Remember how I mentioned that the woman said she was a former public relations professional? She didn’t mention it in her release. (I say thankfully, as I think I and many journalists would have laughed hysterically at that after her first mistake!)

She mentioned it when I emailed her the second time asking her to remove me from her list. Why a second time? Well, because she sent me another, completely unrelated press release within a few days!

You know she should have already checked her media contacts and made sure that she was targeting the right reporters. She should have made sure the journalist wanted her email FIRST.  But email blasting the SAME list in less than a week is PR suicide. It screamed amateur to me.

Plus, if someone asks you to remove them from your distribution list, DO IT IMMEDIATELY. I can’t imagine what a journalist thought of getting blasted twice on two unrelated topics! Can you?

In my new program Press Release Success, you’ll learn each step of creating and distributing press releases correctly so you’ll never have to appear on my Wall of Shame. It includes:

• a Study Guide detailing everything you need to know to launch a successful press release campaign.
• Accompanying e-course so you can continue getting tips and ideas as you are working on my press releases.
• Basic template to write the perfectly formatted press release.
• Sample press releases to study and help you create my own press releases.Press Release Success Software to easily craft perfectly formatted press releases.
• Press Release Distribution Checklist to make sure you don’t skip any steps (or tick of a reporter!)
• 10 fill-in-the-blank press releases where all I have to do is enter my information where indicated and I’m ready to send it out.
• 3 additional bonuses (plus a couple more)

Check out  all the details at http://www.PressReleaseSuccess.com

Part three is coming in a few days… stay tuned.

You see, it was a ‘press release’ about her latest book. (More on why I put ‘press release’ in quotes in another post…)

Somehow I had gotten on a media list she was using. Now, I had never heard of this woman before, so I am not sure how she got my email address.

But certainly I am not a reporter nor do I represent a media outlet. So what gives?

It’s just one of the reasons why this woman is now listed on my personal Press Release Hall of Shame.

She never checked her contacts to see if they were people she should send her release to.

Yes, I know it’s hard enough to create a media list.  I also know it’s a waste to create one if you are sending it to the wrong person.

Imagine if I were a journalist who covers business and got a press release about a new dog biscuit. Not worth my time and will only put the sender on my block/spam list.

In my new PRESS RELEASE SUCCESS system, I not only share how to write a press release correctly, but how to find and target the journalists who have an interest in it so you can get media coverage. Check it out at http://www.pressreleasesuccess.com

In my next post, I will share what else this brilliant person did to get on my Press Release Hall of Shame. (And the funny thing… she said she did PR for several years…eeeek!)

And if you are looking for more press release tips and ideas, as well as information on how to get media coverage, check out Penny Pinching Publicity.

To defend themselves, most media outlets have employed the use of spam filters. And to make matters worse, a reporter’s spam filter is higher than the average person sets it to, leaving most releases unread.

But here’s the thing: if you are sending an unsolicited email to a reporter, you could be spamming them.

Spam is essentially unsolicited bulk email messages. So if you are sending your press releases to multiple reporters without their express permission, you are a spammer.

I know what you are thinking: Wait! I am sending press releases to reporters. They should expect to get press releases, so it’s not unsolicited, right?

Well, that’s the big debate right now. Although I completely understand your point of view, technically by sending out via email to more than one journalists without their express approval is spam.

And reporters are cracking down on it… Big TIME! I know of one editor who reports CAN-SPAM violations every person who sends him an unsolicited emailed press release.

That could disruption or even dissolution of your email service provider, as well as your domain name. Or worse, you could be fined.

What can you do? First, call and find out if the reporter you are targeting accepts press releases via email. Although most reporters have email addresses, many do not want your release emailed without permission first.

But that doesn’t mean you still won’t land in a spam filter. Before sending out an important email pitch or press release, go to the following free websites which are designed to check if your information will trigger the spam filters.

The spam checkers will also issue a report advising you what part of your message triggered any red flags – so you can make the necessary changes.

Lyris Content Checker: http://www.lyris.com/contentchecker/
SpamCheck Tool: http://spamcheck.sitesell.com/

If all else fails, leave a phone message or send your info via good old snail mail or fax.

If you are looking for more tips to make sure your press releases are working, check out Penny Pinching Publicity. Besides fill-in press releases, ebooks, and classes, you also get monthly private laser coaching sessions with me to help you get media coverage.

Well, sure, anything can be true, but judge for yourself and let me know what you think.

Boast #1: I charge more than $2000 per hour for my private coaching.

Really? If people are paying you that amount of money, why do you need to hard sell a lower priced product? (I know, I know… you want to make your thousand dollar methods accessible to everyone.)

Boast #2: I’m a guru, so you can trust me.

