And now, the season begins.

In the office, everyone is hanging around the coffee machine longer and enjoying holiday deserts.  Outside the office, people are caught up in the holiday parties, shopping, food, family gatherings, and enough reruns of holiday programs that they are replaying the Grinch song in their head. They spend a little more time online surfing eBay for gifts and writing emails to associates hoping to put any real work off until January 2.

That’s a major mistake for anyone engaged in or thinking of engaging in a media campaign. The holidays are exactly the time to pop the clutch and put your campaign into overdrive.

The reason is obvious. Although many assume that nothing of any consequence really happens over the holidays, what it really means is that fewer people are competing for those guest interviews on radio and TV and in print. This opens up an opportunity for you to jump in and compete for that media, with fewer of your competitors in that mix. Let’s face it, the media still needs people to interview to generate content.  So, if your competition is not in the game over the holidays, this is the perfect time for you to step in and get the coverage.

Because, even though many companies tend to run silent during the holidays, the media doesn’t. In fact, as we sit there on Christmas morning wondering what store is still open when you’ve run out of aspirin, the media is one industry that doesn’t ever shut down.

During the holidays, turn on the TV.  While CBS might be running reruns of Two and a Half Men, of course, the evening news isn’t running a repeat. And, what about CNN? They still report the day’s news just like any other day.

Same thing holds true for the print media – on Christmas morning and the day after Christmas, your newspaper is still delivered to your front door. And you can bet Yahoo! isn’t recycling content from November.  No, they’re aggregating news from all over the world that was written on Christmas day.

The media works every day of the year – Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Halloween, Yom Kippur, Purim, Kwanza and yes, even Arbor Day. They need fresh content every single day of the week. Their crews may change and shift, their lead people take vacations while second stringers fill in for them. But every day, they broadcast, print, publish and distribute the news. Every day. And their need for content, combined with your competitors’ need to relax, can result in excellent press coverage for you.

You can deck the halls and sing the songs and eat the food that will no doubt be the inspiration for at least one or two New Year’s resolutions. In the meantime, though, consider celebrating the holidays by making them productive. Get yourself in front of the media while your competitors are guzzling eggnog. After all, isn’t success the best holiday gift you could give yourself?

Best To Let the Media Determine That

In my role as the head of a PR firm, one of the most common misconceptions I see has to do with the superlatives people choose to describe themselves. Now, I’m not referring to how the media positions someone, but rather how someone seeking PR wants to refer to him or herself.

I once overheard my senior strategist, Tony Panaccio, having a conversation with a client about what their tagline should be. It went something like this:

Client: So, what should I call myself?

Tony: I’m not sure what you mean.

Client: Well, when I identify myself to the media.

Tony: Well, your name is Jim, right (not the actual name)?

Client: Yeah.

Tony: So, why don’t we stick with that? It’s short, concise and happens to be, you know, your name.

Client: That’s not what I meant. I was trying to think of something catchy.

Tony: Okay, how about “James?”

It went on like that for a bit, until Tony was able to explain to the client that it’s not kosher to try to “name” yourself to the media.

Taglines can work well for people who have their own radio or TV shows, but for those just breaking into the spotlight, it actually has the reverse effect than intended. The media is a cynical, somewhat sensitive league of professionals, not unlike Tony, actually. When they see a name they’ve never seen before with a tagline they’ve never seen before, it strikes them as odd and out of place. In fact, many will turn their noses up at those self-made designations.

We often get folks who want to attach all kinds of superlative descriptions of themselves in their bios like “genius,” “brilliant,” “guru.”  The point is that those in the media will come up with the nicknames and catchy taglines as they see fit, once they have come to understand that person’s experience is real. They are the ones who get to determine who the gurus are and not the prospective gurus themselves.

Further along those lines, some have tried to attach the terms “groundbreaking,” “innovative” and even “spectacular” to describe their products or their books. The problem is that the media feels they are the ones who will determine if someone or something fits those descriptions. When people are positioned that way as part of a pitch or an article, it can be offensive and it immediately raises the question as to the validity of that designation. That’s why using superlatives about yourself in order to establish your credibility, typically results in exactly the opposite effect.

That’s why I don’t call myself anything like “The PR Mechanic” or “The Marketing Maven,” as others in my industry call themselves. It’s not for me to make those calls. It’s up to you and the media to determine that I’m deserving of some kind of title to show my expertise.

