How to SUCCEED at Publicity…
Hi Guys…
I just thought I’d share a recent bit of media exposure I’ve received recently.
It was a full page article in Australia’s newest personal development magazine for progressive people - SUCCEED.
Now this isn’t to show off, but to show you what’s possible when you apply the lessons and tips I want to share with you…
So how’d I get the exposure? Well it’s funny that you ask… See the darnedest thing happened… One day I stumbled upon the magazine, and thought I’d do something that’s vary rarely done in this world of email and txt messages… I decided to go out on a limb pick up a real life telephone, and actually give the publishers a call.
And guess what happened… Yep… They also had a telephone, and they answered it when it rang - Then a normal conversation occurred, and low and behold, a few weeks later an article about me appeared in their magazine.
That’s it… no press release, no tricky angle or pitch… just a conversation person to person.
On a side note… I really encourage you to have a look at this great new magazine about self development featuring The Secret teachers - SUCCEED. If you subscribe now for just $69.70 you get a FREE DVD valued at $97 plus up to five FREE issues. This issue issue features Aussie Home Loans John Symonds on how he saved himself, Dr John Demartini on building you life image, rock chick Natalie Bassingthwaite, a guide to where the property market is heading plus stacks of giveaways and free offers.
Don’t miss out go to www.succeedmagazine.com.au
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Press Release Angles.
Hi Folks…
Today in another installment in the series of excepts from the Dale Beaumont interview available in fully downloadable mp3 format when you join the Renegade Publicist Inner Circle - the best bit is it’s FREE.
Today we join the interview where Dale and I are discussing different hooks you can use when forming you press release.
Dale:
And then you can maybe see, if you’re listening to this, how it is that you can attach whatever it is that you do, to one of these particular types of hooks or media angles. Is that cool if we go through that a bit.
Pete:
That is. Hopefully everybody who’s listening has actually got a pen in their hands and is ready to take some notes right now. So, fire away.
Dale:
Alright. Cool. I’m going to rattle off a few and some of them I might mention what they are and some I might expand a little bit of the story but the first one which is kind of obvious is: “Is it something that’s unique?” Is it something that’s really different? For example, my best friend and business partner in ‘Tomorrow’s Youth’, his name’s Brett Williams and we actually wrote a book together when we were 20 years of age.. now if again we were to go with a headline ‘Two People Write Book” people are going to say “So what?” but, “Two 20 Year Olds Write a Book” and we were actually able to have our fourth print run in four months, that was a pretty awesome achievement for a book to go to reprint. Normally books will go to reprint every year or every two years, but to have 4 reprints in the space of 4 months because we had so much demand for the book when it first got out there, and we were both 20 years of age and writing a book.. That kind of doesn’t happen every day.
That was something that was unique. So you need to actually drill a bit deeper and think to yourself, ‘OK, I may be an accountant but what is it that is actually unique about what I do? What could sort of separate me?’ and if you don’t have anything, then you really need to ask yourself the question, ‘what could be unique?’ How could I – I’m not saying make something up, and I’m not saying manufacture something but how can you find something that’s very small and unique and how can you kind of magnify it. How can you make it bigger or enlarge it? So, that’s something that’s really important. So, they’re asking themselves, is this unique, is this different, does this have some sort of interest for my readers?
The next one that we might go through is something that’s successful. That’s oftentimes, what people look for. Like there was a lady that was on ‘A Current Affair’ last night, a lady called Rachel Barnes and she’s purchased 71 properties in the last 5 or 6 years and she originally grew up in a caravan so, here’s a person grew up in a caravan park, now owns 71 properties, now is a multi-millionaire. You know, it’s kind of in a little bit of a way, a rags to riches type story but she’d done something that’s incredibly successful and people want to know about people that a re doing great things.
Pete:
It gives them hope.
