Public Relations – PR, marketing, and media production | Alchemy On Demand

How To Grow Your Readership

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 05:00:45 +0000

“At the ‘Tools of Change’ publishing conference in New York, Goodreads CEO Otis Chandler revealed a remarkably simple, effortless way for authors to sell more eBooks on Amazon… or in fact anywhere eBooks are sold online.

In a survey of Goodreads’ 15 million-strong membership, he found that the main driver of eBook purchases was, unsurprisingly, ‘referral by a friend’.”
–BESTSELLER Labs

How To Build Your Audience and Grow Your Readership

A sticky situation to be sure – you’ve got this great business and you’ve been growing, expanding, tackling great hurdles, overcoming every darn obstacle, but still… only 50 of your closest friends like you on Facebook! What to do?

Though it may seem hard, growing your readership is something that is doable. Clearly defined goals and sticking to a game-plan are key – but then again, you know this – you’ve got your own business, for crying out loud! So the discipline I leave up to you, but here are the beginnings of a successful strategy for building your readership.

Let me say first, however, that Content Marketing, as well as PR, SEO, and Social Media Campaigns, are all interconnected, and though the following proposal will suggest methods to increase readership, it will also inherently work to increase your Search Engine Results Placement (SERP) as well as establish your prominence in your field. The best approach to any marketing campaign is to achieve individual goals but act with them as part of a comprehensive marketing plan. Take these tips to heart, and you should see a dramatic increase in traffic to your site.

I’d also like to outline the need for differentiation of social media and an on-site blog. Your on-site blog should be about pertinent information that other experts in your industry will find valuable. Think of it as a keynote presentation with “room for questions/comments” at the end. Your social media presence (Facebook, specifically) is the place for links to what you’re doing in the industry – a way for your fans to follow your progress and “like” your latest projects. Each fulfills a need, and the info between the two will sometimes cross over, but your blog should be about expanding your notoriety in your field.

First things first: Get some good blog posts (at least 5 [Why 5?]) on your site.

But before you do, read on.

What makes a good blog post?

Rough overview:

Find a topic you’re passionate about. It doesn’t have to be exactly what your website is about – make it some derivation. For example, if your site is about homeland security, you could write about security, weapons, technological advancements in the field, home security, foreign policy… you get the idea.

Content over 1000 words. Tests indicate that the longer, more in-depth content ranks better on search engines than shorter posts. They do better with social circles, and they tend to be linked more frequently.

Relate Relevant Content – use your spreadsheets to see what posts in your field are being discussed most frequently, then use that information to draft content and research on your own.

Use graphics and examples when possible. It’s important to include at least one attributable image to your blog post as it breaks up the flow of the words and looks better on the page (not as intimidating). Examples prove your point with specifics.

Create a catchy headline. Many posts have been written about how important it is to use keywords in your headline and to assure that it grabs your reader’s attention.

Promote content

Now that you’ve got some blog posts under your belt, it’s time to promote them. It’s not enough to just have social media outlets. As you may know, it’s hard to grow your readership. Not everyone will care about children’s eBooks, but many people care about parenting, technology, what their children are reading, and how to entertain/educate them. You can use these categories to start a list of potential network connections.

Create a long list (200+) of blogs, websites, and Twitter users that are active (tweeted in the past week, the website is regularly updated, etc.)

Make sure that no one on this list sells products or services (you are not, at this point, in the business of selling. You are in the business of establishing yourself as a presence, and if you come out of the gates with an obvious agenda, people will be reluctant to heed your advice).

Get the full name, email address, website URL, and name of their website.

List potential guest blogging opportunities and then email them and request to write a guest blog for them.

Be sure to solicit successful sites, but not industry giants. Alltop.com will give you a list of bloggers in various fields, and you can then use a service like Alexa or Similarweb to check rankings to see what their traffic is like. (Aim for blogs with 30,000 – 300,000 readership hits.)

Consider linking to an internal page (not just your homepage). This encourages site click-through and promotes traffic and exposure.
Follow a template along the lines of:

Subject: you should blog about [insert your guest blog post topic]

[insert their first name], as an avid reader of [insert their site name]I would love to read about [insert guest blog post topic]… and I think your other readers would as well.

