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.

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The answers he got were quite remark-able. In this short but incredible video, you’ll meet some truly normal people and a few well known celebrities as well.

Andy points out the value of having a mentor. Mentors do more than just offer advice. They invest in the outcome. They participate in the development personally. They make sure that some steps are taken and some expereinces and results are achieved.

We could all use and benefit from having a mentor or two. Quality advice and strong active supporters makes a whole lot of difference in a scary world filled with challenges and risk of disaster.

The real question then becomes is what do you do when you receive guidance and help from a mentor.

So the next question I wish Andy would ask of people, is this:

What the smartest thing you ever learned from your dad?

I know my dad would love to hear the answer. Even though I’m in my mid-fifites, he might be really surprised and happy to hear me share this with him.

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Why are we important?

I often get asked this question in the context of tracking and evaluating pr effectiveness and performance metrics.

More times than not, there’s no easy way to identify the tangible effects of media publicity and public relations. Very simply, the results are goal dependent. It depends on what the client is seeking.

With single books or products or event announcements and single outreaches, a relatively simple evaluation over a four to six month period will provide the necessary data in terms of impact on sales, or coverage, or people who attended, that sort of metric.

With multiple repeat publicity projects more complex branding efforts, it is necessary to track cumulative costs, cumulative publicity acquired, and related them to overall sales or actions or people transactions over time. A systematic outreach and tracking effort must be carefully designed, implemented and maintained. It may take up to a year to develop the necessary data.

The bigger problem is distinguishing the effects your public relations efforts are having in comparison to all your other direct marketing and management communications efforts.

Can you determine how each of your multiple efforts affects your bottom line? Are you really able to document and track the individual contributions of each effort?

Direct financial impacts may produce improved sales, and greater profits and/or improved cost savings. Indirect financial savings may produce good will and improved reputation.

Direct non-financial impacts may be to introduce you to new people that produce new ideas and critical business intelligence. These can result in refined higher goals and objectives, totally new initiatives, better alignment of your people and other organizations, internal and external collaboration and even contractual teaming or partnership opportunities. Changing attitudes can be reflected in public opinion or outcry and consequent decisionmaking by affected governments.

Publicity may improve your operational effectiveness simply because you are receiving more outside scrutiny and public fame and engagement with what you and your people and organization do. Your people may pull together and form a more professional, more efficient and effective team as a direct result of the pride they are experiencing in having received such wide-open visibility and public recognition.

Indeed, this last benefit may be the most important effect publicity can have on your total business performance.

There’s an article at my website I wrote several years ago that goes into far more detail. The title of the article is:

Tracking Publicity Success and Public Relations Effectiveness

Hope this helps.

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The rubber meets the road in the news release because this single sheet of paper is the key nexus for all communications with the media. The importance of the copy on a news release cannot be overstated. It has to be free of negative issues or factors that will reduce or eliminate media interest and response. The media basically stops paying attention to you. One fatal error and it’s all over.

This is not what you want to happen.

So identifying the problems and revising the news releases is crucial. I spend a tremendous amount of time and effort trying to avoid sending out news releases with problems still in them.

The issue is that when people send me news releases, it often takes a long, long time to identify and communicate the problems, and then more time again to explain and negotiate all the word changes with the clients, and more time still to finalize the news release and have it ready and approved for transmittal.

Honestly ­ it can be very painful for all involved. I’m quite brutal on my clients, since their success is all that matters. I don’t pull any punches. My comment process can bruise a lot of highly inflated egos of
some otherwise very accomplished people, on the way to a problem free news release that maximizes the chances of success when finally sent. Lots of people think they can write a news release. Very few of them can do it very well.

Fixing the problems I see in the news releases people send me takes forever. It is also very painful. I’ve seen a lot of news release failure over the years, and I now know what the key problems look like and how to fix them.

The issues listed here have all been identified as reasons for the failure of a news release. This is based on over 20 plus years of experience in dealing with the aftermath ­– the actual number and quality of responses generated from the transmittal of a news release.

So here are the most common reasons why news releases fail and a quick instruction on how to avoid hitting the landmine:

1. You wrote an advertisement. It’s not a news release at all. It sells product. It fails to offer solid news of real tangible interest, value-added information, education or entertainment.

2. You wrote for a minority, not for a majority of people in the audience. You simply won’t compete with other news releases that clearly are written for a larger demographic of the media audience.

