Are You Sitting One of These Four "Bookable" Media Stories?

You as a business owner want free positive media coverage. Media outlets need relevant and interesting stories to tell that keep their readers, viewers and listeners interested. Together you are a match made in heaven, but the trick is to find the balance between providing the media with a truly interesting and honest news story instead of what they would consider to be better suited as advertising.

Finding your best media story is crucial if you want media coverage because you can't generate media coverage without a great story to tell. When brainstorming your best media stories, keep this in mind: Reporters, producers and editors are always going to be asking this question:

Will my viewers/listeners/readers care about this, or will they reach for their remote control, change the radio station, click to the next web site or just turn the magazine page hoping for something interesting elsewhere?

It's the age-old acronym, WIIFM: What's In It For Me? (Or rather, my viewers, listeners or readers.)

It is your job as a business owner to find a way to make the media perk up and say, "Hey-this is interesting and different or relevant. Let's do a story." Here are four great ways to generate this kind of interest:

1. Human Interest Appeal

For example: One of my clients is D.A.R.E. America, and I do PR for their after-school dance program called D.A.R.E. Dance. When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, a 7th grader from Chicago contacted D.A.R.E. Dance to see if she could collect gently used dance shoes at her dance studio and send them to Houston so the displaced kids could have dance shoes. We helped coordinate this project with her and also sent out a press release about her project to the media in Chicago. This human-interest story was picked up by a large magazine in Chicago and she had a reporter come out an interview her, take photographs of her and so forth. The coverage was fantastic, and although it was not a piece where the focus was on D.A.R.E. Dance, it certainly helped in our PR, community service and fund raising efforts!

2. Hard news

These stories are usually information-based.

For example: Stories that are political in nature. Other hot items right now are anything around "green" initiatives and new technology.

3. Piggybacking

This term means that you can comment on a national story. You take what's out there on a national level and be the local tie-In. Local media love this!

For example: If you are a divorce attorney and a high-profile couple is in the news because of a separation or divorce, you can send out a press release about what couples can do to prevent a sticky divorce, what the steps are to an amicable divorce, or other angle that works for you.

Another example: Young girls in Hollywood seem to constantly be in trouble. If you're a coach for mothers, you can send out a press release about how to prevent your young daughters from ending up in similar situations.

4. Offering a Solution to Problem

As an expert in your field, you have solutions to common problems. Your solutions are a prime media coverage opportunity.

For example: A report is released that shows that most home owners aren't properly insured. You offer a complete insurance package that meets the needs of home owners. You can send out a press release to this effect.

I trust you see that finding your best media stories is worth spending time on if you really want more media coverage. Many times, business owners are so close to their genius work that it's too difficult to see their best media stores. But keep this in mind: The media truly needs you-yes, you-to fill their air time and their publications. Take time this week to brainstorm and tell your best media stories that make the media say "Yes!" And if you need help, reach out to someone to help you unearth a great story that may be right under your nose.

This article may be reprinted when the copyright and author bio are included.

© 2011 Meredith Liepelt, Rich

"Meredith Liepelt, President of Rich Life Marketing, offers a free report called "101 Ways to Attract Ideal Clients, Build Your List and Raise Your Profile," which can be downloaded immediately at http://www.RichLifeMarketing.com. "

What Do These 5 Headlines Have in Common?

Half of UK consumers fear for their finances

Where there's muck there's ... A £57 million bill

64% of Britons are considering carrying on working after retirement

Middle Britain house prices to drop £40,000 by Christmas

Home insurance leaves Britons £9billion out of pocket

They have all featured in the national press in the last few weeks and they are all relating to results obtained by running surveys.

So what does this have to do with me?

Using this technique, you can build press releases around surveys that you can carry out with your client base, or by running queries on your databases. Journalists love stats and the more unique and original the stats the better. You can even use these to produce a monthly report that gets sent out to local and national press.

For example, we used to produce a monthly survey for loan applications for a secured lending client and it got picked up and used for 6 months in 2 national print magazines with links back to the client site each month.

There is a hidden goldmine of stats that you can use in your customer database to create useful press releases:

Demographics - Where are your clients?

