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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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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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Flickr photo courtesy of Via Mio

The symptoms of this deadly and narcissistic disease include the following:

1. Author does not believe they need to continue doing outreach after their book has been out for six months, because everyone should already know who they are and desperately want the book.

2. Author does not think it’s necessary to register their profile on new niche sites that might elevate their visibility and help them reach out to a new community of folks.

3. Author says their online guru “manages all that web 2.0 stuff and they don’t need to keep track of it or know what is being posted.”

4. Author believes the term “online guru” really means something.

5. Author is too busy to thank any bloggers for covering their book.

6. Author doesn’t want to send out hand-signed copies for book giveaways because book give-aways are only for lessor authors.

7. Author spends time blogging snarky posts on their blog about how they are the smarter than everyone else.

8. Author never responds to comments on their own blog or even bothers to link to outside bloggers.

9. Author thinks the media, the blogosphere and the twitter denizens will follow them JUST BECAUSE.

10. Author believes book marketers who tell him/her it’s all about impressions, click-throughs and long copy – not about valuable content, elevating the discussion and empowering the vertical.

If you are felled by any of these symptoms, please make certain to address them immediately so they do not become a full-fledged online affliction.

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Here are 5 tips for inspiring journalists, readers and followers to keep coming back for more!

1. Tell them everything, be transparent and ask lots of questions that you don’t know the answer to.

2. If a journalist writes a story about a topic you’re familiar with then take time to dig deeper for your readers in an accompanying post. Recognize the journalist by name (it’s only respectful) and contrast and compare their insights with your own. Stop listening to PR folks who tell you that you have to get your requisite, always the same soundbites down pat. Pat is boring!

3. Be endlessly curious. Every single part of business has its own mysteries. Sometimes we’re all asking the same questions over and over again instead of challenging ourselves to look at something differently. Don’t be a lemming constantly leaping off the dull edge with everyone else. Step back and create new ideas.

4. Don’t make it about becoming a celebrity in your field, make room for everyone to rise to your level of understanding. Do these by asking your readers to ask questions, comment and guest post on your blog. Choose to be different, not “celeb-boring.”

5. Stop trying to be “quotable” and start trying to be perenially memorable.

6. Soundbites don’t drive curiousity, they just get us stuck in the mud of old traditional PR.

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The announcement has filled me with glee, when I consider that all those Oprah-esque PR insiders who provide you tons of tips, insider secrets, oprah-show advice etc. will also hopefully be cleaned out as well.

If it’s time for Oprah to have a new start, it’s also time for everyone who has ever paid thousands of dollars to consultants just “hoping” they’d get the right Oprah teleseminar-guru-recipe for being on the show to have a new start too.

For those folks, I hope Oprah’s announcement will serve as a wakeup call that you don’t need to rely on PR gurus, or media gurus to get you on the Oprah show. I’ll tell you a secret, the best way to get on the Oprah show is by using your own initiative, being creative and having a unique and interesting story.

I’ll tell you another secret! People have actually been booked as a guest on her show by pitching the show directly through the website form on Oprah.com. People have actually been booked on her show by tweeting out interesting ideas that Oprah’s producers (who are also on Twitter) find and then build a show around.

If you don’t think they’re on Twitter, do a Google search for “Oprah Producer Twitter” and find them yourself. I could give them to you, but it’s time you start doing your own walking! Come on! You can be your own PR guru if you believe in yourself enough.

You too can go back home to Oprah when she starts her new show. The first step is to tap your shoes together three times and say, “There’s no place like Oprah, there’s no place like Oprah, there’s no place like Oprah. ” (Oops, wait, I was channeling a PR guru and what they might tell you.)

Ok, start again. The first step is to come up with what makes you unique and then research Oprah’s website and see if there is already a show they are booking around that topic. Every week they post new calls for guests to pitch themselves.

The second step is to be persistent without stalking! The third step is to be creative about how you want to get on the show. Don’t believe there’s room for creativity? Peeshaw, as my great Aunt Susan would say.) Still not feeling it?

Read this story of how one person got on Oprah by selling tickets to his own show on the sidewalk.

Or how about using a billboard to get on Oprah?

Still not convinced? Read this story about how one woman used the online submission form and kicked ass on Oprah.

Don’t give up. Who knows you might even be featured on the show twice!

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Hmm. Why don’t they reveal them? Perhaps because they themselves have not really ever had a client on Oprah? Or maybe it’s because if they did reveal them you wouldn’t keep buying the seminars?

Or maybe there really aren’t any secrets and all you need to do is work very hard at presenting yourself as authentically as possible, and have a new angle to a story that Oprah and her staff just might want.

Previously on this blog, we covered two other Oprah-stories of success, not created by a PR firm, publicist or viral marketer, but instead created by folks who were willing to get out there and really brainstorm their way to the Oprah show.

Here’s the third installment!

