• Local media can position you as a celebrity and expert.
• A hometown fan base can help you grow.
• Look for shows, publications that are a good fit.

I admit, I’d be on the first red-eye to New York City if I thought I’d land in the chair next to Matt Lauer on the Today show. Imagine! An audience of millions and Matt Lauer’s hand on my arm!

But while national TV exposure is great, you won’t hear me sobbing if he never invites me to his set. (Well, maybe a sniffle or two – hey, he is Matt Lauer.)  I know that local TV and radio shows, newspapers and magazines can also position me as an expert and a celebrity. They can help me build a solid fan base that will help carry me to national prominence, if that’s what I want. And they’ll give me a chance to polish my message, so when the big time’s ready for me, I’ll be ready for it.

And local media are far more accessible – even more so than just 10 years ago. With state, national and international news now available from myriad sources online, many local outlets are focusing on their community.  Stories and segments about hometown people, events and issues are the one thing they have to offer that can’t be found on a million websites, so if you have a good story to share, you’ll likely find more receptive listeners.

How to get started? Here are some suggestions:

• Look for radio and TV shows that have a format for guests.  Search online for the stations that broadcast in your area and take a look at their websites. Look over show descriptions and if past shows are archived online, take a minute to listen and/or watch. If they’re not archived, jot down the times and days they air, because you definitely want to experience the show to see if it’s the right fit for you and your message. Pay attention to the topics, the host, the kinds of questions asked and the guests. Think about whether you can tie your message into that format.

• Look over local newspapers, magazines and online publications for opportunities.  Read the columns and the articles; what sorts of content do the various editors select? What topics, tone and length? How polished is the writing? Can you provide content that would fit in well? If your message is about animal welfare and the publication is about business, can you craft a column, article or tips that will resonate with that publication’s readers? Or, if you think a reporter might be interested in writing your story, look for the appropriate beat reporter. If you’ve got a new cookbook and a related story idea, i.e. three great Crockpot recipes with just three ingredients, find the name of the food writer.

• Think about what you’ll say before you call or email. Your job is to catch the interest of the editor, show host or producer, or reporter, so it’s important to think through what you plan to say. You can start by showing that you’re familiar with the show or publication: “I have a topic that would be perfect for Dottie Dolittle’s show about relationships,” or “I’d love to write about how I lost 100 pounds for your ‘Real-Life Losers’ column.” Explain your segment/story idea as succinctly as possible and provide a phone number where you can be reached at any time during the day. If you start with a phone call, follow up with an email a few days later and vice versa.

• Remember, you’re providing content, not selling. The media will fall in love with you if you provide great, interesting content that resonates with their audience. They will fall out of love – just like that! – if you use the platform they give you to pitch your book, product or service (that’s why they sell commercials and advertising for)! The payoff for you being a guest, writing an article or being featured in an article is that you will usually be identified by your name, claim to fame and website: “This is Crazy Joe from Crazy Joe’s Coffee, www.crazyjoecoffee.com.” And that’s where celebrity begins.

If you dream of someday dancing with Ellen Degeneres or being interviewed by Howard Stern, don’t give up! Instead, start working toward that now by plugging into your hometown media. Where do you think those big national outlets get their ideas?

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?

After 21 years in the PR business, it has become increasingly apparent to me that it’s time to drive a new milepost into the ground.

While the media has been specializing in reinventing itself every few business quarters, the business of marketing has been slowly evolving, trying to keep up with the changes. Regular readers of this column have seen some phrases making repeat appearances, such as social media, email blasts, online news outlets and other terms that refer to some of the technological advances that have hit modern marketing communications. As each of these new areas of outreach emerges, our tactics as PR strategists are changing with the times.

Well, those changes have become a full-fledged evolution into a completely new paradigm, so I think it’s time we go back to the basics and spell out the new fundamentals of the modern-day PR campaign.

But let’s not start off with where things are going, but rather, where we started. Public relations began as an activity in which PR professionals leveraged free media opportunities on TV, radio and print in order to reach consumer and business-to-business audiences on behalf of their clients. In the early days, there were just a few outlets that commanded the lion’s share of consumer and business eyeballs. However, in today’s world, the media literally envelopes us, influencing how we interact with people all over the globe on a daily basis. It’s not just the influence of TV, radio or our local daily newspapers. It comes to us via our computers, in our email, on our cell phones, on screens located at the gas pump and even where we pour our morning coffee at the corner convenience store.