Your content on [insert existing post from their website #1, insert existing post from their website #2, and insert existing post from their website #3] are great, but I think you can tie it all together by blogging on [insert guest blog post topic].

I know you are probably busy, so how about I write it for you? Don’t worry, I’m a great blogger and have written posts such as [insert blog post URL #1] and [insert blog post URL #2].

Let me know if you are interested, I already know your blogging style, plus I understand what your readers love… as I am one.

Look forward to hearing from you,
[insert your name]

Create a list of all of the popular blogs in your target space. You can easily do this by searching Technorati (a blog and post search engine) and looking for target blogs on a specific topic. If there aren’t too many popular blogs in your space, list out all of the blogs that are somewhat in your space and are popular.

Now that you have a list of all of the popular blogs, make sure you browse them frequently (at least once a week). When browsing them, look out for social buttons on each post that shows how many people either “tweeted” or “liked” the post. The higher the number the better.

Take the posts that have over 50 or 100 social shares and list them out in a spreadsheet. These will become a resource to draw from when trying to write effective blog posts in the future and to see what your potential audience is responding to.

Spin the title. Don’t just regurgitate old information. Spin it. Outline the main points you want to touch upon, fill in the details, then revise and publish. Get a good licensed image, post, then share.

Comment – This cannot be stressed enough. It is tedious and time-consuming, but it shows your presence in your field, helps to establish notoriety and expertise and helps your SEO.

Use your real name and blog URL (not your website’s homepage). This helps give the impression that you’re “for real” and not just promoting your own agenda/business and it separates blog topics from immediate selling. In addition, Google is currently in the process of de-anonymizing the web, linking personal sites to business sites, Youtube profiles, Facebook etc. The goal of this is to increase accountability, and so it helps to establish YOU as an industry expert. Alternatively, you can create another author for your site, but keep in mind it will be this person who will be linked to the bulk of this content aggrandizement.

Respond to comments on your own blog, create a conversation, ask questions. (Pete Cashmore followed this strategy at Mashable, and successfully built it as a Mecca for Social Networking knowledge.) Social media indicators play a big role in SEO, and your readership grows when people see that this is a discussion, not a one-way lecture.

Get Reviews – Reviews are a large determinate of what sells products. Once your readership is up you can solicit other bloggers for reviews and assure them a link to their site, thus enabling cross-marketing efforts. If you have hard copies that you can offer as an incentive – a signed copy, for example – you can use this as payment for their review.

The Great Blog Post – Once a few guest posts have been written, begin writing posts on your blog that link to these sites. Write quality content, use metrics and examples when possible, and then whenever you have a particularly good blog with links to other blog owners’ sites, email them and ask them to share it in their social circles.

Make it memorable and keep business out of it… at first. You’ve got to begin, work on, and promote content that doesn’t sell your business at all. Just for a while. Nobody likes a hard sell and building readership is the same. If you begin to comment, share, and promote quality information that people genuinely care about, you begin to win what they call the long-tail game. SEO and circulation gains aren’t made overnight. Play the game as if you’re sticking around for a while.

You can really crank this up with StumbleUpon Paid Discovery. $100 here and they’ll direct over 1000 visitors to your post. The other blogs you linked to within your post will then see you as a referrer in their analytics reports and your notoriety in the field will grow.

Create a Reciprocal Tweet System – Every once in a while, with that really great blog post, you can solicit tweets directly. Using your list of email addresses, you can send them a short and sweet solicitation for a tweet. For Ex: “I would love it if you could tweet about [insert link]. Let me know if you need a tweet.” This direct approach is roughly 8% effective according to industry giant Neil Patel, so the longer the list of your potential network, the better.

Consider making a badge. Have a web designer make a badge something along the lines of “Top 100 Ebook Retailer”. Create an embed code. This not only creates perceived credibility, but you can now email out the embed code and create something of an inner circle for those that promote you and share content (and audience) with you.