In the meantime, feel free to call me Marsha. All my friends do and you’re far more likely to get my attention.

Irony has a way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it.

One of our clients was at a convention this week, and among his activities, he was hosting a panel on the digital revolution in the entertainment industry. While his credentials in the entertainment business are solid, he has yet to figure out how to operate his new Droid smartphone.

So one of my staff emailed him, pointing out the irony and the client emailed back, “I thought ‘digital’ meant they were going to talk about fingers!”

It started me thinking about the digital revolution in the media as well. With all the new technology available to us through the Internet, including the ability to track Web site visitors from their referring page to our own Web sites and even tracing how long they spend on each page, it reminded me how the emphasis on numbers and tracking have muddied the marketing waters.

Because we now have access to all these numbers and statistics, we can easily lose sight of the fact that the numbers aren’t the whole story. One of the primary differences between advertising and PR is that advertisers can drill down and focus specifically on numbers in terms of audience, tracking each time a pair of eyeballs looks at an ad as one “impression” of that ad.  The more impressions the ad receives, the more the ad campaign is perceived as being successful.

In the public relations arena, it’s impossible to track “impressions.” Media outlets aren’t going to track the exact number of eyeballs on each article – it’s not cost-effective for them to do so.  Besides, offline and online publications already have a yardstick that measures their reach.  It’s a combination of traditional circulation figures that have always been used to track the reach of a printed periodical and the number of unique visitors they get to their Web site each month, which is referred to as Visitors Per Month (VPM).

This certainly doesn’t mean that PR is somehow lacking as a marketing tactic, in comparison to advertising. The equalizer – and in my mind, the puzzle piece that elevates PR above advertising – is the third-party verification that inherently comes with PR. I talk about this frequently, but as the digital side of marketing continues to grow, it’s something all marketers must consider in evaluating the success of a PR component.

When someone buys an ad, it’s like buying real estate. They own that space and they can put practically any message they wish, within reason and within the policies of that particular media outlet. They can make reasonable claims about their company, product or service and use as many superlatives as they wish. They can represent themselves in the most complimentary manner possible. In other words, buying the ad allows them to control the message and how they want their message to be perceived by the masses. But consumers of today implicitly understand that this is the nature of advertising.

According to a global study by The Fournaise Marketing Group, consumer engagement rates from advertising have dropped 19 percent around the world. Here’s what Marketing Magazine had to say about the study:

“The study tracked response and engagement rates across traditional, as well as online campaigns, in 20 countries in the first half of 2011, comparing it to the same period last year. The US and Europe saw the sharpest decline at 23 percent. Online advertising was, on average, 25% less effective than traditional media, with display ads hit by a 26% decline. Fournaise deduced that while the global economic conditions had some effect, the drop was more to do with less effective campaigns and too much focus on ‘creativity,’ rather than customer benefits. In today’s world, where consumers are bombarded with advertising messages, a brand’s actions speak louder than words – and a consumer advocate is far more powerful than a brand one.”

A consumer advocate is more powerful, because a consumer advocate represents third-party verification, someone other than the advertiser to verify the brand’s positive claims. And, that’s what PR delivers with every interview and article, because the media outlets CHOOSE to use their free editorial space to feature that company or expert. Even if they simply quote a company spokesperson on an ongoing business trend, it demonstrates that the media outlet had some level of approval of that company.

That’s why PR doesn’t need the extra digital metrics, because it delivers something that is more important and impossible to measure – trust. That is the real jewel of a PR campaign, far and above the story the numbers can tell.

So if you’re advertising, follow the statistics and tracking data available through your online analytics, but remember that the effectiveness of your ads will depend in large part on how well your marketing campaign has created trust in the mind of your consumer.

I tend to use this space as a “how to” venue. I like to share my insights on how to get the media excited about you, your message, your products, your services and books. My hope is that the information I offer will enable you to generate media placements for yourself to further your public relations efforts.

However, I’m frequently asked about the value of PR in relation to the business goals it’s designed to enhance. People wonder what will happen if they’re able to achieve a picture-perfect PR campaign and get the media to notice them and generate coverage for them. They wonder if the upside is increased sales, or if it’s in the branding or maybe it’s just the increased exposure for their company or projects or their book.

