Publicity Tools

Top 10 WordPress Plugins

noreply@blogger.com (Publicity Tools) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 07:38:31 PDT

There are a lot of ways you can add ads to your WordPress blog. As part of my month long series on WordPress Plugins, I thought I’d take a glimpse into WordPress Plugins that help you monetize your WordPress blog.

WordPress Plugins that add ads to your blogs may assign advertising blocks to specific areas, or allow you to customize where they appear. Others will automatically inject them between blog posts or within the post content itself.

Note: For the most part, the following WordPress Plugins involve editing your WordPress Theme template files in order to add the Plugin template tag exactly where you wish the generated information to appear. For information and tips on installing any of these WordPress Plugins in WordPress Themes, see How to Install, Configure, and Use WordPress Plugins.

Adding Adsense Ads to Your WordPress Blogs

For a long time, AdSense from Google was one of the most popular methods of monetizing your blog. Thus, there are a lot of WordPress Plugins to help you add AdSense to your blog.

Adsense Deluxe WordPress Plugin place the above AdSense Deluxe screen to your WordPress options panel. From there you can create multiple AdSense ad units and decide what parts of the site should have or not have ads, and what ad sizes to run. The Adsense Deluxe+ WordPress Plugin claims they go farther to help you customize your ad placement and improved performance.

AdSense Sharing Revenue and Earnings System WordPress Plugin helps you track your AdSense earnings and impressions, including publicizing the information. Other WordPress Plugins that will help you track your Adsense income include Adsense Clicks Tracker and Adsense Earnings WordPress Plugin.

Author Adsense WordPress Plugin permits ads to be displayed by author, so the post author gets credit for the ads, not the blog itself. For multiple blogger blogs, this is an interesting way to share the wealth.

Amazon.com WordPress Plugins

There are several different Plugins that will help you add Amazon.com ads, wishlists, current reading lists, and other Amazon ad types to your WordPress blog.

The powerhouse of all things Amazon.com for WordPress is Amazon Media Manager WordPress Plugin. There is a lot of flexibility and customization in this Plugin. It’s been around for a few years and only gets better with time. The Amazon Media Manager allows you to select Amazon.com books, music, and products from within your WordPress Administration Panels and easily add them to your WordPress blog in a variety of ways. It keeps track of what you’ve added, and helps you choose how to display the ads, and so much more.

Now Reading WordPress Plugin incorporates data from Amazon.com and allows you to add a “review” or commentary about the book or product.

WP-Amazon WordPress Plugin lets you to search Amazon as you write your post and embed the Amazon information directly into your blog post or Page.

Last Amazon Review WordPress Plugin showcases your most recent review on Amazon.com, helping you to promote the book or product. It features customized configuration of the incoming information and is also available as a Widget to work with Widgitized WordPress Themes.

Amazon Wishlist WordPress Plugin lets you put your Amazon.com wishlist on your WordPress blog, a nice way of asking for books in lieu of money.

Other Advertising WordPress Plugins For Your WordPress Blog

A lot of advertising javascripts and links require no special features to add to your WordPress Theme, but sometimes, a little WordPress Plugin help goes a long way.

CafePress WordPress Plugin allows you to create an online store front for selling your blog products through CafePress.

eMiniMall WordPress Plugin works with Chitika’s eMiniMalls to integrate them into your WordPress blog.

Text Ads Link Sidebar WordPress Widget helps you add Text Ads Links to your sidebar.

AdKit24 WordPress Plugin adds an ad bar for your WordPress blog with configuration through the WordPress Administration Panels.

TicTap Ads WordPress Plugin helps you add TicTap Contextual Ads ads to your blog.

Bidvertiser WordPress Plugin for Bidvertiser ads.

Many large website and blog supporting advertisers feature their own WordPress Plugins to help you add their ads to your blog.

Ad and Banner Rotator WordPress Plugins

There are a variety of random generators and rotators you can use to feature random ads and banners on your WordPress blog. Some are simple scripts while others are easy-to-use and highly customizable WordPress Plugins.

WPAds WordPress Plugin provides rotating options but also allows you to define the ad positions on your blog. It supports AdSense, Yahoo Publishers Network, and other ads including image banners.

PHPAdsNew Integration WordPress Plugin helps to add an ad banner or other content to your WordPress blog.

Other general ad rotating scripts and WordPress Plugins include:

Shopping Cart WordPress Plugins

I thought I would find more WordPress Plugins that help you set up a store front or online shopping cart, but I only found two.