Create/make images that would be useful to other bloggers. Images rank well in search engine indexing, so almost every blog has at least one. Still, it can be hard to find royalty-free images that relate to your topic. Creating infographics, photos, and Memes:

Use tools like Photoshop, Meme Generator, and Quick Meme to create your own meme like this one:

Once you have your own meme, you can start spreading the content using social sites where your target audience would most likely be on – such as targeted Facebook Groups, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Pinterest, 9gag, Tumblr, and Subreddits on Reddit. (This makes great Social Media fodder.) Using your memes on your other external content distribution campaigns (like guest blogs, slide presentations, ebooks, etc. is good practice as well.)

If you’ve seen improvements in traffic, links and brand mentions through this technique, you can start using Reverse Image Search to find sites that have used your memes but haven’t provided a link to your site. Reach out to them for easier link acquisition.

List potential website owners and make some suggestions for their site.
For example: “Dear Sir or Miss, I’m an avid reader of your blog and, being in the blogging field myself, couldn’t help but notice that you did [X] this when really you mean [Y].” OR “… did you ever think of [X]?”

Ask only for a link to your site as potential remuneration.

If All Else Fails – Buy followers. It sounds dubious, but you can solicit companies directly and pay them to write blogs about you. Many successful blogs make good revenue from this, but it should be a last resort unless you’re in a full-blown, no reservations marketing blast.

The above is an overview of the beginnings of a successful Content Marketing strategy. Social Media strategies are closely tied, but are beyond the scope of this document, though some themes like Meme generation would work well on crossover to Pinterest which, as several studies have proven, drive more sales than Facebook.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

How To Harness Social Media to Boost Your Business

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 04:42:59 +0000

You constantly hear that social media is the way to build business, attract friends, fans, and followers, and “go viral” overnight. But as anyone who has waded into the web has quickly discovered, you can easily spend hours caught in this “web” with very little to show for your effort.

If only it were as easy as creating a Facebook page.

Don’t lose heart, however. As you’ve heard us say elsewhere on these pages, PR and marketing efforts are cumulative. They build over time. And over time, your investments will pay off.

Here are some bangarang ways to get readers interested in your business, whatever it may be.

Solicit Your Friends

Perhaps the hardest part about starting any new business is this: Owning It. Tell your friends and contacts about your new venture. Don’t be shy – they’re your friends and they support you. Twitter is built upon the reciprocal tweet system. Friend/follow someone and with about a 10% rate, they’ll follow/friend you.

Time your posts

Becoming something of an authority in your industry takes time and effort, but it’s what you want to do in order to assure your clients and customers that your product or service is coming from the best source. The key is consistency. Like the gym, gains aren’t made overnight but by sticking to a planned schedule. Time your posts and social media listings to publish at a set time 2-5 times every week, at least.

And when specifically should you publish your blog posts? Typically, the best time to publish your blogs is between 9:30am and 11am USA East Coast time. Testing has shown that this is the time when most Americans are up and running, but this data constantly changes. For Facebook, you can use their analytics tool to find out what time best suits your audience.

Now that you’ve got the basics covered, let’s look at ways you can go about drumming up that business.

Create Interesting Content

This is the hardest thing of all, right? I mean, if creating interesting content was so easy, we wouldn’t spend hours trolling the web looking for it. Well here’s the golden rule: do what your customers are too lazy to do. It takes work, but it isn’t necessarily hard. Once you know your business (and you do, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t be in business) then all you have to do is tell your industry the best things about their business.

Take, for instance, flashlights. Now my girlfriend goes crazy over this, but I recently developed a thing for flashlights. Not a pervy thing, just an interest. So I poke about looking for which flashlight has the best throw, flood, spill, this and that, you know, whatever. Anyway, these people over at candlepowerforums have done more testing than you would’ve ever thought possible about flashlights, their lumen output, their lux output, their ANSI ratings, mods, you get the picture.

Still, if you’re looking into purchasing a light hand cannon, well then you’ve come to the right place. The font of information inspires you, engages you, and they sell flashlights.

