media coverage innovation commitment excellence ideas paying attention achievement inspiration contests humor fashion publicity

Right on Sisters! Perfect Trifecta!

Congratulations to clients Sue Bain, Laurie Gawne, and Roxie Roxford - creators of www.Cheap-Chic-Weddings.com and the founders of The Annual Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contest. The announcement for the 2010 winner got them a story in the LA Times last Friday, a Saturday morning spot on Good Morning America, and then Kathie Lee and Hoda covered the contest this morning on the Today Show!

Photos from the contest can be seen here: http://www.cheap-chic-weddings.com/wedding-contest-2010.html

What did we do that hit the media hot buttons? The news release was transmitted Thusday moning. We championed and showcased the dedication, innovation, and exquisite skill of individuals who achieve true artistic creativity and excellence. We made it easy for media to run with a ready to go story complete with galvanizing color photos. We gave the public and the audience something to smile and talk about that made them feel good, be inspired by, and experience a moment of awe and admiration.

You can see the simple news release we used here: http://www.directcontactpr.com/files/files/TPWinnerrelease2010.pdf

The release was transmitted to a custom targeted media list of fashion and women’s editors.

Here’s to you ladies!

Share This

People are asking lots of questions about using Twitter, particularly as a marketing tool and as a tool for PR.

The biggest challenge I see about using Twitter as a marketing tool is trying to get an answer to the following question:

What ROI am I going to get out using Twitter and why?

The ROI people receive from participating in Twitter is an open question. Some people get lots of tangible ROI and many don’t.

If you are an Oprah or an Ashton Kutcher, you may have a million followers. You can cultivate and perpetuate brand image by being a fun enjoyable person with your tweets.

Each one only follows a handful of people. That’s not conversation, it’s performing.

How much time do you think they really spend Tweeting and looking at other people’s Tweets?

Twitter is seen as a conversational medium and it takes time, effort and care to develop and cultivate relationships.

If the celebrities are using Twitter, is it because it will have a positive effect on their ROI? Look at how that happens.

Can you develop meaningful relationships with people on Twitter? Apparently so. Some people do anyway.

Can these relationships produce ROI?

Maybe. Some people may be able to mine the relationships and produce ROI but for most people that I know, this is not the case.

Is it because no one is really listening? Text message communications not all that easy to make motivational or galvanizing. Headlines in articles, news releases and the subject lines of email messages present many of the same daunting challenges. Look at the latest string of Tweets from anyone and see if what they say impresses you enough to spend lots of time each day keeping up with what they are saying.

120 to 140 characters with a snip link and say something of helpful, funny or useful with real value you may get someone to click on the link.

The same one liner may be forwarded.

You won’t sell product or services simply by tweeting three times a day if what you tweet is sales talk and links to your web site.

You may get friends and get followers if you post helpful or valuable information.

Tracking sales from individual tweets is going to be pretty difficult. Tracking traffic from Tweets may be easier.

Will it be worth the time and effort compared to other things that you can do with your time, energy, and money available for marketing?

Maybe. Maybe not. It depends what you do and what you receive from your Twitter efforts as compared to other things you are doing.

You can target using Twitter search and find people who have mentioned a keyword in their Tweets. Is this really a great targeting tool? Are you reaching people who are truly receptive to a direct message from you.

If what you posted had real value and if it helps people, then they may be grateful. They may spread the word to other. They may help you build a reputation for that value. Yes, it may bring new people to your site and you’ll get some ROI.

But is ROI you receive from this attenuated pathway really based on your Twitter post? Or is it because of the value in what you’ve created independent of your Twitter post.

Did you need Twitter to connect with someone to help them? Can you use all sorts of other methods of communication to meaningfully connect with people?

Is Twitter as valuable say as a regular phone call? A web seminar? A detailed post to a forum? An article in a trade publication? An interview on radio or TV? A podcast interview or an interview on Sirius satellite radio?

The answers may depend on who you are, what you do, and what you can give to others, and then of course, in what you have that brings you income that Twitter people will buy.

I believe that if you focus on the creation of real value then you won’t necessarily need to use Twitter at all.

In fact, unless you create something of real value in the first place, it won’t matter no matter what technology you use to communicate with people.

The quality product or service is the most important thing you need to focus on first and foremost.

Of course, if you do create something truly re-markable, other people will do all the talking for you anyway.