3. You are the center of attention, not the media audience. You focus on your business and your marketing, instead of things the editor and his or her audience will be interested in.

4. You forgot to put the five W’s up front. (WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN and WHY THE AUDIENCE WILL BE INTERESTED). You didn’t clearly and succinctly tell the media why the audience would be interested in this.

5. You are too wordy and text dense. You focused on details and minutia, instead of the most important ideas, issues, factors, facts, and news angles. You fail to address the real significant impacts your story
has on people.

6. You place too much information on one page ­ the one page news release has a font size so small an editor needs a magnifying glass to read it.

7. You included corporate logos and other non-persuasive low value added graphics that distract the editor from your key message. You may have also used an unusual fancy font or a file format that turns to
gobbledygook when it goes through a fax machine.

8. You wrote a personally biased article for the media to publish, instead of pitching the idea to the media and the objective reasons why the media audience will be interested.

9. You wrote about features and facts, and forgot to explain what it means to real people. Tell a story about real people. Add in real life human interest.

10. You wrote about how your news ties in to someone else’s fame and glory. Forget it. Never stand in the shadow of someone else. Make your own light. Tell your own story.

11. Your news release responds to something that just happened. You’re too late. You’re behind the eight ball. Forget it. Get out in front of the news.

12. You included too much hype, self-laudatory praise, pithy quotes, useless testimonials, jargon or gobbledygook. Get rid of it.

13. You may have also identified prior media coverage, which indicates it’s no longer a new issue. Get rid of it. Let each news release stand on it’s own two feet.

14. You tried to impress and be clever or innovative but you come off naïve, less than expert, biased, flippant, arrogant, or crazy. Tone it down. Get straight.

15. You made vague and unsubstantiated claims, or wild and outrageous claims, or you included a statement that simply rubs the media the wrong way. Get rid of them.

16. You are trying to be different, just for the sake of it, but you come off eccentric. Forget it. Don’t create a false or inflated image. Be yourself.

17. You wrote a rant and rave, worthy of a letter to the editor, instead of a problem solving tips article, worthy of a feature story. Decide what you want, put your best effort into it.

18. You are simply not credible. It could be your ideas are simply not well thought out, or that you’ve offered old well-worn material, or that you are too extreme or controversial, or not qualified. You may not be
expert enough, or sufficiently qualified, to make the statements, compared to others in your field. You need to present information that qualifies you properly and adequately.

19. You provided poor contact information. You need to identify the best single point of contact and the correct phone number so interested media can reach you and get the best possible attention and response from you to meet their needs. One key person, one phone, no fax, one email address, and one URL (with no long string addresses).

20. You did not include a clear media call for action. You didn’t tell the media what you want them to do with your news release. You need to tell them what you are asking for or suggesting or offering. Then you need to offer the media incentives value-added reasons to do so, like free review copies, free test samples, interview questions and answers, media kits with story angles and stats and data, relevant photographs, etc.

21. You did not incorporate and integrate a primary response mechanism. You need to include a value-added reason, which motivates the editor to publish or mention your contact information, which will generate calls, traffic, interviews, or requests for more information. This usually means something unique and of special value to the audience, that the editor feels good about mentioning. Use an offer for a free problem solving report.

22. You sent the release to the wrong media. Target the media that your clients read, watch and listen to when they are in the right mood, that is, receptive to hearing about your news, and willing to take action when they get your message. Work with your publicist to target the right media.

23. You rely on a single fax or an email to produce an avalanche of media calls. You conduct no follow up. Get real. Follow up properly and you can triple or quadruple your media response rate. Better still, you can
ask the editors “what can I give you to support a feature story and meet your needs”.

Finally, the biggest reason for news release failure is one of attitude.

How do you define success or failure? It’s called unrealistic expectations.

Get real. You won’t get rich off one news release. You’re chances of getting famous are just about as slim.

You might be able to break even.

Look at your investment and compare it to what you need to break even on your investment. If you need to sell 100 books to cover the costs of a $500 outreach effort, you need ten articles because each article only produces ten sales. So that’s your breakeven goal. More books per article, means less articles will satisfy your needs.

You may simply have to be realistic and understand that while you are wildly interested in the topic, it may not have the broad general public interest that you have for the subject. If you wrote an article that has
local interest and you expect national media to pay attention, think again.

If you want to be on the Oprah Winfrey Show, then you’d better pray because chances of doing it off one news release are very slim, near zero in fact.

