Greetings and Salutations -

I just finished up an interview with my local paper about my IPPY awards. I definitely recommend you personally write your local paper regularly with explanations on how you can help them. Papers are struggling to survive and want to provide useful content to their readers. They often are struggling to pay writers, and desperately need good content. You are their solution - and at the same time you get publicity for your projects.

Figure out who the person is who would best handle your area. You can do this by reading a few issues and seeing who writes about which topics. Next, write that person directly, and offer to be an interview subject on a topic they will think their readers want to know about. In my case it was self-publishing. The two IPPY awards gave it a special "sparkle".

It might take a few tries, or take a little while, but eventually they’ll bite. I wrote the paper back when I got the IPPY (end of May) and they only responded last week to set up the interview. So it might take a while. That’s OK. Hang in there.

Remember that they don’t care about you :). I say that a bit tongue in cheek, but papers get paid for advertising. They don’t want to give away free advertising. However, they want more subscribers. They want happy subscribers. So if you can provide content that their subscribers will find useful, that’s what they aim for. They don’t want to advertise you. They want you to pay money, if your aim is to get advertising.

So here are just a few ideas to get the creativity flowing.

Say our Exercise editor wants to promote a new Exercise ebook. She writes the local paper and offers to talk with them about exercise ideas for overweight inactive people. Things they can do to start getting moving. The paper would love this. It would be of great interest to lots of readers. The paper gets its popular article, and the exercise editor gets to mention her ebook in it.

Say our Healthy Foods editor is preparing an ebook on healthy summertime recipes. She can talk with a paper about ideas for making common summer recipes more healthy - and then promote her ebook. Or her site. Or both.

The key is not to write the paper and say "I have an ebook / website and I want free publicity for it". The paper gets millions of those requests a day. They're already losing money. They don't want to lose more by running free ads for people.

What the paper desperately needs is interesting content. They are having to compete with the web for their audience's attention. It's really hard! Papers are folding left and right. So if you can provide them with valuable content, they will be eager for it. And as you provide that content, you add in a promo for your projects.

I've created a brainstorming thread in our private Editor forums here -

http://forums.bellaonline.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/829270

Together we will help you reach your dreams :).

Sincerely,

Lisa Shea, owner
BellaOnline.com

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