Product based - What products are they applying for? How much for? What %age of clients who buy X go onto buy Y as well?

Remember, if using customer data to keep it generic and don't mention customers on an individual basis. Do be prepared to be asked for a case study, so it is always useful to have a case study available. Having a case study in our experience gives you:

o More column inches

o More likelihood of use

o Greater future exposure - If you are easy to deal with, present info in a ready to use way and have case studies - you are a journalists dream!

Opinion based - use an actual online survey to garner results and scale up to a national level. Most surveys use a small number of responses and scale it up to create a national response.

So how do I build a survey that makes it easy to get quantifiable results?

The best way to build a survey is on a multiple choice basis. In this way it is easy to create statistics. Online you can use free tools such as Surveymonkey to create an online survey or poll which then allows you to login in and collect the results to use. You can use a free survey at surveymonkey.com which allows you to collect 100 responses which is a good number to work with.

How do I get people to fill it in?

You can email your existing customer base and offer them entry to a free prize draw for completing the survey. You can use it as a competition and submit it to competition sites such as loquax.co.uk, competitionsuk.net, and ukcompetitions.com.

For the cost of an Ipod Nano or something of similar value you can build a good amount of information.

Keep the survey short, to say five questions, and if used correctly, you can create a press release around each question. So that's a press release every month for 5 months.

Okay so I have the release now what?

There are various methods for publishing press release but we will use two methods.

Firstly, you can email to the finance and insurance journalists. Go out and buy all of the weekend nationals and local papers and note who is writing the stories in the money sections. You can build a quick list of around 20 or 30 in this way.

Secondly, you can submit your release online. You can use a paid for service such as PRWeb or you can spend an hour or so submitting to a few main press release directory sites such as: dbusinessnews.com, seenation.com, Google.com/base, pr-usa.net, openpr.com, i-newswire.com, prlog.com, przoom.com, and pressbox.co.uk.

Some of these sites are US based but it doesn't matter, journalists can look at these resources to get ideas for stories. They also get featured in Google News which is another great source for research for journalists.

Press releases are a great way to get exposure for your business both locally and nationally, online and offline so you should build in marketing time to add in this promotional tool to your arsenal. Press releases used and picked up online also provide your website with a boost in authority too. Having your story picked up and used by the BBC with a link back to your site, for example, can lift your website out of obscurity and improve it web rankings in the major search engines.

Jason Hulott is Marketing Director of Speedie Consultants Limited, and Insurance Internet Marketing Specialist ; We are also content experts that provide a range of services to the Finance and Insurance industry. To get 5 free reports to help maximize your Internet business please visit the site: http://www.speedieconsulting.co.uk

High Dividend Stocks - These ETFs Are Better In Tough Times

Producing steady income for your investment portfolio can be difficult during tough economic times. When the markets are getting slammed and Europe is teetering on the brink of a financial collapse, putting your hard-earned money into high dividend stocks may not be the best decision. The loss in the underlying stocks will provide negative net returns in a down market. This is what happened to many investors in 2008 and 2009.

A better strategy right now is to consider diversifying across a wide variety of high-dividend yielding Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). You can avoid the individual company risk from high dividend stocks, the downside of equities in a falling market, and these ETFs are more stable than stocks in these uncertain times. ETF funds trade just like stocks and so they can be easily bought and sold with any discount broker online and the fees are very small. Start with a small initial investment into each of them and then add money every month while also using the accumulated dividends to buy more over time.

These are my recommendations for outperforming high dividend stocks in these difficult stock market times.:

1) PFF - IShares S&P US Preferred Stock Index Fund (7.2% yield)

This ETF fund tracks closely to the S&P U.S. Preferred Stock Index and yields a strong 7.2% today.

2) HYG - IShares IBoxx High-Yield Corportate Bond (8.1% yield)

This ETF should still hold up better than stocks in a downturn and they do have a 20% allocation that can hedge a bit. The high-yield corporate is actually a reasonable value play here. The dividend is very high at 8.1% today.

3) LQD - IShares IBoxx Investment Corp Bond (4.6% yield)

The investment quality corporate bond fund has a solid yield of 4.6%. There is still some risk in a falling market with corporate bonds but the large diversification will provide more stability than individual stocks or individual corporate bonds.

