Simple Social Media

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Public Relations – Media Spin – Publicity

“A good PR story is more effective than a front-page ad” – Richard Brandson

PR if FREE publicity. It doesn’t cost you a cent!

• It carries more cred than advertising
• Its regarded as honest and reliable
• It stands a bigger chance of being read or listened to 
• It can enable you and your message to been see by thousands, if not millions of people.

And it’s simple, just talk to journalists!

Why you?

• The traditional PR expert you hire, besides costing you a few thousand each month, will tend to have a basic idea of the services you offer. 
• They only know enough to make it sound good and they tend to lack in-depth knowledge of your business. Glossing over the details, they spin a broad picture.
• Journalists look at then as the gatekeepers to businesses and or the person they want to talk to.
• While they may have a good supply of stock photographs, they are generally uninformed about the details.
• The Journalists really want to talk to an expert, they want the quote and or sound bite straight from someone who’s had first hand experience in the situation.

But I’m not trained in PR or have any experience in doing it.

NO ONE  knows your products and or business like you do!
You are the expert that the journalist wants to hear from!

Watching out for the #jornorequest, #urgharo and #haro hastags.
Journalists use these when they are asking for stories, leads and or content.

Here’s Jessica asking for restaurant owners to contact her:

This is a golden ticket if you own or ran a restaurant in Bath or Bristol. It’s a silver medal if your restaurant is older than time with tall tales of pirates, kings and heroes who’ve dinned at your tables!

Put the square box back on the dusty shelf and look to the horizon of new opportunity!

It’s not that they are too lazy to do all the legwork or put in hours of research, they do that. This is just another avenue available to them and a perfect opportunity for you to put your company, brand or product in the public eye. Besides giving them content, in some instances, you’re making it easy by offering the who story or article. 

Other content hungry avenues are BLOGS.

Most of the biggest influencers around today grew out of the humble blog.
Just because it’s Internet based doesn’t mean it’s not worth considering.  

Cosmo magazine has a UK circulation of around 210 thousand to 250 thousand per issue and Good Housekeeping reaches almost double that. Impressive for a glossy mag that ends it’s life in the waiting room of the local GP surgery.

Not that impressive when compared to the Entrepreneur with 100 million unique views per month and the Huffington Post with 218 million unique views per month.

Traditional advertising in traditional magazines costs loads of hard earned traditional money.    #JustSaying

Having said that, don’t overlook the power of a well-worded article in a glossy magazine or even a free train station newspaper.

Identify where your market is, what are they reading, where are they traveling to and what are they watching or listening to. Get to know how specific journalists write, what are their favorite topics. Identify those who you think would be interested in your business or product and make the their life easy by giving them a story.

Research the blog or publication.  Not only do they need to be aimed at your market but you need to be able to demonstrate you could help / motivate / inspire their readers.

Avoid the “me too” rush. If they’ve recently published something similar to what you are offering, they won’t be interested in your pitch.

It’s all in the PITCH.

Write to each publication, TV station or Blog and pitch your story. 

Address the email to a specific person. A “Dear Matilda” rather than a bland “Hello” or the all time classic, “To Whom it may Concern” immediately creates a sense of intimacy and trust. It’s all about relationship building.

• Remember your USP. Unique Selling Point.
• Create a hook, a snappy, standout title that includes the word “pitch”.
• Be 100% honest and do not exaggerate.
• Don’t bore them with details about your business, keep thinking about building a relationship. Both with the writer/journalist and their readers.

Pitch - How I created a multi million business for my kitchen table.

Pitch - Why being made redundant was the best thing for me. 

Pitch – Why earning a living is killing me!

One size does not fit all. 

It’s not a press release so don’t send the same pitch to a whole batch of publications. Custom each pitch to the specific publication.

THINK & ANALYZE

Start to think about which publications would best suit you and your business.

Read them, regularly. Taking note of the journalists/writers who you feel would best work with you and for your product.

Now analyze the newspaper/VLog/Blog/or magazine. Ask yourself where could you and your business be featured?

LOOK & ENGAGE

Look at who is editing and or writing those sections of the newspaper or the blog. Then follow them on social media. No you’re not stalking them, you’re waiting for them to ask for help, remember #jornorequest.
By engaging with them on Twitter and retweeting their articles, you begin building a relationship.

Sometimes they say no.

Don’t take it personally try again with another pitch.

Remember that they are human, as such they have deadlines, social pressure, work pressure and more than likely a demanding boss so don’t be intimidated.

Just keep pitching.