The short answer is yes, but the long answer is a bit more complicated than that. First thing’s first. When we do a print campaign, for instance, we rate it based on the reach of the publications in traditional print outlets and online outlets. We use two key terms – circulation and visitors per month (VPM) – and while one of those terms is old and the other is new, they are based on the same principle.

When we use the term VPM, we’re applying it to the online publications in the same way that newspapers and magazines use circulation figures to apply to their audience numbers.

Back in those primitive days before the Internet, when paper and ink were still a popular means of communication, PR firms rated the success of their print campaigns by adding up the circulation figures of the newspapers and magazines in which they got coverage for their clients.  So if an article was written about you in the Philadelphia Inquirer that would be rated as a pretty good hit, because that paper has a circulation of about 300,000 readers daily. Now that’s not to say all 300,000 people read the article that was about you. It’s simply a measure of the potential readers of your article.

Then along came the Internet.  We now live in a time in which almost every newspaper or magazine article is repurposed online and more people get their news online than offline. In an attempt to present advertisers with a “circulation” figure for the Internet versions of their print publications, publishers created the tracking of unique visitors to their news pages, and that number is called VPM.

For example, if we place an article on a Web site like the Huffington Post, which has a VPM of 22 million, it doesn’t mean that 22 million people are reading your story. It just means that your story was placed on a site that has an online “circulation” of 22 million. It’s just like the Philadelphia Inquirer example above, where the circulation of that publication is 300,000, but there’s no way to calculate how many of those 300,000 readers actually read your article.

So VPM is simply a “circulation” figure for the Internet and it’s how campaigns are tracked in the era of new media, which isn’t much different than the way it was tracked “back in the day.”

Just as in the above example, it’s also impossible to track specifically how many people watched your TV segment or heard your radio interview. The ratings systems for TV shows are not specific enough to track who was watching at the moment you were on the air, and the ratings system for radio is not universally used, so extrapolating accurate numbers for specific days and times is also near impossible.

With radio PR for example, the measures we look at are the size of the market, the wattage of the station (5,000 watts is good, 500, not so much) and in the case of national radio shows, how many stations carry the show through syndication. These are broader brushstrokes than what people can achieve through advertising on the Internet and tracking clickthroughs, but it is also far less expensive. In online advertising campaigns, advertisers can track exactly who visited their Web site, what Web site referred them, what they viewed on the site and even how many minutes they spent on each page. Coming from that experience, it can sometimes be difficult for marketers to understand why the same kind of granular audience analysis doesn’t exist in PR.

But, keep in mind advertisers are paying for that infrastructure with their fees, which are often many times the cost of a solid PR campaign. In addition, those ad campaigns lack the power of third-party verification that exists in PR – when a host has you as a guest on a radio or TV show it’s a tacit endorsement of you as an expert.  It’s someone of authority saying you’re credible and authoritative in your field. With advertising, the media savvy audience knows you paid for the space, so the only credibility those ads carry is that you had enough money to buy the ads.

How does all that factor into your bottom lines? Well, sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, because reaching a lot of people with your message does not equate to making them want to buy what you’re selling. So many other elements are factors in the “buy” decision – your Web site, your specific product or service, the topic of your book if there’s one in play, your price point compared to your competitors, your distribution and availability – I could go on and on here. The truth is that both PR and advertising can only inform your potential customers that you, and what you are marketing, exists.

In the case of PR, it not only informs people, but it also adds credibility to your reputation, as PR coverage carries more “endorsement” weight than any advertisement you can ever purchase.

The key idea to take away from all this is that you won’t necessarily make sales just because you’re doing PR, but you’ll be hard-pressed to make sales without it.

That record, and five dollars, could have bought him a small latte at the Starbucks on Wilshire Boulevard. As I discuss the use of social media with people, too many times I get drawn down that same vortex of talking just about the numbers. And, don’t get me wrong – numbers are important. In social media, numbers equate to people with whom you can communicate directly about your message. In my business, numbers are a paramount concern and that’s why I take pride in the fact that my in-house team (the same team who work the social media network for our clients) has built my profiles to a cumulative 55,000 followers and rising every day.

What the numbers mean is that I simply have an audience. However, what I do with them is as important as what I did to get them.

Now, I’m not talking about marketing to them. I’m not talking about getting your message out to them. I’m not even referring to the idea of using them to help get other followers. All those experiences are very one-sided and while you get a lot of benefit, it’s arguable whether they are getting as much out of those processes as you are.

