Get Featured in the Media

These are the two pieces of, of a stand up pitch, making it relevant. So you have to showcase how your story appeals to the audience of the publication that you're reaching out to. And so if we're thinking about local media specifically, we've got basically a geographic location that they're covering. So anything that makes it local, anything that ties it back into the local area.

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Hello, I am so excited for this episode today. It's one of those things that as somebody who has a PR degree and worked in communications and media for a huge part of my career, I just sort of skipped over the fact that this is not something that a lot of business owners necessarily think about. And that is getting media coverage for your business and building your reputation through the credibility of media through using the audience's that media can help you to reach and for leveraging this really awesome tactic as part of your overall growth and visibility strategy.

So I'm ready to get super granular with you today about the power of PR, and how you can use it to grow exposure for your business, and then leverage that into additional opportunities for yourself, as you continue to go out and do things like speaking or training inside of other people's memberships, or podcast pitching or whatever it is. And just to put a little bit of a boundary around the conversation that we're going to have today, I want to talk to you about traditional media. Now, we often think in the online space about things like blogs, and getting on podcasts and things like that. But I think what's really overlooked is the opportunity to make an impact and build a reputation with your local media, in the community where you live. Sometimes as online business owners, we're just thinking about the internet, and the big global world out there. And how do we get in Forbes? And how do we get featured on like entrepreneur.com. And PS, you pay you pay for it. That's what happens. If you're going to be a contributor to some of those big publications, they in fact, have a contributor selection process, I was invited yesterday actually to do it, and you have to be selected and then you have to pay them in order to contribute. And yes, that is great credibility. It is lovely, if you can like have that little banner underneath your name that says as featured in, but when you're able to build that relationship and get that coverage in your local community. These are people like the audience there is people that you can connect with in real life. And if you haven't heard me talk about that before, iRL is one of the best ways to build relationships and build trust and create amazing business opportunities for yourself.

So let's just talk a little bit about the media landscape right now that's happening. Sadly, journalism is a struggling industry is a field where every because everybody is a content creator. Everybody has a video camera in their back pocket at all times. The actual, like, journalist, talent and skill is becoming something that's dwindling. And there's just not as many journalists out there as there once was. And that just means that there are less people trying to do the same, in fact, more work than ever before. And that means that is we're keeping up with the 24 hour news cycle, trying to keep everything like whoever says it first wins, basically when it comes to news, right. So all those things in mind, I'd like you to shift your mindset around what pitching journalists and what try to get media for your business actually means And that is that you are helping a journalist who do their job. You're not thinking about the exposure that you get for yourself, or what that means for your own business. Because, yes, it could be great. But if we thinking about how do I help somebody tell a story that their audience needs to hear. That's the mindset you need to go into when you're thinking about pitching the media. Did I know that it can be intimidating, I remember my first days as a PR consultant where I had to pick up a phone and follow up on pitches to a newsroom, like, I feel newsroom and like a big city. And that was scary, because they're busy. And they got lots of things coming across their desk. They're getting pitched all day long, with all kinds of different ideas that they have to filter. And again, we're talking about depends on the size of the media publication just for context there. But I would be calling them and following up, hey, did you get my press release this morning about XYZ, here's why it would be great for your audience to cover this story. And you win some you lose some when it comes to that. I also worked a lot in crisis communications. And that's a different kind of media relations, where you don't really have to pitch them, you're in fact trying to get them to go away. Because they're standing at the scene of your crisis. And you're just trying to have a press conference in an ATCO trailer in the rain in a construction site. Speaking from personal experience, anyways, so I want to give you a few tips today around how you can leverage this under utilized strategy to get more visibility, and some of the tools and sort of intricate details that you might need to know in order to be able to use this effectively.