Instinct e-Commerce Light WordPress Plugin adds a shopping cart to your WordPress blog for selling products and services, or for accepting fees online.

YAK WordPress Plugin is simple to use, allowing association of products with specific blog posts and more. There are some customization options and it adds two Admin Panels to your WordPress blog for showing and fulfilling orders, helping you keep track of orders, and managing products.

Are you familiar with any other shopping cart style WordPress Plugins?

PayPal Donations WordPress Plugins

There are several WordPress Plugins and Widgets that will help you include a PayPal Donate Button on your WordPress blog, which is especially helpful for WordPress Plugin and Theme authors.

They include:

Adding Ads to Feeds

While I’m not personally a fan of ads on feeds, here are some WordPress Plugins to help you add ads to your WordPress feeds. Be aware that some advertisers will not allow you to run their ads in your feeds. Check your Terms and Conditions before using any of these.

Better Feed WordPress Plugin supposedly offers an option for adding ads to your feeds. Other WordPress Plugins that allow ads on feeds include:

PostPost WordPress Plugin (Commission Junction and Adsense)
WordPress Plugin: Pre and Post Feed Content
Feedvertising WordPress Plugin for Text Link Ads

Monitoring Other People’s Money

There are only a few WordPress Plugins that will help you monitor other people’s money, and maybe some of your own, though there are a lot of Google Gadgets you can use are similar to Widgets and Plugins, and integration into WordPress is fairly easy.

Stock Quote Tooltip WordPress Plugin allows you to create a hover mouseover effect over the link of any business to display the stock quotes in an AJAX mini window, similar to the Snap Preview effect.

Stock Quote Sidebar allows you to customize which stocks you want to follow and displays them as a list of stock quotes in your sidebar.

Stock Chart Widget displays a chart of your stock quotes in WordPress Widget.

Web 2.0 Rubble Widget is a regular Widget you can add to Widget-enabled WordPress Themes that tracks 10 Web 2.0 type stocks that are considered “popular”.

Move The Markets Post Stocks List WordPress Plugin isn’t the name of this Plugin which the author hasn’t yet named. Still, it’s an interesting stock market and investment oriented WordPress Plugin. It scans your post for stock market symbol names (like Exchange: SYMBOL, NYSE: CSX, Nasdaq: SUNW) and creates a table at the bottom of each post with links to search results for that ticker symbol on Yahoo, Google, and StockTickr.

Best Wordpress Plugins for Google Adsense

noreply@blogger.com (Publicity Tools) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 07:34:31 PDT

Wordpress allows bloggers to easily integrate Google Adsense inside wordpress using plugins. Google Adsense has become the most popular online contextual advertising program and proper custom integration with Wordpress can help to increase Adsense earnings.

Google Adsense Wordpress Plugins

Listed below are 10 best Adsense plugins which help you work smarter with wordpress.

Adsense Deluxe – offers advanced options for managing the automatic insertion of Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) ads to your WordPress posts. Easily switch all AdSense ads to a new color scheme across the entire site.
Adsense Injection – inserts Adsense code randomly into a pre-existing blog. Takes a random paragraph (or br tag) break in your article and inserts adsense code. It does one per story on multi-post pages (home, archive, category) and let�s you pick how many to show on single post pages.
Adsense Inline – inserts Google adsense in blog posts.
Shylock Adsense WordPress plugin – allows you to insert Adsense ads on your blog without modifying the template. Set it up to show different Adsense ads for articles older then ‘n’ days. E.g. insert a 468�60 ad at the bottom of a new article for regular readers, and replace with higher paying 336�280 ad after 7 days for the search engine visitors.
Adsense Beautifier – makes your Adsense look beautiful by placing images beside them to increase your clicks (CTR) and subsequent Adsense earnings. (May not be compliant with Adsense TOS now)
AdSense Widget for WordPress Sidebar – Google AdSense widget designed for the new WordPress Sidebar Widgets plug-in.
AdRotator Wordpress Plugin – rotates your adsense ads with other affiliate programs like Chitika Eminimalls wherever you want. Helps to reduce ad blindness and test different ad formats and affiliate programs.
Adsense Earnings Wordpress Plugin – displays your adsense earning details within wordpress admin panel.
AdSense Manager – is a Wordpress plugin for managing AdSense ads on your blog. It generates code automatically and allows positioning with Widgets.
AdSense Sharing Revenue and Earnings System – allows you to view your adsense earnings and share your adsense impressions with your friends and co-authors.
Author Adsense Wordpress Plugin – allows blog authors to enter their Google Adsense Publisher ID and have ads displayed on their own posts generating revenue. Admin can set the ratio of author�s ads to admin ads.
Author Adsense MU Plugin – Webmasters of Wordpress MU sites can generate adsense revenue from hosted blogs as this script allows you to set an admin ID and the ratio of admin ad�s to blogger�s ads.
Google Ad Wrap – wraps posts and comments inside Section Targeting tags for better targeted ads.