Get real. If she calls, then congratulations are in order. But don’t count on it.

If you wrote an advertisement and wanted a feature story and interviews, don’t be surprised if the only media to call is the advertising manager offering you a package deal. You get what you ask for. What you offer is often times what you will get.

Even if you do get publicity, it may not come out exactly the way you want it. More often than not, the bigger the media, the less likely they are to run contact information.

Often times, the quality may be there while the numbers are not.

One or two quality media responses may be what you want or need. If you get that, it’s a success.

One article in USA Today may out perform ten articles in small dailies and weeklies in the mid-west.

On the other hand, it may not. The small high quality articles may outperform the small mention in the big media.

Similarly, one quality 30-minute interview on a well-liked talk show on a radio station in the middle of nowhere out in the mid-west, will likely outsell a five-minute interview on an Arbitron rated radio station in the
middle of the morning talk show in a major metropolitan area. You can’t tell the listening quality of the audience.

So listen to your publicist. Heed these warnings and reduce the risks of failure. Fail to pay attention to these issues, proceed at your own risk.

So when you write a news release please review it against these criteria to see if you’ve made any of these errors. Then fix each and every one of them yourself, and when you are done, feel free to send me your final draft.

I’ll be happy to take a look at it.

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This is very helpful and useful guidance.

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I’ll say it again.

The type of book you have doesn’t matter to the media.

I do a lot of work with fiction authors. I do a lot of work with non-fiction authors. I do a lot of work with ebook producers.

I used to distinguish how I wrote news releases for fiction compared to non-fiction, but over the years I’ve found that when it comes to getting publicity, it really doesn’t matter what the book is. Also, my experience to date is that I am not very enthused about book reviews, and I favor galvanizing feature stories and interviews. Book reviews tend to be most helpful to those who seek library and book store sales. For people who are working beyond the bookstore and library, and for those who sell direct, just rely on Amazon or online sales and web sites, or are pushing for quantity and special sales, problem solving tips articles, feature stories and in depth topical interviews produce far better return on investment. This is where I’ve seen the greatest gains for authors and publishers.

That’s because, from a publicity point of view, the media actually don’t care a lot about what the product is. They are only interested in publishing three things: news, education and entertainment. They honestly couldn’t care less about whether you wrote a book or have one available for sale. To most media that fact that you wrote a book is just a credential to you being a person who’s qualified to give a newsworthy comment.

Sure if they like the book, if it has real added value to a lot of people in their particular audience, then media may choose to write about the book. But for the most part, they aren’t real inclined to help you sell product. Their view is that if you want them to promote your product so you can sell books, then take out an ad.

What the media really wants to publish and what they respond to best is galvanizing quality content that is interesting to lots of people in their particular audience and that has real added value to them. This is what they need to satisfy their audience and keep the subscription and advertising revenues flowing. This is also what you need to provide them, if you want to get media coverage.

I can get people publicity whether they’ve written and published a book or not. I do this day in day out. All we have to do to be successful is focus on what the media needs. They respond to that.

Even a fiction book makes you an expert of a sort, who can offer helpful insights and information on topics germane and relevant to the book.

What that means is that we focus on using problem solving tips articles, human interest, delving into issues that people want to know about.

Some fiction examples that produced media success this year:

* For Ayna Meppelink’s book ‘I See a Red Door’, we present content talking about what it’s like to be just like her characters, a reluctant, psychic, doubting what her senses are telling her.

* For Mary Anna Evans book ‘Effigies’, we pitch talking points that explore the deep Southern culture, ethics, and biases that her characters encounter.

* For Molly Dwyers book ‘Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein’, we pitch interview and feature content that explores the feminist politic and what it’s like to be a revolutionary woman rising above desperate times.

* For Nick Ruth’s Dark Dreamweaver series, we emphasize the esteem building, character developing themes for young people, and the power of dreams and goal setting.

* For the children’s book, ‘Grandpa Grouper’, by Don Arends, we focused on the idea that the book delivers underwater adventure and contains distinctly innovative human interest. The lead sentence to the news release declares, “Grandpa Don Arends looks a lot like the main character in his new children’s book, ‘Grandpa Grouper, The Fish With Glasses.’

What you have to resist and avoid is telling the media anything at all about how your publishing struggles, marketing plans, publishing and promotional activities, and book sales. This will result in coverage that is all about you, but offers very little motivation to a reading or listening or watching audience to learn more about your products, and the knowledge, feelings, benefits and the personal experiences they can receive by getting what you offer. You need to focus what you offer on the media audience. That is your mission. That has to be your focus.

