Lynnelle Wilson's BOLDVision Blog

Wanted: Small Businesses Doing Good Things

Good things (and PR) come to those who do good.

The NFIB (National Federation of Independent Business) is looking for small businesses doing big things in their community. If you or a small business you know is going out of their way to help their customers/communities in a special way in a difficult economy, you have a PR opportunity.

Megan Pacella, an editor at Hammock Inc., a media marketing company, is  producing an article called "Heroes Among Us". They want to interview small business owners who are going above and beyond in helping; who are NFIB member using their business to help serve their community during the economic recession.

Email Megan at mpacella (at) hammock (dot) com by 5:00 pm on January 30th!

This opportunity is part of a great email notice I get from Peter Shankman as part of his "HARO" (Help a Reporter Out) business.  Three times a day he sends out an email with 20-30 PR opportunities of various sorts. It's a gratis service.

If you're serious, Be BOLD. Sign up and Help a Reporter Out.

Small Business PR in the "Silly Season"

In Skip King's latest newsletter, Reputation Strategies, he talks about the "Silly Season".  Evidently, August is a slow news month and journalists get creative trying to fill the space and air waves with content. This creates opportunities for small businesses.  Want to get a little PR for your small business?  Here's what Skip says:

"Strange things show up in the newspaper in August.  Stories that wouldn't gain traction at any other time of the year can gather major prominence.

This fact is not lost on the media; reporters have been known to call August "Silly Season,"  and the reason it exists is because so many of the people who actually create news on a regular basis - politicians, celebrities, CEOs -  take major chunks of August off.

Meantime, a 30-minute newscast is a 30 minute newscast (well, 22, if you subtract the ads).  But you still gotta fill that time with something, right?

Election years offer a bit of respite from this; candidates never really stop campaigning, even when they're on vacation.  And occasionally, foreign despots - who are nothing if not media savvy and thus well aware of the first-world news void, use the time period to rattle cages.

Still, the comparative lack of hard news in August leaves organizations with an opportunity.

Be BOLD!  Come up with something sufficiently wacky and appealing and you've got a decent shot at coverage.