Google Adsense Tips and Tools Collection

noreply@blogger.com (Publicity Tools) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 07:33:39 PDT

Google Adsense is an amazing contextual advertising program that lets you earn revenue from your site by a variety of revenue generating programs. Pay per click ads, Adsense for search, referrals for Firefox with Google toolbar, Picassa, Google Pack and the adsense program itself. This is a compilation of common Google tips and tools to make more money from Google Adsense.

Google Adsense Guidelines

Program policies, Terms and conditions – follow these rules.
Adsense FAQ – The Adsense support centre for official guidelines.
Adsense Tax information – how google collects and uses your tax information
Adsense Taxes – a free resource about paying income tax on Google Adsense Revenue.
15 Common Adsense Mistakes – Avoid these errors that could get your adsense account banned.
Ad formats – Official list of different types of ad formats you can use.
Webmaster Guidelines – will help Google find, index, and rank your site.
Report a policy violation – If you notice a site displaying Google ads that you believe is violating program policies, let them know.

Adsense Starter Demos

Google Adsense Tour – introducing you to the Adsense program.
Getting Started Demo: learn to sign in, copying and pasting your code, setting up alternate ads, and using your Competitive Ad Filter.
Help with Ad Code Demo: troubleshoot basic problems when implementing your code. Also covers how to implement your code using two different types of WYSIWYG software.
Payment Demo: learn about the AdSense payment cycle, from a click on your ads to money in the bank!
Optimization Demo: learn how to use ad size and placement to maximize your AdSense revenue.

Track Adsense Income, Statistics and Clicks

Adsense Notifier – Firefox extension that displays your Adsense earnings on the Firefox statusbar.
SysSense – personal desktop Google AdSense monitor. It keeps your current Google AdSense information in the Windows system tray.
Adsense Widget – a Mac Dashboard widget that automatically logs into your AdSense Google account and displays the last 6-days of revenue generated from your Google advertising account.
Google Adsense Yahoo Widget – displays the current income directly from your Google AdSense account.
Stats for AdSense widget – allows you to view your Google AdSense� reports directly from your Mac OS X Dashboard.
Adsense Status – GoogleDesktop plugin to View earnings information from your Google Adsense account in the Google Desktop sidebar. Available information: page impressions, clicks, page CTR, page eCPM, and your earnings.
Adsense Alert – desktop client monitors your adsense earnings.
Performancing Metrics – a free professional grade blog statistics service that track limited adsense click data
Adsense earnings RSS feed – a simple script that will create an RSS feed with your daily Adsense earnings to track via your regular feed reader.
Google AdSense Charts and Graphs – chart your adsense data in a multidimensional line charts.
AdSenseLog is a tool for checking and analyzing your Adsense ads data (Content, Search, Custom/URL channels and Referrals).

View / Test Adsense Ads

Google AdSense preview tool – addition to the right-click menu for Windows Internet Explorer 6.x, allowing you to preview the ads that may show on any web page.
Adsense Preview – Preview the Google ads that may show on any web page.
Google AdSense Sandbox Tool – see what sort of Google AdSense ads will appear based on content or keywords. See up to 20 sample AdSense ads for the URL or keywords.
Overture Keyword Tool – suggest keyword bid amount and keyword suggestions, which help you target high paying keywords.
Google Adwords Keyword Tool – generates potential keywords for your ad campaign and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends.

Google Adsense Wordpress Plugins

AdRotator Wordpress Plugin – rotate your adsense ads with other affiliate programs like Chitika Eminimalls
Adsense Deluxe – offering advanced options for managing the automatic insertion of Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) ads to your WordPress posts.
Adsense Injection – inserts Adsense code randomly into a pre-existing blog.
Adsense Inline – insert adsense in blog posts
AdSense Widget for WordPress Sidebar – Google AdSense widget I designed for the new WordPress Sidebar Widgets plug-in.