Now back to your business:

Find interesting content that pertains to your field: this can be anything from ANSI ratings to the brilliance of radiant cut diamonds. Share this with your readers. It will boost your SERP (Social Engine Results Page) and help to define you as an authority in your field.
Make it new – Below, I encourage you to make a spreadsheet–a list–of others in your field. (That’s right, even your competitors.) Read their posts and spin their content. Take their nugget and add your own value to it. (It’s not stealing; all of society is built off a handful of great people and their work. We all pitch in incrementally, but we all had to learn something from someone.) See what’s happening in the field, what your customers are responding to (by checking out which blog posts receive the most shares) and see how you can add your own creative twist.
Give Away Free Stuff – I know that it’s hard to do this as a budding business, but here’s perhaps the most valuable thing you can give: information. (That’s what Alchemy On Demand is doing here, see?) Use that interesting content and create an eBook or better yet, a training course. Offer a service and have your audience pay with a tweet. Or with, say, a Facebook “like” or email address. The more creative you get here the better.

Get a list of others in your field

What? This is about me, not them, right? I know, I know. But if you’re a regular reader of this blog you know that I’m a big fan of lists–for a reason: editors, readers, and customers love lists – and you should too. For our present purposes, your list enables you to find out what others in your field are doing and spark ideas about what you could be doing to create interest. You identify opportunities to comment to their blog or Facebook posts, thereby alerting their friends, followers, and fans, that you’re a valuable resource too. You might even approach one of these businesses or social media sites with a request to author a guest blog on their site. And offer them the same on yours. Now you’re gaining access to their customers.

Google Alerts is another great way to stay up-to-date about what is going on in your field, but generally speaking, might not be focused enough to be pertinent in your niche. If you’re selling a product or service related to spiritual healing, for example, then you may have a hard time finding other blogs and industry professionals that are keeping you updated with breaking news. But you will probably find a wealth of information regarding healing, spirituality, holistic health, general health, Western vs. Eastern Medicine, etc., in general. Use Technorati to get a good list of 200+ blogs that pertain to your field and then use a service like Alexa or Similarweb to check rankings and order them in order of their readership.

Something like so:

This will give you the contacts you need in order to stay up to date on what is happening in your industry. If you don’t like doing this yourself (after all, you’ve got a company to run), I’ve found some great help using Upwork in the past.

Well, there you have it. Some good info about the beginning stages of drumming up your business. I’ll conclude here with the firm advice to begin conversations with people, like them, follow them, +1 them, Link them, whatever it takes at this point. It’s hard to get your readership off the ground, but once you get rolling, you get rolling in customers, and ooh boy – what a feeling.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

What to Include in a Press Kit

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 04:01:23 +0000

Key Elements of a Press Kit

One of the first things new businesses want to know about is how to put together an effective press kit. Though they know that PR is important, they don’t know how to go about generating a buzz about their business, or how to go about growing their readership. The following is designed to help you assemble a press kit. There are no hard and fast rules about what to include; basically, you want to include enough information to inspire an editor or producer to do a piece on your company, product, service…or you.

Don’t be dismayed if you don’t have all of these elements initially. Just collect them as you go. And remember that it’s called “a press kit” because it’s supposed to get you press. One of the best ways to get press is to already have gotten press, so links or samples of articles, interviews, radio or television clips, etc., are key.

Cover letter

Sometimes referred to as the pitch letter, this is where you grab or lose the reader’s interest–which, in this case, is an editor or producer. Tell them upfront why they should care about what you’re telling them. I’m going to presume you are sending an electronic press kit (EPK)–which is increasingly the industry standard. For an EPK, the cover letter is the email that accompanies the EPK attachment.

Pitch/Hook

Assuming you are sending this press kit electronically, the pitch/hook appears in your subject line, the cover email, and probably in the headline of your attachment. It should be attention-grabbing, provocative, and/or dovetail with the recipient’s known interest(s). Three ways to do this include asking a question, upsetting the conventional wisdom, and offering a list (editors love lists), such as:

Do nuclear weapons keep us safe?
Why nuclear weapons don’t keep us safe.
Ten myths about nuclear weapons.

