So, now I’m Google Analytics IQ Certified! I’m very pleased to have passed the exam, and I’m even more pleased that the certification lasts for 18 months! Many, many thanks to Perry Drake for a really great class that gave me a much better appreciation for what a bit of code can do for an organization’s marketing efforts, and access to a profile that made it possible to really see what Google Analytics is capable of doing. My Meetup group is small, and I only added the tracking code about two months ago, so using just that account would have been pretty insufficient.

In the past 8 months, I’ve taken four online self-study courses to improve my skills with WordPress and HTML, learn CSS and XHTML, and taken three classes on my way towards earning a Certificate in Digital Media Marketing through New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies.

This all ties in to my belief that continual professional development is essential to remaining employable and continuing to attract clients. While I’ve been on a bit of tear this year seeking “official” resume builders, it’s always been important to me that I develop and use new skills in order to grow professionally (doing the exact same work for 40+ years sounds incredibly depressing).

I begin another NYU class in February. In the meantime, I’m considering Hootsuite University. (Anyone gone through it?) And also thinking about learning a bit about HTML 5. Or maybe just take a break.

What will you be doing in 2012 to update your skills?

Be prepared to explain your background, your project/service/product, and provide links to any supporting material you can find, as well as give an idea what you are hoping to hire someone to do publicity-wise. I say hope, because sometimes, for example, potential clients with no prior TV experience “hope” to hire someone to get them on national TV, only to discover that in order to get on those programs, guests are expected to have prior TV experience or an extensive history of speaking in front of audiences. So, sometimes what a publicist thinks is possible is different than what a client initially hoped for, and that’s just fine!

At that point, if a publicist is too busy to take on another client, she will likely thank you for your interest and then refer you to someone else who may be a good fit. Those who get back to you will want several things:

A sample of your work or product, or detailed information about the service you offer. Recognize this is just the cost of doing business, and get some samples and pay the shipping fees. If you’re product involves trade secrets, you’ll have to look in non-disclosure agreements or something similar. If you’re an author with a publishing house, don’t assume your publisher has extra galleys and will be willing to ship them out to numerous publicists. You can ask and the answer might be yes, but don’t assume. (The answer could also be no. Galleys are expensive.) Some publicists may be willing to evaluate your book from a PDF, but don’t count on it. I never liked doing that, so I never did. I don’t think I’m able to properly evaluate a book from a computer screen.

Your view of the market. Often times a client has an insider’s perspective that a publicist could never have.

Your background. What makes you qualified to speak on a particular subject? Do not send a 20 page CV. Doing so will probably result in the publicist suddenly becoming too busy to take on another client, because he has just seen that for a very simple request, he now has to digest 20 pages to get the one page of information he requested.

What kind of marketing support is already planned? Be wary of anyone who doesn’t ask up front what plans are already in place. An ethical professional is not interested in a client spending money on things the client doesn’t need to spend money on.

Your goals. This is really one of the most important questions any publicist asks potential clients. Goals determine strategy, which informs what tactics to employ, what media to target, and where to spend time and resources. It’s essential to understand what a client hopes to gain from a publicity campaign – whether it’s sales, increasing her profile within a particular industry, or even just the bragging rights to say “I’ve been interviewed by 50 radio programs across the country.” If a publicist doesn’t ask what the goal is, a publicist can’t develop a plan that she believes is most likely to help a client reach that goal.

Budget. This is a tricky question, since it can seem like the real question is how much can I get away with charging you? if not handled properly. I’ve been the publicist working in-house trying to hire out something as small as a radio campaign, and had this question asked of me. Not only have I read lots about negotiation working for a business publisher, but I’ve also worked for a training organization for quite some time, so I’ve had some training in negotiation skills. I know not to give a number. But there are instances when it makes sense to ask, especially when you’re an agency or consultant dealing with a small business or author. If someone is interested in dropping many tens of thousands of dollars (rare) on a full-on multi-faceted national campaign, with national and local print, TV, a 30-city radio tour, an online and social media campaign, and I don’t think that’s realistic, I have to tell them that. And, if I do think it’s realistic, but I know it’s not a one-person job, I have to consider partnering-up, contracting out, or referring a potential client to an agency with more resources than I have. Also, many of my clients have been small business people with limited budgets, so in order to really create a plan that was going to get them the biggest bang for their buck, I needed a sense of what they were looking to spend (and there were instances where I still came in with a proposal under the monthly budget, because I thought the project warranted a highly targeted approach).