4) PLW - Powershares 1-30 Laddered Treasury Portfolio (2.9% yield)

A way to take advantage of Treasury Bonds but to get a higher yield then buying them separately and being locked in over time is with this ETF. The fund invests in a variety of different maturity Treasury securities and yields around 2.9%. US Treasures are still the ultimate safe haven play in times of turmoil.

5) TIP - IShares Barclays TIPS Bond (4.2% yield)

To help with inflationary times and rising interest rates, you should look at investing in treasury inflation protected bonds or TIPS. IShares offers this exposure in an ETF and it yields almost 4.2% today. It has really performed well so far this year and is probably the safest investment for the foreseeable future.

6) PZA - Powershares Insured National Municipal Bond Portfolio (4.6% yield)

This fund is attractive because of its wide diversity, the fact that these are mostly high quality insured muni's, and due to a selloff after some headline scare hit the market at the end of 2010. While some individual muni bonds may find trouble in the future, this wide diversification should provide ample protection and safety. It's dividend yield is paying out a very solid 4.6%.

There will be better times to buy high dividend stocks and they still are a good investment vehicle over time. In fact, I have even recommended some excellent value high dividend stocks in other articles that should be scaled into during this market turmoil. However, for more safety and peace of mind over the next few months and probably much longer, I recommend you consider investing in the very high-yield income ETF funds that I covered above.

You can get plenty more great stock ideas from our very popular subscription services. We help make trading and investing easy and extremely profitable. Let us do all of the work for you with our model portfolios and hot list swing trading and investing ideas. Our six year track record using proven fundamental and technical analysis techniques at http://www.momentumrider.com is unmatched for market beating results.

Claim your FREE special report, a $247 value, "7 Keys to Find the Top Stocks to Buy" at http://www.ebeststockstobuy.com.

Keith Hugenberg is the CEO of Jalexa Trading Consultants LLC (Momentum Rider), a stock trading and investing educational and consulting company.

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Reverse Cell Phone Lookups - Who Are These Annoying People That Keep Calling?

Are you among the many men and women that had been searching for a free reverse mobile phone look up program? A lot of the cost-free reverse mobile phone sites basically do not get the results you are looking for and it can be quite annoying. Lots of the websites are generally deceptive. Whats the difference between free and a fee based service.

Any time you need to perform a reverse cell phone number look up, exactly what does this necessarily mean? The one thing cell phones have got in common is certainly the fact that the identity of the caller will not be displayed on the cellphone, there is no information but the number. Since cell phone numbers are private, people who want to find out who is calling will need to use a service that will produce the identity of the caller.

Whenever you try to find a trusted reverse mobile phone look up service, you could encounter a lot of internet websites that will state the are free, however they are really not free. That is definitely not possible for any company to deliver zero cost solution, the problem is that a free service needs to have an enormous infrastructure, advanced technology, and a qualified work force to support the entire system.

What can these services do is let individuals to simply enter virtually any phone number and immediately receive the name the number belongs to along with their house address as well as every other numbers belonging to these people.

To complete any reverse mobile phone lookup you should utilize a reliable directory service. Although there's no free nationalized mobile phone directory site readily available because of privacy issues, you will find specialized web directories that will assist in getting the information that is required.

Governmental laws strictly forbid phone companies from publicizing cell numbers. The reverse cell phone lookup services require a modest fee to access these directories. Once the information is retrieved it is presented partially to the user to analyze to make sure it is the correct information. Once the information is approved the comprehensive information is then retrieved and formatted into a report.

By and large, the best, correctly maintained reverse cell phone directory sites, of which there are a many on the internet, can present you with quick legitimate data. Do some research before choosing a service and make sure the company is reliable and reputable.

Click here to use the most reliable and reputable reverse cell phone lookup service to find the owner of any phone number.

Produce Hefty Sales Results With These No-Cost Promo Tools

We're in a darn tough economy. Add to that the fact that writing generally is not the most lucrative of professions even in better times. So it's little wonder that the average author finds the cost and the challenge of promoting his/her book daunting.

