media coverage innovation insights taking action attitude making decisions commitment excellence influence event publicity intelligence action

Here is a great story. It is also a beautiful illustration of how to get event publicity.

Can you imagine how much better it would be for kids at high schools if people agreed to zero put-downs, zero rumors and zero gossip.

That’s what Chicken Soup for the Soul story author Bill Saunders challenged students to achieve. And the kids agreed to do it, too. And the results were immediate and substantial.

The article titled: ‘Chicken Soup’ author urges teens to action is in the Nov 8 edition of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_597494.html

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Why did the newspaper jump on this one?

DPAA + H

This tells a human interest story which talks about local credible people in the throes of real social challenges. It is dramatic, personal, achievement in the face of adversity, and it even has some ironic humor.

It also contains a simple and unique solution to a common problem that faces lots of people.

These are the crucial elements of media coverage success.

Is there are reason to doubt why Chicken Soup for the Soul is worthwhile? Here the contributing authors show in no uncertain terms that they know how to walk the talk. This is true leadership excellence in action.

Now if only adults could learn the same lesson.

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What’s the best type of publicity?

It’s publicity that makes people want more of what you do best. It’s publicity that makes people taste and want what only you can do. It’s publicity that is broadcast to groups of people by someone with a publishing vehicle or system that allows your message to be heard by lots of people.

You can get publicity that does this many ways but it to really achieve the branding, you have to realize that you need to craft a very special message.

The message can be developed carefully and intentionally. It all comes down to helping the people you can help the most.

Who can you help? What problem will you help them with?

Use real life experience to guide you.

Who did you help? What problem did you help them with? What exactly did you do or say to solve their problem?

I call this the miracle of the microcosm.

When you can really help one person, you can then help others with the same problem.

If you select and target a person who is representative of a large group of people with that problem, then the solution has value to everyone with that problem.

You can then utilize technology as a force multiplier to repeat the communications you used to reach and share the message with your target audeince of problem owners.

Then incorporate the solution into a script of communications.

You can tell your story an article for print media including newspapers, magazines and their online counterparts. You can tell the story in an interview on radio or TV.

You can then share the story in all sorts of other online media as well. You can tell the story of what you did in an ezine article, a blog post, on a discussion group, a forum post, a pod cast. You can also create a video about it and post it to You Tube and Google Video and use it for education on your web site and others.

All these spinoffs communications can be developed by you once you decide to help the people you can help the most.

And the publicity you get will create interest from other people with the same or similar problems.

You get to be the expert with the knowledge and skill. You tell your story about how you helped.

You can create this type of publicity any time you want.

All you need to do is help someone.

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On one of the discussion groups I participate in we’ve been talking about writing and selling.

Firmware replied:

> So enlighten us. How would we have recognized THE DA VINCI CODE,
> which really is a preposterous book, as a bestseller when it first
> started circulating in MS?

I’m a real student and believer in the science and psychology of communications, whether they be written oral, and visual. Words trigger interest and even action. Some words are more powerful and effective than others.

Write a check for $1000. How many words on the check? And you know what happens so it’s a reliable repeat action. We’ve built an entire economic system based on a promise to pay for value received. It’s really quite remarkable what a few well written words can do.

Words can motivate.

Look at the Declaration of Independence. Look at what a few carefully constructed words can do. Can you guess how many draft versions it took for Thomas Jefferson and John Adams to get it right?

You can learn how to write to produce action. You can test the words until they produce the response you seek.

Turns out that Dan Brown was one of my clients in the pre- Da Vinci Code days. I’m mentioned in the acknowledgements of the prequel, Angels and Demons. (Go and look if you have a copy!)

I and my family (two teenage girls mind you and a dietitian wife) loved that book because it’s a thought provoking book and a good action packed thriller. Preposterous? Fact or fiction, who cares? It’s a good book and it’s fun to read. That’s why it sells. It’s so enjoyable and provocative to read that stimulates discussion in the marketplace of ideas.

For any book an author writes that’s what will create and drive interest and sales. That’s the excellence in your writing that you need to instill and you’re not done until it happens.

But Dan was a poor starving writer of many books before he wrote the blockbuster. He and his wife Blythe worked very hard to achieve success. They worked and reworked those early writings till they had what it took to get the right publisher to take on their project.

I believe that you can design and even engineer results based on what you write. I see it in all the creative works produced by my clients day in day out. That’s what speechwriters do for politicians.

You have to pay attention to the people you are trying to motivate and please. You have to have a goal of triggering a certain action. You help the people you can help the most. You educate the people you can educate the most. You entertain the people you can entertain the most.

You do the very best you can. You don’t write and publish and then try to sell. This of course is what many authors do.

You write, test, test, test, and only when you know the action you get do you then seek to publish and sell.

You write and then revise, revise, revise and improve, improve and improve till you get the action you want when people look at what you’ve written.

You go the distance to where the snowball you’ve been pushing up the hill begins to move on it’s own.

You have to identify the pool of people you are aiming to please. If it’s cookbooks, it’s people who cook. If it’s science fiction, it’s people who read science fiction. If it’s top literary agents, then it’s top literary agents.

If you write a book and show it to 20 people in the right pool of people and ten of them truly rave about it, and it results in 60 people asking for it (since each convinced 3 other people they had to read it), then maybe it’s time to show it to ten agents.

But if you show it to 20 people, and you get a lukewarm response, then maybe you need to revise it and improve it till you get the raving response you need.

That’s how you recognize that you’re in the right position to publish and have a reasonable confidence of success.

Look at the story by Lynn Neary on NPR July 31, 2008 about Brunonia Barry launched her self-published novel, The Lace Reader, into the big leagues.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92934202

Pretty good illustration of the principles in my article The Magic of Business. Look at what she did with her first writings. Look at the effect her books had on the people they wanted to reach.

The interview indicates that they knew what they had to do. They sought to please their readers in the book clubs and the booksellers. Then they saw the agents fighting over the book, and even the publishing companies in the bidding war over the rights to the book.

You can set this as your goal and believe that you can do this. You have to hone you craft and writing skills, and also focus on taking your writings to the right people once you find out that your writing has the effect needs to have on people in the market place.

The beauty of testing in it the microcosm of wherever you are is that you can get the feedback you need and then revise, revise, revise till it really sings.

Then you can test it and test it and test it again so you prove reliably that it does indeed produce the action you want people to take when they read it.

And in a nation of 330 million people, the potential is huge.

And if you translate it into Chinese, there’s another 300 million waiting for you across the Pacific.

You start local and aim global.

The beauty of the opportunity of being alive today is that you get to try.

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