So the first thing that so first of all, you need three tools for pitching media, you need a media list, you need a pitch note, and you need a press release of some kind. And I'm not going to break down the entirety of what goes into a press release. But 100% Chat GPT can help you write one in a proper format, that essentially you're going to create a story that they could then just directly publish, it includes quotes, because information and includes all of the juicy stuff right up at the top. So how do you actually create a standout pitch that journalists would actually be interested in? This is the reframe, because we often think, Oh, well, I'm not a big fancy thing that did something or what an amazing award. But PS, if you did win an award, please tell the media about it. I was just at an event recently where it was like the top 40 under 40. And of course, it's put on by a media publication. But local media also was interested in that story. If you are featured in something like that, they want to talk about you, they want to share the local success stories.

So these are the two pieces of of a standout pitch, you can't get relevance. So you have to showcase how your story appeals to the audience of the publication that you're reaching out to. And so if we're thinking about local media, specifically, we've got basically a geographic location that they're covering. So anything that makes it local, anything that ties it back into the local area, whether for me like my audience is entrepreneurs, and I'll share a success story that I had with this, which was that I pitched about my podcast, turning six months old. I didn't get a million downloads, I didn't like have 10 years of podcast data didn't win an award for it. I just wanted to share that this was a thing, and I was doing it. And it was relevant to entrepreneurs, which we have a lot of in our community, which is probably safe to say that you can think about your audience for your business and the audience in your community and connect the dots between those, then that is what's going to help you to create that relevancy for the media. The second piece is timeliness. Generally, we're talking about a quick turnaround news cycle. We're not talking about the long lead publications. That's sort of a separate area of media, where if you're thinking about magazines, or like entrepreneur or big publications like that, they do issues, they have themes, they have a media kit, they do advertising opportunities, and things like that, talking about like the daily or weekly news cycle. If you have a local radio station, a local TV station, local printed paper or online publication, those are what we're thinking of, and they generally are turning around daily content or weekly content. And also both because generally even a newspaper will have an online component where the online stories may be shared in advance more frequently, and also printed in the in the hardcopy paper. So timeliness is Another piece of bring into it. Why can you talk about why you're sharing this now? Like, why is this story relevant right now? Is it connected to a local holiday, a specific season, Small Business Week, something that just happened in your business that you want to share about, like you are a new store, you just opened a new storefront, you just created a new thing that just happened right now bring a piece of timeliness to it or as many as you can. And that will give the media an additional reason to be publishing this nap.

So those are two elements to help make your pitch stand out. And when we're thinking about now, how do I make this into a thing that the media actually wants? There's the three pieces that I mentioned that you need to have a media list, a pitch note and a press release. So starting with your media list, that means identifying the actual publications that you would like to send your pitch to. So whether that's the geographic location, and looking at the different types of media, television, radio, and print and online, those are how you would start, like, we're looking at general news here, we can get into talking about like industry specific publications and another episode, but I want you to get like new the new specific, like publication news, that's a separate kind of pitch that you would do. So have a list. See if you can find actual people who work for that organization. If they have an online publication, they generally have a byline meaning the name who wrote the article is listed on the article. And generally, you can click on that and get their email address, if not every publication always has a general news box, which means that they have like news at insert name of radio station or publication here. And you can always use that. But as this more specific you can get, the more you can reach out to someone individually and help also say something like I saw you read this other article about something similar to what I'm sharing with you. So you might also be interested in this. And that comes into play in the pitch note, the pitch note is the most important piece here, we can write in a really nice press release, we don't just blanket send that to a whole bunch of different media outlets. At the same time, you want to get targeted, you want to send this solo dedicated, it takes more time, we're not blind copying a bunch of people, you are sending a personalized pitch note to every single outlet that you would like to pitch, and you're going to customize it to them. So referencing something that they've previously printed, that's a great way to do it, telling them that you recently read something else connected to a different news article that somebody else is happening in the world right now. And then highlight the top couple of points that are within your press release as far as what the news is, and include that.