The media now numbers literally tens of thousands of mass and specialty outlets across every communication channel at our disposal. Those who run the media have gone from being a very elite and small fraternity, to numbering in the hundreds of thousands just in North America alone. One no longer needs to work at a network or a newspaper to be part of the mainstream media. Many bloggers and online columnists influence the opinions of millions as independent enterprises working from wherever their laptops can get an Internet signal.

To understand how to manage a modern-day PR campaign, it’s important to know what elements make up the modern media. It’s no longer just TV, radio and print. It’s far more than that:

• Network TV – Despite the popularity of cable news networks, the traditional evening network newscasts from NBC, ABC and CBS still hold the vast majority of the viewing audience. In 2010, more than 23 million people watched the big three nightly newscasts, compared to about 4.5 million who watched the evening newscasts on CNN, Fox, HLN and MSNBC. They are the gold standard and getting featured on those networks – whether it be morning or evening broadcasts – is one of the toughest “gets” in the PR business.

• Cable News – While they command a lower aggregate audience, cable news has become the place where expert celebrities and news figures are born. Getting on the radar screen of the big networks can be very challenging without starting here. One example is NBC anchor Brian Williams, who was a White House correspondent who transformed into an anchor on MSNBC’s The News with Brian Williams back in 1996. Williams would later succeed Tom Brokaw as the network’s news anchor.

• Radio – Back when this newfangled technology called television first gained prominence, everyone in the industry swore radio would fade away and die. But it didn’t. When the Internet came into view, everyone said radio would fade away and die. But it didn’t. When satellite radio was created, everyone said terrestrial radio would fade away and die, but it didn’t. It may morph and change as the decades pass, but it’s still here, and people who want publicity need to know how to get on talk radio. That Marconi guy was definitely on to something.

• Print – Ever since Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” leaflets were published when our country was being founded, words on the printed page have commanded the attention of the masses and that influence isn’t going away. While you’ll read in a moment about the emergence of the Internet, you have to understand one thing. No matter how big online delivery becomes, the major print outlets will still have a role to play, because those are the organizations that break news. Print is the home of the mainstay of written journalism, the beat reporter. These are the people who know news is happening before anyone else, because they have relationships with newsmakers. When the government wants to leak a story to the press, they don’t go to The Huffington Post, they go to The New York Times or The Washington Post. These organizations still house the best journalists in the business and they are still the one place everyone wants to see their names in print.

• Online – More people get their news online today than in traditional print publications. I could flood you with statistics, but they would be meaningless against the backdrop of the current landscape that most people can see plenty well with their own two eyes. Coffee shops are populated by laptop, iPad and smartphone surfers. Millions of people get their daily news emailed to them every morning by a news outlet or aggregator. Others follow their friends’ Twitter updates to see what news is breaking right now. It used to be that newspaper reporters would sweat out the evening newscast, hoping they didn’t get beat on a news event that took place that day. Today, online news stories appear with a time stamp, so you know just how recently it was posted. It will likely be updated 20 times during the day before the evening newscast hits the air. Online news has not supplanted traditional print outlets with regard to the function of gathering the news, but it sure does deliver it faster and better, and to more people.

• Social Media – This is the newest entry into the media, but it has proven time and again that it is not a fad, but rather one of the foundations of the modern media world. It is a place where people come together not to read the news, but to share and experience it. It is a virtual water cooler where people go to talk about what’s going on, share opinions and join forces to use that information for the purpose of changing the world around them. It is also a place in which someone engaging in a PR campaign can reach out and communicate directly with people, without having to go through an editor or an interviewer. They can act, react and interact with the very people who may one day be a customer or a client.

Twitter and Facebook can also fuel the other elements of the media. People can use social media to drive people toward traditional media coverage about them or they can use social media as a platform to comment about other trends in the news. It’s a two-way communication that has few restrictions and endless applications. It is also fraught with pitfalls, because the anarchy of social media can easily come back to bite someone who engages the audience without understanding the culture of that community. However, while it’s applications in PR are still being explored and developed, its reach is without question. If you are doing PR, and you’re not using social media, you’re sitting on a stool with one leg missing.

