5 ways to generate publicity from the bad economy
Joan Stewart
The gloomy economy presents opportunities galore for smart
Publicity Hounds everywhere. Here are five ideas:
1. Create videos offering advice and upload them to the dozens of
video-sharing sites using TrafficGeyser, a program that will save
you hundreds of hours of time uploading to dozens of sites.
2. If you can’t get onto your local TV news, submit amateur videos
to the stations for use on their websites. Also submit them to local
newspapers, which are hungry for user-generated video.
3. Pitch influential bloggers with tips on how people can save time
and money and keep their sanity when times are bad.
4. Subscribe to one of the publicity leads services that send
queries from journalists who are looking for specific types of
sources for stories. They’ll be writing and broadcasting thousands
of stories on the economy, particularly if we head into a recession.
5. Think far beyond traditional media and target niches such as
ezine publishers. Save the fretting for your financial statements.
But be optimistic about your chances to create publicity that
piggybacks onto the economy and any other trend.
Publicity expert Joan Stewart shows you how to use free publicity to establish your credibility, enhance your reputation, position yourself as an expert, sell more products and services, promote a favorite cause or issue, and position your company as an employer of choice. She explains how to use traditional and social media, and develop strong relationships with journalists, broadcasters, bloggers, ezine publishers and other “new media.” Her own free publicity campaign started at age 10 when her hometown newspaper wrote a story about a blue ribbon she won for a 4-H sewing project at the Ohio State Fair. From then on, she was hooked on publicity. Her popular ezine, "The Publicity Hound's Tips of the Week" goes to more than 40,000 subscribers worldwide and includes the best publicity advice and good dog jokes (one in each issue) you'll find anywhere. You can subscribe to her publicity tips newsletter at http://www.publicityhound.com. She lives and tries to stay warm in Port Washington, Wisconsin.
January 19th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
I read an article once that examined businesses during the Great Depression, and they found that the businesses that survived were those that actually stepped up their marketing during the downturn instead of cutting costs in that dept. What happened was that their voice became “louder” as their competitors’ voices got “quieter”, so they picked up more of what few customers there were, while their competitors lost more of the same.
Smart advice for today’s business climate.