No, I’m referring to something much deeper. I’m talking about engaging my audience. I’m talking about generating an exchange of ideas with them. I’m talking about something that rarely gets mentioned in reference to any kind of marketing at all. I’m talking about serving them.

The slippery slope of talking too much about numbers in social media is that it becomes easy to forget that those numbers are actually real people on the other end of that keyboard. It’s not 55,000 followers; It’s 55,000 people. If they choose to follow you, you have to ask yourself what kind of experience will it be for them. Will they profit from following you in some form or another? Will you offer them insight and knowledge, regardless of whether it turns into any business for you? What will they get out of it all, compared to what you believe you’ll get out of marketing to them.

Most businesses operate under the theory of fair exchange that is taught in business school. Vendors are paid by customers for a product or service. The customer gets the value of what he paid for and the vendor gets paid an amount commensurate with that value. It’s a fair exchange. Pretty simple, right? In social media, I believe we should apply what is called the theory of exchange in abundance. Under this theory, a customer pays a vendor for a product or service and that vendor then supplies what has been paid for, along with providing additional value. The result is that customer is far more inclined to do business with that vendor again. Actually, this principle of exchange is the best policy for all business.

People who use social media for marketing purposes should ensure that they are providing a lot more value than simply trying to get their followers to open their wallets. They should share advice, knowledge and insight with their followers, and send them messages not intended to market themselves, but rather intended to improve the lives and businesses of their followers. In that sense, they are participating in exchange in abundance.

It means that instead of treating your audience like numbers, you treat them like people who are following you because they believe a social networking relationship with you, in its simplest terms, may yield some value for them as well. You engage them on a level beyond just what they can do for you. You engage them in a mutually beneficial exchange of ideas, thoughts, concepts and knowledge, aimed at doing nothing more than serving them as individuals. And, if they should choose to transcend those online social media tethers and engage you in a commercial relationship, they’ll already know something about your business.

They’ll know you exchange in abundance, which to them means you’ll be as good in business as you are online. Making a total stranger respect you and like you, and want to engage you in a business relationship simply from what you broadcast to your social media group, is the absolute height of marketing and the soul of good business.

It’s true. She doesn’t talk to reporters at all. Outside of her commentary stints on Fox News, she has no direct contact with any journalists in print, on radio or on TV. So how is it she constantly stays in the headlines? One word: Twitter.

Palin lets the world know what she thinks through Twitter feeds and then comments on them through other social networks, like her Facebook page. She is still mentioned as a potential presidential candidate and her name appears in the news almost every week.

Is there any better evidence that social networking is not a fad?

But don’t take my word or even Palin’s word for it. Just look at the stats:

Twitter

• Since April, Twitter has gained 40 million users and a 62 percent increase in mobile use of the platform. (Source: ClickZ)
• Now, there are more than 175 million registered Twitter users. It is unclear as to how many of these are regular, but the number of Tweets per day has rocketed to 95 million – an increase of 250 percent. (Econsultancy)

LinkedIn

• LinkedIn has grown by an impressive 100 percent from last year; it now has more than 100 million users across the globe. Interestingly, 56% of these users are from outside of the US. (Econsultancy)

Facebook

• Back in January 2010, the site had 350 million active users across the globe. It now has in excess of 640 million – half of which log in daily. Based on this figure, Facebook has seen a 40 percent increase in daily usage over the past 12 months. (Econsultancy)
• People are sharing more content on Facebook now too. On average, there are more than 7 billion pieces of content shared on the site weekly. This figure has risen from last year, when it was 3.5 billion. (Econsultancy)
• 75 percent of brand “Likes” on Facebook come from advertisements. (Mashable)
• More than 250 million people use Facebook Connect every month. (Facebook)

General

• The average American Internet user watches 30 minutes of video online per day (comScore) compared to 5 hours of television per day.
• Social networking site usage grew 88 percent among Internet users aged 55-64 between April 2009 and May 2010. (Pew Research)
• In 2009, social gamers bought $2.2 billion in virtual goods, predicted to increase to $6 billion by 2013. (NPD Group).
• 22 percent of Fortune 500 companies now have a public-facing blog that has at least one post in the past 12 months. (comScore)

From the stats, a few key trends are quite clear:

• Corporations are using social networking to extend their branding efforts.
• Real commerce is taking place through social networking sites.
• Social networks are no longer a trend. They are a fact of life for millions of Americans.