Dale:
That’s right. Exactly. So, if you are an accountant, well, what is successful about what you do? Maybe you see, I don’t know, maybe 500 people a week where the average accountant may only see 50 people a week. That’s successful. Or maybe it’s the turnover in your business or maybe it’s the satisfaction that 100% of your customers absolutely are raving fans. What is successful about what you do and kind of draw that out for us – going back to that book example was two 20 year olds have written a book and that was kind of the unique part but the successful part was that it was in its fourth print run in four months so we kind of drew on that as well. So some of these ones that your going to be going through, you may kind of be going for a combination of these factors, a combination of these hooks or angles in order to get your story secured, because you may not with just one alone.
Technorati Tags: dale, beaumont, dream, express, pete, williams, publicity, press, release, media, exposure, write, writing
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How To Get In TechCrunch
The always great Guy Kawsaki wrote a post on his blog ages ago which I have dug out to share with you today.
I first came across Guy around 6 or 7 years ago (I had what my girlfriend Fleur calls a “man crush” on him, way before he started his blog and became world famous) when I heard a cassette recording (yep, cassette) of a speech he gave at a Million Dollar Round Table event.
Anyway this entrepreneur, venture capitalist and author is simply amazing and I encourage you to get your hands on anything he writes. He almost wrote the forward to my book, but unfortunetly the deadlines and things didn’t allow it to happen (I also like to name drop).
Ok, enough rambling… back to publicity.
Here’s a video of an interview Guy did with Mike Arrington of TechCrunch. The salient question that Mike answers is, ”How do I get my company in TechCrunch?“
Technorati Tags: publicity techcrunch guy kawasaki pr pete williams
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OurCommunity.com.au Part 2
Here is the second installment on the publicity resources available at http://www.ourcommunity.com.au
In this video we cover
- The updates made at ourcommunity.com.au
- The Help sheets available on the site
- The Community Calender
If you stumble upon other cool resources on this site, please leave a comment below.
Technorati Tags: publicity, pr, ourcommunity.com.au, our community, community, calender, media, exposure, pete, williams
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The Value Of Bad Language & Publicity…
Hi Guys…
I am seriously $^%#! pissed off. I sat down today to get through my ‘to-do’ list which is longer then Ron Jermey’s $@%#
Now 34 mins later I haven’t ticked off one %#$^$ thing.
See, somehow I found myself on Matthew Stibble’s blog called Bad Language and I just couldn’t stop reading, as it’s got some really powerful posts on publicity.
So just to $^@# take up some more of my &%$^! time, I thought I’d take a moment and give some link love…
Here are a couple of the posts that took up all my $^%$& time.
- 62 Ways To Improve Your Press Release
- The Top Ten Lies Of PR Companies
- Surveys: Uses and Abuses For Writers and PRS
- Write Press Release Headlines That Make Sense
Hope you get some value and eat up as much time as I $*&@# did…
Pete
P.S. I know my attempt at using a lot of #%$^ to play on the name of Matthew’s blog’s is a really lame joke, but hey its early in the morning here.
Technorati Tags: matthew, stibble, publicity, pr, bad language, headlines, surveys,
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A Must See FREE PR Resource - OurCommunity.com.au
I think the video says it all…
The link is: www.ourcommunity.com.au
P.S. You can thank me for revealing this by sending chocolate, money and Size 12 Nikes to
Pete Williams C/- Itelecom 276 St Kilda Rd, St Kilda 3182.
P.P.S. Since I’ve recorded this video, they have changed the sites layout slightly… I’ll record a new video shortly, but you’ll be able to find the pages we are talking about easily on the new site.
Technorati Tags: publicity, advertising, pr, pet, williams, media, exposure, marketing, business, renegade, publicist, preneur
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How to Talk to the Press
As always Guy Kawasaki never fails to deliver gold…
Recently, he pointed us to a video
featuring editors and reporters from the Wall Street Journal, Wired, TechCrunch, Seattle Times, and Seattle Post Intelligence discussing how entrepreneurs should pitch the press.
It’s 56:53 jam-packed minutes long so if you are too lazy to watch the video you can also read the summary.
Enjoy…
Just for reference the origins of all this is from: http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2007/07/the_naked_truth_goes_straight_to_video.html
Technorati Tags: publicity, wall street journal, wired, techcrunch, seattle times, seattle post, pete williams, guy kawasaki, pr
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How The Media Actually Works…
Hi All…
Here is another except from the interview with Dale Beaumont available when you join the inner circle at www.RenegadePublicist.com.