There are good reasons why companies need to be on Twitter and follow what people are saying, and even converse once an issue or even a crisis erupts.

But is it worth the time, effort and money it takes to be on Twitter for small businesses?

Maybe. It depends on you, your product, your services, and on the value of the relationships and the quality of the communications you have with the people you need to produce your income.

If you can have meaningful little tiny snippet text communications that relate directly to the mental factors that determine or influence sales decisions in your target audience then maybe Twitter is for you.

If on the other hand little tiny snippet text message communications don’t cut it, then maybe you don’t need to be using Twitter at all.

Share This

I’m a copywriter and a publicist and an author so I guess I do make a living writing. I’m happy to share with you what I’ve done and what I’ve learned.

I wrote my first news release in 1977. I went online with my first website in 1993. I’ve built up my copy writing and publicity services company at home and online over the past 15 years.

You can read the story about how I created my business in the book “Chicken Soup for the Entrepreneur’s Soul” published by Health Communications in November 2006. It’s titled `Ripples’. Fun story.
If you want to see it click here Ripples

The marketing I do is pretty nominal but it is consistent, and I take baby steps to keep it going nearly every day.

I’m of the belief that if people and companies have employees doing work that you can do and have more work that you can do than they have employees available to do that work, then getting paid is easy.

Can you do it?

Yes you can!

You just need to present them with a very desirable alternative turnkey to hiring you as an employee. Make it attractive and make it easy and it’s a done deal.

I’ve found that if they have employees doing something, then outsourcing to you is often a very attractive option. You can normally charge four to six times the hourly rate of pay that they pay full time employees to do exactly the same work, but without them having to carry the overhead that they have to carry for an employee. So if top technical or professional employees are making $50 an hour, then you can charge $200 an hour. Most companies will not bat an eye at these rates these days. You can run the numbers and see, at these rates, it’s not hard to bill over $100,000 a year and do it part-time from home. The Internet and email can be a wonderful place.

So no matter what the employees or you do, you can create a short menu of options and fees that break both the services you will provides (just like an employee performs, or the deliverables they create), and format this into a short list of the fee based time or product deliverables that you can perform or deliver on demand or by schedule.

So instead of a resume, create a one page brochure that says “menu of options”. Then itemize options so people can hire you in bite size chunks of payable time or for products or services by known typical units of performance (by the hour, by the day, by the week, by the page, by the document, or whatever).

This menu allows you and the client to select what you do and price it in advance, and build this into a one page contract or an email or even a phone call.

I’ve found that the best marketing tactics that work in this business are ones that allow you to leverage professional branding with your target audience. You should not waste time, effort and money unless it brings a professional branding message in front of someone who will potentially be amenable to doing business with you.

So I recommend you experiment, test and most importantly and track and analyze what you do, to identify how you are getting clients and where the biggest income streams come from. Then apply the basic rules of systematic continuous improvement to what you are doing. Simply put, if it works, do more of it, and if it doesn’t stop and do something else.

You can use my business as an example. To this day, I get most of my new business by:

* meeting people at conferences at which I exhibit, and giving short but personal consults on the fly, and once I hear what they are all about giving them recommendations that help them a little and indicate what they can get by involving me more.

* writing and publishing articles (problem solving tips articles) in magazines, to demonstrate skills, expertise, ability, knowledge and wisdom, and create desire once they realize they want more of what I can offer.

* posting articles and responding to posted questions in newsgroups and on discussion lists, to do the same.

* adding more free articles and free downloads to an extensive highly educational and focused website, to educate and motivate people to do more themselves, or hire me if they can’t do it themselves.

* adding more success stories and testimonials to my portfolio, to again demonstrate and affirm.

* sending really value added email introductions to prospects, to supply them with a plan of action that leads them to hire me.

* doing 30 minute consultations by phone, learning what clients need and delivering strategic advice and one page action plan proposals by email.

* answering prospect questions as though I was already working for them.

* carefully cultivating word of mouth off prior exceptional performance.

* speaking engagements, giving workshops and training sessions for free and for fee, but only to the right targeted company or audience.

* meeting people for lunch and listening to their project needs or dreams.

* sending them one page email proposals.

* building off referrals, and speaking engagements, and seeking to leverage host beneficiary relationships.