Google Adsense Optimization Tips

Adsense Success Case Studies – detailing success stories from top adsense publishers.
AdSense Optimization for Forums – get higher CTR by a unique adsense placement strategy.
Blogtimize! – ad placement for blogs for higher CTR
Adsense Optimization Tips – General tips for better ads postitioning and earn higher revenue.
Adsense Webinars – online seminars that help publishers obtain the highest results from their implementations of AdSense.
How to increase Google Adsense CTR – simple tips on colors and ad placement can increase CTR.
The Best of Eyetrack III – What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes. How readers scan a webpage.
How to Remove Public Service Ads – simple tips to help you remove non paying PSA ads.
AdsBlackList – will teach you how to seek, recognize and filter low paying google ads.
Yahoo Ads placement tips – suggestions to place Yahoo publisher network ads. Apply the same idea to adsense ads.
Rotate Google Adsense Ads Colors – helps to reduce Ad Blindness
High Paying Adsense Keywords – updated list of current highest paying keywords for Google Adsense.

Alternate Ads

Alternate ads – allows you to utilize your ad space in the event that Google is unable to serve targeted ads to your page.
Alternate Url – provides a 50/50 Revenue Share, full global coverage monthly payments automatic referral income, family safe ads, paypal supported and gives detailed stats.
AlterNut Ad – pays you a flat rate every month in return for you displaying thier ad rather than the PSA. Invite only.
Default Ads – load your affiliate or other ads into DefaultAds and generate a link to include in your Google Adsense alternate ad URL. They show their own ads 1 out of every 100 impressions for this service.

Adsense Chats and Forums

Inside AdSense blog – Official blog that posts new tips and information about new AdSense features.
Adsense Help – Google group for adsense support. Only posts from user ‘AdSensePro’ are approved by Google.
Digitalpoint Adsense Forum – discusses Adsense payments, guidelines, stats and reporting and much more.
Webmaster World Adsense Forum – Discussions around Googles Text Ad service AdSense.

Top 10 Adsense Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Publicity Tools) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 07:31:55 PDT

#10
Contextual Ads Preview/Comparison Tool

This tool is helpful in comparing AdSense ads to those of other advertisement vendors (Chitika, Yahoo). You also have the ability to customize the colors and view what ads a certain URL would be likely to display. It's a pretty solid tool when planning what type of advertisements you want to put on your page (especially if you are trying to decide which vendor to sign up with).

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#9
Blacklist

The Blacklist basically gives you a list of AdWord publishers that have very low payouts. It is a fact that ad space is valuable-- I would rather fill my ad space with 3 publishers offering $0.50 per click than 3 publishers offering 1 or 2 cents. By providing a list of provider domains to avoid, you can filter your ads and have a greater chance of having high-paying publisher ads displayed on your site. According its website, Blacklist works by:

"...providing you with list of most commonly filtered websites whose webmasters use AdWords to attract visitors for low price click so they can convert it to high price click on their own MFA (Made for AdSense) site(s). In order to STOP these type of actions going on your sites, all you need to do is to paste our specially generated list to your AdSense Setup -> Competitive Ad Filter list. Your revenue should substantially increase."

Nuff said.

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#8
AdSense Calculator

This is one of my favorite tools-- it allows you to quickly calculate how much you can make given daily impressions, CTR, and CPC. Although it’s certainly easy to calculate the values yourself, this is a resource you can use to quickly get that info. It computes daily, monthly, and yearly data for both clicks and earnings.

From their website:

"It also serves as a tool that will allow Google AdSense users to take their current statistics and get an idea of how much they can expect to see daily, monthly and yearly. As well as those who are considering implementing AdSense on their site what results they are likely to see."

For those out there who like to speculate ("hmmm, if I had 3000 impressions and a CTR of 2% and average CPC of 30 cents, what could I make...?") this is THE tool for you-- quick, simple, and easy to use.

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#7
AdSense Sandbox

"This is a handy little utility if you would like to see what sort of Google AdSense ads are based on content or keywords. "

This tool lets you see LOTS of ads that Adsense may be displaying on a site. Why is this good? Simply put, you can look at ads that show up for your competitor's site. And why is THAT good? You can use it to help out your own ad campaign.