This all stands to figure as Americans are being forced to do more with less. They have to make ends meet with less money, get more work done in less time and take care of their families despite the growing demands of earning money through more than one job. Social networking allows Americans to get news, stay in touch with friends and promote their business interests.

I use social networking as a key way of reaching out to my potential clients as well as those in the marketing community who want to use my columns for their Web sites, invite me on their shows as a guest, and even hire me as an expert speaker – all of which drives my business. As a marketing communications professional, I would never dream of eliminating social networking from my outreach arsenal. Each day it grows more important and even helps to drive my revenue, so when I recommend social networking to my clients, it’s not because I am trying to follow all the media hype. I’m living it daily and I see how it helps my bottom line.

But here’s probably the most compelling reason for you to dive into the world of social networking. Based on the stats, your competitors are already using it.

Now, forgive me. I have to go place this piece on my Twitter feed.

I was actually surprised when I realized that Sheen’s daily presence in the news wasn’t just from his tweets or his videos that he posted online, but rather his radio interviews. The meatier comments the media used for their stories about Sheen actually came from his constant calls to national radio shows like The Dan Patrick Show, The Alex Jones Show and a wide variety of morning shows in different cities.

In fact, Philadelphia’s Wired 96.5 FM station – recognizing Sheen’s penchant for phone-in radio rants – flew a banner over Sheen’s house inviting him to call the station. He did and another news cycle ensued.

The interviews then fueled more tweets on Twitter and provoked TV and print outlets to seek out Sheen for other interviews. Now does that mean I’m saying that a public meltdown in radio interviews is a good PR strategy for drawing attention to your message? Of course not, but make no mistake, talk radio was the fuel behind his media engine.

And that’s a lesson that should not be taken lightly and it proved one thing that advocates of other, more technologically-driven media, seem to want to downplay: people are still listening to radio. They are listening to radio and paying attention to what they hear. That’s why I feel very strongly about the value of talk radio as a key component of any well-balanced media campaign.

A good radio interview can fuel social media, because it gives you something to tweet about. It also works well in conjunction with print coverage and appearances on local and national TV, because it provides a longer form format for your message. Whereas an article may only be 500 or 600 words or a TV appearance only 3 to 5 minutes, a radio interview can run anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour, depending on the show and how interesting you are to the host and the listeners.

What I love most about talk radio is that it provides a forum for guests to demonstrate their expertise in their field, making them attractive to customers, clients and also decision-makers from other media outlets. It’s also the one place in which they can communicate their message in their own voice, in their own tone and their own words – unedited – to listeners within the range of the radio show’s signal. If it’s a syndicated show, their message can be heard nationwide.

So, if you’ve been thinking about doing PR, be sure to include radio as a key venue for your campaign. People are definitely willing to listen to you, if you’re willing to speak to them.

You can advertise, promote, tweet, post, blog and sell like Dale Carnegie on steroids, but if you haven’t built trust with your potential customer, it’s truly a waste of good resources.

Regardless of what “behavioral research” professionals tell us is the reason why a consumer takes the leap of faith to make a purchase, I know from my 20-plus years in PR, that trust is one of the most essential ingredients. And, in today’s marketplace, I believe the issue of trust is even more significant than ever.

Online commerce started exploding more than a decade ago and today the volume of sales occurring in this marketplace is booming. More books, consumer products, entertainment, durable goods and electronics are sold online than ever before. It ranges from the practical, like buying books and music from Amazon, to the ridiculously impractical, like buying a car off of eBay. This marketplace is growing and the one simple reality is that people aren’t going to use their PayPal account or credit card to buy something from a Web site unless they have a sense of trust in the company or product they’re buying.

Trust. That’s it and that’s all. So, how do you build it?

Assuming that you’re selling something that’s comparable to your competitor, the best way to build trust is by educating the consumer. They need to learn of your knowledge and expertise and gain confidence that what you’re offering can solve their problem or benefit them in some way. This, combined with the ability to demonstrate your passion and hard work behind your product, is why PR can deliver best on the promise of trust.