More important, you can’t just describe it, and say, it’s in the book. Your news release has to actually persuade media to call you and ask for the book to review, and to do that the release has to actually trigger some feelings, desire, want, and emotion. The news release has to do what your book does and achieve that emotional engagement in about 30 seconds. You have to deliver a thrill, a pleasure, an emotion and a personal experience. I wrote this up a while ago as a ‘rule for getting publicity success’ like this:

Tell me story (a short, bed time story), give me a local news angle (of interest to my particular audience), hit me in the pocket book (make me or save me money), teach me something I didn’t know before (educate me), amaze me or astound me (like in WOW!), make my stomach churn (in horror or fear), or turn me on (yes, sex sizzles).

No matter what type of book or service you have, getting publicity is a completely separate task and requires you to use different ideas and actions. And to get publicity that sells books you have to be very interesting, have incredible things to say, or offer truly helpful, educational, entertaining or humorous, or galvanizing ideas that interest people in who you are and what you have to offer.

This is a process of testing and refining what you say until you know that if you communicate certain things, a known action will result. You can interest media in writing about you if what you offer is exceptionally good. If create and offer something interesting, then you will improve your chances of getting favorable publicity significantly. Communicating that what you have to offer is good is crucial.

If you are at a loss for what to do here is a quick way to identify and develop your core material.

What I tell my clients is 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. These are your target customers so describe who they are.

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

Think about being entertaining and informative with your points and develop the ideas at your story telling best. Think about how you talk to people about your book, especially when the conversation results in a sale. Look at your reviewer testimonials. Why do people like what you do? Use what you learned to guide you. 

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? 

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 what your presentation and their article or interview is going to look like — How you can help them put an article that gets favorable thank you’s by mail phone and email, or a good show that entertains and educates the people in their audience.

Focus less on passive ideas and more on actions or positions people can take that people can take today! that 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’ could 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.

In many cases ,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.  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.

Hence the key to your success is being truly great at what you do. Help the people you can help the most. Please them and satisfy their needs beyond expectations. That’s what will get you attention. That’s how you create and deliver value.

That’s also how you market and achieve success and happiness.

I wrote an extensive article on this topic which you can see at my web site. It is titled:

Writing News Releases For Fiction Books

Here is another article that might be helpful to those who want more strategies in getting more book publicity titled: Cover letter or news release? Book review or feature story?

BTW – if you follow this advice, make sure you send what you create to me by email. I’ll be happy to take a look at them and give you some recommendations on what else to do next to get more publicity.

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As a publicist who sees hundreds of books of all types each year, I don’t believe that ebooks are a hot product in and of themselves. There are only certain types of people who will buy them and use them. The marketplace is actually pretty small and most people still buy and read regular books.

So in my view, and what I advise my clients is this: Once you own a body of intellectual property, sell it every way you can. An ebook is just one form of publishing. You can print it POD, publish it in with Kindle, package it in a pdf file, break it into pieces and let people subscribe to it, you can teach with it, use it as a freebie for people who pay for a workshop, you can use it as a calling card for higher cost services, and lots more.

I think you can benefit a lot if you look at what you are doing as if you are making candy.

Sweet, enjoyable, memorable candy.

It comes in all sorts of flavors and colors and sizes.

I see four types of candy on the Internet: products, services, software and information.

* Products need to be manufactured and delivered.

* Services need to be performed.

* Software can be delivered in a box or a download, and can be easily updated.

* Information can be provided in lots of ways.

There are lots of hybrid forms to these four basic types of candy on the Internet.

You can make mind candy — intellectual candy. This is candy that teaches people something and helps them grow.

People always remember where they get good candy. It produces a physical sensation that creates the sensation of physical pleasure and specific chemicals are released in the body — chemical memory is the result. This is the branding that takes place when we see or even better experience, something remarkable.

So no matter how you publish, focus first on creating something truly incredible. Then when people hear about it, they’ll want it, and they’ll be interested in anything else you sell.

So write to sell. Write content for information or code for programs. Write what you are best at.

Don’t stop the development process till you can reliably demonstrate that what you have created actually sells repeatedly to different people at a known rate. Do this once, twice, three, four, five times to different groups of people until you vereify that the communication you use produce the same action on the part of the people you present to. If you talk to, email, or communicate with ten people, and sell one product, that’s a ten percent response rate. Two products, then that’s a twenty percent response rate. Three products, and that’s thirty percent.