In this except Dale and I are discussing how the media actually works and how it’s structured.
Dale Beaumont:
Well the media is kind of made up of 2 real sides, or 2 real entities. The first is us. We as human beings are just enthralled by what’s happening in the world around us. We kind of want to know and we kind of want to be stimulated and we want to be entertained. So, we’re curious by nature. So, we’ll always kind of look at what’s happening, what’s going on around us. On the other side of the fence we’ve got these, we call them ‘media outlets’, and that could be television, radio, newspapers, magazines and on-line media. And they obviously have a commercial interest. They want to make money.
And then on the other side, there are a whole of companies and these companies want to expose their goods and services and products to consumers, or potential consumers. So, media outlets are kind of in the middle and what they do is obviously they have costs. They’re a business at the end of the day and they need to employ staff and writers and graphic designers and they need of course to cover printing or whatever other expenses that they have so you obviously have these advertisers. They advertise on the programs and then, after the advertising is filled up, maybe you’ve only covered about 20% of the actual magazine or the air time so then you’ve got to fill the rest up with something.
And obviously they look for certain types of stories which is maybe what we’re going to talk about next, that are going to keep their audience interested in the magazine or the station that they’re listening to so, you know, they can continue to get ratings which is going to lead to more advertising revenue, which makes them more profitable, and hence they can kind of grow and expand.
So, kind of, the whole point of that waffle there is that every day media outlets need a massive amount of content in order to fill their publications and programs. If we’re talking about, for example, a newspaper, you know they may need two or three hundred thousand words to fill up their publication. Or if we’re talking about the radio for example – perfect example. 24 hours 7 days a week, 365 days a year that they need content. There’s 20% which is taken up by advertising, well what about the other 80%?
They gotta fill it with something. So, they need content.
They need to have information. And you can come along as someone that is a bit of a saviour in a way because sometimes, as you’re saying, see the media and journalists as being big and scary but, understand that they need you just as much as you need them in order to get the exposure. So they’re hungry. They’re looking for people. They do of course, sit in a bit of an ivory tower and have a little bit of a solid brick façade sometimes and it almost seems like ‘how can you ever get through’ but if you know the right techniques, if you know what they’re looking for then you can actually get through those defences. And once you kind of get into the inner sanctum in a way, you’ll find it’s very easy to get the kind of exposure if you know how the game’s played.
Technorati Tags: dale beaumont, pete williams, pr, media, structure, publicity, exposure, radio, newspaper, tv
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How Publicity Can Generate Traffic For Your Website…
Howdee…
I just posted a reply/entry to a small contest being help on the warrior forum, which I thought you might be interested in.
For those of you not aware of the Warrior Forum, it’s a online forum for dedicated to internet marketers - people who sell stuff online. A great resource I highly recommend anyone with a website check out - http://www.warriorforum.com/
Anyway, one of the members has just started a thread (topic) wanting people to give their best idea for generating traffic to a website and is offering some cold hard cash to the best 3 entries…
You can check the thread out here: http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=172377
Here is the original post outlining the ‘contest‘..
…. Since one of the biggest problems people seem to have is filtering out the BS from the truth, and not knowing who to listen to - I’ll make it my normal “post your most useful tip for others to learn from” type deal.
There are a lot of self-proclaimed gurus saying things which they’ve never done, and either pushing the ‘Death of X’ or ‘Secret Backdoor’ approaches to loosening your wallets, so if you want the money, just post your most useful technique/tip/strategy that is no-cost and can generate either: signups, traffic, customers etc to a new online business.
These 3 things (subscribers, customers and traffic) are the core of what most people struggle with online, and although we can all say “just do a JV” etc, I know that many people struggle with this, so if you have a killer tip that will help people, don’t sit around wondering how much you can charge them for it, post it here and you might make just as much by giving it away.
