Generating Publicity with Letters to the Editor

Publicity is a very different beast than advertising.

DEFINING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PUBLICITY AND ADVERTISING

Dictionary.com defines Publicity as "Information that concerns a person, group, event, or product and that is disseminated through various media to attract public notice."

Dictionary.com also defines Advertising as "The activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as by paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media."

While the two concepts seem very similar in nature, the real difference lies in the word "paid."

PUBLICITY IS NOT ALWAYS FREE

If certain resources need to be gathered together to launch a drive for publicity, then the publicity cannot be thought of as free.

In fact, some publicity stunts can be very expensive to plan and to pull off. Additionally, press releases can consume a lot of time or money to get them to the news sources that need to see them. Constructing an effective press release often requires a writing specialist to construct it. Then press release distributions can run $300 apiece if an experienced third-party vendor is contracted to get them delivered.

No matter the cost of effective publicity, the cost of the same amount of media attention generated by advertising will always be much, much greater.

WITH THE RIGHT ANGLE, YOUR PUBLICITY CAN COST EVEN LESS

Joe Vitale has told the story about how the U.S. Parachute Association wanted to draw attention to one of their events. They had hired publicist Linda Credeur to help them to develop ideas to promote their upcoming event.

When Linda learned that the elder George Bush had been the only U.S. President to parachute from an airplane --- in WWII --- Linda thought it would be a great idea to "invite Bush to the convention, and to even give him an award."

Although George Bush generally gets $50,000 an appearance, Linda was able to get Mr. Bush to attend the event for free. Joe said that the event was able to generate "wall-to-wall news coverage" with at least four camera crews in attendance for a week.

To read the full story, please visit Joe Vitale's site at:
http://www.mrfire.com/0018.html

LEARN TO SCALE YOUR PUBLICITY

Not all of us have the resources to pull off an event on the magnitude of the U.S. Parachute Association convention. Despite the fact that Mr. Bush attended and participated in the event for free --- Bush even made an additional jump on his 75th birthday two years later --- the convention still required the U.S. Parachute Association to corral a lot of resources to make their event successful.

Realistically, most of us do not need to generate publicity on the same scale as the parachuting convention. And even if we were able to generate that kind of coverage, we might not be prepared to handle all of the new interest in our business --- especially if we run a service business.

Two things kill more businesses than any other --- not enough operating capital to stay afloat, and more business than we can actually keep up with.

It is important to keep our publicity efforts to a level that is more consistent with our ability to keep up with the results of our efforts.

PRESS RELEASES

Press releases are designed to call attention to "a person, group, event, or product." However, for a press release to be effective, it must be constructed in a manner that makes the topic newsworthy.

Simply calling attention to the existence of a business is seldom effective in generating real publicity, unless your business has just opened --- and then the announcement only has merit at your local newspaper office.

Especially when you are attempting to generate attention in the local news media, it is important to take special care not to annoy your local newspaper reporters. These people can actually make you or keep you out of the paper completely.

Even if you are attempting to distribute your press release at the national level, take care to make your press release interesting and newsworthy so that you may gain real advantage with your release.

GENERATING PUBLICITY ON A ZERO BUDGET

The most overlooked method of generating publicity for your business can be had with three simple lines of text:

Your Name
Your Business Name or Your Domain Name
Your City and State

All over the world, there are newspapers, magazines, online ezines and websites. Every single newspaper, magazine and online ezine generally accepts and publishes "Letters to the Editor."

In addition, webmasters are generally looking for solid testimonials that they can use on their websites.

Just think, if you were to take the time to read a few publications or visit a few websites and take the time to notify the publisher of your thoughts, you might just find your comments being published in all sorts of locations. You never know just where your next paying customer might come from, so take the time to get yourself quoted in these media outlets. You might just find more and more traffic and sales coming from places where you would never think to buy advertising.