This last one is perhaps the most crucial. As you satisfy clients, of course, you can get repeat business. If you do work for a headquarters or a home office of a company with lots of offices all over the country, your host contact can lead you directly to many other prospects. You then get to pitch them all or better still, the headquarters contact shares you and everyone in that business network then contacts you. This situation can be phenomenally beneficial. Lucrative in fact. Same thing can happen with speaking engagements at associations. The local speech or workshop travels up to the headquarters.

Once every few years I create an innovative post card and do a mailing. My most recent mailer was a one pager back-to-back. If you want to see my most recent one, send me an email message request and I’ll send you the pdf file. I was using US Mail for mailings until two years ago. Now we participate in coop mailings and use email.

Nowadays I also use a show off business card. It has a picture of me fishing. It’s a memorable experience to look at and to hold. It brands me as a distinctive writer.

I use email, short letters and one page business proposals extensively to close deals by email and phone. In fact, I have a rule which basically says that you never have a conversation with a prospect without making a customized personal proposal. It works very well.

I actually don’t need or use formal contracts at all. I just take credit cards and bill them at the time of performance. I take very few checks and only in advance if the client insists upon paying that way. Client satisfaction with this arrangement is nearly 100 percent for many years now.

I spend NO money on advertising at all and do not care about search engine placement or ad words. Clients who call me have either heard about me or find me online through research or referral. They basically have decided to hire me before they call me so I actually do very little selling.

I’ve actually found that in my business, the people who search using search engines aren’t the clients I seek to work with. Most of them don’t have the products or businesses that I enjoy and can be successful with. The people who find my site online rarely are quality clients. So search engine ranking and placement mean very little to me. I can be found very quickly if people search for me nonetheless. In fact, search on my name and you’ll see thousands of links going back 15 years.

I’ve also found that the decision to hire is based on people having convinced themselves that you offer needed value that can be acquired no where else at the costs that you present. What you need to do is just learn how to make the product or service you give remarkable and personal, unique, and phenomenally effective. You also need to learn how to communicate this to them quickly.

Do that and your business will grow consistently with everything you do. The key to enjoying yourself along the way is to simply focus on helping the people you can help the most. You also need to know when to say no to a project that is problematic and where you know won’t be able to satisfy yourself or the client. The rule should be `no unhappy clients’.

I learned this business model by studying a variety of other consultants and copywriters. This model is actually very easy to operate and fairly low cost. I incorporated a few years ago as a full C Corp to take advantage of the tax structure since the business bills over six figures a year. I pay myself a salary. I also just use QuickBooks Pro to do the day to day bookkeeping myself but do hire a professional accountant to do the taxes each year. I use the merchant credit card services offered with Quicken and it does the bookkeeping entries as it processes the credit card authorizations.

The skills I acquired to conduct my business the way I do is mostly out of books. I am a voracious reader. This is in addition to reading or skimming all the client books that come to me (Fed Ex and UPS stop here nearly every day Monday through Friday). I read at the health club, I read during the day and at night, and in front of the TV. I basically am reading (or searching and surfing the Internet) if I am not writing or on the phone.

My house is totally wireless and there are two computers on plus two laptops available for use by me and the rest of the family at all times.

I can even take my cell phone and my wireless laptop in my boat and take client calls and work while fishing along the Columbia River because of the many hot spots and homes with unsecured wireless routers along the river. It’s amazing! The technology really is wonderful these days. That makes for some very pleasant days working (yes really working) while catching salmon, steelhead and walleye! If you’ve ever called me during the day you may hear me tell you that if I get a fish on I’ll have to get off really quick, but I’ll call you back! OK, enough bragging.

I just looked over my library and I highly recommend you basically commit to reading most every business, sales and marketing book published and get whatever you can out of each and every one of them. I still probably spend $100 to $200 a month on books in this area and have for years. My wife says it takes more to keep me well read than it does to keep me well fed. I have a 25 year collection and I still refer back to them constantly.

My favorite book authors and the books I can point you to for the best answers to this question the most are:

* Harry Beckwith (everything he writes is golden including: Selling the Invisible, What Clients Love, The Invisible Touch, and his new one, You, Inc.)

* Bob Bly (again, anything he writes is worth owning. The Copywriter’s Handbook, Secrets of a Freelance Writer, How to Promote Your Own Business, and Write More, Sell More, which is still one of the best books ever written on running a writing business).

* Ralph G. Riley (The One Page Business Proposal is perhaps one of the most important books you’ll ever find. It has made me tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars).

