Mash Snacks: How Do I Get More PR?
Mash Snack 2
October 8, 2020
Description
Bec takes us through a few quick PR Tips for brands and small businesses that might not have a large budget.
Audio Transcript
Hey guys, Bec Caldwell, here and welcome to today’s short episode. This is a series we like to call “Mash Snacks,” a short and tasty morsel that won’t make you late for work. Okay. So today we’re going to be talking about PR, public relations, and how to get your business in front of more people and getting your brand name known. So part of it is SEO actually. SEO is about getting your brand online in front of people, so in Google Search and in like say Facebook and other social media. But public relations at its heart is about branding and having people who know who you are and know your business just based on your name. So, for example, if you say Bonds, you know, it’s underwear, you say Coke, you know, it’s a cola drink. And, you know, if you ask somebody for a Coke, they know you want to cola drink. Now, there are people out there that only drink Coke or only drink Pepsi. That’s a whole other argument. But I guess the idea for this is how do you be the Coke of your industry? Now, look that is a set of big shoes to fill, but you can be in that niche for your local area, for your state, for your country, if you put the work in. So where do we start?
So first things first, you need to know what your pitch is. Now, quite a few things come together to make a really good pitch. So as long as you know what the story is, you want to contact people in the PR world with your story. So, I mean, I wouldn’t be cold emailing people saying, “Hi, my name is so and so, and I’m…” you know, that’s going to be really boring. They get a million of those. Your first impression is your subject line. So make sure your subject line specifies that it’s a query or pitch, and then tell us the headline of the story. Tell us what you want the headline in the news article to be. And secondly, begin the email with a story. Don’t Introduce yourself again. Get to the point. Say, “The point of this is, here’s the story, here is a quick fact,” and then get into who you are, because they probably don’t know you and they don’t have time to get to know you. They just want to know the story. Now, the most important part is where do you even find places to put your information? Depending on where you live, H-A-R-O, or HARO, is a fantastic resource. It stands for Help A Reporter Out, and you can find that at helpareporter.com. Now, it is very North American based but a lot of the PR on there is for magazines like “Forbes” and “Huffington Post.”
So the writers will be asking for sources in your industry, hopefully, and you’ll be providing them with that source and hopefully, you’ll be quoted in some of those big magazines. Now, there are like some smaller blogs on there too, but those are really great to get onto so that you can hone in your pitch so that when you do make it to the big time, you are ready, because being ready is almost 90% of the game. If you’re in Australia or New Zealand, SourceBottle is the way to go. So that’s sourcebottle.com, and I think there’s a .com.au as well, because they do actually cover the UK as well as the USA, I believe. So those are a lot more local. So you can even drill down into topics, country and you can even do a thing where put gifts in gift bags for special events and things like that. So once this whole virus restriction thing is all over, if you’re an e-commerce person, then you can put your product in gift bags and have people see you that way. Now, those are really great. So we’re gonna have a proper podcast episode on how to write a great pitch and copywriting for these things in the future. But if you just want to get started right now, just take those tips. Number one, your first impression is your subject line. Make sure you write your headline there. And number two, make sure your email starts with a story. And number three, start pitching to people on HARO or SourceBottle, and you can get the ball rolling and get a couple of links to your website while you’re at it. All right. Enjoy.
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