Once the publicists you are in talks with have gathered all this information, and had an opportunity to evaluate your project/product, as well as do some preliminary research, they’ll write up a proposal. Then it’s up to you to decide which proposal (and publicist) seems like the right fit!

Earlier: Where to Find a Book Publicist

Why? Because I don’t use LinkedIn to see your Twitter feed. If I want to follow you on Twitter, I’ll follow you on Twitter. I’m also not interested in your Foursquare check-ins (why is your Foursquare automatically linked to Twitter, which is feeding in to your LinkedIn account?), or most of what you’re sharing on Twitter. At least, not on LinkedIn.

I go to LinkedIn to see information relevant to my business network. New jobs. Promotions. Recommendations received. Recommendations made. Connections made. Groups joined. Updates relevant to the individual’s business network. A really, really interesting white paper shared. Each social network has a different audience and a different purpose. LinkedIn is about business. Twitter is also about business but is much more frequently updated, with a few personal touches thrown in, and I mostly follow people/brands who use it for business purposes.  Foursquare is about location. I’m only going to connect to people I really, really wouldn’t mind seeking me out to say hello at some bar I checked in to listen to some live music. I’m also aware that my followers on Twitter probably really, really don’t care that I checked in to IHOP. Plus, if you link Foursquare -> Twitter -> LinkedIn, what impression would a potential client, recruiter, HR professional, hiring manager, boss, or any other professional connection have of you if for some reason – like a friend visiting and a very busy social calendar – you check-in to four bars in two days?

I don’t think automation is necessarily bad. This blog goes out via Twitter, LinkedIn and FB, but I only post once or twice a month. However, automation without thought to your audience and purpose is bad. Check your broadcast settings. Think about what you want to share and where you want to share it. Think about whether it’s appropriate to why people are following you. Also think about why someone would follow on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, if all the content is exactly the same. If you want to streamline, look in to using Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, which allow you to pull in multiple accounts and simplifies posting, while also making it easy to tailor your message to the network.

What are you social media pet peeves? What drives you the most batty?

Outside of LinkedIn, the first thing to consider is your subject area. It’s rare (read: impossible) to find a publicist with a specialty in “everything.” Even the larger PR agencies outsource to freelancers when a project comes in that requires a specialization current staff don’t have. You don’t just want to find a good “book” publicist, you want to find a good book publicist with experience in your subject area. The reason being that a phenomenal publicist with loads of experience in cookbooks and paranormal teen romance isn’t necessarily the best publicist for a book on Jewish studies, feminism, or business topics. (Or maybe he is, if you’re on a budget and are willing to accept a learning curve in exchange for a discounted rate. After all, what makes someone good in media relations in one area will make them good in another area, if they have the necessary knowledge.)

I think the key to finding the publicist that’s right for you is talking to people who work in publishing. An agent, editor, copy editor, in-house publicist, authors in a writer’s group, etc. Get recommendations. Ask anyone with any experience in publishing – traditional or self – if they know anyone, or if they know anyone who knows anyone. Talk to the publicists. Sometimes a publicist can’t consider taking on another client or just doesn’t have the experience in an book’s category to offer a proper campaign, but will suggest other publicists that will fit the prospect’s needs.

“Book publicist” may be the worst possible keyword phrase for SEO (with 7 million sites returned on a Google search), but you’ll find good agencies and publicists in the top results (it probably just depends how many pages you’re willing to search through). “Freelance book publicist” only results in 258,000 pages, and the top  result is a list compiled by The Book Publicity Blog in 2009. It’s not comprehensive, and there are many talented independent publicists available since publishing shed so many jobs in the last couple of years that aren’t represented on the list, but it’s a good source.

What publicists have you worked with and loved? What resources did you find helpful when looking for a publicist?

Hopefully anyone who would buy and send someone a layoff card would have enough sense to know that a heck of a lot more support than a piece of paper is needed when someone loses their livelihood through no fault of their own. But I think out-of-sight is out-of-mind for a lot of people, so I can imagine for some the support ending at “I sent him/her a sympathy card.”

