I wanted to let you know where I’ll be speaking next. I really should put out press releases for these, but there’s no time lately.

Every week at 2pm MST on Wednesdays I interview people with Nigel Swaby for our podcast called the Web Marketing Weekly Show. It’s secretly how I get to know amazing people. So if you want to be interviewed please contact us on the site. (www.webmarketingweeklyshow.com).

I’m speaking at the Mountain West Regional Public Relations Conference for PR students at Utah State University on Friday March 26. Then later that afternoon I’ll be off to Podcamp at Neumont University in South Jordan, Utah. I need to learn what they are teaching (because I’m podcasting).

Monday March 29th I’ll speak at the Utah Student Summit on a social media panel at The Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City. This is also for students.

This summer I’ll speak at the EVO conference for women in social media (www.evoconference.com). More details coming.

I’m speaking on how to pitch a search engine at this Ragan conference hosted by Cisco Systems June 9-11, 2010 in San Jose California.

See this is what happens when you write a book. I used to be petrified but now I’m pretty comfortable with it. I especially love the enthusiasm of most college groups I’ve spoken to.

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I’m addicted to LinkedIn lately. I asked this question and got so many answers.

Have you ever found success tweeting your news to journalists on Twitter?

I was looking for people who have gotten news coverage because of a tweet. I also want to know if people had found success using a paid service like Muckrack. PR Newswire will tweet your press release for $75 and PRWeb will for free (at the $200 level and above).

Google now ranks tweets in search results and the higher authority the person who tweets the better it is for your rankings.

“we use at Microsoft twitter to do interviews (twitterviews) with our CEO and other specialists of the department and we often get a good coverage on newspaper or magazines.”

Kristopher who does PR for ARUP Laboratories has had some success pitching on Twitter:

“We got a product write-up in BusinessWeek online for a very big client last year. We built a twitter page for our product as it was launching at CES and then targeted the industry as well as media. Just getting that coverage in BusinessWeek was a success to me.

I have pitched other reporters through twitter with varying success, either outright ignoring my pitches or replying kindly that they weren’t interested. Robert Scoble has a friendfeed room designed specifically for pitching him, and he really responds…

It’s a good venue for reaching out to the media because it circumvents the gatekeepers, and in that light I think PR people need to understand how twitter and other platforms work. (Even so, when a writer takes a story idea, they usually still have to clear it with their editor.) But it’s not the place to build a strong, lasting relationship with the media, I think that it can be an ice breaker, but email or phone call or face to face are the best places to build lasting relationships.”

Tonya who is an adjunct professor gave a great tip – to set up keyword searches on Twitter:

“I’ve used Twitter to reach out to journalists and bloggers, schedule interviews, and follow up to their requests. I wouldn’t use a paid or automated service, but I do set up keyword searches on Twitter and follow relevant journalists. Then when the opportunity comes, I’m already there.”

Melissa, a wellness expert said a tweet led to an interview:

“I don’t personally tweet links to press releases but I have had editors from Better Homes and Gardens and Parents Magazine interview me because of a specific tweet that I sent offering a wellness tip.

I also always tweet out my media coverage – you never know who is watching!

I made a list of several national media members on twitter if you’d like to follow. It’s mostly lifestyle oriented.”

She has a Twitter list that includes journalists: http://www.twitter.com/casseracomm

Now it’s your turn to answer – had any luck using Twitter to pitch stories?

Today was episode 1 of a new venture – the Web Marketing Weekly Show. It’s a 30 min. podcast every Wednesday – live. Nigel Swaby of SEO by Swaby is my co-host. Today we talked about online press releases and our successes with clients.

Here’s how it works: we discuss a web marketing topic with each other or bring in guests. Then we briefly talk about something in the industry – news. Then we’ll read IM messages, emails and take calls – basically answer questions or give advice. We hope you’ll join us. It’s not formal and we have a fun time.

Check out the web site which will materialize and include our schedule as we go: www.webmarketingweeklyshow.com and check out our first episode about press release success stories and Superbowl ads – the ads that ran and the ones that didn’t.

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• Online PR Podcast Interviews Janet Thaeler (newspapergrl.com)

I used to borrow my grandma’s video camera, put on her wig and wear her business suit and pretend I was the news anchor. I made my cousins cover sports and weather. Today I’m a reporter for real! (just like I’m a PR pro for real).

CNN has a feature called iReporter that lets anyone put up news stories. Not only is this good from an SEO or reputation standpoint – it’s fun. I grab my video camera and I’m making news. News that I tweet about and let reporters on Twitter know about.

So first I had to find some news. My first story was today and it’s about how the economy spelled doom for a troubled local bank. Barnes Bank Closed after 119 Years in Business. It was quite an event in this small town. I went to interview some folks. I must say that the police were super nice – which I needed to see about now.