That’s the way it all shapes up. The modern-day media is far more complex than it was 30 years ago, but the opportunities are far more boundless than they ever were before. People can start at the bottom of the media food chain and work their way up the ladder, because today there are far more rungs on that ladder than there were decades ago. The media also moves faster than ever, because the competition for attention is far greater than in the days where your choices for news were between Walter Cronkite, Harry K. Smith and David Brinkley.

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.

However, there is one industry that doesn’t close down. It’s the media and here are some statistics to back that up:

• Number of newspapers who publish on Thanksgiving Day – 100 percent
• Number of radio shows airing on Christmas Day – 100 percent
• Number of TV networks broadcasting on New Year’s Day – 100 percent

Okay, maybe I’m being just a little facetious, but I think you get my point. The media doesn’t shut down during the holidays.  The newspaper still arrives at your door every morning and when you turn on the radio or TV, you’ll find all the same shows are on the air.  Admittedly, the holiday staff are the people who drew the short straws – but there they are on the air, behind the scenes, writing stories and generating the news we consume daily, without fail, even during our most cherished holidays.

My point? Where the holidays may be a time when you think it’s okay to be less proactive with your marketing, it’s not a good time to slack off with the media. In fact, with so many people being home for the holidays, it’s the perfect time to be on the air and in the news. And, for that reason, now is a critical time to ramp up for a big media push.

You see, the media people who are planning to take off during the holidays are still responsible for generating content while they are gone. Now, for radio that often means compiling “best of” shows that can air in place of regularly scheduled shows, or it’s simply seeing who at the station draws the short straw to guest host a show over the holidays. Competition is even tighter for TV so many TV hosts actually stick around through the holidays.  All in all, the battle for advertising dollars is so fierce that some shows just stay on the air, business as usual.

The key difference is with print and online news outlets, both short and long leads. They typically take the next few months to plan and prepare that content so it can fill space when they are off enjoying themselves. These folks don’t have to sit in front of a mike or stand in front of a camera, so they can have their pieces sitting in the hopper to run, while they are off making merry.

So if you have a PR campaign in progress, now is the time for the full court press to make the most of the fresh broadcast airtime available before the holidays, and more importantly, to push your print efforts while those guys are planning their holiday copy needs.

And, if you don’t have a current campaign, it’s the perfect time to start. Just know that no one would ever call you a Scrooge if you decided to keep your PR campaign on the job right on through New Year’s.  It’s just smart business.

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.

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.

So relax and learn how you can become an author of a book in just 13 weeks and help propel your business to the next level. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed conducting the interview.

Marsha: Why do you recommend that people write books in order to promote their businesses?

Michael: That’s a great question. We live in an era where the Internet is turning practically every business, service, or consultant into a commodity judged primarily, if not only, on price. In other words, the only way a lot of people are able to get business is by competing on price, and the rule in business is that any business you get by competing on price, you’ll lose when someone undercuts your price. So the question becomes this: how do people stand out in an overcrowded marketplace, where consumers and prospects have access to more information about your competition than ever? How do you make people realize that you are the most trustworthy advisor and that you can solve their problems?

At the end of the day, every website pretty much looks like every other website. They’re all attractive. They’ve all got blogs. They all kind of look the same. So even spending a lot of money on a website, let alone on traditional stand-alone marketing material like brochures, just doesn’t cut it. There’s nothing as powerful as a book to get people’s attention.

With a book, you’re able to demonstrate that you understand like no one else the specific nature of the problems that your prospects face. I always recommend targeting a niche with a book instead of writing for the general public. Write exactly for the people you’re trying to sell to. Show them that you understand their problems and that you offer solutions. In a book, you can lay out everything that you do to solve these problems. The goal is that if your book is generous enough with information, they’ll say, “I could do this on my own, but I would be much better off hiring the author to solve this problem for me.” That’s the result we’re looking for. That’s why you want a book.

Marsha: What can a book do that a good website can’t?