Summary of Company/Product/Service/Person

Here you state your own/your company’s/your product or service’s credentials. Do it briefly on page one, but include a more detailed description later on. Or you can provide details early on in bullet-point fashion:

Five reasons Miracle Clean should be on your shelf

All natural
Non-toxic
Non habit-forming
Organic Mothers approved
Works like a miracle!

Testimonials/product, service, or performance reviews

Great things other people have said about you. Famous people are impressive, but anyone with a credential in your field is good, as are compliments from your consumers, even if no one has ever heard of them.

More detailed product and service information

Fact sheets, sales sheets, or company brochures.

Other publications and articles

PR is cumulative. The more press you’ve gotten, the more newsworthy editors will find you. In an EPK you don’t include copies of other media coverage, but links to them on your website—or to the media outlet’s website.

Press releases

In practice, it is often a press release—in other words, breaking news about your company—that prompts you to send out an EPK. Using David Krieger and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation as an example, a press release (and the subject line of the email) might announce David Krieger’s newest book. The introductory paragraph of the email will encourage editors to inform their readers about this newest title, and also encourage them to interview Dr. Krieger, referencing the EPK attached.

Similarly with Lucky Penny Press, a children’s eBook publisher, a new title might prompt a press release, but also serve as the opportunity to encourage editors to do a larger story on LPP, and/or its founder, and/or the eBook phenomenon for children.

Suggested topics, or a sample news story:

Suggest topics that your company spokesperson can speak to, or even include a sample news story (if not a press release). Some editors will print it verbatim, or they may edit it, which is their prerogative.

List of frequently asked questions

This helps the editor conduct an interview or outline an article.

Photos

At least one print-worthy photo!

Other items to consider

Nonprofit and community-service involvement
Awards
Factual background material and/or white papers
Schedules of upcoming promotions and events
Significant statistics specific to your industry, demographics and target audiences
Samples or examples
Camera-ready logo art

There you have it – all the elements to successfully put together a press kit. The above information has been hard-earned from 20+ years in the industry, so take it to heart and you’ll be just fine. Do you have any successes with your press kits that you’d like to let us know about?

-Leslee Goodman
Alchemy On Demand

Why Write a Killer Blogpost

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 03:59:48 +0000

Sure, it seems easy enough – all your friends seem to have started one, so why shouldn’t you? But with the advent of the internet and weblogging, it seems that everyone has become an expert and so it’s hard to separate the good content from dross, the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. There are plenty of articles out there from a great many web authors, but the question remains – what’s in a blog post?

Blog posts can be written for a variety of reasons – a blog about your new hobby baking cupcakes is one thing, but if you’re looking to generate some quality content for your business, then that’s a whole other bag. Businesses that maintain a web presence (and who doesn’t nowadays?) will benefit to have a blog that maintains a quality line of content. This not only shows your prospective customers that you are staying informed (as well as informing them) about current trends in your industry, but it also helps to make your site competitive on search engines like Bing and Google.

People are paying thousands of dollars nowadays to talk to search engine optimizers (SEOs), and it only makes good business sense – the better your site does on a Google ranking, the more potential customers will see it and the more business you’ll generate. And so getting back to our point, writing a great blog post not only generates visitors to your site helping to validate it, but it also allows you to add keyword-rich content that helps make your site better “known” to Google for these particular keywords. But writing a great blog post does more than this, it also allows you to establish a community and a relationship with that community.

According to SEO gurus like Neil Patel and SEOmoz, companies see a far better Return On Investment (ROI) when they have loyal, return viewers of their site. Thus, quality content establishes a rapport, builds a fan base, and imbues a sense of your competency in those who would visit your site. With the latest Google Algorithm updates, gone are the days of generating countless backlinks and keyword-rich nonsense content.

And thank heavens for that, eh? Let’s make the web better for all involved. Here’s to generating some quality content and keeping the BlackHats out of it.

-Hudson Hornick
Alchemy On Demand

David Krieger of Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Makes Front of The Sun

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 03:41:09 +0000

Leslee’s interview with David Krieger of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation was featured on the front of the January 2013 issue of The Sun Magazine: http://thesunmagazine.org/
Check it out!

