most of it.

What is a News Release? Really!

What is a News Release? Really!

So much confusion over this simple question. Here’s my definition of a news release:

A written proposal:

– containing a request for media coverage

– and/or an offer to provide media the content needed to achieve that end.

A news release is either sent directly to media decision makers directly (e.g., by fax, email, street mail, etc.) or placed where they can find it and use it (as when it is posted to a news search engine using a news release distribution service).

A news release is not an advertisement. You do not pay for coverage and do not control what the media says. It is a document that persuades media to give you media coverage. Your degree of success is often based on how much of what you give them to do their job is actually used.

You must provide media with information that matches what they are accustomed to publishing (or producing). Usually this means the content must be news, education or entertainment, or opinion or commentary.

If you have a different objective, then perhaps you should not be thinking what you are writing or need to write is a news release at all.

It’s OK to have a different objective. There are other types of marcom (marketing communications) you can choose to achieve a goal. It also means your target audience is not likely to be media people. You will need a different targeted list of people to match your objective.

But if publicity in media is what you want, you write a news release.

Social media news releases – just another tool for publicity outreach

Social media news releases - just another tool for publicity outreach

Interesting post over at PR Squared titled The Dual Future of the News Release

I don’t believe that social media news releases are all that earthshaking or special or that it will replace every other MarCom method out there. I view SM news releases as another tool in the arsenal that represents yet another choice in how we reach out and communicate with people.

I still see that prime media matters a lot to clients. They want results and if SM can help produce results that’s fine. It’s the results that matter to clients. How you get them and the ROI you produce is what matters to clients.

To me, the SM news release is just the newest technology with specialized format requirements to come along. The technology you use is a factor because it influences the format of your message.

But it’s secondary to learning and proving that the words you place in that MarCom format are indeed words that will produce the action you want whether it be sales, attendance at an event, donations, name recognition, or political action.

Just because you use SM as a way to transmit the message won’t help you if what you place in the SM news release is boring, text heavy, laden with hype or simply is commercial advertising.

The biggest challenge is to figure out what you can say and do to really turn people on in the first place.

That’s what I focus on when i work with clients. That’s because unless you say something or write something that will turn people on, nothing you do with your message will matter.

My belief is that the technology doesn’t matter at all until you learn how to talk so people will listen and act. That’s true even no matter what people read, watch or listen to.

We live in a world where most people have serious attention deficit disorders most of the time. They are under so much stress it takes extraordinary communications skill to communicate meaningfully.

It even more critical when people base their decisions on snippets, slices, blinks and tweets.

Of course, once you do create galvanizing messages, then you can use all the conventional news release, online Internet and SM technologies as a force multiplier to spread the message and duplicate the action you get.