And then the third piece is your press release. So this is a traditional document and somebody asked me today, you know, is there a new way to do this, like, isn't that a little bit old school, and it's still something that the media is used to seeing. So keeping it in a format that they're used to, is helpful. And there's a special style of writing a press release, called the inverted triangle formula, which means that you put all the juicy good stuff at the top so that they can catch the hook, catch the headline and get the gist of what you're talking about right off the bat. But the other piece is that you're writing it in a way that shows them how they could write it. So it's essentially like if you thought about if my press release was printed directly in a paper, would that be amazing? The answer is yes. And that happened for me one time, it rarely rarely happens. But the truth is like I pitched something to a weekly publication, and the editor was running like six different newspapers. And he said, I didn't have time to write anything specific. So I'm just printing your press release. And I was like, Yes, you are. That's amazing. Because I crafted that messaging, I had it like set up so that it would showcase me slash my client in the best light possible. And I am so glad that you are attending. So when you think about how to write a press release, those are the kinds of components to think about. And you can get Chad GPG to help you with this, it will help you with the formatting. He put a contact information on there. So it's something that if they have a system for filing it, it's gonna go into that place. And it's going to be a reference material. And you want to include any additional media that you might have, such as photos or videos, or audio files or anything like that that's relevant to what you're talking about, again, into the context of how will this help you journalists to do their job?

So I hope that you found this helpful I want to highlight just do not skip research and do not skip customization. And because the very worst thing that you can do in media relations, because it is all about relationships is address and email to the wrong name. Keeping up on top of who is actually, in the media these days is an effort in and of itself. And there are services that are keeping track of media databases and things like that for you. But just start by looking at your local area and thinking about how you can showcase yourself with that local angle to your local publications. And you probably I live in a very small town and I have three options for doing that. So you probably have more wherever you live, and reach out and even think about going into like a neighboring community, and connecting to those media there and see where you land. Because as soon as you get one hits, that's going to start a train for you down like Oh, pitching myself doesn't cost me any money. And I am now got all of this media coverage that is worth 1000s of advertising dollars. To, to go back to the story of like the success story here. And why finally was like, oh, I should probably share about this is because I did a pitch for my podcast when it turned six months old. I got front page mention on the paper app page article in the paper, a online article from that same media outlet, plus a radio interview, which ran for a whole day, and an online article attached to the radio station. And that was from one press release. And I sent it to two publications. So a four different hits out of two publications, which is very good in terms of the stats, but I just was like blown away. And truly, you would pay 1000s and 1000s of dollars in media ad spend in order to get that kind of coverage. And when people read articles more than they read advertisements, right?

So happy pitching, I hope that I will hear some more success stories like I have from previously sharing this idea with some clients and coming up with ideas around how you can pitch media. And if you are listening to this in real time, I am doing a pitch like a pro workshop as part of my Black Friday offers. So you can check that out the link will be below. And if it's not live, you'll be able to catch a replay version of it, where we can go a little bit deeper into this content and talk about how what some ideas might be for your specific business because I was just under training. And I like love hearing different people's businesses and coming up with ideas on ways that you can connect that into timely things that are happening are making it really relevant to your local media so that you stand out and are more likely to get featured. As with anything, media coverage is not guaranteed. never hire a PR firm that tells you they're going to guarantee placements, because that is just not possible. You can do the best pitch prep ever. And then a train derails. And literally, that's happened to me. And then the media who are going to come to your event and cover your thing. Just don't cover it right because other things trumpet. So keep this in mind as you're thinking about your visibility strategy moving forward. I'm excited to hear how you are thinking about getting media for your business.

You did it you just listen to another episode of the Entrepreneur Sschool Podcast. It's like you just went to business school while you folded your laundry, prep dinner or picked up your kids at school. Thank you so much for being here. I want to personally celebrate your commitment to growing your business. You can imagine I'm throwing confetti for you right now. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a review. Make sure you're subscribed and let us know you're listening by screenshotting this episode and tagging us on Instagram, head to entrepreneurschool.ca for tons of tools and resources to help you grow your business while keeping your family a priority. You can subscribe to our email list and join our community. And until next time, go out there and do the thing.