How To Get Free Publicity With Publicity Stunts And Building Authority

May 16, 2014

Publicity is defined as any time someone is willing to endorse you for free. Publicity can be as little as a tweet if someone decides to tweet about you, simply based on the merit of some of your work. That happens from time to time. But the challenge that all business owners have is how to accelerate the rate and magnitude of the publicity that they and their business or book gets from various sources. In this tutorial we’ll dive in and explore a number of ways you can increase the chances of getting publicity for whatever you are promoting, whether it is a business, book, personal brand or anything else.

Become A Source Of Publicity

Most small business owners are on a constant hunt to get publicity. They see any blog, website, magazine, podcast or YouTube channel as an opportunity to get exposure and press coverage for their business. Many business owners jump on these opportunities with desperation and don’t realize that they are probably one of a hundred business owners this week who hope to get free publicity from that particular media source. In most cases that leads to rejection. But there is a very simple way to reverse that. You simply have to offer some publicity to that publication in return. You can do that by establishing your own presence with a blog, podcast or a YouTube channel. If you have your own publicity source, you can simply offer to give publicity to whoever you want to get publicity from, and that starts an entirely different conversation. By offering to do something nice for people, you get placed in the front of the line, ahead of all the other people who simply ask for the favor to get publicity, and offer nothing in return.

Publicity By Association

Once you establish a media presence for your small business, you can offer exposure to anyone you want. The savvy thing to do is to offer publicity to any big name person or brand with whom you want to network with, or be seen with. When you interview someone, they naturally promote that interview on their social media channels. Additionally, since you are interviewing that person, you are seen next to them, and people start naturally associating you with that person.

Once you start being associated with powerful and respected people, you also begin to be seen as more authoritative. That makes other people naturally want to work and collaborate with you and your business.

Publicity Stunts To Get Free Publicity

Another strategy you can use to get free publicity is to use publicity stunts. You can do something unordinary and unusual that grabs attention. This is very similar to Seth Godin’s concept of the purple cow where you should do something unique and extraordinary to stand out and get attention.

Publicity By Joining Press Clubs

Every major city has a press club. If you are a business owner, you can go to the press club in your city and meet various journalists there. You can tell them that you are a source. A source is the term journalists use when they describe an expert or someone who contributes to their stories. If the journalists in your local press club use you as a source, they will credit you in their story by mentioning your name and your business. That will not only give you publicity, but will also help your SEO efforts because they will also link to your website or blog in their story.

Check Out My Publicity Book

If you want to know more about how to get publicity and press coverage for your business, I put together a short but powerful book with many strategies you can use to get publicity for your business. You can learn more about the book on how to get publicity on this site, or get the publicity book out on Amazon.

Free Publicity Playlist Of 16 Video Tutorials

Here is a playlist of 16 video tutorials on how to get publicity for a book, business or start-up.

Paid Publicity Package To Get Press Coverage For Your Business Today!

In addition to the free publicity that you can get with the strategies outlined in this article, I also offer a publicity package where your business, book or start-up can get exposure on YouTube, podcasts and blogs. Here is the link to the publicity package. And for more on how to get press coverage, check out the tutorial for how to get press coverage which has 10 actionable things you can do to get publicity for your business.

Further Marketing Resources

If you are looking for ways to promote your business, I created a number of books, apps and courses to help you learn marketing and hopefully become great at it. Here is my marketing plan book on Amazon. And here is more information about my marketing plan book to see if it might help you.

If you prefer to learn by watching video rather than reading, here are my video-based marketing courses. Here is the marketing plan and strategy course and here is my advanced social media marketing course. To learn more about the courses, here are the blog posts explaining more about the advanced social media marketing course and the general marketing plan and strategy course.