While there are plenty of PR folks out there who can pitch on your behalf, don’t forget what you can do on your own. If you have a blog you have an incredible tool for media to find you.
The media is constantly sourcing blogs and the experts who write them to feature in both online and offline news stories. Almost every single cable news show incorporates experts who are identified only by their blog or website.
Imagine you being that next expert! Imagine saving thousands of dollars on worn-out pitching methods and getting the news media to come to you through your unique content on your blog.
Did you know that last week the AP announced it will officially give bloggers attributions in news stories?
So why aren’t you creating news with your blog? Be ahead of the stories of the day and offer your expert opinion via your blog before you’re asked to. (TIP: Don’t make it snarky.)
Stop waiting for a PR firm to make your news for you. The Web has created a fantastic way for you to be directly seen by journalists, freelance writers and news media. In fact, they’re hoping to find you because their editors are tasking them to find experts online who have large communities.
If you are that expert, and they can quote you in a story then it serves the publication as well as you. Offline and online publications will assume that if you’re quoted in a story, you will also link to that story on your blog, Twitter, Facebook etc. and that will help drive more readers to the media publication itself. It’s a win-win.
If you rely only on traditional PR flacks and online PR folks to get you to the media, but are not actively working on your own behalf, then you’re missing out!
Journalists would rather be in contact with you directly. Make it easy for them by creating content on your blog that sets up interesting angles on stories, underlines your expertise, and is well-written so they can source it.
How do you write news hook blog post titles?
1. Look at the headlines on major media sites, and use the same form for some of your blog posts. Here are some I grabbed off MSNBC.com today.
To get to D.C., a Democrat runs away from it
Many Gulf fishermen reluctant to try their luck
Poll: Most still confused about health care
No Verizon, not antenna, is iPhone 4′s big problem
Bombed car from Iraq on display at museum
Body Odd: Screwy in the city?
Tween boys tackle obesity: One family’s story
Airline passengers fight fees | Peeved about peanuts
Ouch! Contestant’s face is a melon magnet on ‘Race’
Public employees snooped in Bowersox files
Those headlines are clever, engaging and make you want to read the rest of the story.
You can write the same type of headlines for your blog posts! The job of a good blog post title is to get the readers’ attention. It’s exactly the same with a headline.
My past client Manisha Thakor is very adept at this on her site. Hit her blog and read the last five to seven headlines on her blog posts – you will love them! And then learn from them.
Now go and make the news!!!
One of my missions in my work and speaking is to help experts understand that there are valuable and actionable ways to reach the media directly through your online content.
As a longtime journalist turned online visibility strategist I’ve seen many of my clients apply the power of their social media content to connect directly with journalists and secure media coverage.
The days of just having a traditional PR person pitching you as an expert are long passed. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the old mass pitching methods via fax, spam mail and phone do not see the uptake they once did.
When over 50% of the journalists, bloggers, and media are freelancers it’s vitally important to remember they are actively on the hunt for the next great story because that is how they will in turn get paid for a story.
That next great story could be YOU.
Over the next few weeks I’m going to share insights on how to use your content to “be the expert that shines online” to the media. I’ll also share some client wins that have come through using the processes I’m writing about.
The tips today focus around how you can use your blog content to garner media attention as well as new opportunities for contributing to larger online sites like the Huffington Post or BasilandSpice.com that feed out to many online channels.
Remember your blog content can be repurposed into all your other online channels. (Note: If you’re concerned about copyright of your blog content, then make sure you’ve registered it under the Creative Common License.)
Here are five tips you can use today to attract the media to your blog:
1. Set up google news alerts that match your expertise and and respond to at least major media article that comes through those alerts on a weekly basis. Link to the article in a blog post, and give additional insight (from your perspective) to the article’s topic. Don’t be snarky. Give actionable insight.
2. Subscribe to three enewsletters from publications that cover your topic. When you get those enewsletters make sure you read through them and see if there is a wonderful article you can cite in your own blog and again give your take on the article. Make sure to explain why it’s a useful article to your blog readership and add a couple of your own insights as well. (Extra tip: Go to the actual site the article is running on after you’ve made your blog post and comment on the article itself on the site. Always comment authentically and don’t comment just to get a link back to your site!)
3. Be a news breaker on your blog. Just like a PR person offline spends hours reading the news in your arena and trying to determine how you can comment on breaking news – you can do the same yourself and use your blog to do so. If you’re a fiction writer for instance, you might keep up with the latest sales in fiction and share your insights with your readers first!
4. Don’t leave out the local and regional! Too often we’re focused only on national blogs, media and coverage. If you start with your local coverage, articles, etc. to link to you can begin to catch the local media’s attention through your blog. Once in awhile blog “close to home” sharing some local insight or linking to your local paper. Imagine if your local paper is The Washington Post and the editor is scanning blogs for local folks to comment on business stories!