Michael: It really comes down to what I said in the previous answer—help the author stand out from the crowd. Again, everybody’s got a website, but how many of your competitors have books? Probably none. A book is an outstanding “leave behind”—you can’t exactly print out your website and leave it on the prospect’s desk. You can send your book in ahead of you and it’s so impressive that you’ve written a book while everyone else just has a website. You can get radio and TV appearances, as an expert or as a guest, because you’re an author. If you want to be a speaker, you really have to have a book, because the first question people ask you if you want to speak is, “Where is your book?” You can get lucrative speaking engagements, media exposure, a presence on the Internet beyond your own website…all with a book. Not just with a website. Of course you’ve got to have an attractive website, but again, so does everybody else. What’s going to make you unique?

Marsha: Why should someone consider using a ghostwriter to write their book?

Michael: We’re all good at what we do and not everyone has the desire, inclination, or experience to write his or her own book. Typically, for my clients, even for those who could write their own book and might even desire to do so, it’s really not the highest and best use of their time. It might take them, say, a hundred hours over six months to write their book. I can get it done for them in about twelve hours over ninety days. So you’re saving time, because you’re bringing in the expertise of an experienced person—in our case, our company, BusinessGhost, has done more than a hundred books. Then you’re able to use the same time you would have used writing your own book doing things that create the most leverage in your business or practice. It sure isn’t hunching over a computer and typing paragraphs out.

On top of that, a ghostwriter does more than write. A really good one will help you determine exactly what the right book should be for you at this time. You could write a lot of different books and maybe you’ll write many books over the course of your career. But what’s the right, best book right now for you? That’s awfully hard to determine on your own. It really is worth bringing in the guidance of a professional to solve that problem. I’m not sure I would equate ghostwriting and brain surgery, but if I needed brain surgery, God forbid, I wouldn’t’ do it myself. The work of ghostwriters isn’t quite as dramatic as brain surgery, of course. But we do have our clients’ reputations on the line and we have to take that responsibility incredibly seriously.

Marsha: What if someone does a lot of letter writing and blog writing—can they just write their own book, or is a ghostwriter still a good idea?

Michael: In my experience, a book is just a different animal. How do you sustain the interest of a reader over a document that runs not just a few thousand words, but 150 or 200 pages? How do you know how to organize the thing? What goes where? How much of a “call to action” can you include without offending the reader? By the way, how are you going to publish it? These are issues that even people who enjoy the process of writing their own blog pieces, articles, and [why] papers may not have the experience to answer as effectively as if they had brought in someone with specific experience in that field. Books are just different. They’re not just bigger; they are orders of magnitude more complex. I don’t want to make what we do sound like it’s overly important. But it is important. A book has to be right. If it feels like a collection of blog pieces, people are going to say, “This isn’t really a book! If you’re not credible about this, why should I trust you on anything else?”

Marsha: What are some of the things someone should look for in choosing the best ghostwriter for them?

Michael: I had a client in the area of HR who said that the key to hiring anybody is not to focus on the usual things—resume, education, how many years of experience they have, prior job titles. The only really important question is this: “Where have you solved this same problem elsewhere?” In reality, anyone can call himself or herself a ghostwriter. There is no licensing structure. The state doesn’t regulate ghostwriting. You’re on your own if you’re hiring someone, because anyone can “hang out a shingle.”

The thing you’ve got to ask any potential ghostwriter is this: “Where have you solved this problem before?” In this case, the problem is translating the appropriate body of knowledge in the client’s head into a book that will convince a specific niche audience to take a specific action that the client desires that niche audience to take. We’ve done that a hundred times.

Marsha: What are some of the pitfalls people need to avoid in hiring a ghostwriter?

Michael: Lack of experience is one thing. Ironically, not charging enough. Books are a lot like cars, in that you get what you pay for, except that it’s easier to cut corners and get something good with cars than with writers. There really is no such thing as getting a bargain when it comes to hiring a professional writer. If you want a good book, be prepared to write a serious check. On the other hand, you’re going to make so much more money from the book than you ever could have imagined that it’ll be worth it, and sooner than later.

