First Word

Sometimes clients have strange ideas about what public relations (PR) will do for their company, product or service. The primary expectation is that with enough reviews and coverage for their books, in this case, that this exposure will result in a landslide of sales. Here is what PR will without a doubt do no matter what. If you get placements, reviews, interviews, features in print, broadcast and radio, you will gain exposure and increase visibility for your book and platform. Those two things will absolutely happen. Sometimes (and not all of the time) this exposure results in increased sales. Other times, it does not. My book Second Bloom received adequate exposure in regional press and a little national exposure. It did gain the recognition. When I would mention its name, many people began to recognize it and me. But it never triggered a best seller. The book A Feast at the Beach has had very good exposure mostly in national media, and it has, off and on, triggered great sales. I...

I have had the pleasure of working on two entertaining books - Smash and Vanity Circus. I've also talked to other comedic writers. For a while, I did nothing but comedic writing for my blog, but then I shifted a bit toward a lot of information-based marketing. If you don't know what is information-based marketing, it's definitely worth exploring. What I found is that you have to sprinkle the humor lightly when relevant but stick to more serious information on the whole. How did I make such a discovery? Well, I watch my analytics. I had what I'll call Blog 1.0 out there. And after about a year, I noticed the blog stats crashed a bit from 600 average page views down to between 100-200. I found this drop slightly alarming. In the blog 2.0, I began different tactics, mixing up the fun with the valuable content, and then I watched another shift where the stats exploded -- and in one day they jumped up over 80%. What is the lesson? Well, you can sprinkle a little fun here and...