How long have you studied your craft? How long have you been teaching it? (Oh yeah, I forgot, you just saw this money making opportunity so now you are ‘enlightened.’ This is especially true with all those so-called social media experts.)

Boast #3: I guarantee it!

Although many guarantees are true, be on the lookout for those who say things like ‘My iron-clad 365 day guarantee’  which can be interpreted to say only after a year can you ask for your money back. (Yup, I’ve seen it happen. Would you remember to wait a year to ask for your refund?) Or worse, someone who takes off 5% (or more) as an administrative or handling fee for the refund you have requested.

Boast #4: This is valued at thousands, but you’ll get it now for $47.

If it’s worth that much, how come it’s so cheap? Enough said.

Here’s the thing: Lying is easy; marketing is hard work. So don’t let them fool you. If it sounds fishy, I encourage you to speak up and ask questions. It may be the truth, but unless you call the person in question on it, how will you know for sure?

To be honest, I used one of these tactics in my past. And guess what? I hated myself for it – and so did my customers. NEVER AGAIN! I encourage all that marketing online to ditch the boasts.

By the way, being a girl from the 80’s, I couldn’t help but reference the Thompson Twins song for the title.

So here’s the video to remind you that when it’s sounds a like a fib, it probably is… (blame it on the hair, I say!)

Can you think of other lies you’ve heard? Share them in the comments section!

Most reporters and editors today are either too busy to read an entire press release or not motivated enough. The statistics show you only have 3.5 seconds to get their attention. So it’s important to spark their interest in the beginning of your release with a good lede. (Yes, it’s called lede, not lead!)

That way there’s more of a chance your release will get read – and that
the reporter will contact you.

Follow these guidelines and expect to grab a journalist’s attention:

• The lede sentence should include the most important information in
  less than 25 words. You want to make sure that your lede is merely a summary of what the release will include.
• Don’t guess that your reporter knows what your talking about from
  the headline. Although many may understand what the gist of the release is about by reading the headline, there are still those who may need a more detailed explanation.
• There should not be any advertising or propaganda in the lede. Any
  exaggeration just adds unnecessary length to your lede – and it just shouldn’t be in a release to begin with.
• The lede paragraph includes the who, what, when, where and how of the story. Once you answer the main questions, then you have everything you need to write the rest.
• The lede needs to be bold so that it communicates effectively. Draw the interest of the reader and make them feel like they have enough information if they only read the lede. The key is to make them want to keep reading by catching their attention early on.
• When it comes to word usage, less is more. The best thing you can do to communicate effectively is cut down the jargon. If your message is hidden behind a lot of complicated terminology, you will most likely lose a reporter’s interest.
• WIIFM? Think of the lede this way: it’s a few words explaining what the story is about – and why should the reader care.
• Think of the audience. Ledes can – and should – be different for each target audience.
• Don’t stall the point – get right to it. Don’t bury the lede with lots of added muck. Use active words to keep it moving.

Are ledes difficult for you to write? Ask some questions in the comment section and I’ll try to help you.

Your list is key because it contains prospect who have indicated they want to receive information from you. If you have a useful, targeted list and handle it well, you can make sale after sale to these people.

It’s part of what marketers call a marketing funnel. You essentially are capturing your prospects who would may be interested in what you have to offer. When done correctly, your messages will make them more apt to buy from you again and again.

How can you build your list?

Some of the time honored internet marketing methods are also great ways to build your list. Examples include: Pay per click ads, article marketing, free reports and other informational marketing tools and so on. Each of these is a useful part of your list building efforts, but there are quicker ways to build your list.

Have you ever thought of creating a list building promotion?

Promotions have been used by companies for a long time to generate consumer interest and to make more sales. These promotions are usually built around some kind of special event and may be completed online or offline.

The following are some of the best list building promotional ideas:

1. Everyone is a winner with a contest! Contests continually generate a lot of excitement and are a good way to get people to sign up for your list. It’s a good idea to run a separate contest for every niche market you’re working in just make sure that the prizes are desired enough to get people to sign up. Make the entry requirement signing up to your list and you’re in business!
2. Membership has its privleges. People always like to feel like they’re part of an exclusive club; offering members-only discounts and other benefits is a sure-fire method of list building. I recently promoted that I was going to offer an exclusive discount to my subscribers on Twitter and suddenly I had 30 more subscribers in 30 minutes.
3. Surveys always push participation and they are very effective at getting people interested in your list. You can find a very good example of this technique at Karner Blue Marketing’s The Website Checkup.
4. Happy birthday! Celebrate with me! Provide some sort of birthday gift or discount to those who sign up for your list and watch it grow!
5. Happy holidays. Think holidays to add some new people to your list. It’s important to remember, a holiday is always around the corner always around the corner; this is a great opportunity to get a promotional event going.