By the way, you don’t need to be a bestseller and you don’t even need to get a deal with a New York publisher to have your book succeed for you. The sole measures of a book are these: has it increased your stature and earned you money? If the writer you’re considering has not written books that have done these things for other people, keep looking. Ask to speak to past clients and learn not just about how the book came out, but how the experience was working with the writer. Some of my brethren are not as professional as they could be. They hold onto that “artiste” mentality and have disdain for anything to do with business. I don’t feel that way at all. Sometimes people say, “Michael, do you ever get writer’s block?” My answer is always the same: “No, because I have writer’s mortgage.”

What’s behind that little joke is the reality that we’re being judged not just by the quality of our product but by the customer service we provide. If people aren’t happy with the experience they have with BusinessGhost, it doesn’t matter how good their book is. So you’ve got to find somebody who can provide both quality service and a quality book. And the only way you’ll know is by checking the writer’s references.

Marsha: How important is it to find a ghostwriter educated in their field of business?

Michael: It’s not as important as you’d think. It’s the writer’s job, essentially, to stand in the shoes of the reader of the book and ask the kinds of questions the reader would ask, if the reader had access to the author. So it’s the client’s job to educate the writer as to who the audience is. That’s my starting point when I work with a new client—we determine exactly who the audience is for the book, what their needs are, what their problems are, what their concerns are and what their fears are. Who are these people? It’s a little like method acting. If I know who I’m representing when I’m doing the interviewing, I can ask the right questions.

I would never take a book on that has a scientific or medical bent, simply because I don’t have a background in those areas. We don’t do technical writing in any form at BusinessGhost. It’s just not our strength. But we’ve worked with business people in so many different fields, including healthcare, real estate, consulting, finance, investing, event planning, sports, broadcasting, coaching, body/mind/spirit—at this point, we’ve done a book in just about every field you can think of.

The one thing you don’t really want to ask your writer is, “Have you done a book exactly like mine?” Chances are no one has. What you want is an individual who has enough of a business background to grasp the core of what you are trying to get across in the book. I have a law degree from Columbia Law School and I’ve been running my own business now for more than seventeen years. So I’ve got a pretty good idea of what it takes to run a successful business and that helps me understand where my clients are coming from as they run theirs.

Marsha: How does the process typically work for a busy executive or professional?

Michael: My role as ghostwriter is to have the smallest possible footprint on my client’s schedule. I learned the hard way that busy people just don’t have time to spend hour after hour chatting over a glass of wine on their private jet with their writer. That’s not the real world. In fact, I like to say, “If you’ve got enough time to talk with me, you probably aren’t busy enough to need a book.”

To best answer your question I can tell you how I work, which is unique, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect how other ghostwriters work. First, I personally work with the client in order to come up with the table of contents for the book. This involves us discussing the audience for the book, the action we want that audience to take, the body of knowledge in the author’s head that would convince that group of individuals to take that specific action, if only they knew the author knew that stuff! That body of knowledge then becomes chunked down into the table of contents. We can typically work through this process in an hour on the phone. Indeed, there are many clients of mine I’ve never met face to face and we’ve done all our work on the phone.

After that initial hour, all we need is an hour a week. In an hour a week, we can do an interview that would serve as the raw material for each successive chapter. So you know that Tuesdays at 9:00, you’re talking to your ghostwriter about chapter one this week, chapter two next week and so on. Our schedules are flexible so that when our clients need to move meetings, which often happens, we can accommodate them. As long as we keep up that basic pace of an hour a week, we can generate a chapter within ten to twelve days of that hour-long conversation. So you’ve got chapter one in your inbox ten to twelve days after the interview on chapter one. You can give us guidance, which we can apply as the writing goes forward, even with chapters two and three—so that by the time you’re getting those chapters, the book is already essentially in the second-draft phase instead of you getting a big pile of papers that doesn’t sound anything like you when the manuscript is delivered, which often happens with other writers.

So what’s nice about our process is that in an hour a week, you can just do a “file dump” of everything you’ve ever known, thought, believed, expected, case histories, war stories, whatever, about a given topic and you don’t even have to organize it in your head to deliver it to us. That’s our job. You give us the hour and we can give you a twelve to seventeen-page chapter within ten to twelve days. And since most of the books we do are under 200 pages, because people like shorter books today, we can have the whole writing and editing process done within about four months… and it only takes a client an hour a week. It’s a lot of work for us, but not for the client. And that’s how it should be.

