If you get publicity in major newspapers and magazines, you should trumpet the news to the world. Unfortunately, many recipients of great publicity take their clips and paste them into a scrapbook, or file them away, never to be seen again.

If this describes your routine, read on.

How about telling the world about your publicity with a tool you use every day – your business card!

Why not take one side of your business card and turn it into a billboard that features the names of the great publications, TV stations, radio shows and websites you’ve bee quoted in?

It’s simple and easy. Just create a file with your word processor and type in the places. Then adjust the font size so it is big, bold and readable. You don’t have to put in logos, dates, article titles or links. Just print the names of the media. Simple.

On the flip side of the card, put you usual info: Name, company, title, phone, email social media names, website, company logo, etc.

Then go to your printer and tell them you want a double-sided card. They’ve done this a zillion times and will know what to do.

You can make your card stand out even further by selecting different kinds of paper stock or a background color that is not the boring white.

Business cards are pretty cheap these days (at least on the Internet), so why not print a bunch of media-savvy cards and impress your next networking meeting?

Bloggers have influence and major players are reaching out to influence them.

Consider these events at BlogWorld:

• General David Patraeus took time out from defending our country to welcome people to BlogWorld and to thank bloggers for supporting the troops and their families. BlogWorld held a separate track for military blogs. Other tracks were for business, travel, food and sports.
• Mark  Burnett, creator of Survivor, The Apprentice and other reality shows, used BlogWorld for the world premier viewing of a trailer for his latest show, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.”
• Political consultants Mark Penn and Karen Hughes, veterans of two White House staffs, spoke about social media and politics.
• Borders announced software program to turn a book into a blog and have it sold via their bookstores – for $85, which includes the cost of an ISBN number. The head of the program told me that an ISBN number alone usually costs more than $85.
• SONY showed a prototype television with Internet capabilities. Tech pundit Jim Louderback said it was not ready for prime time, but that it did herald the beginning of a new era of convergence of the two media.

Meanwhile a room full of 100 food bloggers anxiously took notes from PR people who showed them how to curry favor with reporters and with brands – and learn a bit about journalistic ethics in the process.

In another room, several hundred corporate employees talked about how to measure ROI on social media and new media tools. Wrapped in numbers, metrics, formulas and algorithms, the session was not for the faint of heart, but for B-school wonks.

Still in another room, newbie bloggers were learning the ins and outs of creating content, creating community and creating income.

As panelists made their points, many in the audience tweeted and re-tweeted key points and sound bytes. Some presenters paused in their talks to point out they just said something that was tweetable.

Still others checked their messages on Facebook and Twitter (using HootSuite for the most part).

If one message came through loud and clear it was the social media was about creating conversations, not broadcasting messages. Case in point, two bloggers took to the microphones during Q&A to blast Penn and Hughes for talking in talking points, but not engaging the audience. The politicos answered the bloggers with more talking points but never once asked the questioners for their ideas.

Old habits are hard to break.

My audience is mostly speakers, authors, consultants and coaches. Most of whom think social media is a giant time waster. I can see why: Most messages I get from them are promotions for their webinars, teleseminars and thinly-veiled commercials for their books, consulting clients and other self-serving and self-promoting ventures. Of course no one engages in conversations with them. There’s no meat. People can see through an ad, even when it isn’t labeled an ad.

If you want to be successful with social media (and this conference showed me that many big companies really are getting ROI from their efforts), then it is key to engage so you can build visibility, trust and then sales.

So, what do you think?

Dan Janal is a very successful entrepreneur, professional speaker and marketing coach who helps clients build their businesses by improving their strategy for using publicity, marketing, Internet marketing, e-commerce and sales. To see how you can improve your business, go to www.prleadsplus.com

Follow me on twitter @prleads, www.facebook.com/danjanal and Linked In and my Linked In group, “PR LEADS.”

This article can be republished in your ezine, blog or website.