I cannot encourage you enough to study what Mubarakah Ibrahim of Balanced Fitness was willing to do and how it got her on Oprah. (Beware: this did not involve stalking Oprah’s BFF Gayle, or Oprah’s chef, or Oprah’s dog trainer, or even Oprah’s mailman!)

It simply involved Mubarakah having great faith and pride in herself and what she knew was her differentiator from other fitness trainers out there. Bravo!

In less than ten days after Mubarakah went to the Oprah website and emailed them a very brief pitch about herself and her fitness center, she was contacted by Oprah producers and subsequently on the show.

The Web and Web 2.0 offer you amazing abundance if you choose to be brave!

My favorite Rilke quote is, “Be brave and mighty forces will come to your aid,” in Mubarakah’s case, she was her own mighty force! Learn from it!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTLk9Fe9IYw[/youtube]

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Blog carnivals started several years ago, and are still a great way to help promote your blog. Particularly if your blog is new, joining a blog carnival will help bring you some traffic and backlinks, and also helps you authentically promote other bloggers too.

A blog carnival as defined by BlogCarnival.com is “a collection of links pointing to blog posts around a specific topic. Usually a blog carnival will have many editions and every week a different blog will host it.”

Some of the very first carnivals included “Carnival of the Capitalists” which can be found here.

With over 31440 editions of 9114 carnivals and 259 new carnivals in the past 30 days, what are you waiting for?

Look through the full index of carnivals and pick one that you might want to be a part of. Also read the About page for more information on how the carnivals themselves work.

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This top one focuses on community, Web 2.0, building synergy across the world using 2.0 platform.

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We’re starting to see several different companies including Cision and some new entrepreneurial folks building their own blog contact lists and selling them so I wanted to give my take on these.

I think these lists can be valuable in terms of doing some of the leg work for you and finding good blogs in a certain pitch arena, but they absolutely should not be incorporated into a mass pitch PR list.

The downside to all these “the most exhaustive blogger list” offerings - is that they also portend a giant potential for not using them in the best possible fashion.

If you’re going to purchase these lists, it does not take away from the due diligence and respect you should always employ when reaching out to bloggers, journalists and online publications. Don’t use these lists to do massive same as usual PR spam and I highly encourage you to read each and every blog you’re going to reach out to.

Timesaving? Not really. Respectful to the online world and bloggers? Absolutely, which will serve you much better in the long run.

And if you can’t afford to buy these lists, not to worry. Simply take one hour a day and build your own lists. There’s no magic in any of this! Use sites like Alexa.com, Technorati, you can even use this cool free PageRanker tool for the Google page rankings.

Go ahead and put your own page in there while you’re at it! The higher the page rank on Google the better.

With one caveat! Don’t completely judge a blog by its number on any of these tools. Just because a blog might have thousands of readers, are those the readers who are going to buy your book, and champion it? It depends and that’s why you need to be respectful and do your research.

Despite what all these new “talking heads” on the Web tell you there are no magical shortcuts to building a “tribe” as Seth Godin so aptly calls it.

Also, please keep in mind that the Web itself is full of actionable insight that is free! It’s on all the technology publication sites and has been vetted and created by technology journalists ( I was one for ten years), so before you BUY into all this new information and think you have to PURCHASE things to understand how this all works, take some time and research just as you would if you were purchasing a new car or any other big product!

Don’t take the word of a NEW Web Guru. There’s nothing like good old fashioned research and legwork to find the best answers possible. Be a social media learner (like I am) not a social media expert follower.

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Walt Mossberg

No PR firm can ever guarantee coverage. When you are working with a PR firm either online or offline, there are no guarantees of coverage. If they are a good firm, the guarantee is that they will do everything they can to bring your product, book, CD to the awareness of the folks who hopefully will pick them up for coverage.

If you’re working with a pay-for-play PR firm, it’s different and I’m not a fan of those firms that  guarantee coverage or pickup depending on the amount you pay for each slot.

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I excerpted this statement from the post,” Not sharing all the details upfront about an upcoming campaign when inviting bloggers to participate is a very good thing.”

Read the whole post and see where you fall on bloggers, PR and how best to reach out to them. I think it’s never a good idea to start out with a mystery when engaging in a collaboration with anyone, but would love to hear your take on it too! Notice I use the word collaboration. Bloggers even if they are being paid to be “brand identity enthusiasts” still need to feel a part of team,  and certainly are due the respect and transparency of anyone else on the team.

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Is it your dream that everyone mentions your book like they would a must-see movie?

The best way to have that happen is to put your creative thinking cap on and start writing!

“What?” you say.

“Write? I just finished a whole book!! I can’t possibly write one more word! ”

Come on!

Yes, it will be more than one word, but blog posts don’t have to be biblical in length. They do need to be smart, engaging, witty, inviting, empowering, poignant, resource-filled, link-loverly and community-focused!

If you clicked on the vid above, you’ll see how each phrase encapsulates an entire show, just much shorter in length. You can do the same thing with your blog posts about your book and you will be surprised how much your community will begin to link to your posts and champion them out to new folks online!

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