For example, I know Plenty of Fish (the free dating site with the ugly site design) makes a TON of money from ads. Since my site, UpHook, is in the same general category, I can look at what ads are showing up for them and see if those same sites show up on mine. If not, then I know I'm not really competing against them; and I also know that their ads are probably worth more per-click than my ads. In addition, this also gives me a list of what websites I may be competing against. And keeping an eye on one's competition is a smart move.

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#6
Adsense Preview Tool (explorer)

This tool is very similar to the Sandbox. The difference is that you can generate a preview of what ads may be displayed on a page much easier. Rather than visiting a website, you can bring up a pop-up window full of ad samples by right clicking and selecting the preview tool from the pop-up window.

The upside: It's easy to access and gives good information (see Tool #7)

The downside: It's for Internet Explorer

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#5
Adsense Notifier (firefox)

This is an invaluable too for OC people who check adsense stats every 5 minutes. Checking adsense habitually is a painful process—its like watching grass grow. But this handy little extension makes it less of a headache. The Notifier can sit in the bottom of your browser window and displays whatever stats you want-- total clicks, daily earnings, impressions, CTR, etc. Wondering if you made any more money yet? You can find out with a quick glance. It’s highly configurable and can save you bunch of time.

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#4
Competitive Ads Filter

Now we're getting to the heavy hitters. This tool is actually part of the Adsense setup manager, so you have to already have an AdSense account to use it. You can use the ad filter to block specific ads from appearing on your pages. Simply give the filter a list of URLs and they are effectively prevented from displaying on your site/blog. This can be useful for a few reasons:

1- You can prevent competition form advertising on your site. This could directly benefit from you by helping to ensure that people stay on your site and not jump on the first ad offering the same thing your site does. Due to the targeted-advertisement nature of AdSense, if you have a service site there is a good chance that your competition will have ads showing up on your site all the time. For example, all the ads that show up on my site (free personals, etc) are for other sites offering dating and personals and matchmaking, etc. For some people this is bad-- but for others it can be a good thing.

2- You can prevent irrelevant ads from being displayed. I mentioned this in a previous blog post-- there are some cases where you want to get rid of ads that don't really correlate well with your site content. Remember, AdSense is just a software system-- it tries to determine what ads to serve up based on some site content. There is a chance that it can guess wrong. And when that happens, you can use the filter to help correct things. Have a site about dogs being cooler than cats but AdSense shows a bunch of ads about pro-cat books? Just chug the bogus cat sites into the filter and you'll be all set.

3- You can block publishers that have low-paying ads. This is helpful in making sure you get the best value for your space. Using the Blacklist tool to get a list of low-paying publishers and plugging their domains into your competitive ads filter can quite possibly earn you more money in the long run.

These are all good uses for the filter, however, there is a drawback to using this tool-- if you are trying to filter entire groups of content by using the filter, you will only see temporary results. As more sites pop up, you will likely have to keep updating the filter. This is why this tool is best suited for blocking sites that are in direct competition with yours.

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#3
Word Tracker

I know some people who swear by this tool. Although you have to sign up to get unlimited access to the service, the trial will probably give provide enough useful information for you to enhance your AdSense experience. Word Tracker pretty much tells you how often people search for a specific keyword. It can also estimate how many competing sites use those keywords. This is probably the best tool to use before deciding what content to include on your page. If there are a lot of competitors, it may be better to target one of the less-searched-for words. Chances are, you will be able to get indexed higher in a search engine for those terms as opposed to going head-to-head with the competition for the popular words.

Obviously, this can drive traffic to your site. Users are more likely to visit matches that show up within the first 2 or 3 pages of a Google search than they are to visit matches on page 87. Why not opt for being indexed in the first 1-50 matches? Sure, you will get less searches overall, but you will be much more visible.

According to their website:

"Wordtracker helps website owners and search engine marketers identify keywords and phrases that are relevant to their or their client's business and most likely to be used as queries by search engine visitors."

This tool is can be used for things other than AdSense. However, it just so happens that popular search keywords are also popular AdSense keywords. Go figure.

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#2
Overture Bidding Tool

This tool gives you both suggested keywords AND sample bid amounts given a target word. Although Overture is NOT the same as AdSense, the keywords are almost the same as those suggested when signing up for an AdSense account. In addition, I've found that the bids listed are pretty darn close to those offered by AdWords publishers. Using this tool, it would be trivial to build a list of high-paying keywords that you would want to make sure you use in your content.

