The Tin Shingle Blog

If you follow our Tin Shingle blog or Facebook you'll know that Daria Artem, the Chief Confectionary Officer (!!) at Lady Fortunes Gourmet Cookies had me at her beyond creative cookie designs (from QR-cookies to personalizd fortune cookies).  Good news for her DIY PR campaign is that her responses to PR leads also have editors hooked. 

In fact, within her first month at Tin Shingle she landed a feature on The Street.  As we all know, a fully rounded publicity campaign isn't all about product stories, you need to tell your business story too, which is what Daria was able to begin doing here. Just how did she do it?  Read on, and learn a bit from her process, from pitch to placement!
Note from Sabina: I LOVE her answer to question #2, it inspired me!

HOW LADY FORTUNES COOKIES LANDED THESTREET.COM

How often have you been working on your DIY (do-it-yourself) PR?
3 months
 
What press opportunity did you snag by replying to a PR Lead?
The Street was doing an article on Management Horror Stories- so we replied and got a great feature!

Can you walk us through the process, from pitch to placement?
We responded to the lead and a week later got a bite from the writer. Our pitch included 2 stories to choose from, interesting facts and main points bulleted for the writer. She set up a time for an interview and I called her and told her my story. She asked specific questions- she told me she was tape recording because I guess they do that so that they can listen later and add quotes. She told us the date that the story would run.

I contacted her that week to confirm the story ran and it did! This writer works with a lot of other magazines and news programs so I will be keeping her on file!
*smart says Tin Shingle

How long did the entire process take (days, weeks)?
The entire process took about 3 weeks from pitch to placement. You throw out a response and sometimes wait up to 2 weeks to get a bite!

Did you learn anything through this process that you can share with other small business owners?
YES! I almost did not reply to this query because I did not think they would take my story and mention my business- but I responded anyway. It is really funny about pitching because everytime you pitch a writer they see your name and see your story and this writer told me she saw another pitch from before (which did NOT work out for her) but this time it did! The lesson here is to be tenacious and don’t give up. Respond like you mean it EVERY time. You wouldn’t serve half baked cookies- so don’t offer up half baked pitches!!!! 

We find the must-know news so you don’t have to.  Read on Tin Shinglers!

• Many a fan of Tin Shingle both pitches and reads MSNBC which is why we thought you may want to catch up on the news of Microsoft ending their relationship with MSNBC.

   

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• TV and social engagement.  Check out the nitty gritty here from AdAge. 

   

• A new online shopping website has launched created by two entrepreneurs who wanted a place to find modest business and social outfits.   Meet Mode-sty.

   

• Today we say goodbye and bid a fond farewell to writer-preneur Donald Sobol of the Encyclopedia Brown series.

   

• I can truly say that 7 Habits of Highly Successful People is one book some of the most powerful and, well, successful entrepreneurs I know all credit for impacting them as business owners.  Today we mark the passing of it’s author, Stephen Covey. 
   

Yesterday, when I was doing a regular check-in on my Facebook feed, I caught a news story via a Jezebel post regarding teenagers protesting at Conde Nast.  Curious, I clicked and read more.

It was there that I read this article about teenagers protesting at Teen Vogue and demanding that the magazine use more "real image of real girls". You go girls!  I was excited, but when I read on through the story and found other accounts of the nationally televised protest, I also found several reports saying that disappointingly, Teen Vogue's response was less than stellar.  (Check out the lack of response from the magazine in this article by Buzzfeed's Amy O' Dell HERE.)

With so much buzz building around the incident I decided to see what Teen Vogue's response was on social media (isn't it amazing that Twitter was the first place I went to see a real time response...times have change).  I headed on over to Teen Vogue's Twitter feed only to find that their response was...well there was no response.  They spent the day tweeting as if it was all business as usual.  Not one mention was made about the protest, their thoughts on airbrushing or "real" models, it was like they were living in a happy bubble that the rest of us were not part of yesterday afternoon.  To be honest, in light of the afternoon's protests and discussions, their afternoon tweets about celebrities and beauty actually felt a bit odd.  In the end, a (male) publicist made a statement, and as of late yesterday, the Twitter feed remained silent about the protest.

TWITTER FAIL! I'm actually a big fan of Teen Vogue and couldn't believe they didn't seize the chance to begin an open dialogue on and offlline with the teens.  I'm more surprised that they didn't even make a social media statement as the buzz online grew.  The thing is, like it or not, we live in a world where social media allows messages to spread quickly and demands us to be authentic online.  You can't ignore an incident and think it will go away.  You can't use Twitter when you want to communicate things on your agenda and then hide from Twitter when things are uncomfortable.

To be successful in social media (and life) you have to be transparent, authentic, responsive and engage in real conversations.  This also means taking the good and the bad.  If someone makes a comment on your Facebook page about something they didn't like about a product or service, don't erase it (unless it's an extreme case) instead, you respond to it.  Good social media skills require great customer service.  They require relationship skills.  If you were in an argument with your friends or family you would talk it out you wouldn't hide in your room and hope it went away.

Teen Vogue isn't the only big brand that has made social media mistakes and theirs is far from the biggest.  Read on to hear about other Twitter failures.  Learn from their mistakes!  Tweet on!

13 Epic Twitter Failures by Big Brands

We find the must-know news so you don’t have to.

• Can you learn business lessons from a cocaine dealer?  The Huffington Post thinks so, and shares them in this article. 

   

• Will you be effected by the Internet blackout on Monday?  Find more out about it in this CNN report.

   

• The “evolve or die spirit” is the subject of this article in Bloomberg Business Week which highlights how businesses are changing to meet new demands of the world and changes brought on by the recession.  #inspired.

   

• Are you paying attention to the ever-growing and increasingly powerful tween market?  Perhaps you should, which this piece by Rieva Lesonsky of SmallBizDaily discusses.

   

• ZUMBA! You’ve heard of it, you know the aerobics meets dance craze is spreading across the country, but did you know the story of the entrepreneur and the ever-growing business?