Here’s what I found (or would have found) helpful when I lost my job back in the midst of what everyone was calling “the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.” (How’s that for striking terror?):

Friends & Family

Invite him over for dinner. If the person laid off has a family, this may be less of an issue. But for a single person, the isolation that comes from no longer having an office to go to or colleagues to talk to during the day coupled with no one to talk to at the end of the day can be overwhelming. An invitation to a meal also helps alleviate the financial cost of preparing a meal, and it will probably be a better meal than your friend can afford right now (at one point, I got my monthly food spending down to less than $100. It was necessary, but it sure wasn’t healthy.)

Include her in social activities. Make it a point. Going to the movies? Ask your friend to come along. Going bowling? Invite your pal, even if she doesn’t want to actually bowl. Going to a nursery to pick out plants for your garden? Ask your friend to help you by offering an opinion. You know your friends. Be mindful what they would like or dislike. But remember, sometimes it’s just about being around others.

Don’t let him buy his own drink. This is one thing I never had a problem with. I always figured anyone offering to pay for a drink or a meal would push back if I insisted on paying my own way. Afterall, I’m sure they’d like to think people would do the same for them. A gracious “thank you,” is the appropriate response. But, some people will push back. Stay firm. As I told a friend who lost her job after I lost mine but when I had picked up some consulting work, she did it for me when I was going through a hard time and would do it again, so what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t do the same?

Go visit her. My experience was that a lot of people didn’t realize that even the cost of mass transit was too steep on a limited budget. In New York City, it costs $2.50 for a one-way fare on the subway or buses. That’s was $5 spent on every outing that I wasn’t able to walk to (and I made some long walks to avoid the loss of 5 precious dollars). For people in areas without mass transit, their transportation costs include not only the price of gas, but car insurance. So, make a point of coming to see your friend. Happen to be in her neighborhood? Give her a call, and see if she wants to go for a walk. Got a DVD from Netflix she’d like? Use it as an excuse to see your friend (she probably got rid of her cable, so it will be welcome on more than one level). And bring a couple of sandwiches too!

Former colleagues/professional contacts

Connect with and write recommendations for your former colleague/direct report/boss/client/vendor on LinkedIn. I can’t stress enough how important this is. No matter your level of involvement on LinkedIn, it is a professional social networking website, and writing a recommendation for someone who just lost their job through no fault of their own and with whom you have a wealth of recent experiences to draw from is neither time consuming nor is it difficult. For someone looking for a job or seeking consulting work, a LinkedIn profile becomes an important reference point, and recommendations allow HR professionals, hiring managers, and potential clients to see how well regarded a person is. An absence of recommendations – especially from recent colleagues and supervisors – would certainly strike me as odd. Keeping this in mind, I try to write recommendations for people as I go. While consulting, if I work with someone who impresses me, I write a recommendation. Most of the time I’ll get one in return. If someone I hire for freelance work impresses me, I try to connect with him or her to write a recommendation.

Hire former colleagues for freelance work. This one is obvious. If someone you worked with, for, or who reported directly to you loses his job, there’s a pretty good chance you are going to need to farm out some of that work. Why wouldn’t you farm it out to the people already judged to be competent to do these things?

Recommend former colleagues to others who are seeking consultants, new hires, etc. Another obvious one.

Refrain from lamenting about awful it is at work with so many colleagues gone. I’ve survived rounds of layoffs, and I’ve been laid off. Without discounting just how bad it feels to see talented and committed people lose their job and have to come back to work without their presence, while also wondering if you will survive another round of layoffs if that should happen, I think we can all agree that losing your job is worse. Much worse. So if that urge strikes, stuff it back down.

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What do you think about the Hallmark-ization of layoffs? Would you like to receive on of these cards, or would your reaction be similar to mine? What would (or did) you find helpful from friends and professional contacts if you were downsized?

Many authors understand that if they want publicity for themselves, their book, or their business, there’s a good chance they’re going to have to hire a publicist to supplement their publisher’s efforts. For self-published authors, they are responsible for it all.

Whatever product or service someone is looking to promote by hiring either a publicity or social media consultant, the time to start thinking about that is well before your product or service launches. I recommend a minimum of six months prior to launch. Earlier is better.

Social media efforts should be thought-out and strategic, designed to further whatever goals the client may have, and tailored to the amount of time and effort he or she can put in to it. For traditional media, monthly magazines have anywhere between a three to six month lead time. Some are even longer. That means that right now, it’s too late to get in to a December issue. You might be able to make it in to a January issue, but only by the skin of your teeth.