If you ensure that mostly high-paying ads are displayed on your site, you will be getting the most out of your ad space. Think about it-- a user isn’t going to know how much each ad is worth before they click it. They are likely to click on almost any ad that appeals to them. Why not make sure that those ads will pay the most money? Using the Overture bidding tool to get other suggested keywords is also useful-- however, be careful not to saturate your page content with a bunch of keywords. This can make your site/blog look tacky. A few here and there should be enough for the AdSense spider to throw up high-paying ads. Combined with the Blacklist, this is an excellent tool to use as an alternative to the AdWords Bidding Tool.

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#1
AdWords Bidding Tool/Traffic Estimator

This is probably the most useful tool out there. The only drawback is that you must have an AdWords account to get access to the information. I would suggest getting AdWords anyway, since it gives you a good idea of what publishers go through and what options they have when creating ads.

This bidding tool is THE resource for figuring out what keywords result in the highest paying AdSense ads. It's quite possible that all those pages and blogs that list the Top X-number of highest paying AdSense keywords use the bidding information found through AdWords or Overture. As a site/blog owner, its important to know what words you might want to emphasize in your content.

The traffic estimator will take a set of keywords and tell you the estimated average CPC based on current publisher bidding statistics. Knowing that the estimated CPC of my keywords can pull ads paying between $3 and $8 on average, I know that I am in a very good position to make money from my AdSense advertising. Although these CPCs are average values, and I'm sure Google will only show those ads on very well-performing sites, it at least lets me know what I have to look forward to when I start bringing in a larger amount of traffic.

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Honorable Mentions:

The Heat Maps

Not really a tool. But for those people who don't know, this can increase your earnings substantially-- especially if you have ads in all the wrong places.

AdsenseAccelerator

I don't really know much about this site, other than some people apparently bought the tool and use it to easily find the best keywords. I'm not big on buying stuff, so I wouldn't really use it. But if anybody is interested in trying (or has already tried) it and doesn't mind paying a few bucks, feel free to let me know if its worth the money. I’ve heard good things about it.

Media Publicity Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Publicity Tools) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:55:33 PDT

Audio news release (ANR) - A taped news release sent to radio stations. Most ANRs feature voice actualities of organization spokespersons or other representatives. An ANR may be sent with paper copy of a wrapper - lead and close-out - to be used by the local newscaster. The wrapper may also be pre-recorded. An ANR usually contains spot news or an organizatio's reaction to spot news or current issue.

Audio Phone Feed - Providing radio station with a special number they can call to tape one or two minutes (or less) of information you have recorded for continuous automatic sending. This provides stations with actualities they can use.

Billboard announcement - A brief message, submitted by non-profit or community groups, on community needs and activities. They are run free of charge on community cable television channels.

Bylined Articles - Articles written mostly for trade and business publications. The article byline is that of a key player in the submitting organization.

Camera-read Features - Columns or feature stories - usually evergreens - are ready to be pasted into the newspaper. They include heads, graphics, and photos. They're sent on glossy sheets of paper (repro proofs) or on disc or CD-ROM. You may also post them in your website. They comply with newspaper standards in that they seldom mention the name of a product or company more than once. The content either is newsworthy in itself or the facts presented bestow a benefit upon the reader. (Also called sponsored editorials.)

Chatter Sheets - Sheets with interesting, timely, and brief bits of information (e.g. trivia, historical milestones, consumer tips, etc.) on themes or topics relevant to an organization that are sent to DJs to use during their shows.

Community Calendar Announcement - A brief description (who, what, when, where, and perhaps why) of a community need or activity, included in a radio or television "community calendar"

Community Notice - A brief description (who, what, when, where, and perhaps why) of a community event, need, etc., listed free in a special section of the newspaper. (The ones that focus on events often are referred to as event listings.)

Donated Ad - Advertising time or space donated by the medium or someone else, including a regular advertiser in that medium, a corporate sponsor, or community business. A donated ad, paid for by several sponsors, may include "hookers" that identify the business donors.

Feature - A story that gives detailed information on an issue, a trend, a situation, an industry, a company or organization, or a person. A feature often focuses on the human element. It is designed to enlighten, entertain, and/or educate readers. Feature stories can be submitted to community newspapers and magazines (query first) on paper or on disk. Camera-ready features can be created and sent to community newspapers as well. Ideas for features can be pitched to various media.

Filler - A short piece of interesting but minor or untimely material that the print media can use to either fill space or to provide community interest information.

Free Speech Message - The broadcast version of the guest editorial, these are opinions presented by an individual or group on a topic of general public interest. They are taped at the radio or TV station.

