As a longtime journalist turned online visibility strategist I’ve seen many of my clients apply the power of their social media content to connect directly with journalists and secure media coverage.

The days of just having a traditional PR person pitching you as an expert are long passed. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the old mass pitching methods via fax, spam mail and phone do not see the uptake they once did.

When over 50% of the journalists, bloggers, and media are freelancers it’s vitally important to remember they are actively on the hunt for the next great story because that is how they will in turn get paid for a story.

That next great story could be YOU.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to share insights on how to use your content to “be the expert that shines online” to the media. I’ll also share some client wins that have come through using the processes I’m writing about.

The tips today focus around how you can use your blog content to garner media attention as well as new opportunities for contributing to larger online sites like the Huffington Post or BasilandSpice.com that feed out to many online channels.

Remember your blog content can be repurposed into all your other online channels. (Note: If you’re concerned about copyright of your blog content, then make sure you’ve registered it under the Creative Common License.)

Here are five tips you can use today to attract the media to your blog:

1. Set up google news alerts that match your expertise and and respond to at least major media article that comes through those alerts on a weekly basis. Link to the article in a blog post, and give additional insight (from your perspective) to the article’s topic. Don’t be snarky. Give actionable insight.

2. Subscribe to three enewsletters from publications that cover your topic. When you get those enewsletters make sure you read through them and see if there is a wonderful article you can cite in your own blog and again give your take on the article. Make sure to explain why it’s a useful article to your blog readership and add a couple of your own insights as well. (Extra tip: Go to the actual site the article is running on after you’ve made your blog post and comment on the article itself on the site. Always comment authentically and don’t comment just to get a link back to your site!)

3. Be a news breaker on your blog. Just like a PR person offline spends hours reading the news in your arena and trying to determine how you can comment on breaking news – you can do the same yourself and use your blog to do so. If you’re a fiction writer for instance, you might keep up with the latest sales in fiction and share your insights with your readers first!

4. Don’t leave out the local and regional! Too often we’re focused only on national blogs, media and coverage. If you start with your local coverage, articles, etc. to link to you can begin to catch the local media’s attention through your blog. Once in awhile blog “close to home” sharing some local insight or linking to your local paper. Imagine if your local paper is The Washington Post and the editor is scanning blogs for local folks to comment on business stories!

5. Stop waiting for just the right blog-bite! The longer you wait to start sharing your insight in your arena on your blog, the more the competition will outpace you. Take 30 minutes today and write up ten things you know you could effectively comment on in the news or media world. Start building some content around those on your blog.

You will succeed!

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The stats on Linkedin.com usage continue to climb and it really is your virtual corporate boardroom. Every talk I give I make sure to underline this message because so many people are just using Facebook as a way to stay connected. Linkedin.com should be a primary tool for you no matter what your business vertical.

Did you know that Linkedin.com has over 70 million members spanning 200 countries? Did you know almost all the Fortune 1000 companies have a company page on Linkedin.com? Linkedin.com is the tool that helps you connect to them.

If you’re an author, entrepreneur, non-profit, for profit or private school, B2B or B2C business you should be on Linkedin.com and using it effectively to connect to a larger network of people.

Five Ways To Ensure Visibility on Linkedin.com:

1. Make sure that your profile is at 100% on your personal profile.

2. Make sure that you have filled out the Summary paragraph on your profile with actionable keywords and your best and specific description of your expertise.

3. Make sure that you have claimed your VANITY URL under your profile name on Linkedin.com. You can go into your profile and do this by clicking on EDIT profile and change your Linkedin.com link from numbers to your full name.

4. Make sure you have joined all your college alumni groups, your Linkedin.com city group (if there is one) and a couple of business groups in your profession.

5. Start the process of sending out invites to your co-workers, business partners, etc. to make sure you build up your network. Continue to accept invitations on the platform as well.

Bonus Tip: Make sure you have listed your email in your profile so that people can contact you directly.

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Today I flew out from San Francisco after speaking to the Northern California Book Publicity and Marketing Association luncheon yesterday on ”Online PR and Social Media,” and spent the flight listening to the Dead on my iPhone.

This was shortly after having coffee in Sausilito this morning with my friend Ann Matranga at The Depot. We sat outside and watched the kids play in Lytton Square which Bill Graham helped create and we talked about the Dead.

So it seems synchronistic, speaking of the Dead that David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan today announced, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from The Most Iconic Band in History (Wiley, 2010).

There are so many reasons why this book is cool, but I have to be honest and say I love Chapter 8: Encourage Eccentricity and the whole focus on the fans and marketing.

I love it because it reveals how a company or band or individual can tap into the power of differentiation and eccentricity to make their way in the world.  Not only can this bring you success, but it’s the right thing to do!

