Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound, has a list of 13 Press Release Topics When There’s Nothing Newsworthy. Here are 6 of my favorites:

1. Create Your Own Holiday

Create your own day, week or month of the year, or your own holiday, at Chases Calendar of Events. The listing is free. You can then use that holiday as a springboard to even more publicity.

2. Make a Prediction

Predict something that ties into your area of expertise—or not. Predict when gasoline prices, the stock market or interest rates will rise and fall. For fun, predict who will win the Super Bowl or when the first snowfall will occur in your area. Predict the winner of local or national elections.

3. Write Tips That Tie into an Upcoming Holiday

Professional orgnizers can write about how to stay organized during the Christmas holidays. A child safety expert can offer tips on how to keep kids safe during fireworks season on the Fourth of July.

4.  Identify A Trend You’re Seeing in Your Business or Industry

You don’t even have to think very hard to identify a trend you’re seeing. How has your customers’ behavior changed the way you do business? What’s happening with your orders? Is your nonprofit serving more people in a particular age group or income level? If you want to cheat, Google “Top trends in the (fill in the blank) industry” and write about one of those.

5.  Comment on Breaking News

This one’s easy. The news can tie into your business or industry—or not. If you’re an expert who welcomes interview requests for radio talk shows, say so in the release. See 6 ways to tie your pitch to breaking news for PR and publicity.

6. Explain How to Solve a Problem

Press releases offering tips and advice are often the very best for pulling traffic to your website. That’s becauase you can dazzle readers with your expertise, help them solve their problem, and then link to a website where they can find more information about a product or service you sell that can help them even more.

Reprinted from “The Publicity Hound’s Blog” and “The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week,” an ezine featuring tips, tricks and tools for generating free publicity. Subscribe at http://www.publicityhound.com/ and receive by email the handy cheat sheet “89 Reasons to Send a Press Release.”

Thanks to the digital age, the traditional press release has gone high-tech. Combining content with visual and interactive elements will set your communications apart. Here are three twists on the traditional press release that can help you cut through the clutter and stand out among your competitors.

Social Media News Release

The social media news release (also known as multimedia news release) is designed for our online world. This format allows you to integrate the traditional elements of a press release such as headline, content, facts, quotes and boilerplate along with images, audio, video and links to your website and social media channels. Not only is this a great tactic to reach journalists are increasingly dependent on the Web for story ideas and research, it’s also an effective way to attract bloggers, customers and the general public. If you’re new to this concept, I recommend signing up for a PitchEngine account. PitchEngine offers users a one-page form that you fill out. Tell your story, add images, video, keywords, links  . . . even your own customized tweet. When you’re done, hit Publish and share with the world for free. PitchEngine does offer paid premium distribution services. PRWeb and PR Newswire also offer SMNR or MNR creation and distribution services for a fee.

Access, Reach and Connect

Multivu/PR Newswire recently came out with a nifty product called the Access, Reach and Connect (ARC) engagement platform that distributes  multimedia and social media content across multiple digital channels. The ARC platform lets you engage with media, bloggers and target audiences using an accessible and interactive format distributed via PR Newswire’s network. Developed as a free-standing, interactive media player and landing page, the platform offers the ability to combine and distribute video, multimedia, photos, coupons and promotional content.  As users interact with the platform, it analyzes online activity analyses; monitors real-time impressions, views and streams; and monitors and tracks social media activity. The downside? It can be a pricey option, though worth the investment for the right campaign.

Infographics

While I can produce a decent pencil sketch when pressed, I wouldn’t consider myself terribly artistic. However,  I can appreciate the beauty of good design, a stunningly composed photo and a neatly packaged magazine spread. That’s why I am absolutely loving infographics. An infographic is the perfect combination of beauty and intelligence, a compelling and engaging tool to communicate with media and customers. And in case you hadn’t notice, infographics are taking the Web by storm. This can be an amazingly viral PR tool to illustrate survey results, tell people about a process, demonstrate a company’s growth, predict trends, jazz up technical information, and so on. Journalists love stories rich with data. Make their lives easier and package that data in an infographic. If you have limited time and resources, mention to your media contact that he or she can take your information to create their own infographic. (As a working mom, I especially enjoyed this infographic created by Circle of Moms.)