* Dan Kennedy (The Ultimate and No B.S. series)

* Seth Godin (Purple Cow, Free Prize Inside, and Unleashing the Idea Virus)

* Mark Stephens (Your Marketing Sucks)

* Jay Abraham (Getting Everything You Can Out of All You Got)

* Dr. Jeffrey Lant (this dates me! No More Cold Calls, Cash Copy, The Unabashed Self-Promoter’s Guide, and Money Making Marketing. Good luck finding these but if you do, consider yourself lucky)

* Jeffrey Fox (How to Become a Rainmaker and How to Become a Marketing Superstar).

If you need attitude adjustment to get into the right frame of mind for running a business, then I highly recommend:

* Jack Canfield (The Success Principles)

* Napoleon Hill (Law of Success)

* Steven Scott (Mentored by a Millionaire)

* Brian Tracy (Maximum Achievement and many others)

* Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul (Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Bud Gardner)

The real trick to reading is that you have to create a written plan with the ideas that come to you.

Reading and not writing simply isn’t productive. Writing a plan of action turns the idea into something tangible. You must add in the tasks and place dates and performance measures so that you know that you have completed the task.

Knowledge is valuable but to turn a fantasy into reality you must take action and try, try, try till you actually succeed.

You need to create two independent processes:

The first is the process for creating quality work (writing) that you can get paid for.

The second is the sales process that you use to get customers and get money.

Once you create these success processes for yourself then you apply technology to get more of each done in less time, with less effort and expense.

In fact, if you do both of these enough, it all becomes second nature, much like riding a bicycle or a car.

At some point, it can even get boring. To avoid losing faith and being unhappy, you have to find your happiness in delivering whatever happiness and help you can to others.

And that is my belief in what life is all about. .It’s my definition of success:

You achieve happiness and success when you help the people you can help the most and get rich at the same time.

The bottom line is that I believe that the opportunities to be a well paid writer right now are simply phenomenal. You can specialize and focus on any one or more of hundreds of markets. The country is huge. There are 300 million people in the US. There are 30,000 towns. There are simply millions of companies all of whom can be helped again and again.

Don’t be shy. This isn’t that hard to do and you’ve got the skills. Focus and go for it.

BTW, here’s the link for the pdf file containing the story `Ripples’ from Chicken Soup for the Entrepreneur’s Soul, or if you want the latest flyer I used in my mailings, just send me an email request. I’ll send you the pdf files.

Hope this helps. Questions welcome!

Paul J. Krupin - Direct Contact PR
Reach the Right Media in the Right Market with the Right Message
800-457-8746 509-545-2707
Paul@DirectContactPR.com

Share This

Connecting in a caring way.

You can write an email. You can write an article. You can write a news release. You can create a script for an interview.

You can now send it out and try to get people to pay attention to you.

You can post it on web sites and make it available to millions of people who are searching using key words. That’s the idea. They search and they find you.

Will anyone pay any attention to you?

Not unless you care and they realize it.

There 20,000 people posting on blogs every hour. There are millions of people and businesses updating their web sites every day.

There are millions of people twittering away merrily with their little snippets of ‘wassup’ messages.

Are they connecting with you in a caring way?

Which ones actually get through to you? Which ones do you pay attention to?

Our newly elected President Barrack Obama knows how to connect.

I just signed up to be a follower on his Twitter account.

Within minutes I received the following email message:

“Hi, pjkrupin (pjkrupin).

Barack Obama (BarackObama) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Check out Barack Obama’s profile here:

http://twitter.com/BarackObama

Best,

Twitter

Can you believe it? The President of the United States is following my updates on Twitter.

In fact as of today, he’s following more people than are following him.

He’s following 166,088 people, and he has 144,000 followers.

He (or someone on his staff) is listening to more people than there are people listening to him, at least on Twitter.

This is amazing to me. This gives me a unique online experience.

He’s connected with me and he says he cares.

Try it yourself. Sing up at http://twitter.com/BarackObama

See how you feel when you get that message that says, “Barack Obama (BarackObama) is now following your updates on Twitter.”

What an example to emulate.

Share This

Last week someone on the Self-Publishing discussion list at Yahoo Groups asked “what goes into a news release”.

It took me a while to wrap my mind around an approach that I was satisfied with since we have so many diverse creative people on the list. The response had to be useful to all.

In many ways, this is perhaps the most common question I receive from authors once they start promoting and marketing. I rephrased the question a little.

How do I get people to pay attention to me?