Marsha: What final product should someone expect when hiring a ghostwriter?

Michael: It shouldn’t be a pile of pages! The final deliverable should be a beautiful book that celebrates you, your business, your service, your product, your ideas, or whatever you are bringing to the marketplace. The book has to be brilliantly written and extremely attractive. As they used to say on that old commercial, anything less… would be uncivilized!

Marsha: Michael, thank you so much for your time and for sharing this valuable information for our readers!

But, I am profoundly proud to say that I am not the only expert. At EMSI we have a team of experts and quite frankly, this team is one of the best I have had in my 21 years of running this business.  The work they do on a daily basis is phenomenal.

I thought I would introduce you to them, one by one, over the summer months, and allow them to tell you about what they do every day to book interviews on radio and TV and obtain print coverage. I believe it can be truly enlightening and helpful for you to learn how they overcome obstacles and meet challenges in order to consistently arrange media day in, day out, week in and week out.

The first person I interviewed for this project was Lisa Hess, who joined EMSI more than six years ago.  She’s our TV Campaign Manager and her job is to book our clients as guests and expert news commentators on local and national TV programs. She books an average of about 20 TV interviews a month on national and local shows all over the country.  She has placed guests on shows like Fox & Friends, Live with Regis and Kelly, CBS Early Show, CNN and The 700 Club to name a few, as well as many top local and regional shows.

Lisa is smart, savvy and as relentless as they come. She knows what makes producers tick and as a result is one of the most prolific media bookers I have ever seen.

I asked her about her job, her daily routines and some of the challenges she faces on a regular basis. These are her answers.

Walk us through a typical day in the life in your job.

I usually get in by 8:25 a.m. and go through my emails and answer anything urgent.  Then, I go into our staff meeting where I have a chance to discuss my plan for the day, based on the campaigns I have in the works, and review new pitches that have to get written in order to have a successful week.

Right after the meeting, I check out news headlines to see if any of our national TV clients match what is going on in the news. If they do, I contact the client immediately, asking for their comments, so that we can put together a pitch and get it out by noon at the latest. Any later than noon and I’ll miss the window to get it in front of producers.

Next I follow up on any media responses that might have come in overnight and answer any urgent client emails. After that, I choose which clients to work on for local TV appearances, based on the time zone and the dates the client is to be in that town. If I’m pitching them to a city I have not previously worked with, I create a list of producers and shows and then email blast the pitch. In this way, I balance the incoming responses for the day with new pitches flowing out to producers and making phone calls as needed.

When you’re pursuing local TV appearances for clients in specific city’s, how do you approach it?

When pursuing local TV appearances in the top 100 markets, you can expect there to be about 200 contacts per city. Now, this takes into account everyone in the production food chain, including hosts, anchors, reporters, producers, executive producers, assignment editors and more. The reason I reach out to all these different people is because just about anyone in that chain can recommend a guest for a segment. Also, you never know what the different producers and reporters are working on, and you could get lucky and pitch them on exactly the right guest at the right time. For instance, if a reporter is working on a story about new methods for job hunting, and you’re a job coach who contacts that reporter, you might be a perfect fit for that segment.

Is there a difference between pitching local TV producers and national TV producers?

Absolutely. Local producers look for things that are light and fluffy and guests that provide information or tips that their viewers can make use of in their daily lives. For example, an expert who can offer unique ways to save money on your food bill is more attractive to a local TV producer than an expert who wants to comment on the breaking economic news of the day.

On the other hand, most of the national producers we deal with are interested in general commentary on the economy, politics, a wide range of consumer trends and top national news story’s. Celebrities, when we have a story related to them, are also good for national producers. They also love experts who can comment on breaking news. In the past, we had a former military pilot who had written a book on crisis management as a client and he happened to come on board right when “Sully” Sullenberg made his famous landing on the Hudson River. We booked him consistently for about two weeks to comment on that story.

Another recent example is a gentleman who came to us with a memoir about being kidnapped by his estranged father as a young child and who was terribly abused during six months in captivity. His expertise was unique and we had great success with booking him on shows that were running stories on both the Elizabeth Smart case and the Jaycee Dugard case. When you have those opportunities, it’s like capturing lightning in a bottle. It hits hard, but lasts for a short period of time, depending on the developments in the news cycle.