If I were trapped in a mine, thousands of feet underground for more than two months, I don’t think my first thought would be “How can I get media training.”

Then, again, I wasn’t trapped in a mine with the world looking on with wonder and pathos. The miners who were living in horror, apparently, were thinking several media steps ahead of me.

According to the Toronto Star, the miners asked for and received media training so they can sell their story – er should I have written “tell” their story instead? Oops. Freudian slip.

“With as many as 2,000 journalists waiting for them on the surface, the first thing they asked for was media training,” the paper reported.

Movie deals, book deals, TV interviews and the like are all in the offing for these tragic heroes. I wish them the best. No one should have to through the troubles they’ve seen.

I guess this shows how media-centric the entire world has become. Everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame, make a killing and ride off to the sunset. New thought. No one wants 15 minutes of fame any more. They want their entire lives broadcast on TV or YouTube or Facebook for the world to see and for them to monetize.

I just hope no TV producer thinks of a Realty TV show where 33 people are forced to live in a collapsed mine and vote one person off each week. There’s a saying about life imitating art.

If you need media training to turn your big disaster into a winning moment, send me an email and I’ll put you in touch with one of my many friends who do this work.

In the past, authors did well using email campaigns to broadcast book launches with bonuses. This process is so “2009.” Today, you have to use all of your tools. If you can build followers with your blog and then get attention on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you are more likely to drive people to your book site or Amazon page and make the sale. In this teleseminar, Marcia Reynolds will show how she integrated these tools to take her book to #1 on Amazon for Leadership and Management books for women and still keeps her in the top 10.

Here are a few things you will discover:

1. You started by creating a book blog site. Can you tell me why this is the center point of your campaign?
2. How did you get to blog for Huffington Post?
3. What was your Facebook strategy?
4. What was your LinkedIn strategy?
5. What was your Twitter strategy?
6. Did you use a publicist to help get the word out?
7. Did you use email or print support at all?
8. Tell me about actual book launch day, what did you do?
9. You said you had some struggles with Amazon-can you tell me about that?
10. How are sales going now and have you leveraged any other business from your campaign?

Marcia Reynolds, PsyD speaks globally on leadership topics and coaches rising star leaders on building relationships and making critical decisions in their complex and evolving workplaces. In addition to her Amazon bestseller, Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction, she authored Outsmart Your Brain and has been quoted in many publications including Psychology Today, Harvard Communications Newsletter, and The New York Times.

This free, one hour teleseminar will be held on Thursday, October 14, 2010, starting at

2 p.m. Eastern

1 p.m. Central

Noon Mountain

11 a.m. Pacific

To register, click here:

The event will be recorded and a link will be sent to all registrants.

To register, click here:

John Kremer knows more than 1001 tips which he has documented in his must-read book, “1001 Ways to market Your Books For Authors and Publishers.” Here are five tips he shared at the 21^st Century Book Marketing Conference in San Diego this past weekend.

1.     Speak. “80 percent of books are bought by word of mouth.”  Start locally. Get comfortable and then move on to larger groups. Every book that became a best-seller (regardless of genre: business, spirituality, children’s, even poetry). If you write a childre’s book, speak in schools. If you write poetry, speak at bookstores. People love buying books from the author.

2.     Present as much content and inspiration as you can. The worst thing you can do is hold back info.

3.     The essence of book marketing is creating relationships. Find good people to partner with.

4.     Get on TV, especially national TV. TV sells books. Everyone knows about Oprah, but many people don’t realize that the Daily Show and The Colbert Report can help move a lot of books.

5. Target the 100 top people who should know about your book. Contact each of them every month, once a month. These are people who could have an impact on the sales of your book. Over time, they will get to know your name. "You'd be surprised how often that works. People remember your name," he said.

John is a legend in the book industry. I highly recommend his book and his ezine and his teleseminar series called “People You Should Know. Read more at www.bookmarket.com/tips.htm