To quote from that chapter, “The Grateful Dead teaches us that we are all eccentric in some ways. Smart companies understand eccentricities and create a market from them.”

I also like this from the book,  ”Deadheads are your neighbors, coworkers and friends.” As a dancing bear tattooed Deadhead I’ll have to confess, I know the deadheads, the deadheads are friends of mine, and I am proud to still be one!

As Bill Walton says in the foreword of the book, “Like other daring visionaries The Grateful Dead rejected conventional wisdom.”

That’s why we are still dancing – and that’s really how you can build a fan base that even after all these years is still trading Dead stories, tapes, t-shirts and mementos of their time drifting with the Dead.

So any marketing lesson that Scott and Halligan share in this book you definitely should tune into.

Go see David’s post all about the book tour at his site.

And check out his new tie-dye pic on the site too. Wonderful.

Meanwhile, me and my dancing bear will be digging the marketing nuggets of this extraordinary and timely book on marketing!

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If you’re ready to truly have independence and thrive both online and offline, then you need to also declare your independence from naysayers.

You know who they are and  you have to compassionately say goodbye to them. They are not only the people in your life that are always the first to say no to a new idea, but also your own negative beliefs about your brand, your offerings or your value to the world.

Does this mean once you say goodbye to them you don’t have to do any more work? That things will just happen? Absolutely not. To make anything happen in this world, you absolutely must be scrappy, persistent and unyielding in your desire to attain your dream.

If you want to attain the dream of being more visible online then you should:

1. Stop listening to people who say social media tools like Twitter and Linkedin.com are useless.

2. Stop listening to viral marketing agencies and PR firms who tell you the only way to get your message out is through bait and switch content and endless affiliate marketing spam techniques.

3. Build your thought leadership online by sharing your insights freely, honestly and often. Stop waiting for people to give you permission to share your expert knowledge. Start providing your community a way to freely access your content on your blog/website in conjunction with other social media networks.

4. Stop listening to people who promise a quick method way to gaining thousands of followers on social network communities with very little real work or effort on your part. There is no quick, easy way to community-building, start one click at a time and keep going.

5. Stop buying into the idea that only a giant PR or marketing firm can do conversational sweeps, define social media touchpoints, or find relevant communities for you to participate in. You can do alot of this work on your own and you can collaborate with the agencies if you do determine to work with them.

6. Stop letting the fear of social media and all those folks who say it can’t be used effectively keep you from you USING it. If you choose not to let your voice be heard through online channels, then you’re missing out on the opportunity to truly effect change in the world.

No go and be vibrantly independent!

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Friday is a good day for posting a few sites you should know about and tools you should be using as an author. So enjoy and think kindly of me as the temperature in Austin is heading toward the upper nineties!

1. If you’ve not yet registered to publish your blog on Kindle then you should do so today. Here is a great and easy way to do it on Squidoo.  I have to say too that Seth Godin mentioned this in his incredible talk at IBPA this year so YOU really should do it!

2. If I were an online book publicist (which I sometimes am) then I would feel incredibly happy to share the link to the Book Bloggers Convention attendees and tell you that you don’t need an online publicist to build your own book blog pitch list from those blogs.

2A. Don’t copy the whole list and then just spam pitch them. Take time to read their blogs, see if your book is a good fit and contact them one at a time. (Of course one would hope this is what PR flaks would do too, but alas, I’m not sure they are as smart as you!)

3. Gee, I wish all those cool blog posts I have could somehow be converted to newspaper-style format, so I could be my own mini-me publisher. Hmm. How can I do that? Try Feedjournal.

4. If I were an author I would be using Muckrack.com to find what journalists are tweeting in my vertical/topic and I would make a list and follow them on my Twitter account.

5. If I were someone who is always trying to figure out other ways to use Twitter (and I am), I might start following the publications I hope to be featured in and anytime they tweet out a new article link, be one of the first ones to go the publication site and comment on the article. If I do it often enough they might even think about using me as an expert for a future story. If I do it without marketing blather and authentically then at the very least I’ve created a way for folks to find me and perhaps visit my blog.

6. If I wanted to save money on news clipping services and use the Google alerts I set up in an even more powerful way, then I would convert all the places I’m mentioned or featured online by using HTML to PDF converter for free.

7. If I had an intern and wanted to be booked on radio shows, I might have them go through this list and see how many are a good fit for my topic and who the producers for the shows are by visiting the web links to the actual station. (Ok, this means you have to do a little bit of sleuthing but is that so wrong?!)

8. If I were an author hoping to get a book review or a writer wanting a book deal I would follow the folks listed under books here.

Now go and conquer all things Web and may the “book-Force” be with you.

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Image by luc legay via Flickr

Here are some new ways you can empower your profile, enlarge your community and GET MORE SOCIAL!

