I had the privilege to interview Michael Levin, New York Times bestselling author and CEO of Business Ghost (www.BusinessGhost.com) about why corporate executives and professionals should write a book. Having written novels, business books and co-written with or ghost written for many high profiled professionals, such as Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield, football broadcasting legend Pat Summerall, FBI undercover agent Joaquin Garcia and E-Myth creator Michael Gerber, he offers a unique insight that is a wealth of information.

Michael has also written for the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CBS News, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times and many other top outlets. Plus he is an eight-time national best-selling author and his books have received outstanding reviews in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, People Magazine, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Examiner, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, the Boston Globe, Esquire, Booklist and other leading publications. Read more →

How To Tell Which Blogs Are Bonanzas And Which Ones Are Busts

In the age of the Internet, everyone has a blog.

According to BlogPulse, there were 152 million blogs on the Internet at the end of 2010 and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Many of these bloggers have become opinion leaders in their particular areas of expertise, while others have next to no following at all and blog just to let off steam. So how do you know which bloggers to target when you’re promoting yourself or your company and which ones to ignore? I have a few tips that might help you weed out the followers from the leaders: Read more →

Have you noticed how Charlie Sheen has quieted down? It’s not that his public meltdown has slowed or that he’s run out of things to say. It’s just that he isn’t saying it on radio anymore.

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. Read more →

One of the things I tell clients who want to get coverage in print and online press is that they have to read the news. If you want the print media to cover you, I think it simply helps if you know what it is they like to write about.

Part and parcel of my being a PR professional is to subsist on a vast daily diet of news digested the old fashioned way. I read newspapers and magazines, and at night and in the morning I watch a lot of television news programs, with a pretty even mix of straight-up news broadcasts and “talking head” panel shows.

My chief strategist calls that “old school.” He still reads the equivalent of two newspapers a day and he watches news broadcasts and talking head shows, as well – but he does it all online in smaller bites. He has a lot of hands-on PR work to do each day, so he can’t devote hours upon hours every day the way I do. Read more →

I’m always asked the question about how long a good publicity campaign should last. Invariably in the media business, more publicity is always better. Still, the question is a good one, and it bears answering.

To do that, I want you to think of the consumers you’re trying to reach as a quiet pond in the wilderness. If you want to make the pond ripple, throw a pebble in it. Big rocks make more waves than small pebbles, but even so, the ripples eventually end if all you’re doing is throwing in one rock at a time. Read more →

Understanding the Real ROI of PR

If I had a nickel every time a CEO or marketing executive asked me how many more sales they’d make by using PR, Bill Gates would be jealous of my island-sized yacht.

In order to answer that question, however, it’s important to understand the fallacy on which it’s based. So, let me ask you a few questions. Read more →

I talk to authors every day who are ready to throw in the towel when it comes to promoting their books. It’s either because they were unsuccessful in their own efforts to get the media interested in interviewing them, or worse, they hired a publicity firm to get them media coverage and the firm had little to no success. This second scenario is really the worst one for an author as they can really lose faith in themselves and in the importance of their message. Read more →

There’s More to It than Just Sending Out a Press Release

In the past few months, I’ve covered a lot of ground with regard to how to do your own public relations campaign. I’ve explained how to make yourself or your company appealing to the media, how to write pitches and why articles work better than press releases.

But I haven’t yet explained some crucial elements with regard to orchestrating a PR campaign and more specifically with regard to landing TV appearances. Radio and print publicity definitely require attention to details – but the number of logistical issues you have to deal with for TV exposure is far greater. Read more →

The cycle of marketing was once summarized in the story of the circus coming to town.

If the circus is coming to town and you buy a billboard saying “Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday,” that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed and the local paper picks it up, that’s publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations. If the town’s citizens go to the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that’s sales. Read more →

Watch Mary Kay Hoal, Founder of Yoursphere, interviewed on Fox Business.