Why is that? Simply put, it’s the only tool in the media bag that affords you third-party verification. With advertising, you buy the space and you control the message. Consumers know this and understand that an advertisement is nothing more than a sales pitch. While selling is an important part of marketing, it does nothing to build trust. But when you are featured in the media as part of an article, or appear as a guest on TV or radio, those placements are tacit acknowledgements on the part of the media that your message and your voice were important enough for them to feature it as part of their show or as coverage in the news. The Los Angeles Times may not use the line, “…this book is a must-read,” or “…this product is a cure-all,” but their inclusion of you in their news coverage is enough to help build credibility with their readership.

Moreover, this recognition takes place in a non-sales atmosphere. This is significant, because it’s reflective of the consumers’ desire to be protected from the barrage of advertising and promotion that they feel is simply aimed at getting your hands in their pocketbooks and wallets. People don’t LIKE being sold, but they LOVE being informed, educated and entertained. The media presents your message in a way that is comfortable, familiar and trusted by their audience.

And there’s that word again: trust. Regardless of what you do in terms of advertising, promotion and social media, getting real press coverage needs to be an essential element of your marketing and promotional efforts. It may not result directly in loads of sales. However, one thing is for certain, without trust, your potential for sales is much slimmer.

Having written a book myself, I know how hard people work to achieve that coveted designation of “author.”

And, I know how it goes, you don’t want to make it a big deal with your friends and family, but deep down where you don’t talk about it openly, you really wish there was a button you could buy that reads “AUTHOR!” You also wish that it was socially acceptable to wear it on your lapel, because, darn it, writing a book is NOT easy. You worked hard to write a book and when it’s done and published, you do enjoy being able to claim membership in a relatively exclusive fraternity.

So when you prepare your media campaign to promote your book, certainly ALL your press releases and materials refer to you as an author. And, that’s where the train might be running off the tracks.

In our everyday lives, we don’t know very many authors, so being an author is a unique attribute. However, in the world of the media, positioning yourself as an author makes you one of thousands and may actually serve to lessen your value. That’s right, declaring yourself to be an author may be one of the reasons the press isn’t clamoring to interview you right now.

The first reason for this reverse phenomenon is that there are over 370,000 new books published every year, and so many of those authors are trying to get the same ink, radio airtime and TV interviews you are. In fact, many national TV shows who book guests have a separate booker to just deal with authors. That means every time you send a pitch designating yourself as an author, you are instantly put in the same category with all the authors who are pitching the same producers. Your book and expertise may be in foreign affairs—which makes you instantly relevant in today’s news cycle—but the producer who books foreign affairs guests will never see your pitch, because you’ve been lumped in with the authors.

Moreover, the media doesn’t exist to help you sell your book. They’d much rather you buy an ad if your purpose is to make money from the exposure they’d be giving you for free. So an author-centric pitch may, in many cases, go right in the garbage or the deleted email folder.

From our experience over the last 21 years of booking an average of more than 2,100 radio interviews each year for our clients, we know that if you pitch a radio producer with “I’m an author, I’ve written a book about such and such,” it can land you absolutely nowhere. These producers are inundated by authors all the time, so hearing that as the primary identifier makes you one of many. That’s why we never use the word author as the primary positioning for our clients. Instead, we call them experts, because on one level or another, that’s who they really are and that’s the value they represent to the show hosts. Compare the author pitch to, “John Doe is an expert on the legal issues regarding nursing homes, and can offer advice to people who are planning either for themselves or for their parents, and they just wrote a book about it.” The expertise is what the host wants, so we deliver it up front, using the book to add credibility to the expert positioning.

A lot of authors feel they aren’t experts in a classic sense, and for those people, I’ll wager a bet. I’ll bet I can find a genuine way to position you as an expert, even if your expertise is through personal experience. If you wrote a book, even if it is a work of fiction, there is some trigger—some amount of experience, research, expertise or passion—that drove you to write it. That qualifies you to be called an expert and helps you engage the media’s interest in having you as a guest.

Being an author is a very big achievement and no one is trying to play that down. But, to the media, who deals with a seeming endless flood of authors daily, calling yourself an author simply makes you one of tens of thousands.

If you want to be distinctive and offer the media some level of value for their audiences, then you need to take that button off your lapel and embrace your own expertise. While being an author is very important to you, being an expert is what will be important to the media.

In the age of the Internet, 24/7 cable TV news channels, news on your laptop, desktop, PDA and smartphone, I think it’s important to remind folks about the significance of talk radio as it relates to getting publicity for your book. But don’t just take my word for it.

