Secrets of Getting Free Coverage in Your Local Area

Buying a full-page ad in your local newspaper would cost more than most resume writing businesses could afford. However, if you got your local newspaper to cover you for free, that's exactly what you might get: an entire page (or at least a portion of a page!) dedicated to you.

Here's how to leverage the power of the press to get massive free publicity in your local area.

Pay Attention to Subsections
People often make the mistake of only trying to make "The Big News" (i.e., the front page of the paper or the front page of the Careers section). When you're trying to get attention locally, often it's better to focus on smaller sections.

For example, instead of trying to get an article in the Careers section, you might try to get a story in the "Money" or "Business" section. (Plus, you'd be attracting the attention of readers who aren't necessarily looking for a new job right at the moment.) Or how about trying to get a story in the "Living" section about a client who made a career transition in order to spend more time with his kids?

Each newspaper uses a different name for their various sections. Look through the various local papers and pick the sections you want to try to get stories in.

Don't Just Target Newspapers -- Think Magazines

Large cities often have magazines as well as newspapers. For example, San Francisco has the "7x7" magazine, dedicated just to San Francisco. New York, Chicago, Boston and many big cities also have similar circulations. My hometown -- Omaha, Nebraska -- has a couple of different city-oriented magazines, including Omaha magazine. The same company also publishes magazines called "Omaha Home" and "B2B Omaha."

Do a Google search of your city + magazine and see if you can find publications that are city-oriented in your area.

Reaching Out to Journalists
Remember that newspaper editors need to fill pages. Find the editor or journalist who's responsible for the specific section you're targeting. Try to pick people who've written about similar stories in the past. Then, send them an email pitching your story. Wait about 24 hours, then contact them by phone to follow up. Add them to your news release distribution list.

You might not land the story your very first try. Keep coming up with interesting angles and soon enough you'll get your first mention in the newspapers. Publicity begets publicity -- the more you're quoted, the more you'll be asked to be a part of future stories.

For more information on how to get free coverage for your careers industry business -- including sample news releases, dozens of story ideas to pitch, and more -- check out the Feed the Media Special Report (available to Bronze Level members during the month of September on BeAResumeWriter.com).

Pinterest Tip: How to Follow Other Pinterest Users

Last week, I shared a post on "Using Pinterest in Your Career Services Business." One of the most common questions I get from resume writers is: How do I follow other resume writers? 

As a social media site, one of the core features of Pinterest is the ability to follow other people’s pins. By following them, you cause their pins to appear in your feed. They’ll also see that you’re following them, making it more likely that they’ll follow you in return. Here’s how to find people and boards to follow.

Finding People You Know

If you have already connected your Facebook account to your Pinterest account, it’s easy to find people you know. To find and follow the pins of your existing connections, just hover your mouse over your name in the upper right corner. This causes the drop-down menu to appear. Click “Find Friends."

You’ll be taken to a page with all your friends’ names displayed. Just click “Follow” to follow them.

NOTE: When you choose to follow a specific person, this will have you follow all their boards and their pins. Alternatively, you can choose to follow specific boards only.

Follow Specific Boards Only

What if you only want to follow a specific board and not all of a person’s pins? You can do that and it’s a feature that’s useful if you only have some interests in common. Just click on their name, which will bring you to their profile page.

On their profile page, choose the specific board you want to follow and click “Follow” at the bottom of that board’s detail.

If, it at some later point, you want to follow all the boards of the individual, just go to their profile and click “Follow” from that page, instead of just on the board.

Finding Boards from People You Don’t Know

One rich source of images and ideas is boards by other people. People you don’t know. To find these boards, just click “Everything” along the top. A drop-down menu will appear with the topics of all the boards you might be interested in. Pick a topic.

A large feed of boards will appear. Click on a specific board to open the board. Click on a name to view that person’s profile. If you see a board or person you like, just follow them by clicking “follow” as shown above.

By selectively following people who pique your interest, you’ll be able to create a diverse, interesting and stimulating feed of pins on Pinterest.

That’s all it takes to start following people! You can find a short list of resume writers who are on Pinterest at the bottom of my post on "Using Pinterest in Your Career Services Business." And be sure to follow me on Pinterest!

Two Smart Ways to Leverage Your Facebook Content

The Resume Writers' Digest Facebook page

Your Facebook presence can be a great way to get the attention of prospective resume clients -- and stimulate referrals.

Here are two tips to help you maximize your results on Facebook.

Don't forget to use your personal page on Facebook to drive your resume business.

I've seen a couple of career industry professionals recently who are working to transition their "followers" to their Facebook business pages. If you value your privacy but still want to spread the word about your services, it can be smart to keep your "friends" to people you've actually met and family members. Friend requests from people you don't know -- or prospective or current clients -- can be directed to your Facebook Business page.

Facebook actually made this more confusing in the past few months as they introduced the "Subscribe" feature, which allowed people to receive your public Facebook status updates in their News Feed if they "subscribed" to you. But outside of a couple hundred high profile individuals, the idea wasn't widely adopted. And it seemed to counteract some of Facebook's own standards. Why limit individuals to having 5,000 "friends" and encourage them to use a business page to promote their services (and create a  Terms of Service agreement that penalizes personal profiles set up as companies or organizations) and then later encourage adoption of subscriptions to personal profiles? I don't get it.

With that said -- even if you decide to limit your business promotion to your Facebook Business page, and keep your personal account's "friends" list to people you know well (or better, at least!), don't neglect sharing business-related information on your personal page. There is a lot of power in your personal account's Facebook contacts. If you have a particularly good piece of content, don't just post it to your Facebook Business page's wall. Post it on your own as well. Your friends might like it or share it, resulting in more of their network seeing the content, which leads to more views on your page.