I reviewed the news releases that I’ve done for the past few years for authors and publishers seeking to identify the common characteristics of those communications that produced the stellar media responses and the book sales that went with them. I sought to take a fresh look at that set of key issues that appear in the marketing communications that produce the best success.

It was a fun exercise. So here’s what this exercise revealed about:

How to be Galvanizing

1. Be right and be first to tell people that you are right on.

2. Be wrong but keep trying to do it right and be the first to admit it, telling people what you did wrong and are doing about it.

3. Communicate clearly and help the people you can help the most. Put your audience first.

4. Demonstrate purpose. Do something noble and heroic and active, don’t just talk about it.

5. Be passionate and surprise people by doing something interesting, unusual, and real.

6. Make people laugh and smile at you, with you and at themselves.

7. Give people relief from a headache or the pain they are experiencing now.

8. Show people a half naked man or woman. Why? Because it works. Now make it relevant or meaningful to your ideas in some surprising and legitimate way.

9. Tell people about their innermost fears or insecurities.

10. Predict what is going to happen six weeks from now and why it is important.

11. Be spontaneously alive and exuberant about people and your ideas.

12. Show people courage and do something amazing and brave.

13. Be astonishingly honest and sincere. Achieve authentic.

14. Be irreverent and make people realize the folly of their beliefs..

15. Tell true dramatic and personal stories. Focus on achievement in the face or adversity. Help people see themselves in the story.

16. Shake people to their roots. Tear apart a sacred cow.

17. Scare people with a prediction. Identify and describe the common enemy or the crisis on the horizon.

18. Use a really good relevant photograph. Give people visual evidence so they know they are in good company.

19. Do your absolute best and create something truly remarkable and memorable.

20. Create a vivid metaphor that illustrates and relates to your audience at a deep personal level.

21. Create a visual picture that makes people realize what their future will be like.

22. Tell people exactly what they need to do to be healthy, involved, authentic, purposeful, connected to the future, inspired to find greater meaning and motivated to take immediate action to fulfill their destiny.

It’s my belief and experience that these triggers to getting attention and galvanizing people are useful and applicable to all the marketing communications you use to promote your books or products or services.

You must develop, test and prove that you have content that can do this yourself. You can also get help from experienced people to do this. You can hire publicists or marketing experts to assist you.

Then you can place these ideas into the headline and lead of your news releases. You use these ideas to flesh out the content of your problem solving tips articles, feature stories, and interview talking points.

You use these ideas to make what people read, hear, or see about you sticky. You want them to take it with them and show someone else what you have done.

Your goal is to make such an incredible impression — an indelible memory about you — that gets people so interested in you that they are motivated to buy *everything* you have available.

It’s applicable to situations where you are speaking to people whether it be one on one, or if you are talking to a group of people and you goal is to get people to buy your book or your services.

It’s also applicable whether you are publishing an article in a newspaper, doing an interview, or posting something to a web site or a blog or an article site.

I hope you find that even just one of these is something you can use and benefit from.

All you need is to find and use is one.

Once you have these ideas you can create the news releases and marketing communications you need to get better sales and better coverage with media.

A galvanizing message will tend to resonate with certain types of people and media. You may have to change your target to match the message. You may have to change your message to match your target.

If you find out that one galvanizing idea works for one group or type of people, you may have to find out whether it works as well if you present it to another type of demographic pool of people. A message that works with mature seniors, may or may not work well with fitness, health or women’s. A message that works well with techies may not work well with business or education. You may have to find out what works and this may take time and effort.

Depending on what you have to offer, a targeted media list and a targeted approach to media may be what works the best.

I would enjoy feedback and comments on this post. Please feel free to contact me if you have any ideas on how to make these better.

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/

Share This

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.

Share This

People are talking about how Vincent Bugliiosi has sold lots and lots of books by word of mouth, blogs, and without reviews and commentary by major media.

One comment on one of the discussion lists I follow stated:

“So I would advise writers who can’t afford a real PR firm to find a niche magazine for your work with ideally national circulation and get an article on your stuff in there.”

My opinion is that this is good advice for some and not for others.

What you see as being a vehicle for your success with PR is not what others may see when using PR. Media PR and marketing success is based on what each target audience reads, watches or listens to particularly when they are in the receptive mood or mode for whatever is being offered.

In one case it makes perfect sense that certain magazines are a good place, one type of products and services while radio and other places won’t be fruitful at all.