I’m on the lookout for news now – hopefully I can get some at the Sundance Film Festival or even at Affiliate Summit this weekend.

I’m not trying to take on a cause but I pull for social networking sites to bring out our collective humanity. Really these sites just reflect who we are. If we’re jerks then we can be even worse because we don’t have accountability. If we hate, we can hate anonymously and be very cruel. But we can also reach out and be moved by people we otherwise wouldn’t have known. And impact far more people’s lives.

This card from @Postsecret is an example of how social networking sites can bring up painful memories. I wrote recently about how I experienced a mother losing her baby, almost in real time on Twitter. That’s another example of how social networking sites connect us in various ways on different levels.

It was my birthday this week and thanks to Facebook a lot of people knew about it and wished me happy birthday. I could think it was too impersonal but I didn’t — I just enjoyed it. It strikes me though that with all the automation – I could die and people would still wish me happy birthday, my ebooks & products could still sell, blog posts I’d written could still go live, tweets could go out, etc.

It’s sort of eerie in a way but also sort of immortal in a way too…notice this message below isn’t in past tense. I’m not sure how I feel about it. The internet brought us a global community & these tools only make it more intimate.

If you want a real trip philosophically, do what I did. Read Crush It! By Gary Vee and then read the 4-Hour Work Week. It will put you in a philosophical bind.

Crush It! Will tell you that to truly succeed with an online business you need to put your soul into it. You need to know everything and live your business. You need to BE your business. It’s going to take insane work and crazy hours to accomplish but to be truly outstanding is worth the price. Gary is very passionate about it and lives this. Watch a video of his work and you’ll feel it.

Now, watch a video of Tim Ferris. Just as passionate. These 2 are both maniacs. They are insane. They go to extremes in life and they absolutely love their lives. People become devotees of their style. People like John Jonas create entire businesses off the philosophy (teaching people how to outsource their business so they can spend a minimal amount of time on it and do what they love the rest of the time).

Perhaps the most extreme example is the Markus Frind who owns the dating site Plenty of Fish. He based his business on mathematical equations to determine how to match people up, made it free and makes millions. He’s covered in Inc. Magazine and he basically works almost never and plays the rest of the time.

To make it even worse for me I drove 2 hours to attend the Wasatch Business Community workshop and we have a guest speaker on publicity. Or on branding actually. Howard talked about how he is friends with his customers. He went into elaborate detail about the gifts and attention to detail he has when it comes to clients. His top clients get nice perks. I’m sitting there thinking, yes I like people but there is no way I’d want to be friends with all my clients (no offense – it’s just not practical and if everyone is your friend, then no one is your friend). I’ve seen disaster when that’s happened. But it’s brought him a lot of clients and it obviously enriches his life.

So as I’m transitioning to promoting ideas and other people’s products to having my own products, I’m at a crossroads. I need to outsource because I’m getting overwhelmed. I don’t want to outsource because I’m not sure what direction I want to take things. There are all sorts of pulls on me. Be a “guru” with a bunch of URLs with sales letters that lead to my products? Go B2B and partner with firms that have a good following (get my DVD into MarketingSherpa’s store, for example)? Both? What is true to who I am? If I go one way or another am I cheating myself?

All I know is just about every month we go on a mini vacation and a few times a year we go on a bigger one. So I can’t be a Gary. On the other hand, if I don’t outsource some things will just never happen that I need to happen (like getting an affiliate program running before Affiliate Summit).

So I bounce between these extremes. And I’m perplexed by them. And I’m trying to figure out what I want (which is pretty much the norm but I’ve gotten some things down – like I really like vacations but I also like coming home and working on my business).

Now it’s your turn. Have you read these books? What do you think? What’s your advice for me?

Creating my online PR training DVD has been another journey, like the journey of writing a book, only different. My editor Jason Alba encouraged me to produce a DVD based on the concepts in the book. Luckily he’d been through it before and had a great editor (Bong) and the experience I lacked.

Half way through he told me to start again because of technical details. I was discouraged! Of course, just like the book it felt like it would never get done. But it is done. And it is shipping! Here is a preview:

Preview of Killer Press Releases Training DVD by Janet Thaeler from bongvideos on Vimeo.

Here is a review from Bong my editor. He’s great because he makes me look good and he’s also very positive and enthusiastic about the project. He had over 40k views on his video after following some of my advice.

Here’s what he said:

Jason Alba, CEO of JibberJobber.com. When I started editing Janet’s video, I was so amazed on the knowledge I got from editing it. Not only that I am editing, I was also learning great things about online press releases, SEO value, how to be news worthy on the web, and last but not the least, how to submit an effective press release. I got a lot of tips that actually helped my website appear on the first 5 pages of Google search for video editing services.