Long months of writing. Days of intense anticipation. And at last this new gem rolls off the press. What should be time for glee often turns into somewhat of a horror with the sudden realization that the challenge is yours, not your publishers. Your plans to hire a PR firm are dashed when you see the fees they expect. You flounder when you realize you are there alone with no one to help you.

While this is particularly true for novice authors-and there are thousands of them coming out of POD houses-more experienced writers discover the old days of subsidized book tours and fancy launch parties are relics of the past. Publishers today expect YOU, the author, to pay the bill and do the work necessary to make the public aware of your masterpiece.

There is no question a quality PR firm, and there are several in our industry, can jump start your book on the path to success. But you likely don't have the thousands of dollars to retain them. Don't despair. There are ways to promote your book and build sales without breaking what little budget is available.

Writing articles on the Internet, much as I am doing right now, bears great fruit, but costs you nothing. Syndicators like EzineArticles and isnare are free to use. Yet they place your article in front of up to 40 or 50,000 readers. You add an appealing Resource Box at the end of your piece touting your book and giving full information on where to find it. You'll see your numbers grow quickly.

Reach out for quality book reviewers. Readers always pay more heed to favorable comments from an objective third party than they do to your pitch or that of your publisher. Cherry pick those you think are right from Amazon's Top 1,000 Reviewers. Head to Jim Cox's Midwest Book Review on the Internet for great advice and highly respected reviewers. Try Dan Poynter's ParaPubnewsletter for more possibilities. And you won't have to spend a penny.

Carefully dip your toe into social networking. Try Facebook because it has such a huge membership, Twitter because of its current popularity and if you have the time, LinkedIn particularly if your book deals with business or professional issues. Schedule a limited amount of time each week to keep your site updated and active, but don't let the fun of participation steal hours from your basic routine---writing.

Never overlook the incredible reach of broadcast. Radio talk shows are the activity of choice. There are many of them that deal with a wide variety of subjects, many of which will be related to the topic of your book, whether fiction or nonfiction. If your home area has a local TV station, go for it. National television is tough to crack, but it becomes a lot easier if you have a track record of regionals and lots of talk radio.

Getting booked on the air costs nothing. But it will take some effort on your part to reach and convince producers of your worth as an interviewee. There are companies that can help to place you on air. Steve Harrison's Bradley Communications, Annie Jennings PR, Rick Frischman's Planned TV Arts and Francine Silverman, author of "Talk Radio Wants You."

With the exception of broadcast, most of what I have introduced you to can be accomplished online. But don't ever forget the value of print publications. Whether you are seeking reviews from a newspaper or magazine or want to place an article, the exposure will benefit you tremendously.

Newspaper book sections have shrunk or disappeared completely. But think of the value of a review in a section of the paper that relates to your subject. Perhaps it's business or food, sports or finance, travel or the arts. Possibilities abound. The situation is similar for magazines. They are published in every imaginable field. Use directories like "Writer's Digest," published in on and offline versions or "The Wooden Horse" which I think is the best of the online directories.

There certainly are many other low cost or free promotional possibilities, but space does not allow me to cover them all. Use your imagination. Study what other authors are doing on the Web and off.

Most of all, make sure you have an active, interesting website crammed full of worthy information. (Post every article you write on your site,) Give the visitor an easy pathway to learn more about your book and hopefully to buy from a sales page on your site.

With these simple techniques and a strong website to act as a base to send material from and to receive responses, you will catapult your book to unexpectedly strong sales. But always remember: while it may take no money, it will take effort. Without real participation, no promotional program will succeed. Good luck!

Charles Jacobs is an author, book coach and writing instructor. His latest book, "The Writer Within You," has been named a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR seven times. It has won gold and bronze medals. The book can be purchased at http://www.retireandwrite.com.

How Much Energy Will These Solar Panels Produce Anyway?

The whole idea of this feed-in-tariff business is that you earn money by selling units of energy produced by your solar panels. So much so that after 25 years of operation you've made your money back and have even turned a tidy profit. This means that in order to know whether putting up some solar panels makes any sense, you need to know exactly how much energy they're going to produce over the 25-year guarantee period.

