From the category archives:

Publicity

Generate social media buzz with PitchEngine

in Interactive marketing, Publicity

Are you looking to generate some publicity from social media? Forget sending out an old school press release on the wire. While the traditional press release template is still useful for connecting with journalists and media outlets, it’s simply not an effective way for most companies to generate leads and customers and connect with their fans. 

 

As Brian Solis, the Principal of PR and New Media Agency FutureWorks and author of the popular PR 2.0 blog, says: 

Press releases are both a mechanism for refining and distributing news and now also serve as a conduit for connecting influencers and customers to information as well as the people behind the story through social networks. Upgrading the template for the development of press releases improves the foundation for the story and the transparency, authenticity, and believability required to extend it across social networks, online press outlets, and throughout the blogosphere. 

The upgraded template is called the Social Media Release, or SMR. In a SMR, you can incorporate embedded video, photos, product images, presentations and pdfs into a mini-website that can easily be shared via the social web using apps like Twitter, Delicious, Facebook and Digg. 

What are the benefits? The SMR engages readers by providing far more information than the canned press release template that was created over 100 years ago. SMRs are more conversational and make it easier for you to be found by bloggers, fans and potential customers and also help with SEO by adding links to your site. 

The Social Media Release isn’t a replacement for a traditional wire service for important news, but a supplement to it. A number of traditional wire services (like PRWeb and Marketwire) have incorporated SMR features, but PitchEngine is a website completely dedicated to the SMR. 

We use all three, but I like how I was able to add our YouTube screencasts directly to the SMR. Currently, PitchEngine’s SMR is free for the first 30 days. Check out our recent Growth Panel release to see it in action. 

Better yet, try it yourself! 

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Share documents with Scribd

in General marketing, How-To Articles, Publicity, Search engine marketing, Websites

Last week I posted our Strategic Marketing Process ebook on Scribd. It’s a great way to share documents and promote your content. Feel free to download it right here. Mouse over “iPaper” in the viewer and select “Save Document.”

You can do the same thing at Scribd’s competitors, Docstoc and Slideshare. All three sites work similarly: Upload and download documents, photos, articles and presentations and share them with the group.

Strategic Marketing Process eBook at Docstoc

Strategic Marketing Process eBook at Slideshare

There are a number of ways to use these sites:

  • Post slide decks after delivering a presentation.
  • Post articles to create thought-leadership and generate leads.
  • Use for file downloads in place of your web server.

Scribd and Docstoc allow you to embed your document into any webpage. We used Flashpaper to handle this on our previous site, but these sites are more appealing because of the added distribution benefits.

LinkedIn now has a Slideshare widget so you can embed your docs in your profile. It will be interesting to see if all three survive, but right now, all three are great ways to increase your content distribution.

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Creating publicity: What's newsworthy?

We all know that “getting your name out there” is a good thing. Publicity can accomplish this, but you need to tell the right story the right way. While the catch-phrase “even bad publicity is good publicity” might hold true for celebrities, that’s not usually the case for businesses. Publicity is about sharing your news [...]

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How to find a hook

You probably know that publicity in the media can be extremely valuable in building credibility and awareness for your company.
A legitimate news story is an endorsement that can reach a wide audience for very little cost beyond your own creativity and time.  It can help you

Build awareness about your products/services, expertise and people
Drive prospects to [...]

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How to generate word of mouth (WOM!)

Reading about “WOM units” in marketing articles makes me chuckle. Oh, the acronyms! But word of mouth is a tremendous tool. The big question – how can you get it?
Roy H. Williams, author of the New York Times bestseller Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads, explains How to Buy Word of Mouth in his [...]

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