Making a Point Through the Media

When my first book came out, I learned something that many authors, in the throes of writing their terrific tome, don’t consider: when it comes time to get the word out about your book, it’s up to you, the author, to do as much promotion as you can. Once I discovered that my publisher’s publicity deparment wasn’t going to be doing the PR legwork for me, I turned to another book to help me with the task of promoting my book. The book I used was Guerilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson.

Written for the small-business owner that is looking to raise his company’s profile, this book offered many media tips that were applicable to me, a book author. It talked about sending out timely press releases whenever there was a national news story that you could somehow spin to be relevant to your business, and it also reminding media-minded folks to get in the habit of writing letters to the editor of your local paper about issues that were important to you, relevant to your business (or in my case, my book’s topic), or that were in response to an article the paper had run.

I recently recalled Levinson’s “letter to the editor” advice when I was feeling frustrated that I couldn’t recycle carboard and cereal boxes in my home. I figured that it was time to air my grievance to the world via letters to the editor. Yes, I was trying to get this issue off of my chest and maybe shame the local garbage companies into stepping up their recycling efforts. At the same time I was hoping that someone might read my letter to the editor and offer a solution I hadn’t conseridered.

Off went those letters to the editor to three local papers, and a few days later someone called me. It wasn’t my trash company, to apologize for their lousy recycling service, and it wasn’t another company trying to get my business. It was an ordinary citizen calling.

This person had read my letter to the editor and wanted to let me know about the local trash company she uses–one that I had never heard of, because it is so small–that not only recycles nearly everything you could put out at the curb but allows its customers to earn points based on how much they recycle. Customers can then redeem these points as gift certificates to local businesses.

The customer reward program is run through Recyclebank, a Philadelphia based company that created this notion of incentive-based recycling. This idea was right up my alley. It would allow me to recycle nearly everything I’d hoped I could recycle–glass, paper, aluminum, plastic, cardboard, cereal boxes–and earn, basically, free stuff. What frugal and green person wouldn’t love this?

Happy ending to my saga, right? Wrong. The small local company that works with Recyclebank does not serve my town. So I’m still stuck my regular trash company and my on-going quest to figure out ways not to toss my cardboard and cereal boxes into the garbage.

Maybe my next act of guerilla marketing will be to wait and see if my local papers ever write about Recyclebank. Then I can write another lettter to the editor. This time I can talk about how it’s such a shame that big trash companies like the one I use don’t participate in this innovative program. Perhaps that will shame them into finally changing their recycling ways.