MEDIA COACHING – PUBLICITY – Your Fortune in Follow-up

You are out there beating the streets and so far no one has taken you up on an interview, a review, an endorsement  – nothing.  You are coming up zero.  What you are hearing is that they are very busy right now.

Don’t lose the information on those first contacts.  You have spent time on them.  Put the work aside and go on to the next.

Back up.  You are going too fast.

Perhaps you are asking  really busy people who have many requests and I am not suggesting that you call them often and be a pest.  But I am suggesting you do not give up.

In the meantime, concentrate on smaller radio shows and bloggers who are friends.  Do some interviews yourself.

If you are new and starting out, you have to make friends.  Yaro and Gideon on their Become A Blogger program stress that you must make intelligent comments on other sites to build relationships.  This will not only build traffic for you but it will help when you need publicity. Join Stumbleupon and promote their posts.  Or Digg.  Believe me, you will get noticed.

There is a book store in Naperville, Illinois called Anderson’s Bookshop. It is not a huge store but is a gem that has been around for a long time.  The top authors want to do book signings there.

I did too.  So, I sent them a letter and my book.  And I called.  And I called.  They were very polite but no banana.  I was a new author for them.

I got the name of the real decision maker.  It is not always the manager.

The next time I called, I asked for that person and asked her, “How do I get you to fall in love with me?”

She laughed and laughed and she gave me a date for a presentation.

Getting into Anderson’s was important.  Not just to get in there but to SAY I had presented there.  It carried weight with the other stores I was romancing.

What you have to do is build up authority.  Then, when you approach the big guys again you will have something to link to that will give you some weight.

Your credentials are like an employment resume.

Have you already done some interviewing on audio or video?  You should make a “reel.”  That is short clips from each one – maybe 2 minutes and a total of no more than ten.  No one will look at more than that.

Make it simple.  A little music and a title. Then the name of the person and the clip – repeat – end with your information and a little music.

I learned early on from Yaro to do what you are good at.  I am a writer – not a techie.  Find someone on your forums to do it for you if you don’t know  how to do this.  That’s how I found Michelle Vandepas who is a super techie and was writing code before the Internet existed.  (She just did the makeover on my blog.  Isn’t it nice?)

Send your tech the full interview.  Time it and tell them where you want the clip to start and end.  Give them the first and last word.

I discovered this idea by accident.  A publicity agent  who sent me many great authors for my TV show asked me to take a new author and I was swamped.  I told her maybe later.

“I really need this interview to send out to get other interviews.”

We squeezed her client in.  We had a relationship.

You need  other credentials.  Endorsements for example.  People are busy. Offer to write one yourself and see if you can get someone important to sign it.

Reed, who is one of my favorite commentators offered this story:

“I have a beginning author friend who wrote a novel based on his experiences as a high-school football player.  He asked my advice on how to promote his book. In his novel my author friend mentions Ditka and a number of his famous players.

The “light bulb” went on!! I called my friend and said, “you and I are going to have dinner together and I know JUST the restaurant. But before we do I want you to do some home work: Write a ‘Forward’ to your book.  Then off we went….to Mike Ditka’s.

There was Coach Ditka enjoying his cigar.

We showed “da coach” the Forward my friend had written and asked if he might sign it so it could be included in the book. Guess what?  HE DID!!”  His friend sold the book.

As your “resume” builds up, you can start going back to  to your follow up file with all your new information.  Ask again.  After a time, ask again.

When I wrote Media Coaching – Getting Publicity the thread that ran through the comments was that this seemed hard.

It is.  You have to be persistent.

We could even label it another word.

Shameless.

HOT NEW SITE FOR PROMOTION  TALKING BOOKS TV

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