Hudson Hornick
-Alchemy On Demand

How to Write a Block-Rocking SEO Press Release

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 03:05:41 +0000

You know what a press release is:

A press release is the #1 tool in the publicist’s bag of tricks. A press release is what publicists send to media to let the public know what their clients are up to.

But what you may not know is that business owners (a.k.a. Those do-it-yourself publicists) rely on press releases too. It’s true – they send them out when they want to tell the world about a new product or service they’re launching; a store they’re opening; an event they’re sponsoring; an award they’ve won; or some other newsworthy milestone they’ve achieved.

Thus, press releases are popular and important for business.

So that’s a press release. No big deal, right?

So what the hey is an SEO press release?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. An SEO press release is one that is written so that search engines–those robots employed by Google, Yahoo, Bing, and AOL–will read and rank your press release.

You want Search Engines to read and rank your press release because these days online media are as important as print and broadcast.

So how do you write a press release that a robot will read and disseminate?

The same way you write one for people.

Not so bad, right? Here’s why:

Search engines now want the same thing from a press release that readers want: interesting content clearly communicated.

Here’s what PRNewswire recommends about press release writing for SEO:

“Great content written with a specific audience in mind is good SEO and will increase your chances of being found.”

In other words, you write a press release when you have something newsworthy to say to a specific group of people.

Sometimes, however, that’s easier said than done.

How To Write a Great Press Release

Although most people can talk in clear straightforward sentences, too many of us get muddled when we’re saying something in writing. So here are eight easy tips for writing a great press release that both search engines (software) and people will want to read:

1. Decide what your lead is—the news you want to tell. Here are three examples from Malibu NoseRiding Championship, one of our actual clients:

Announcing the 2013 Malibu NoseRiding Championship:
World’s first timed, co-ed noseriding competition

—
Outside TV signs on as Malibu NoseRiding Championship sponsor

—
Win a GoPro camera in Malibu NoseRiding Championship’s photo contest

Why they’re great titles:

Each of these headlines states clearly what the “news” is. Either it’s the first of something, some big-name is getting involved, or there’s something people can win. Any way you slice it, someone will be interested and that, my friends, is the definition of News.

2. Tell who, what, when, where, and WHY—the five Ws. It’s important in a press release to get as many of the basic facts as you can into the first paragraph. Although WHY is the last on the list, it’s often important to say “why” even ahead of who, what, when, and where. That’s because attention spans are short; you need to let people know quickly why this matters. If readers care about WHY, they’ll stay with you to find out who, what, where, and when. Here’s out it played out for Malibu NoseRiding Championship:

“History’s first-ever timed noseriding competition, in which men and women compete as equals for cash and prizes, will take place “On One Perfect Day” in October 2013 at Malibu’s legendary Surfrider Beach.”

(It’s not often that you can claim a history-making event, and when you can, put it upfront.)

3. Fill out your press release with interesting details (content) as hyperlinks.

“The Malibu Noseriding Championship will bring together sixty-four of the world’s best longboard surfers to compete for ‘most time on the nose’ in an objectively timed event. The event will raise funds and awareness for the Malibu Beach watershed ecosystem—once a pristine environment named “Malibu” by the region’s first inhabitants, the Chumash.

“The event will attract some of surfing’s best, including (long list of championship surfers)…

“The Malibu Noseriding Championship will benefit three local nonprofits: Eco-Malibu, whose mission is to restore and protect the lower Malibu Creek watershed and historical wetlands of Malibu; the Bay Restoration Foundation, working to restore and enhance the Santa Monica Bay; and the Surfing Heritage and Cultural Center, dedicated to preserving, presenting and promoting surfing’s heritage for the appreciation and education of current and future generations.”

4. Include keywords in your press release. Keywords are terms that people will search for when they’re looking for a product or service you provide. If you’re a PR agency in Santa Barbara, “Santa Barbara PR agency” are likely some of your keywords, and so are “Santa Barbara” and “PR” and “public relations.” Anytime I sensibly include my keywords in my press release, I’m helping a Google bot rank it higher for those words.

If you’re the Malibu NoseRiding Championship producers, “Malibu NoseRiding Championship” is a great keyword phrase, but don’t forget that “surfing,” “noseriding,” “surf contests,” etc. can be equally valuable. Try to mix it up to get a more complete keyword profile.