This is because media publish or cover based on the answers to just two key questions:

1. how many people in the audience will be interested?

2. what’s in it for the audience?

The answer to both questions has to be:

A = A lot.

This varies by the type of product or service or information offered and to what people are accustomed to reading, hearing or watching in the target media. My experience is that everyone needs to figure out what works for themselves. There is no single process or technique that works for everyone.

The chord you strike, the media response you get, and the actions you see once published depends on the perceptions and expectations you create with your news release.

This week, we saw blogs produce significant and near instant success for a book about remarkable artwork created by people with autism. We saw TV and radio and print respond well to a timely problem solving tips article and interview pitch based on a book about career re-invention for people over the age of 40. We saw FOX TV and national and local business magazines and newspapers respond well to an article based on a book for CEO’s. We saw magazines and newspapers and radio and tv respond well to a new high fashion cosmetic product. We saw radio and TV respond well to a country music video titled ‘pain at the pump’.

Each message was different and went to different media. What’s interesting is the number and quality of media who responded favorably, and what happened after the publications came out. In some cases the article were published within 24 to 48 hours and results were observed immediately. In other cases, requests were made, interviews were booked and results won’t be ascertained for a while to come. But we saw the right media audience respond predictably to each.

The experience shows that the media response depends what you have to offer and what the message is. Each product and message has to be tailored and targeted intelligently. The message has to be galvanizing to produce the desired action. If it’s not, then the publicity fails to produce the desired sales.

The media response will tend to parallel the market response very well. This is critical business intelligence for people with startup products. This intelligence can be used to grow a business. It’s valuable information if properly used.

The goal of publicity is to create national or targeted name recognition in the right pool of people. Targeting and mastering the messages that produce the action you desire (e.g., sales) takes research and intelligent design and repeat practice so that the message produces results reliably and consistently.

But this often takes time to develop.

Just think how much time and effort and repetition goes into mastering your particular product mix or skill set. You go to school for years, get degrees, then work gaining experience, all so that you get versatile and know what to do in a range of siutations. You wouldn’t use specific tactics in all situations. You’d only use specific tactics in certain situations.

The same type of decision making processes apply with PR to produce sales. You have to develop the experience and knowledge regarding where and when and how to use which tactics and messages.

And once you figure out what works, then you can use technology as a force multiplier and repeat the message in front of the right pool of people.

Of course, this is a process of testing and improving. Many first time publishers can only afford to do it once and the economics then don’t allow them to continue on. If they survive the startup process and do actually create a business, then doing PR regularly helps them grow their business. It’s the same with marketing.

One thing is for certain. If you stop marketing, your business dies.

PR is not a substitute for direct marketing. It’s a tool to help your marketing. It has to be wisely and properly used. Often times, it’s not only the instant effect on sales that the publication has when it is first released that is most valuable. Often times the follow on effect of the author/owner when using the PR success for marketing afterward is what produces most sales. The article has the effect regardless when it is seen or heard.

I wrote an article that’s worth looking at if you want to see a systematic view of how to evaluate and track the effectiveness of pr efforts. Here’s the link.

Article: Tracking Publicity Success and Public Relations Effectiveness

http://www.directcontactpr.com/free-articles/article.src?ID=14

Share This

David Weinberger, co-author of the bestselling book The Cluetrain Manifesto, gave a one hour talk at Google in June 2007 as part of the Authors@Google series. His new book describes how the digital revolution is radically changing the way we make sense of our lives. He argues and illustrates how the digitization of everything is changing the way human beings function in the world.

In this incredibly lively talk, he covers miles and miles of intense intellectual concepts at lightning speed, talking about and explaining the contents of his new book titled Everything is Miscellaneous.

This is a wonderful presentation replete with brilliant ideas, humor, breakthrough glimpses of the past, present and future and observations that will make you think the world indeed is flat.

His photography is extremely engaging and his personality and style is part of the phenomenon that he creates as he speaks. He communicates by building vivid theoretical frameworks and colorful imaginary pictures simultaneously. He’s educational and entertaining.

Every now and then he’ll take a breath of air!

His basic idea? The world is clustered into categories and the way the world is organized by us humans is pretty nice. The one who gets to classify is powerful. The classic order of the world is changing and what used to be understood as stable is no longer operable in the dynamic digital new world in which we live.

This has important implications to how we function and communicate with each other in the future.

Share This