I’ll pick the winner on Friday evening UK time, so that whoever wins will have the money in their Paypal accounts for the weekend…
Now, obviously one of the greatest ways I think you can get traffic for a website is via offline publicity - just look at the simplymobiles.com.au example I posted about… and naturally that was my entry.
A copy of which is below for you guys…
Most online marketers forget they are running a business and their client/prospects live in the ‘real world’… Today the line between online and offline are blurring and we need to think bigger.
We all know that as business owners or Internet marketers we can have the best product in the world at the best price possible with the greatest attachments, connections and bonuses – but if no-one knows about it, then you’ll be sitting alone with the world’s number one white elephant - that’s precisely why traffic is so important. (yeah no 5h!at right)
Now wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could have these hungry clients, throwing money at you faster then you can handle, with out all the typical, and expensive, marketing methods such as
-
Google Adwords Affiliate CommissionsSEO Consultants
Now the whole aim of the game is to get a constant flow of pre-qualified, pre- disposed prospects coming to your website, with their credit card in hand, already thinking you are an expert in your field ready to buy what you are offering?
Now, before we talk about how this can happen, lets break this down:
Pre-Qualified traffic means your visitors are actually targeted, and thus your conversion rates are going to be higher, which gives you leverage to get JV partners in the future.
Pre-Disposed means that these visitors have actually gotten off their fat-rear-ends and taken action to get to your site wanting to read your sales letter. Again higher conversions, and less tyre-kickers
Thinking you are an Expert - means that one of the biggest challenges us Internet Marketers face is instantly overcame… And that’s the issue of TRUST. The biggest resistance to an online sale is the trust the prospect has for your business (quality of product, quality of service and security of payment etc)
If someone comes to your website already thinking you are a qualified expert in your niche, there is no trust to build - it’s implied. Which means you can simply make the pitch.
As a side note - the underlying reason video works so well in the sales process is that it allows the prospect to ‘get to know you’ and build ‘psychological trust’ with you.. all because they have a visual medium to relate to.
Now before ‘reveal’ this super-awesome way to get this traffic I want to give you a really quick case study.
I was a ‘behind the scenes player’ in a project to drive traffic to a e-commerce site here in Australia early last week… Now this site was hosted on one of the countries largest wholesale internet providers servers (the type that would support and sell services to a Comcast or EarthLink in the US - so big playas)
Anyway… this one tactic caused their servers to crash solely due to the traffic levels and payments that resulted.
I am talking tens of thousands of visitors at once… Some crazy 5h!at people. … Now I don’t think this is a typical result - FAR FAR from it, but it is certainly powerful.
So, the most powerful way to get a constant flow of pre-qualified, pre- disposed prospects coming to your website,already thinking you are an expert is through FREE PUBLICITY.
Yep I said it, free exposure in the real world media - radio, newspapers, TV - a very over-looked and under-valued internet marketing tool.
The reason publicity works so well as a traffic generator for online marketers is that (as Kurt alluded too in his post) it’s the most amazing third-part endorsement. It’s the (ultimate) testimonial you can’t buy, fake or get off a buddy.
If you get exposure from a media source that gives your website or product an endorsement via the story, then no amount of paid advertising can bring you the same amount of kudos or credibility.
If the prospect sees an article about you, your website or your product in the media, it’s instant KUDOS - you are the expert!
So when they get off their butts and go to your site - they are their to sign-up and or buy - that’s PRE QUALIFIED TRAFFIC
Also, if you’re selling information on playing the guitar, imagine the credibility and pre-eminence in the market you will gain by being able to refer to print or television media on your website. This will bring you instant expert status and result in harnessing one of the most precious commodities of the internet – trust.
Oh yeah, did I meantion its free and real easy to get ?
That’s my entry boys and girls…
Pete Williams
P.S. If you want to see the piece of media exposure that caused the servers to crash check out http://youtube.com/watch?v=zTquOQsT_6Y
P.P.S. More info on PR @ renegadepublicist.com
P.P.P.S. In honor of JMo and Mr Kern - "this stuff doesn’t work"
Technorati Tags: warrior forum, internet, marketing, pete, williams, publicity, pr, online, traffic, lead, generation
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