Tell us your favorite recent placement and how you got it.

I would have to say it was scoring a two-part interview for one of our clients with Regis and Kelly, only it wasn’t actually Regis and Kelly who wound up doing the interview. As it turned out, Neil Patrick Harris was subbing for Regis that week, which worked out fine because he conducted a wonderful interview.

After a nice little wave of coverage based on an earlier pitch that garnered us bookings on CNN International, Fox Business and a few other national shows, we decided to switch gears and come up with a new angle. We decided on a “job makeover” pitch and fleshed out the idea with new and unique tips for scoring a new job combined with some fashion and style tips on how to dress for the big interview. Our client had a friend who was a stylist and she was going to take part in the segment. So we sent it out to the larger national shows, including Regis and Kelly. Regis’ producer responded and asked if our client could do the segment alone, just on tips for jobs – how to find them, how to get them. But she needed a better plan for the segment to present to her boss, the executive producer. So I came up with the idea while driving home from work that day about a segment that revolved around the do’s and don’ts of getting a new job. The client and I brainstormed a bit the next morning with our strategist and we came up with a really great segment, complete with tips, statistics and graphics – everything the producer would need to not only sell the segment, but produce it, as well.

The way the segment aired really made use of all our work. Harris and Kelly sat on chairs to the right and our client sat facing them.  On the back wall of the set was a giant screen, where they projected our bullet-pointed tips as they interviewed our client. It was a little bizarre watching all the work we had done in our office being broadcast on national TV, with very little editing from the Regis and Kelly production team. It proved to us that the best way we can serve our clients is to be of service to the media. When we can make their jobs easier by presenting them with good material and a good segment that’s going to be interesting to their viewers, the producers will keep coming back to us for more.

(Here’s a link to that interview: www.emsincorporated.com/live-regis-kelly-january-7-2011-dr-michael-woody-woodward/.)

What’s your advice for someone looking to do a TV PR campaign?

Keep in mind a few key concepts. First, doing one or two local or national interviews is not going to instantly catapult you into the spotlight. It is a process, a ladder that has to be climbed one rung at a time. Second, it’s not just about the booking. It’s about the execution. Getting booked on TV is only half the solution. You have to be really good when you get on the air. So, regardless whether you’ve done dozens or TV interviews before or you’re a total novice, you should be open to the idea of media training. We do that with all our TV clients, including you, Marsha, if I recall correctly.

Finally, when you get on TV, don’t sell. Educate. People fast-forward through commercials because they hate being sold all the time. If you try to sell in your segment, they’ll fast-forward through you, too. If you educate and provide the viewers with information that can help them in their lives, they’ll be far more inclined to buy what you’re selling. The TV camera does more than put a few extra pounds on you. It can spot a fake and it can also make someone who is genuine look truly sincere. Just be yourself and let your expertise be your main tool on the air.

I’m sure you’ll agree the latter is a far more desirable approach to meeting new people at a cocktail party and the same holds true when conversing on a social networking site. I learned this concept from social media guru, David Meerman Scott, best-selling author of the #1 bestseller The New Rules of Marketing & PR when I interviewed him a few years ago.

While Social Networking started with no commercial intent, it has become a fact of life for many businesses who are engaged in Social Media Marketing (SMM). Commercial concerns are becoming a big part of Facebook and Twitter more and more each day. People use the social networks as part of their social lives with the commercial aspect of it being only slightly relevant.

The companies that are successful with SMM recognize that the first word is social and how they “socialize” is crucial. They use their status updates and tweets in a non-commercial manner, providing information and interesting tidbits that are related to their expertise without pushing a sales message. The important thing to remember about Social Media Marketing in general is that it’s interactive. That means when you send out a tweet or a blog, people can respond in a public forum. So, someone tweeting about how upset they are that their favorite contestant on American Idol got voted off the show knows they’ll get feedback from people who may agree or disagree with them. The same thing holds true for commercial tweets. If you send out something about your company or yourself, you’re inviting fair, as well as unfair, comment and criticism. The social networking sites are not your personal Web page, where you get to edit the content. The space is home to millions of people with all their various opinions; so if you’re not careful, you may wind up with a lot of negative chatter as a response to your business outreach.