And that’s incredible for any product and marketing communications.

Then publish. Publish your ebook, publish your hard copies, publish your videos, and your dvd’s and mp3’s. Promote your speaking, your wrkshops and your consulting.

You can see more of my ideas on this how this translates into marketing and publicity at the free articles at my Direct Contact PR website

In particular look for the article titled “The Magic of Business”.

From a publicity point of view, the media actually don’t care what the product is. They are only interested in publishing three things: news, education and entertainment. They honestly couldn’t care less about whether you wrote a book. To most media that fact that you wrote a book is just a credential to you being a person who’s qualified to give a newsworthy comment. if they like the book, if it has real added value to a lot of people in their particular audience, then they may choose to write about the book. But for the most part, they aren’t real inclined to help you sell product. Their view is that if you want them to advertise your product, then take out an ad.

What they want to publish is the news. education and entertainment that satisfies their audience. This is what you need to provide them, if you want to be published.

So we can get people publicity whether they’ve written and published a book or not. All we focus on is what they media needs.

So no matter what type of book or service you have, getting publicity is a completely separate task and requires you to use different ideas and actions.

You can interest media in writing about you if what you offer is exceptionally good. If create and offer something interesting, then you will improve your chances of getting favorable publicity significantly.

Hence the key to your success is being truly great at what you do. Help the people you can help the most. Please them and satisfy their needs beyond expectations. That’s what will get you attention. That’s how you create and deliver value.

That’s also how you market and achieve success and happiness.

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They are called News Search Engines. You can use them to dramatically improve your success with the media.

News search engines are specialized search engines that visit news sites from all over the Internet and use computer algorithms to select stories for inclusion. They then cluster the stories and photos into an online magazine format. As the news changes the news search engines keep you informed of the latest developments.

They allow you to search the latest news stories from hundreds to thousands of news sources. This gives you the critical business intelligence about not only what the media is covering but how they like to publish what they cover.

Some of them also allow you to create special news alerts, which send you an email message every time a news story comes out on your special topic or keywords of interest.

This is very powerful and useful technology and at least for right now, it’s free.

Let’s explore these and find out how you can use them to get more publicity for your business, for your books, and for you and your authors.

Top News Search Engines include the following:

Google News
Yahoo News
Alta Vista News
All the Web News
MSN News
Daypop
Topix.net

Not all news search engines are created equal. Some provide coverage of some areas while others don’t. Some news search engines even let you establish channels like this one, set up to reveal news from the book publishing industry for selected news services and syndicates.

Yahoo Book Publishing News of the Day

You can search and find information on a wide number of critical topics. It is up to you to identify your key words. This is a fine art because if your search words are too general you will get way too many stories each day to be useful to you.

(more…)

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What happened to books before, during and after the development of the Gutenberg Press. This wonderful video provides you with a perspective that should make any author or publisher think twice before finalizing their creative work.

http://www.youtube.com/v/g6Hr1P3F-M4

How do you write something that will sell?

Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.

How do you know when you are done? When one prospect after another picks up and doesn’t let go.

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There are a whole bunch of very important and insightful statements that he makes in this video, which he gave speaking to Google in 2007. This 48 minute segment covers material from his book “All Marketers Are Liars”.

One of the crucial ideas he conveys here is that technology simply doesn’t matter as much as marketing. Smart marketing is what creates success.

Who do you tell your friends to go see? Who do you tell your colleagues to go to for help? Who do you recommend when someone needs something?

This is where you need to be.

Another question is do you deliver your messages to people who want it when they want it? This is the essence of his permission marketing.

Then the real meat of this presentation (and Seth is a vegetarian) is all about how successful marketers convince people to believe a story.

Stories convince people because they make people feel a certain way. This is the challenge of marketing — to deliver on the story.

Another idea he covers is how the goal of creating a purple cow, that amazing remark-able product, that is so incredible you share it with ten of your friends because it is just so cool.

One superb nugget he delivers is that he compare how a super successful company spends ten times the money they spend on marketing on the design of the product. The average company spends ten times the money they spend on design on marketing and advertising.

Which one is more remarkable?

I see the same thing with people who write books. In my situation, the best book is easier to achieve success with. Want to get lots of publicity? Write a good book.

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