Note: It can take some research and analysis to select your keywords, and we’ll say more about it in another post. For the time being, however, once you know what your company’s keywords are, use them in your press release.

Adding keywords can be as simple as including them in the headline: “Announcing the first Malibu NoseRiding Championship,” or in the first paragraph of the press release: “Alchemy On Demand, Santa Barbara’s PR agency, announces …” You can then add them, or variations of them, again in your press release whenever it makes sense to do so–from a reader’s (not a robot’s) point of view.

5. Include a photograph or video. You learned it in school: “A picture’s worth a thousand words.” In the Internet age, that’s an understatement.

Photos draw readers’ attention. If you have no other image to accompany your press release, quote someone—even if it’s yourself—and include a headshot of that person. Photos make editors more likely to include your story—because they know that readers will be more likely to read it.

6. Include contact info, including a link to your own website. That’s important for reporters, but also for readers who may want to know more about you than just the information available in your press release.

7. Include “boilerplate” about your company at the very end of your press release. A Boilerplate is a single-spaced paragraph that describes what your company does. It provides background information for living, breathing editors, and adds credibility/authority for SEO software ‘bots. It’s also one last place to legitimately insert your keywords. Here’s an example using Lucky Penny Press, another Alchemy On Demand client:

“Lucky Penny Press is a children’s eBook publisher founded by Melissa C. Marsted, author of Pablito and the Speckled Bear. Lucky Penny Press, whose motto is “Nurturing the creative spirit,” publishes books written by both adults and children. Each book has a professionally recorded audio version. As part of LPP’s cultural fabric, each book is connected to a non-profit organization, which receives a portion of book sale proceeds. LPP sells eBooks in numerous eReader formats including those for iPads, iPhones, Kindles, Nooks, MP3 players, and any computer. Every eBook can be downloaded in either eReader or audio format, or both.”

8. Use the Associated Press style. Associated Press (AP) wrote the rules for journalistic fine points followed by most written media. Since many editors will run your press release verbatim if they don’t have time, staff, or inclination to rewrite it, your job is to make it easy for them to do so. AP style includes rules such as spelling out numbers one through nine, but using numerals for numbers 10 and above (as I just did in this sentence). This rule doesn’t apply for dates, such as July 1, 2013, for which numbers are always used, or when a sentence begins with a number, in which case the number is always spelled out.

AP style also omits the “serial comma,” which is the comma before “and” in a list longer than two. For example, “dogs, cats and ponies”; not “dogs, cats, and ponies.”

(This omission of the serial comma upsets Hudson, and my son Noah, but we’ll leave the grammar nazis to fight amongst themselves, yes?)

Another AP-style guideline is to put the comma or period inside the quotation marks. When you’re quoting someone, it looks like this: “This is our first award,” the proud business owner said. “We couldn’t be more pleased.”

And that’s it. Follow these straightforward recommendations for writing press releases, and you’ll also be writing an SEO press release in no time.

Congratulations!

–Leslee Goodman
Alchemy On Demand

How to Generate Free Publicity (Part 2)

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 00:26:12 +0000

OK, so you’ve got a great story about your business you want your local media to cover. How do you get their attention?

Just like in fishing, we call it The Hook.

The Hook is an intriguing email subject line/press release headline that makes readers (and editors are readers) want to know more.

Here are some tips for “hooking” an editor with your press release:

Use numbers. I don’t know why; they’re like lists. Editors–and other readers–love ’em. “Fifty ways to leave your lover.” “Top 12 Films of 2012.” “Five flavorful ways to serve meatloaf.” “Thirty great gifts under $30.” “The 10 worst pick-up lines ever.” Except for the meatloaf one, don’t you want to know more?

Turn conventional wisdom on its head. It’s always interesting when someone goes against the grain. Instantly, observers start to follow that one and ignore the crowd. “Everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten” (not college). “Why working out won’t help you lose weight.” (Sorry; I made that up. Last time I got on the scale it still wasn’t true.) “Why raising test scores won’t fix society.”