Easy, you might say - the calculation is pretty straightforward. You find out the average annual irradiation (sunnyness level) from your local weather station, and multiply by the efficiency of your solar panels and the number of square metres you have. This will give you a nice number and away we go. The only problem is you might be more than 50% wrong because we've missed out a couple of variables. Variables such as temperature coefficient, tilt angle, diffuse-light fraction, solar cell type, shading losses, inverter losses, cable losses, degradation, module de-rate factor, mismatch losses, anti-reflective coatings, snow and lightning strikes, to name a few.

Of course there are an infinite number of effects that can influence the output of your photovoltaic system (solar eclipse, anyone?). The question is whether you have considered the important ones or not.

Knowledgeable installers use one of a number computer programs designed specifically to take these factors into account. You type in what type of solar panel you're using, how many, where they are, what angle they're tilted at, what direction they're facing and then press 'go'. It then calculates the amount of energy you'll produce each month and even the return on investment if you want it to. Behind these models is actually some physics that describes the behaviour of solar cells under different light intensities and correctly.

The most commonly used model in Europe is called PVSyst, developed at the University of Geneva. This software package contains information on a large number of different solar panel types and is capable of taking into account many of the above listed factors. Installers across Europe use this software package to predict the energy yield of residential solar systems, as do many banks pondering whether to provide multi-million euro loans to super-large PV power projects. Even with this advanced software package however, some of these factors are very complex, and improving these models is an active area of research.

Here, I'll deal with a couple of these complications as examples. When you buy a solar panel, it invariably comes with a power rating. Full size modules are generally around 200W. What does this mean though? In principle, the power rating indicates what you get when the panel is illuminated by full-sunlight. 'Full sunlight' is not very specific, so the international community has defined what is known as Standard Test Conditions (STC), which corresponds to an irradiation of 1000 W/m2 and a cell temperature of 25oC, when the light has a specific spectrum (or colour) known as Air Mass Index 1.5. So the power of your solar panel comes from its performance under exactly these conditions. In general this is measured using special type of lamp called a 'solar simulator' that tries to reproduce the AM1.5 spectrum as closely as possible. Calibrating these lamps precisely is notoriously difficult and there are very few testing centers around the world that are truly trusted. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado, USA uses at least two different lamps and one outdoor measurement to record STC performance, after a long period of calibration.

Because measuring the STC performance is so tricky, the power rating you get has a plus or minus 5 percent error margin. This is hard to include in your simulation. In addition, manufacturers will often deliberately under-rate the power of their solar panels to be sure they don't fall below the warranty. This means you may well get considerably more power than you expect.

Another factor that adds to uncertainty is the degradation factor. When you buy solar panels they are normally guaranteed for 20 years, but only to 80% of the initial power output. This means the manufacturer expects them to degrade 1% per year on average. When calculating performance in the models, people also tend to use a 1% degradation rate per year. This is only a rough estimate however. During the certification process, solar panels are given all sports of nasty treatment to test their reliability to breaking point. This doesn't tell you much about the rate of degradation when the solar panels are outside under normal operation though. The only reliable way to test degradation over 20 years is to wait 20 years, but this is complicated by the fact that technology improves reliability much faster than that. So the degradation of solar panels made in 2008 has only been tested since, well, 2008.

What these issues highlight is that understanding the energy yield output of your solar panels is not as straightforward as it may at first seem. When having your system designed, make sure who-ever you're dealing with has some experience, and if possible, get a second opinion.

The other critical piece of information for understanding the financial viability of a solar installation is how much you will get paid per kWh under the feed-in-tariff. Unfortunately, the UK government has not released the final figures yet, which means no-one in the UK can make a reliable financial plan for getting solar panels, even when the launch date for the feed-in-tariff is just 4 months away.

Hopefully I will be able to update you on this in the near future. For now though, it's better to be more conservative with your numbers than too ambitious....

Kevin Langley is a leading knowledge in the Solar Investment and Renewable Energy world. Having worked with the subject for many years, he is fast becoming an expert on green energy and investments in green stocks.

He writes for many blogs and runs a range of Solar websites. He has a keen interest in green renewable energy and spends most of this writing time focusing on this subject.

http://solarfeedintariff.co.uk/