To help you avoid some of the more common pitfalls of SMM, I’ve put together a few tips on how to use this strategy in a productive way that gets results.

Don’t Sell – People mostly use social networking sites to interact with friends and associates. If you tweet that people should buy your new book that was just released, you’re opening yourself up to negative responses for invading this social space with a commercial. It’s not like a Tupperware party where people are expected to buy what you’re selling. Treating it as such could cause you to lose followers and friends as a result.

Inform and Entertain – People will think more positively about you and your company if you use the social media connection to inform and even entertain. Let’s say you own a scuba shop, and you want to use these sites to promote your business. Don’t tweet about a sale on scuba supplies. Instead, tweet what the boating and diving conditions will be for the weekend, and include a link to a blog or informational listing on your Web site for more information on it. People who are divers will use that information to decide whether they want to dive that weekend and many may need supplies. Now they recognize and respect your shop as a resource, and will be far more inclined to stop by to fill up their oxygen tanks before their trip.

Respect the Culture – The culture of Social Media is not unlike an Internet forum or message board. The delivery mechanism is the same, but many people engage in lively and serious debate, so think of ways to engage people in those discussions without painting yourself in a negative light. A good rule of thumb is that if you wouldn’t say it at a social gathering in person, then chances are it wouldn’t be appropriate online either. Keep your updates useful, informative and neutral. People will respect the fact that you respect them.

It’s Not a Numbers Game – This is not a direct response medium, so tweeting five times a day with new information may annoy people more than help them. Confine your communications to a reasonable number, based on the groups you belong to. Focus on the quality of your communication instead of the quantity.

Capture Your Audience – Providing quality information that your friends and followers enjoy can cause them to want more information from you. So, give people an opportunity to get it by setting up a free newsletter or a blog that they can opt into. This allows you to maintain an ongoing relationship so that when they are ready to buy what you have to offer they will remember you.

SMM is a great way to build relationships with new associates as well as potential customers and clients. When used properly, you can build a huge following of people who come to know you as an expert in your field. It’s a forum that will pay enormous dividends for years to come.

The problem with this strategy is that in order to reach the consumer, you must first interest the editor who holds the key to running your story. They are the gatekeepers. The disconnect for most people is they think writing and distributing numerous press releases chocked full of sales messages will get them the coverage they’re hoping for. And, it’s this primary misunderstanding that leads to the failure of more PR campaigns than I care to think about.

When I speak to groups, the principal message I try to get them to understand is that editors do not want to be viewed as a messenger for those trying to sell things. They see their role as providers of valuable and newsworthy information for their readers. So, if they’re hammered with press releases that have a sales type message, the two most likely results are either no response at all (they delete the release without reading it) or an email in return that reads, “Sounds nice. Let me direct you to our advertising manager.”

In order to get the positive response you desire, you have to provide quality content that’s meaningful to a publication’s audience. For example, press releases that focus on tips for their readers from your position as an expert not only help the journalist do their job better but it also positions you as a valued resource. And in today’s print media world, when so many news organizations are short staffed and few releases even get read, those that provide the gatekeepers with valuable information are the ones that win that coveted print space.

Another misguided strategy I’ve seen (that results from this same disconnect) is using the myriad of free press release distribution services – or even those who charge a nominal fee – to distribute copious press releases to the media. These organizations sell their services with the justification that even if you don’t get a lot of press, their service will get it plenty of Google recognition. My attitude, to be a little uncharacteristically blunt, is “so what?” A Google ranking on a press release that never received news coverage is not a valuable thing. It lacks the third-party verification that comes with legitimate press coverage.

I know at this point that I may sound a bit like a broken record, repeating myself about issues like this over and over again, but it’s only because I hear it over and over again in my daily communications with people seeking PR for themselves or their companies. There is no substitute for coverage from the legitimate media. No SEO, no SEM, no Google-driven press release scheme as a side door to obtain legitimate media works. Well executed PR gets press and nothing matches the power of real media coverage from real media outlets. Anything else just isn’t worth the time or the resources.