An even BETTER tip is to link to your business page in the post. That way, when it's shared, you're also driving traffic to your Facebook Business page, which can result in referrals, new business -- or, at least, a new "Like."

The second tip has to do with post timing and frequency.

Post early (and late) and often.

There is a lot of research out there about when is the best time to post content on your Facebook page (early morning, before the employed go to work? Mid-morning, for the unemployed? Late nights for college students?)

Unless you have thousands of Facebook fans (I am actually a backup admin for a Facebook page with more than 54,000 fans), a more important guideline than "when" to post is "how often" to post.

Most people have their page settings set so that they "sometimes" see your status updates on their feeds. That means that the more often you update, the more likely it is that something you posted will show up on your followers' feeds.

Don't post more than once or twice a day; but try to post at least once every two or three days. If you can post good content once a day, so much the better -- but don't post shoddy content just to fill space. It's fine to be a "curator" of content as much as a content "creator." That means sharing interesting and relevant articles from other sources (even other resume writers!), but be sure to add your own commentary, or -- better yet, spark engagement by asking a question like, "What would you do if you were asked for your Facebook password in an interview?" on a link to an article about employers requesting access to applicant Facebook accounts. The more someone interacts with your posts (likes, comments, shares), the more likely that content is going to show up in their News Feed in the future.

If you find it difficult to remember to post (or if you prefer to "chunk" your marketing activities and do them all at once), use Facebook's "post scheduler" feature on your Facebook Business page or a third-party service like Hootsuite and write all your posts all at once, but schedule them to "drip" out over time.

These are a few smart ways of making Facebook more effective in your resume writing business.

P.S. -- If you haven't already, please "LIKE" our Resume Writers' Digest Facebook page! You'll get curated articles, links to our blog posts when they're posted, notifications about upcoming events (including free teleseminar traning), and more!

Using Pinterest in Your Career Services Business

Pinterest is the fastest website in history to hit more than 10 million unique monthly visitors. That's faster than Facebook, faster than Twitter and faster than Google. It went from 4.8 million unique in November 2011 to 11 million in January 2012, a mere three months.

Although Pinterest is growing rapidly -- and you may even have an account already that you are using to collect home decor ideas, or recipes -- most resume writers and career industry professionals don't understand how they can use it to get new clients.

(If you want to learn more about setting up a Pinterest account, you can access the free 27-page "Resume Writer's Guide to Pinterest" in the Free Level Resources section of BeAResumeWriter.com. You can apply for your free membership -- or sign in, if you're already a Free or Bronze Level member -- at www.bearesumewriter.com/join)

Bridget's Pinterest Profile: http://pinterest.com/rwdigest/

Over 80% of Pinterest users are women. Pinterest is a powerful tool for interacting with female buyers and decision-makers online. 

Here are some creative ways to use Pinterest in your resume writing business.

Become an Authority on Pinterest

Ideas for Jobseekers

Much like on Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere, one of the best ways to get attention is by providing high quality content.

As a resume writer, you can curate content that relates to the careers industry. I've got a couple – including the "Ideas for Jobseekers" board.

Create content-based boards that give other people ideas and help solve problems. You can create boards for things like interviewing (curate "dress for success" photos, for example) or for "Career Books You Should Read."

Keep doing this until people see you as an authority on Pinterest.

 Market Research

Use Pinterest as a market research tool.

What are prospective resume clients thinking? What do they want in their lives? What are their hopes and dreams?  Figuring out the answers to these questions has traditionally been quite tough. With Pinterest, however, you have a live feed of exactly what everyone in your target market is thinking about and cares about right now. 

Look at who is following your boards, and click through to their profiles. (On your personal profile page, you'll see your number of Followers and the number of people you follow -- "Following." Click on the one that says "Followers.") Check out boards with titles like "Things I Love."

  

Future Product Ideas

 Along with the idea of using Pinterest to conduct market research, you can use it to capture future product ideas. What kind of ideas is your company considering? One way to let your users participate in the decision making process is to just throw up all the possible ideas on a Pinterest board.

For example, if you're putting together a new special report on "Getting Started with Facebook In Your Job Search," you might commission a couple of inexpensive cover designs (I recommend using Fiverr.com) and then put up the choices and have your Pinterest followers "vote" on a design.

Throw the concepts up there and let your customers decide.

Affiliate Pinboard

Example of an Affiliate Board

An affiliate pinboard can help you give value to your customers by helping them find resources that are relevant for their needs while you earn affiliate income when they click-through from your Pinterest board.

Create a pinboard out of resources you can find in your industry. Slip a couple of your own in there as well. Customers will find your pin board and buy from both your recommendations and from your company. 

Showcase Your Work

Drive traffic to your blog

One of the best ways to use Pinterest in your resume writing business is to drive traffic to your website and your blog, and to show examples of your work and places you've been published. You can pin blog posts to your board, link to books you've been published in, and post fictionalized resumes.

Looking for an examples of resume writers who "get" Pinterest? Check out these profiles:

• Maureen McCann
• Rosalind Kimber
• Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter
• Charlotte Weeks
• Mark Dyson
• Tim Tyrell-Smith
• Daisy Wright
• Kristin Johnson
• Miriam Salpeter
• Adrienne Tom
• Dawn Rasmussen
• Jan Melnik
• Walter Akana
• Holly Bunn

These are some creative ways you can use Pinterest in your resume writing business. Pinterest is an extremely fast growing website that’s only going to get more and more relevant as time passes. Are you ready to get involved?

Like this post? Check out my post on "Pinterest Tip: How to Follow Other Pinterest Users."