But if you really want to step your list promotion up a notch, you can create your own holiday. There are a few ways to make it official and get media coverage as a result (which can also grow your list) and I’m sharing it all starting next week at my List Building Promotion Secrets Telebootcamp.

I’ve done this same technique for a few years and have tripled my subscriber list as a result. Recently I conducted a holiday creation promotion for a client as well. The result: 1000 new targeted subscribers in one day.

Let me show you how to create your own holiday, build you credibility and your list, while getting published in a major book, and in major news media outlets. (One strategy shows you how you can get the Associated Press, one of the news media’s premier news sources, to promote your holiday to thousands of media outlets.)

As of today I only have 2 slots still available. So if you think you’d like to do this, go to http://www.ListBuildingPromotionSecrets.com

Without  it, your small business won’t grow. Essentially, these leads are people who may be interested in buying something from you in the future.

You can gather leads repeatedly by creating your website in a way that requires each person that visits to sign up for your information will give you his or her email address. While you can’t force a person to sign up, you can gently encourage him or her to sign up by showing him or her the value of doing so.

Here are some of the steps you need to take to make sure you have a profitable list:

1. Give them a reason to sign up. A landing page is the webpage your prospects will arrive on and see your offer to persuade them on your list. It must be well-designed and professional looking. If you don’t have any design skills then hire someone to do this for you.

2. Put a web form on your landing page and offer your customers the opportunity to opt-in to your mailing list. Offering something tantalizing for free encourages many to opt-in. Studies also show that asking for less information – just an email address – gets more prospects to sign up.

3. Make certain any freebies you give away are of the highest quality, because the subscribers on your list will conclude the worthiness of your products and services based on the freebies they get. You want them to think, “Wow! If this professional gives this away for free, imagine what I will get when I pay for something!”

4. Give more than just a sales pitch on your website. Provide useful and informative content to appease your customers’ sense of curiosity. Your target market will want to read interesting things and want to look for more than just a sales pitch. Content sites, like a blog,  are a great way to build trust and loyalty.

5. Keep things private and let subscribers know you will. If you tell your prospects that you will not share his or her personal information, then don’t share it with anyone. Your reputation will be ruined, and word spreads fast on the Internet.

6. Take some time to try any products you offer yourself. Make certain it is something you consider worthy of buying. If you are selling a book you wrote, make sure it has mass appeal and will benefit the target market you plan to market it to.

7. Provide the best customer service. This is THE #1 way to stay ahead of the game. If your target market are happy and you resolve their questions and complaints, then you will win their trust and loyalty.

8. Reward customers that refer others to you. Show others you recognize the value of their recommendations to others. Besides affiliate commissions, send cards and added bonus items every so often.

9. A quick response makes prospects pleased. Respond to your customer’s complaints or inquiries immediately, with the purpose in mind continually being to please your customer.

10. Stay truthful and trustworthy in all you do. A customer will sniff out a scam faster than a dog will a bone. Don’t lie, don’t trick and don’t steal. Dishonesty loses customers and prospects quickly, making your list useless.

These tips will help you with a long term list building strategy. If you are looking for a faster way to grow your list, check out List Building Promotion Secrets. Class starts April 6!

* The gurus who switches their niche or focus because they have a ‘higher calling’. (The reality is the calling is about cash… they had tapped out the market they were already in.)
* The high-end coach who won’t even stop to say hello to you at an event and actually has a ‘handler’ to keep you away. (If the customer is king, why are you treating them like peons?)
* The rock star Internet marketer who claims to be making a high six or seven figure income but can’t pay the money they owe to the outsourced people who created the programs that supposedly made them that money.
* The ‘How-To-Get-Rich-Like-Me’ guy who flashes a wad of money around to prove himself then calls you “retarded” if you don’t buy his $5000 package. (Name calling aside, what’s really insulting is that if you look at that stack of $100 bills you see that a majority of it is singles sandwiched between a couple of hundreds!)
* The high-profile guru who tells you the reason why their product/program/coaching isn’t working for you isn’t because their teaching isn’t good, but because you are not thinking positively/using the Law of Attraction/have a barrier deep inside your mindset. (This ‘it’s-not-me; it’s-you’ approach is the ultimate Catch 22: if your lack of faith is causing the program to fail, then every question you have can be thrown back in your face as “part of your problem”. How can you argue that?)

One (obviously) disgruntled person said this to me, “Internet marketing has become one giant incestuous circle of marketer selling hype to marketers so that they can sell hype to marketers.”

Basically some Internet marketers out there are in a sense in multi-level marketing. They make money by selling a product that tells you how to make money by selling a product that tells people how to make money selling a product that tells people…. Well, you get the picture.

They only make money because they are at the apex of the marketing pyramid, and as with all pyramid schemes, the people lower down the pyramid will lose the money they invest.