5. Stop waiting for just the right blog-bite! The longer you wait to start sharing your insight in your arena on your blog, the more the competition will outpace you. Take 30 minutes today and write up ten things you know you could effectively comment on in the news or media world. Start building some content around those on your blog.
You will succeed!
- Image via Wikipedia
Every once in awhile I’m amazed by how many PR people, who’ve actually never had the experience of being a journalist, write “how-to” articles focused around what you should and should not do in interviews with journalists!
I am a card carrying member of the Internet Press Guild and the Online News Association. Having been a journalist/reporter online since 1996, I can tell you that journalists are people too. They’re just like us. They’re trying to do their job well, get paid and stay alive in what has become an increasingly competitive and low pay market.
The majority of journalists write because they love to write. They want to create good stories – they’re not out to get trap you in an interview or take things out of context. I’m speaking primarily in terms of major offline and online publications, not tabloids.
Journalists are not out to get you, they are out to get the story. The story includes your personality so the best thing you can do is be yourself. Don’t be a robot, be a real person. Stop listening to PR flaks who tell you that you have to ONLY talk about your brand or in polished soundbites.
Good content comes from good conversations, real conversations where you present the full picture of your life. Good reporters create amazing stories by making authentic connections with their interviewees.
When I was a full-time dot com journalist you would be amazed at how many CXO level interviews I did where it was heartening to find out the CEO or business leader had a life outside of just their job and their title. In fact, I always tried to share a little bit about my life (stay-at-home Mom wearing journalist cape by day and night between storytime, naps and Cheerios on the floor), and what that did is help my interviewees feel comfortable to share their real lives as well.
Putting the heart first in connecting with journalists who interview you will keep you in their hearts, and more importantly their contact Rolodex, much longer than if you simply choose to not interact with them on a real human level.
Oftentimes the most interesting part of a story comes from you and the journalist realizing you have more in common than just the story. What some PR flaks consider small talk is actually gem talk. These little beautiful gems that come through connecting on a real level with one another.
As a bonus, if you become a source of bigger insight than just your brand, it will help the journalist depend on you for other stories long-term.
Reporters are generous, smart, hard-working writers and their goal is to create valuable content, help them do that by being a valuable human first, and brand spokesperson second.
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If content is King, then curiousity is Queen.
Here are 5 tips for inspiring journalists, readers and followers to keep coming back for more!
1. Tell them everything, be transparent and ask lots of questions that you don’t know the answer to.
2. If a journalist writes a story about a topic you’re familiar with then take time to dig deeper for your readers in an accompanying post. Recognize the journalist by name (it’s only respectful) and contrast and compare their insights with your own. Stop listening to PR folks who tell you that you have to get your requisite, always the same soundbites down pat. Pat is boring!
3. Be endlessly curious. Every single part of business has its own mysteries. Sometimes we’re all asking the same questions over and over again instead of challenging ourselves to look at something differently. Don’t be a lemming constantly leaping off the dull edge with everyone else. Step back and create new ideas.
4. Don’t make it about becoming a celebrity in your field, make room for everyone to rise to your level of understanding. Do these by asking your readers to ask questions, comment and guest post on your blog. Choose to be different, not “celeb-boring.”
5. Stop trying to be “quotable” and start trying to be perenially memorable.
6. Soundbites don’t drive curiousity, they just get us stuck in the mud of old traditional PR.
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1. Not only read their work, but print their last ten stories out and look for all the ways they tell a story. Good journalists are incredible storytellers and you can find out alot about how they write, what they look for in an expert source and what interests them by reading several stories all at the same time.
2. In the aforementioned stories, highlight all the adjectives they use in the story and you’ll get a very good feel for their particular slant in stories and the publication’s slant as well.
3. If they are very well-known journalists, then take the time to read interviews they’ve done about writing, their own work and their lives. This is an excellent way to make a human connection. Remember, no matter what your PR firm has told you, journalists are HUMANS too.
4. Go through each story and highlight the experts they’ve sourced in the story. This will teach you what they look for, what caliber of expert they reach out to and how you might position your own thought leadership around this. By the way, don’t create inauthentic content via blogging or otherwise to just “snag” a journalist’s attention. They’re much smarter than that and really good journalists are very intuitive and work hard to find the best possible source.
5. RESPECT, find out what it means to the journalist. Don’t stalk them, don’t email them incessantly, don’t consistently denigrate their angle on a story. If there is something you can add, then by all means add it to your blog post about the story. Add some new insight. We can all help each other to elevate the writing and meaning.
6. Don’t ever expect or think you deserve coverage. It’s not enough to just decide you’re a great expert or big thinker. You have to work harder than that. Don’t even make it about a journalist doing a story on you. Make it about you doing a story for your own community that engenders new discussion. Journalists are always looking for new angles to old stories!
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