1. At every single book signing you do make sure you not only sign your book, but what about putting your @TWITTERID right underneath your signature?

2. Revive and revamp your signature line in your email – make sure you include your TWITTERID, YOUR LINKEDIN profile, your FACEBOOK FAN PAGE and a link to your BLOG. Also make sure that you put your TWITTERID and your LINKEDIN ID on your business cards.

3. Encourage people to tweet during your booksignings. Create a hashtag that is your book title, or topic and give it out at the start of the booksigning.

4. Still think you can’t find media on Twitter? WRONG! Check out this great link for all the public media.

5. Always mention your TWITTERID in media interviews – say you would love for people to connect to you via Twitter.

6. Subscribe to the enewsletters from media, print and online magazines you want to be featured in. Make sure when you get the enewsletter you take time to then go to the site and immediately comment on a story. By doing this authentically you are not only providing more insight, but providing the reporter or freelance journalist another possible expert for a future story. Journalists don’t always want to quote the same sources for every story. Respect their work and they will in turn count on you to add new ideas in future stories.

7. What? You don’t have time to source actionable data on Muckrack.com? That’s crazy! You aren’t seriously thinking your PR person is doing this all day every day to find new journos on twitter? Peeshaw. Start doing it yourself.

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My hero Erma Bombeck said this of motherhood, ”

“It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.”

When I speak at conferences, no matter what the topic of my talk is I always start out by telling my story of returning home to my daughter  when she was just a mere 11 weeks, 2 hours and 9 minutes old.

My boss, news director Bruce Whiteaker at the Austin KXAN-TVNBC affiliate news station had patiently waited for my return to work after 11 weeks leave. The morning of my return to my job, I slowly drove toward Austin  listening to NPR and drinking my coffee wearing a bright blue suit, hose, and heeled pumps. Humming Helen Reddy’s “I’m Woman Hear Me Roar,” I powered my Honda Accord north toward Austin, and then after less than four miles, I powered it back toward home.

I reached my house in less than 7 minutes having thrown my pumps out the window on our dirt road (later my husband Andy would go and get these), and leaving behind a career that I knew I would not return to.

I returned home to take care of my daughter, even after leaving my husband with enough pumped breast milk to feed the Walton clan and a list of directions that spanned four pages. This is the same good husband that had my daughter, her first night on Earth, sleep just like a tiny doll on top of his chest after holding my hand the entire time of delivery.

I peered through our front den window, scared to go in and wondering what my husband was going to say to this harried, tear-streamed face, standing in  pumpless feet with ruined hose chanting, “I want my child back.”

It took all I could muster to step inside and tell my husband, now rocking our daughter,  that I turned the car around.

“I turned the car around,” I said softly at first. He was still looking at me, and I said again, “I turned the car around.”

Now he stood up with our sweet daughter and said, “Sweetie, of course you turned the car around, and handed me our daughter.”

Not only had I turned my car around but I had turned our life around. And it was all for the better. What this one choice gave me was countless moments of wonder with both my children now ten and fourteen. What it also gave me was a brand new career because I was lucky enough to get a job as a technology journalist in 1996 writing for a first mover online business information site called Internet Business Forum. Instead of interviewing celebrities as a freelance writer, I was interviewing people who built everything we use in our daily lives. I was at the start of the dot com, survived the dot bomb and am still going strong. (Thank God for my children and my husband who gave me the gift of doing this.)

Today I want to witness how powerful being a mother is, and although my story is about leaving a job and staying at home, motherhood is a 24 hour job no matter what decisions you make and every mother is incredibly important to the world. Each mother has a right to choose what is best for her children, her life and how she will mother. Every single mother counts, because they are the ones that shepherd each magnificent life to a well-lived life.

God Bless them all.

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Every once in awhile I’m amazed by how many PR people, who’ve actually never had the experience of being a journalist, write “how-to” articles focused around what you should and should not do in interviews with journalists!

I am a card carrying member of the Internet Press Guild and the Online News Association. Having been a journalist/reporter online since 1996, I can tell you that journalists are people too. They’re just like us. They’re trying to do their job well, get paid and stay alive in what has become an increasingly competitive and low pay market.

The majority of journalists write because they love to write. They want to create good stories – they’re not out to get trap you in an interview or take things out of context. I’m speaking primarily in terms of major offline and online publications, not tabloids.

Journalists are not out to get you, they are out to get the story. The story includes your personality so the best thing you can do is be yourself. Don’t be a robot, be a real person. Stop listening to PR flaks who tell you that you have to ONLY talk about your brand or in polished soundbites.

Good content comes from good conversations, real conversations where you present the full picture of your life. Good reporters create amazing stories by making authentic connections with their interviewees.