Do both. “Five reasons nuclear weapons can’t keep us safe .” “Three myths about fluoride your dentist doesn’t want you to know.” “Three things your girlfriend wants besides chocolate, flowers, and a ring.”

See the world through an editor’s eyes. That means being sensitive to what’s timely in THEIR world (hint: what holiday is coming up next month?) and tying your news to it in ways that catch their attention. For local business editors: “Why Mother’s Day is a money-maker”; Lifestyle editors: “What NOT to give Mom for Mother’s Day this year,” or “When Mom is gone: How to remember Mom on Mother’s Day.” For Travel or Food editors: “Beyond brunch: 10 memorable places to take Mom on her day.” Politics and foreign policy: What would Mom do? (Threw that one in there to see if you’re still reading.)

Mind you: these topics are timely a month in advance for daily or weekly media; monthly media typically want six months’ lead time. That means if you want media to run a story on you before the holiday season, send them your press release six months in advance, using any of the above tips that appeal to you.

Share your success stories! What’s the most effective “hook” you ever used with the media?

— Leslee Goodman
Alchemy On Demand

How to Generate Local Publicity (Part 1)

Admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 00:22:23 +0000

It’s the holy grail of all small businesses – Free Publicity.

But how do you get it?

In this age of information overload, it can be hard for beginning businesses to be heard above the din of more experienced buzz-makers.

The good news is that the more media outlets there are–newspapers, e-zines, magazines, social media sites, and blog-talk radio shows, the more media outlets are looking for quality content. And local media outlets are hungry for LOCAL media content… meaning you and your business.

Sadly, local media producers are unlikely to come to you. If you want the media to report on your business, you have to let them know why they should.

The press release is a business’s primary tool for communicating with the media. A press release is a one- to two-page document that informs the media of a newsworthy event at your company.

What is a newsworthy event?

A new product launch; a new management-level hire; a new location; new store hours; new social responsibility initiative; new partnership – all are newsworthy events. Are you seeing a connection here? What’s newsworthy is what’s NEW. It’s really that simple.

Sure, not every editor is going to be interested in every new offering that comes out of your company, but tailor your news release to the appropriate outlet.

The business section of the local paper may be interested in your new product line, while the news and lifestyle editors will not. Perhaps there’s a trade publication for your industry? Send your new product launch press release to its editor. If your company makes the cover of the trade publication that news may warrant a story in the hometown paper or news broadcast.

Take, for example, Lucky Penny Press. They recently partnered with poet laureate emirata of Santa Barbara to co-create a picture book of poetry for kids and adults. We sent a press release to the Santa Barbara Independent arts editor, who found it pertinent because the poet, Perie Longo, maintains a following in the Santa Barbara area, and April is National Poetry Month. Lucky Penny Press got some good publicity out of the deal.

What are some other ways you can generate buzz for your business?

Do something for your community.

Partner with a local nonprofit to clean up the beach. Start an intern program for local teens. Conduct an office food drive for local fire or flood victims. Take a photo of any of these initiatives, write it up, and send it to the local press. Do it monthly. You’re doing something for the people the media serve and they are likely to cover it.

Create a contest.

This is one of the most effective ways of building social media followers and fans. Offer your product as the prize and give people a chance to win it for “Liking” or “Sharing” your page. Mashable wrote a great post about the creative ways businesses used contests to build their online community. One of my favorites is the Downtown Ithaca’s Alliance, which hides a garden gnome somewhere in downtown Ithaca, NY. People hit the streets in order to find the gnome and post their findings on DIA’s various social media channels. A great way to build community and a relatively free and easy way to drum up press.

Host an event.

Open your doors for the local art walk. Have a monthly open house with wine and cheese. Host a talk about something your business is knowledgeable in. People love free events–especially with food and drink–and most local media will list free events in their Calendar sections–for free.

These are just a few ways you can get the word going about your business. There are numerous other ways to get the media interested in what you’re doing… ways we call “hooking” an editor.

Do you have any creative ways to “hook” an editor?

Let us hear about ’em!

–Leslee Goodman
Alchemy On Demand