Another thing to take in to consideration is the amount of time it will take to find a publicist. There’s a lot to consider:

• What’s your budget?
• Do you want the full-service agency experience, with multiple publicists on your account and a reasonable expectation of hearing back from your team within an hour or two to answer any question you may have? And are you willing to pay for that level of service?
• Would you prefer to hire an independent contractor who may only handle a couple of clients at time, but may also take Wednesday off to go to the dentist/beach/spa?
• Does your personality mesh well with the publicist(s) who would be working on your account?
• Do they have experience promoting products similar to yours?

You also want to allow time for those you contact (and I suggest contacting several) to evaluate your product in order to write a proposal. That means you’re going to have to factor in the time it will take you to send samples. And if you’re an author, that means a physical copy of your manuscript. I’ve had potential clients ask me to evaluate their books via a PDF, and I won’t do it. I need to be able to make notes in the margins, and easily flip back and forth between page 24 and 134, and I just can’t do that staring reading on my computer or with an eReader. (Bravo to those who can, but I suspect I’m not unusual in this regard.)

Another thing that people sometimes fail to consider is that a publicist can only work on so much at time. Many publicists workloads won’t allow them to take on any more clients and still be able to properly service their current accounts. I’ve turned down potential work for this very reason, and I know some of the publicists I work with are booked up for six months or more. Even with an agency, you want to be aware that many have reduced headcount in these tough economic times, and will often supplement their staff by hiring a freelancer to work on one or two projects.

Once you’ve chosen who to hire, you then have to give that person or team a reasonable amount of time to familiarize themselves with your product in-depth, develop press materials, pitching angles, media train you, get samples for the media, create media lists, etc. In other words, once you sign a contract, you’re not going see results immediately. Even if you’re interested in hiring someone just to schedule radio interviews, you don’t need six-months, but you can’t expect to find a publicist and have them get you on 15 radio programs on a specific date, if you only start talking to people 2 weeks before your target dates.

If you are considering hiring a publicist, where are you in the process? If you have hired one in the past, what was your experience like? What surprised you?

I decided to visit home for Labor Day weekend, and rented a car from a rental location in a town that had been evacuated only 3 days earlier due to flooding.  While I was home, I was told the area had taken a soaking from Irene, and there was also some rain coming in from what was left of Tropical Storm Lee. The Susquehanna river, while high, didn’t seem abnormally swollen. Three days after returning to New York, this video was shot from a community upriver from my hometown:

The flooding is the worst since 1972, when Hurricane Agnes combined with another low pressure system and produced heavy rains in the region. I hadn’t been born when Agnes struck, but I heard it referenced so much growing up by the Susquehanna River that the name is synonymous with massive flooding and destruction in my mind.

After Agnes a levee system was built, but some towns still don’t have one.

And towns that have a levee still face big problems. This video shows flooding in my hometown, which has a levee, and sadly the town’s middle school.

A big thanks to WNEP-TV online and The Press Enterprise on Facebook for keeping this transplant informed.

Disaster relief donations can be made to the American Red Cross.

But one of the challenges in my current role is finding time for pleasure reading. Don’t get me wrong, I actually really like working on business topics and think understanding management, leadership, career issues, innovation, etc. is important for a fulfilling and successful career. But when you’re charged with developing and executing campaigns for 30-45 business books a year, staying on top of the business of media as well as publishing news, developing new professional competencies, and being familiar with a whole bunch of newspapers, magazines, industry trades, TV shows, freelancers, blogs, radio programs, social networks, and probably a couple of categories I forgot, sometimes you can get in to a funk where all you want to do is come home and watch Bravo. (That could just be me).

So this summer, I decided to push myself out of that funk. I formed a book club. I rededicated myself to reading, and it was exactly what I needed. Somehow, even though I was busy taking digital marketing classes through the NYU School of Continual and Professional Studies, as well as learning HTML, CSS, and XHTML, I not only found time to read three books for the book club, but three other books for my own enjoyment, as well as Don’t Make Me Think!,  a book about web design and usability, as well as Google’s free ebook, Winning the Zero Moment of Truth.

What do you do to make sure you have time to read for pleasure?

Books read for pleasure this summer!