Have you tried any of these tactics? How did it go?

The holiday hustle is officially on. And “write the family holiday newsletter” is glaring at you from the top of your “to-do” list. Relatives near and far love to receive your family newsletter every year. But it takes a good amount of time and commitment to sit down and pull it all together doesn’t it?

Here are five tips to get your holiday creativity humming:

1. Consider your audience. I know, I lead off with this one a lot. That’s because this is probably the single most important tip for any kind of writing you do. You’re not writing a brag book or a year in review. The goal here is to help make others feel closer to your family.  Think about who will be receiving the letter. If they were sitting across the kitchen table from you, what would the conversation be about? Pick out some of these topics so you can create an experience for your readers.
2. Enlist the help of your family. What does your husband or wife want to say? Your kids? You may want to talk about how little Sophie started kindergarten this year. Sophie on the other hand won’t stop talking about the town fair. Let her talk about the highlight of her year, and capture it in her own words.
3. Keep it brief. Family is a naturally favorite topic for many of us. Let’s be honest with ourselves for just a quick second though. Sometimes going on and on (and on) about our family can get a little boring for the person listening or reading on the other end. A holiday newsletter that’s thoughtful, charming,  humorous and BRIEF will be more memorable than pages upon pages about the minutiae of our lives. General rule of thumb? Try to keep it to about a page to a page and a half.
4. Have fun. Write from your heart. Use your own voice. Don’t use a letter writing template that strips out all the personality. No one is grading you on your letter so just let ‘er rip.
5. Get a second opinion. Or third, fourth, fifth. Gather up the family and read your letter out loud. Then let them each read it to themselves. Ask them if they want to change any items that reference them. Also enlist them as your personal proofreaders too. You don’t want to run the risk of embarrassing the whole family with a misspelled word.

Still not feeling the holiday newsletter love? Wish you knew someone who could write it for you? Ah hem, you do. And I can make it as painless as possible for you with a quick questionnaire and a brief phone call. If you own a business and you’d like help with a holiday newsletter that you send to your customers, I can help with that too.  So put in your order today because I’m only writing a limited number.

Now I’m off to write my own holiday letter. Wish me luck!

P.S. Already have your holiday letter written? I’m happy to give it a FREE critique (I’ll be nice, I promise), and I’ll proofread it too. My gift to you.

How would you like access to 60 free (or almost-free) tools to help you navigate the world of social media and publicity?

If you have a tight budget and are looking for ways to save time, these tools will come in handy. Sure, you could spend hours tracking them down on the web yourself, but I’m willing to bet you don’t have that kind of time. Fortunately, I know of way you can learn about them in just an hour.

Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound, will present these tools, and demonstrate some of them, during a webinar called “60 Tips in 60 Minutes: Free (or Practically Free) Tips, Tricks, Tools & Tutorials for Publicity & Social Media.” The webinar is at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, October 17. If the time is inconvenient, sign up anyway because you’ll get the video replay. You’ll also receive a special report on how to find influential people who can lend their names to whatever you’re promoting.

Register for the webinar today. And if you think your followers would benefit, feel free to share this with them on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. If you register and have success using these tools, I’d love to hear about it so please leave me a comment here.

P.S. I always learn something new from Joan’s webinars and I’m especially looking forward to this one!

Full disclosure: I will earn a commission from your registration.

Getting your business, product, service or expert voice in a blog has just as much, and sometimes more, cache than getting featured in traditional news or trade media. So how do you earn that coveted virtual ink?

Whether you’re responding to a query or contacting a blogger cold, these key points can make or break your pitch:

Read the Blog!

This is so important, I’m going to say it again. Read the blog! It’s OK if you’re not familiar with the blog, which often happens if you’re responding to a query. However, before you send off an email in response to a guest blog post opportunity, for example, take the time to read the blog and learn about the blogger before pitching them.