You may even notice that many of them ’steal’ each other’s work, make it their own and sell it with a new label. (Is there anything original from them at all?)

Most just sell a formula, and if your business or niche doesn’t quite fit into that formula… oh well, that’s your fault.

Yet, I believe there’s a new ‘breed’ of marketer online – one that has not only seen this, but been burned by these people in one way or another. They are honest about their lives (the good, the bad and even sometimes the ugly!).

They know they aren’t perfect nor lead a perfect life. They understand that a business relationship is more than just taking, but giving as well. They are about their customers. They aren’t pretending to be gurus. They just do what they are good at. They will show you how to get the best results from their programs.

That’s what I want from one of my mentors and how I hope to be for you when you work with me in any capacity.

So let me be real here:

I own a public relations and marketing communications firm that happens to be a virtual firm. I’m not the biggest firm on the block, but I have had some great results. I get people into major magazines, newspapers, tv and radio where they are able to attract lots more clients and customers and really boost their bottom lines.

I also love teaching, and realized that I could teach others how to do what I do. So I created another company to do just that.

But I don’t consider myself a “guru.” I’m a marketing professional. In my view, “gurus” are people who demand unquestioning faith from their followers. I want clients not followers, and I expect my clients to rely on reason and evidence, not faith.

I’m a mom. And I’ll admit, sometimes I’m not such a great mom. My four-year old girls have autism. And although they are not high on the spectrum, I get frustrated sometimes. I am jealous of moms with typical kids who can bake cookies with their families. I am jealous of moms who can bring their kids out for neighborhood party and not have to keep an eye on them for every minute. I know I shouldn’t be jealous – and don’t get me wrong, I love my girls – but I want more.

I’ve had great successes and I’ve failed miserably. I’ve made tons of money on programs (tons meaning thousands) and I’ve made zip on others. (I didn’t sell one seat on a telecourse I offered.)

I have a decent list, but not tens of thousands of subscribers.

There are times my husband flips out (and rightfully so) that I give too much away and don’t value my work more. (I’m working on that!)

I’m afraid to ask for help. I find it a sign of weakness or failure.

So there you have it…complete transparency from me.

What do you think? Are you tired of the Internet marketing rock stars who aren’t as transparent? What qualities are you looking for in a mentor or teacher? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Why did it work so well? Partly because I promoted it a lot. But the other reason is due to creating a joint venture giveaway. And you can do it too.

A joint venture giveaway is an event where business owners provide free products in order to draw in customers. By partnering with other business owners, you are able to connect with members of their community and share what you have to offer. In turn, your community learns about the other joint venture partners participating. And all the joint venture partners grow their lists.

Everyone loves freebies, potential customers included.  Joint venture giveaways aren’t just any freebie. The best part of  a joint venture giveaway is that they are an opportunity to showcase what you have to offer.  It allows you to share your talents and skills with a whole new audience and therefore what you giveaway is important and should offer real value.

Of course you can do this as a physical giveaway, but the easiest, and most cost effective way is to hold one online. This allows potential customers to instantly receive your free giveaway via download.

What can you use as a giveaway item?

EBooks and article packs are very popular and, if you are not a writer, can easily be picked up from a PLR site. Have you made a video? Recorded an interviewed you did with someone? These are all very popular and easy to pull together giveaways.

How can you participate?

Joint ventures can be general or specific.  For instance, some joint ventures are created to inform people about creating traffic for their website or how to get free publicity, as Be Heard Day did. Others might be more general such as self improvement or health. Be on the lookout and keep your ears open and you’ll hear about many joint venture giveaway opportunities.

There are three ways to be involved in a joint venture giveaway. First you can participate and get involved. Find out what is being offered, sign up and take advantage of the giveaways. The Be Heard Day giveaway saw about 700 people grab downloads to learn about new tools, memberships and products that can help you in your business.

Another way to participate in a joint venture giveaway is to be a contributor. As a contributor you would be one of the many business people offering a free giveaway.  In exchange for your giveaway, members are required to opt-in to your list. This is an excellent opportunity to grow your list and impress potential customers with your terrific giveaway.

Here are a few resources to keep you up to date on future giveaways that you can join as a contributor:

• http://www.affiliategiveaways.com/
• http://eprofitnews.org/giveaways
• http://www.newjvgiveaways.com/

A word of warning about these sites. Do your due dilengce and make sure the JV giveaway your are interested in is a good fit for you and the target market you want to attract. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time and effort, and getting people on your list who will never BUY from you (which is the ultimate goal, right?)

The third way is to create your own giveaway. I’m sharing the secrets to create a giveaway that attracts the RIGHT joint venture partners to match your target market’s needs, and gets you a ton of publicity in the process. Find out more about how to build your list with joint ventures at http://www.listbuildingpromotionsecrets.com