Guest Editorial - An analysis of or commentary on news events or public concerns, written by someone whose credibility is based on his/her knowledge of a particular subject and/or position in an organization.

Letter to the Editor - A letter written for and sent to a newspaper or magazine to present an organization's position, make a correction or respond to another story or letter.

News release - A news story written for and released to the news media, particularly newspaper. News releases submitted to newspaper are written according to CP style guidelines. When a news release is prepared for radio it is written according to BN style guidelines. A news release can be distributed on paper, on disk, by email, by a PR newswire or posted on a website. A news release has a flag with the word(s) News or News Release in large type near the top of the "page." When the information in a release is community oriented, the flag can read Community News. Other alternatives include Sports News, Business News, Etc.

Product Release - A brief announcement of news about a product or service. Unless the "news" has wide public appeal, most product releases are sent to relevant trade publications.

Promo - A broadcast announcement that promotes an upcoming program or activity on a radio or TV station. If an organization is involved in a project with the station- as a sponsor or a participant - the promo may mention the organization's name and/or address and or slogan.

Promotional "prop" or symbol - Inexpensive but interesting and relevant items sent with "soft" publicity materials to attract media attention and, perhaps, serve as a props for the visual media, particularly television.

Publicity Photographs - Photographs taken for publicity purposes and submitted, with a cutline, to the print media. Photos may be accompanied by a news release, fact sheet or other publicity material.

Public Service Announcement (PSA) - A broadcast announcement, for which no charge is made, that promotes the programs, activities or services of a federal, provincial, or municipal governments, non-profit organizations, or another groups serving community interests. Information for PSAs can be prepared in point form, as a script, or pre-recorded on tape. All are submitted to the PSA director.

Radio Program or Feature - Taped news and public affairs features, provided by an organization no charge to radio stations. Programs and features may be on such topics as consumer hints, author/performer interviews, and new product information.

Sponsored Publication - A newspaper or magazine prepared by an organization and offered free of charge to readers. The content is relevant to the company, cause, or association, and usually does not contain advertising.

Sponsored TV Program - A television public affairs program, paid for by an organization and offered free of charge to the television networks or stations. Programs usually are produced in half-hour or one-hour formats - with or without allowance for commercial content.

Reader Tip Sheets - Sheets that contain helpful tips on carious subject for media audiences. They are designed to be used "as is" by the media.

Video News Release (VNR) - A videotaped news story produced by an organization and distributed to television newsrooms. VNRs are particularly useful at times of crisis or when an organization has an angle based on unusualness or human interest. VNRs may be accompanied by B-roll footage.

Top 10 Publicity Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Publicity Tools) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:36:03 PDT

Just like many of you, I like to save money. That’s why I offer so many “Do-It-Yourself Public Relations” products. I’m also always on the lookout for other useful, inexpensive publicity tools.

Here’s a list of tools you can use to get publicity for $1 or less:

1. Help a Reporter: Free leads from reporters who are looking for sources for stories.

2. Contact any Celebrity: One week’s trial for a $1. Get contact information for celebrities, to get potential endorsements.

3. The Gift List: Free trial of a list of media contacts for consumer product companies. This link will also give you a 15% discount should you decide to get a subscription.

4. Contacts on Tap: Free 15-day trial of a media contacts database.

5. Chases Calendar: Free listing of a holiday you can create. This annual calendar is used by media everywhere.

6. Ezinearticles.com: Free directory of articles. Submit yours with a resource box at the bottom to drive traffic to your Web site.

7. Write a guest post or get interviewed or mentioned by a top blogger, with a link to your Web site – free.

8. Win an award - Takes time to submit the award application, but usually no money.

9. Create profiles and use free social media tools including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

10. Set up and write posts on a free WordPress blog platform. These posts often get picked up in search engines, and may be found by reporters searching for sources on specific subjects.

Use these tools and watch your publicity efforts become more successful – for not a lot of money.

Publicity Tools : Ritesh Patel

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Publicity Tools : Ritesh Patel

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Publicity Tools : Ritesh Patel

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Publicity Tools : Ritesh

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Publicity Tools : About Us

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Publicity Tools : Partners

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Publicity Tools : Freebies

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Publicity Tools : Privacy

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Publicity Tools : Terms Of Use

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Publicity Tools : Sitemap

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Publicity Tools : Contact Us

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Publicity Tools

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Publicity Tools

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