When I was a full-time dot com journalist you would be amazed at how many CXO level interviews I did where it was heartening to find out the CEO or business leader had a life outside of just their job and their title. In fact, I always tried to share a little bit about my life (stay-at-home Mom wearing journalist cape by day and night between storytime, naps and Cheerios on the floor), and what that did is help my interviewees feel comfortable to share their real lives as well.

Putting the heart first in connecting with journalists who interview you will keep you in their hearts, and more importantly their contact Rolodex, much longer than if you simply choose to not interact with them on a real human level.

Oftentimes the most interesting part of a story comes from you and the journalist realizing you have more in common than just the story. What some PR flaks consider small talk is actually gem talk. These little beautiful gems that come through connecting on a real level with one another.

As a bonus, if you become a source of bigger insight than just your brand, it will help the journalist depend on you for other stories long-term.

Reporters are generous, smart, hard-working writers and their goal is to create valuable content, help them do that by being a valuable human first, and brand spokesperson second.

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For someone (me) who is always trying to balance the online with the offline, I feel your social media junkie pain.

You Just Might Be A Social Media Junkie if…

 1. You keep dropping a note in your collection plate at church instead of a donation. The note says, “Dear Reverend Hill – why have you not yet started a Facebook fan page for Jesus?”

2. Your wife wants you to be in therapy with her, but you’ve told her you will only do it if you can find a therapist who can dispel his/her wisdom in 140 characters or less. (length of a Twitter)

3. You’ve told your immediate and extended family that the best place for them to find out what you’re up to is on Tweetdeck. 

4. Instead of an emergency phone number on your children’s school information – you’ve posted your TwitterID account and told them that is the best way for them to reach you. (The school secretary in particular does not seem hip to the tweeting.) 

5. You volunteered for the Parent Teacher Organization group but only on a virtual level and have promised you will send tweets during the school carnival when the principal is dunked. 

6. Your Mom closed her Facebook account, because she was getting too many Fan messages from you asking her to join your Fan page. 

7. Your husband has a Google alert set up on your name and occasionally searches Google images so he can see what you looked like before you became part of your office chair. 

8. Your neighborhood bunko group has unfriended you on Facebook because they don’t much cotten to you sending status updates like, “I just kicked everyone’s butt in bunko. I’m the bunko queen and these women can’t roll a triple six if it killed them.” 

9. You tell people you and Barack Obama are very close virtually because you joined his Facebook Fan page. 

10. You found your Honors English teacher (Mrs. Whitley) on Facebook and you’re sending her blog posts to redline for you (because after all once a teacher, always a teacher.) 

11. Your husband has banned twittering, facebooking, linkedin-ing from the bedroom. 

12. Your pug starts a very high pitched noise when he sees you reach for your iPhone.

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Wonderfully funny and incredibly talented people abound and the dinner this evening could not have been more hilarious. If you’ve not read anything by Laretta LaRoche, please change that and get her books.

She was the keynote speaker this evening and really delivered! Also Tim Bete (past director of Erma Conference) spoke and he was truly funny as well.

The room tonight was packed full and what a great honor to be among so many talented people.

I’m nervous about presenting tomorrow but I’m wearing my tweet-proof vest so all should be well, plus I’ve got to say the spirit here feels incredibly kind and generous.  I’m going to try very hard to have the audience at my first “Hello, Ya’ll.”

I also got to hang out with Sam Horn, who I really count as one of my mentors and just think it is incredible gift to know. You should also check out Sam’s books!

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I’ll be leaving tomorrow to speak at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Conference which is a great thrill for me. My client Bill Scheft will be speaking there too, as well as one of my heroes Gail Collins.

Erma is another hero of mine and I started reading her books when I was very young and my Mom would pass them to me to inspire me and give me the gift of humor. I’m taking my Mom, a 72 year old English teacher, who still teaches in an 95% economically disadvantaged school district near Dallas. My mom gets the kids in 9th grade who everyone else has “passed along” but those same kids can’t read and often have no one to believe in them. My mom changes all that for them. Several of her students are now in college and many have gone on to work in other careers as well. She inspires them to do more with their lives.

Erma’s writing always inspires me. It is timeless because it is good common sense and elevates the power of humor and love in our lives. Being a humorist is the hardest writing job one can have, yet Erma did it effortlessly. So before I leave for the trip in the morning, I wanted to share my favorite Erma quotes.

1. Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

10. It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” I’ll be presenting “Overwebbed: Help I’ve Had a Social Media Breakdown and I Can’t Tweet Up”. I’ll also be tweeting from the event so look for hashtag #ebww . I think everyone will be using that one for tweets.

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So grateful to be included in the “Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time To Get Busy” book.

This book is an incredible tome of leading marketers, writers, PR folks and others on the Web. Hope you’ll take time to check it out. And below are all the fantastic folks who contributed to the book itself.

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