Make it Easy

Be gracious, be humble and most of all be helpful. This is a credo I follow whether I’m pitching an assignment desk editor or a blogger. It’s professional and it gets results. Yes, media is a channel and a tool to get your message out into the world, but be sure to treat the people behind the tool with respect. In fact, if you think they are here to help you, practice thinking the reverse. You are here to help them. If you’re helpful and low-maintenance, you’ll be rewarded 10 fold. Be a diva and kiss future opportunities goodbye.

Here are three ways to be helpful:

1. Offer additional sources — If you work with contractors or vendors that relate to your pitch, include them too. Sure, you end up sharing the spotlight with someone else but you help round out a blog post (or news story) plus your colleagues will likely return the favor.
2. Provide photos or graphics — A word of caution: Avoid sending large image or graphic files willy-nilly. Send an email with a description first and request the best way to deliver what you have. If they are large files, you may need to post to an FTP site or send them on a CD/DVD rather than bogging down someone’s email inbox.
3. Write your own author’s box — If you’re doing a guest post (or a by-lined article for traditional print media), write you own short bio. The author’s box appears at the end (sometimes the beginning) of your post. Write it yourself to save the blogger’s time and to control your unique selling position.

 Follow Directions

If a blogger or editor wants 300 words, don’t send them 400. A few words more probably isn’t a big deal but don’t push your luck. Be respectful of length limits and deadlines. If you see or discuss specifics like these, repeat them back in your correspondence to assure the blogger or editor that you understand, and will follow, their parameters.

Offer Valuable Content

It’s not enough that you, your business or your expertise is awesome. You have to package it in a way that helps a blogger’s audience. This goes back to reading the blog, because that will help you identify the challenges unique to the blog’s audience. How does what you do help them?

 REAL LIFE EXAMPLE

I recently responded to a request in Blogger LinkUp for guest posts on freelance writing. Here’s the initial query:

Name: Anna
Blog or Website URL: http://freelancewritingsource.com

Need posts on freelance writing (tips, writing site reviews or anything general)

I need at least 300 words. Two external links are allowed that preferably point to websites in related niches. No duplicate content.

Admittedly, I was unfamiliar with this freelance writing blog. I thought this could be a good marketing opportunity, as well as an opportunity to add a sample to my portfolio. However, I had to read the blog first to confirm its credibility, confirm I had something valuable to offer and identify exactly what that offering would be.

Here’s my response, followed by an explanation of my numbered notes:

1. If you’re responding to a query, say where you saw the query
2. Mention a specific blog category if possible and how you can help the blog’s readers
3. Pitch a hook or headline and a brief summary of the post; you can refine this later, just don’t deviate from it drastically
4. Include a brief overview of why you’re qualified to guest post, be interviewed, provide a quote, etc.
5. Say clearly what you will deliver and repeat back any specifics

The result?

Anna published DIY Website on a Dime and has invited me to contribute again in the future. Follow these tips and you may become a go-to source or frequent guest blogger.

Here’s a case for investing in a good copy editor. Spell check is not a fail safe when it comes to editing any piece of writing, and its auto-correct function could get you into a predicament with certain words. Take a look at this ESPN app that lists Boston Red Sex [sic] in the MLB wild card race. Oops!

Use spell check for a basic surface edit only, then have a copy editor (or a friend with solid grammar skills) look at your work. Have you had any embarrassing misspellings that you’re willing to share?

Special thanks to my dear friend Jen Borreson at Fresh Roasted Graphics for sharing this blooper.

I love pledges. Speaking from experience, they are a great way to generate publicity and have fun doing it. So when I read about Smith & Wollensky’s Pledge Alliance campaign, I just had to share. Throughout most of October, the Midtown Manhattan steakhouse will remove the name Smith from everything and replace it with the name of a randomly chosen guest everyday. All you have to do is pledge to make Smith & Wollensky your steakhouse. What a fun way to encourage loyalty, honor customers and get diners in the door!

Have you taken a pledge? Let me know what you pledged to do and why.