I can sense Janet’s passion for Online PR while I was editing the video. She make’s it easy for the viewers to understand the power of Online PR with also the help of SEO. You can know more about this DVD by clicking this link.

I’ll be speaking at the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Utah Chapter for my employer – OrangeSoda.

Day: January 20, 2010
Time: 12pm noon
Location: The Pizza Factory – 2230 North University Parkway, Provo

Members and non-members welcome

Here’s the topic: Pitching to a Search Engine. Here is a preview of my DVD that just came out about this.

We all think of our publics when crafting messages, but have you
been including search engines in that planning? While a search
engine may not be a “traditional” public, 70 million people get
their news online every day, so knowing what a search engine needs
n order to maximize your news reach is a skill set you should, and
can, master.

Janet Meiners Thaeler is the author of I Need a Killer Press
Release, Now What???, and a recognized
expert in the field of SEO, social media, and crafting press
releases for the online world. She recently won the award for “Best
Social Media Content Guru” from the Utah Social Media Club, and her
webinar entitled “Creating a Killer Publicity Strategy with Online
News Releases” for PR Web was attended by thousands and earned her a
spot on PR Web’s list of “Best PRWeb Webinars of 2009.”

Janet will talk to us about how to think of a search engine like a
public, and will teach us best practices that will make your
releases and social media campaigns stand out and be recognized by
these increasingly important news vehicles. You will come away from
this luncheon with tools you can put to use right away and a renewed
confidence in your ability to reach this untraditional, but often
misunderstood public.

I looked at my stats for the year 2009 on Newspapergrl and OnlinePRBook. Sometimes I’m surprised but here goes

NewspaperGrl blog

• Most of my traffic comes from Google (34%)
• The next biggest source is direct (typed in – 22%)
• One link from The Pioneer Woman’s Blog gave me 13% of my traffic for the year!!
• Twitter gave me 5% of my traffic (surprising since I invest most of my time on Twitter)

Lessons learned: a link from a big name blogger can inject a TON of traffic. I need to work on getting links from big names in my industry though. I imagine most of those readers didn’t become regulars. Twitter isn’t a great place to get traffic for my blog.

Also, I must have some high ranking reviews on Google. It shows that SEO is better as it ages because posts that I wrote 2 or 3 years ago are still sending me a lot of traffic today. I’m not very deliberate in my SEO because this is a business journal of sorts. My other blog is more business.

Most popular blog posts (most traffic) for 2009

1. Me, the Pioneer Woman, Dooce & Jason Gough
2. Drop Ship Access – Not Worth the Price (from 2007)
3. Blocked by CraigsList?! (from 2006)
4. The First Business Book to Make me Cry (linked to from Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wall on Facebook)
5. 4 Tips on Getting Followers on Twitter

Top 5 blog posts on OnlinePRBook Blog (started in July 2009)

1. 5 Killer Press Release Examples
2. Example of an SEO Press Release
3. 7 Killer Online Press Release Tips for Small Businesses
4. 102 Headline Ideas for Social Media
5. Free Press Release Sites

2010 is here and it’s the year of the TIGER. According to Chinese astrology: The Tiger is said to be lucky vivid, lively and engaging. Another attribute of the Tiger is his incredible bravery, evidenced in his willingness to engage in battle or his undying courage.

So I will keep these 2 things in mind: courage and good luck. I will be courageous and lucky this year!

For my online business this year I want to accomplish the following (maybe you can help with some of them!):

• Sell out of my first run of online PR training DVDs and start streaming them online.
• Get an article about online PR in Entrepreneur Magazine (I noticed two people I know were in the last issue, so I should be able to swing this).
• Set up my affiliate program. Then find at least 10 joint venture/affiliates  to sell my DVD and make a commission of $75 a sale on each.
• Finish my SEO press releases ebook and start producing one per quarter.
• Start an online store for my online PR products at www.OnlinePRBook.com. Challenge: what platform to use? Cost? I want it to be like an ecommerce store rather than spread in random places throughout my site.
• Get my email list up & going!!! This sounds so easy but it’s been stopping me for a while now. It’s almost embarrassing that I’ve never done it.
• Find newsletters to put content in in exchange for a mention of my DVD (this is the biggest investment I’ve ever made in my business, besides my book and of course I want it to be very successful. It’s 3 hours of content.
• Become a better speaker – join Toastmasters and look for new opportunities to do both in-person and webinars. (Is there a list of webinar hosts??)
• Write press releases about the DVD, important webinars, etc.
• Update my blog with a real photo of me, widen the main section, underlined links (I’ve tried), remove ads except for my own (since they mysteriously stopped making money when I redesigned my blog), font color = black, fix background colors on sidebar to white, add Facebook & Twitter Connect, remove dates & make comments link larger, any other suggestions for me?
• Get banner ads made for the DVD.

What about you? What are you looking for in 2010?