The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism recently reported that 48 million people get their news from talk radio. Surprised? Don’t be. While other traditional media outlets in print and TV were shrinking, the genre of talk radio was growing. Inside Radio Magazine further reported that the number of radio stations that carry talk shows grew in 2010 to 2,056 from 1,370 in 2009.

When you complement this growth of listeners with the demographic survey results from Talkers Magazine’s (the leading trade publication serving the talk media industry in America) 2010 Talk Radio Research Project, and you can see why radio listeners are a perfect audience for your message. Here are some highlights from the survey:

• “A majority of the talk radio audience is…35 – 64.”
• “…talk radio’s audience has to be considered among mass media’s most affluent with a high percentage of listeners earning over $50,000 annually.”
• “…a notably high percentage of listeners have attended one or more years of college. (35% have graduated with a four-year college degree.)”

In summary, “Talk radio listeners are diverse, mature, educated, attentive, active and affluent…” A powerful audience!

But, being able to secure interviews on quality stations is only half the battle; you also have to be good on the air to make the most of the opportunity that this valuable medium affords you.

I wrote a booklet of 50 tips to help you be all you can be on the air, and every so often we like to dig in that bag of tricks to remind you of some basic—but important—tips to being a good radio guest. So, here are five top tips for turning those media opportunities into action:

1. 1. BE ENTHUSIASTIC. Enthusiasm is more contagious than the common cold, so be sure you bring lots of it to the table; radio hosts love it when you do. When you’re excited about your message it can’t help but radiate to listeners too. That excitement in turn propels them to learn more about your book when the interview is over. So heed this insightful Zig Zigler warning, “For every sale you miss because you’re too enthusiastic, you will miss a hundred because you’re not enthusiastic enough.”
2. 2. AVOID DISTRACTIONS. Having listened to talk radio, you probably know that 90 percent of all interviews are conducted by phone. That’s both good and bad news. The good news is you get to do your talking in comfortable, familiar surroundings. The bad news is you get to do your talking in comfortable, familiar surroundings; in other words, in places where there may be barking dogs, meowing cats, noisy kids, and blaring TVs. Be sure you’ve eliminated, at least temporarily, any potential distractions. Turn off your computer and the TV (or TVs) and make sure you switch off your cell phone. Put the pets outside. Alert your family about what you’re doing. Remember, nothing screams “amateur” more than listeners hearing you yell at your kids to quiet down. If necessary, lock yourself in a room for total privacy—and stay focused.
3. 3. BE HONEST. This may sound like good, old-fashioned advice—and it is—but here’s what I have in mind: Your host and his listeners have this uncanny ability to detect falsehood. They’re like organic lie-detectors, and there’s absolutely nothing worse than getting caught, on air, telling less than the truth. Be open and honest with everyone. Remember, listeners relate better to people they feel they can read like an open book. Take a page out of Howard Stern’s book, no matter what you think of the guy, Stern built an empire by being honest with his listeners.
4. 4. BE THE REAL YOU. This is a corollary to #3 above. Present yourself as…yourself, warts and all. Do not, for instance, use the occasion of a talk show interview to try out that impressive British accent you’ve been practicing. And, don’t use six syllable words when you’re used to talking in everyday language. I’m joking around here, but you get the idea. The real unprocessed “you” communicates a lot about your character and that gives audiences a better handle on both you and your message.
5. 5. DEFINE YOUR MESSAGE. Before going on the air, know the key points you want to communicate. Make sure those points will be of greatest value to the listener. Then stay “on message” no matter how far off the host’s questions take you. Always steer your answers back to your own key message and all will be well.

While it may seem like common sense on paper, applying these tips isn’t necessarily second nature. But you’ll find that the more interviews you do, the more these tips become second nature and the more value you’ll derive from your publicity campaigns.

When I speak to authors who’re looking for cost-effective ways to build or strengthen consumer awareness about their book, talk radio is one of my absolute favorite recommendations. Spending 10 to 15 minutes out of your day to speak to an audience of thousands or more about your book, with no travel involved…does the opportunity get any better?

Actually, it does. We’re one of the pioneers of “pay-for-performance” PR, which means our clients don’t pay a monthly retainer for “best efforts,” rather they are guaranteed a specific number of radio interviews for the fees they pay us.

So, if you have a book that answers a common problem for consumers, appearing as a guest on talk radio is a smart PR tactic that should be part of your overall marketing strategy to build awareness around the country.