5 Ways to Promote Yourself That Don’t Feel Icky

5 Ways To Promote Yourself Without Feeling IckyMom used to tell me it’s not polite to brag.

 

And no one likes a braggart!

The funny thing is that people often assume that some who brags a lot is very confident and outgoing, the fact of the matter is that they may actually be insecure and seeking outside reinforcement.

Ok. So you don’t want to be seen as a braggart.

If you don’t share your company’s offerings, your accomplishments, successes and milestones, how will your prospects and clients know about them? How will you share your gifts and service with more of the people who need them?

If a tree falls in the forest…

You do need to get the word out and promote yourself and your services on a regular basis. The great news is that there are ways to do it that won’t make you feel icky or a braggart.

5 easy ways to toot your own horn that won’t make you feel uncomfortable:

Talk about your business in the third person – a simple mindset shift
This is a common problem for soloprenuers. A simple trick to remove feeling uncomfortable about promoting yourself is to think of yourself or your business as another entity, a third party. Think about how much easier it is to share a friend’s accomplishment with others. Treating your business like that friend, makes it easy to talk about your business without holding back or feeling discomfort.

Make the customer the hero of your story
Focus your marketing and content on your client’s success stories [with their permission]. You solved their problem successfully. They are now raving fans. Create a case study, blog post or press release. If you focus on the client, the content you create will feel less like you are being self-promotional. It will also be something that the client will naturally want to share with their audience, garnering your even more mileage and visibility!

Be a customer educator and advocate
Offer great tips and information that will help your audience – both prospects and clients succeed. This will naturally position you as a knowledgeable resource, which will attract people who need your services. Don’t be afraid to give away your best content.

Just calling yourself the expert isn’t going to do it these days. Positioning yourself as an educator and an advocate for your customers success should be your major focus. When a prospect feels you are the source of valuable information, and they know you truly care about their results, then they will be the ones calling you the expert.  – Jack Mize

Let others sing your praises – it carries more weight
It’s not what you say about you, it’s what they say about you. Prospects trust recommendations from friends and family, online reviews and the media; these sources directly influence purchasing decisions. Have an active plan for gathering testimonials, getting media mentions…and display them prominently on your website, marketing materials…

When someone asks what you do, you can quote a customer…For example, “Clients say we solve their ___ problems quickly and affordably”

Make it easy for others to talk about you
There are many great plug ins and tools that make it easy to share content from your website or blog. If the share buttons are always available next to your content, your audience is more likely to help spread the word, as it’s almost effortless. I love the Social Warfare plug in as it gives you many options to help people share your content including customized social media images, pre-populated tweets and posts.

Focus on the great work you do, and how you can solve problems and provide solutions. There are folks out there who really need your help and you are doing them a disservice by not letting them know about your services and solutions

Related Content:

How to Use HARO to Get Press

Your Customer Experience Equals PR

Customer Experience = PR

Customer experience is a part of your PR. A very important component.  

Studies have shown that there are two types of customers who talk about your brand and your business – ones that are raving fans and love you and those who are very unhappy with you or the experience they’ve had with your company.

What is the experience people have with your company?

Your customer experience equals PR for your brand

A few examples – Let’s start with the happy experience

Fat Witch Brownies, make the yummiest brownies I know. I like to send a box of their brownies as a gifts to help celebrate happy occasions and to thank business colleagues for referrals or other generous actions.

I had recently ordered a gift box of brownies to thank a business colleague for his help on a project, when they didn’t arrive at the recipient’s office, I found out that I had used the wrong address.

I called the Fat Witch and asked if there’s a way to check on where they had delivered my order to, and if there was a way to get them rerouted. I fessed up that I had made fat witch tin boxa mistake with the address. They said no,  unfortunately they couldn’t trace the package, however they would gladly send the brownies again and only charge me the shipping.  This had been my mistake, and yet they were willing to share some of the cost to resend my package.

Customers who encounter positive social customer care experiences are nearly 3 times more likely to recommend a brand. Source: HBR

The bad customer experience

I went online to use Haiku Deck, a presentation software that I had been using for awhile. After spending over an hour creating a new presentation I saved it and went to export it. A window popped up telling me that to export it into Powerpoint, I would have to upgrade to the paid version for $9.95. This was a new requirement, but I was fine with paying to use their service – that is until I completed payment and returned to my work area on Haiku Deck only to find that my hours worth of work hadn’t been saved.

Yes, technology is great when it works.

I was extremely frustrated, first about the the loss of time, but also that I had just paid and was now left with nothing. I contacted customer service whose response was that I had done something wrong. They had tested the software therefore I had done something wrong.

95% of dissatisfied customers tell others about their bad experience. Source : Dimensional Research.

Time lost in creating the presentation. Time lost talking to customer service. Not a happy camper. Now the mere mention or thought of Haiku Deck brings up the unpleasant experience, which is now imprinted on my brain.

 71% of customers say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide good service.  Source: Forrester 

Now back to how customer experience, and particularly customer service is part of your PR.

Public relations by definition is the practice of managing the spread of information between an individual or an organization and the public.

Consumers trust recommendations from friends and family, online reviews, and the media – in that order. Consumers make buying decisions based on recommendations online reviews and companies they read about in the media.

If your if your customers are going online and writing about you, posting on social media, or making recommendations to friends and family, what are they saying?

Remember, like me your customers remember the excellent and exceptional experiences and the terrible ones, and that’s what they will talk about.

I know which experience I want my customers to have and what I want my customers to be talking about.

The Fat Witch, has a made me even more of a raving fan. I just had to go and tell a few friends on social media to show my appreciation.

Related content: Customer Experiences – A Tale of Two Entrepreneurs

Media Lead Times – Key To Pitching The Media Successfully

media lead times deadline

Why I can’t get you into Entrepreneur or Inc. magazine next month.

I’ve gotten this request many times from prospects, “Can you get me featured in Entrepreneur magazine next month?”

No, I say without hesitation.

Not because I doubt my pitching skills but because there is something called lead times.

“Why not? I’ll pay whatever you charge,” persists the prospect.

Let me stop you right there. I didn’t hesitate to say no because TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, and some blogs and websites have lead times that govern their operations. These timelines may vary for different types of media outlets. Still, if you want to get media coverage or pitch a story or article, it’s essential to understand their lead times.

A Lead time in publishing describes the amount of time that a journalist has between receiving a writing assignment and submitting the completed piece. Depending on the publication, lead times can be anything from a couple of hours to many months. [source: Wikipedia]

Print publications like Entrepreneur or Inc. plan their issues four to six months in advance. This is one of the reasons that PR firms require a minimum 6-month retainer. Publicity can take time and planning to build a smart and strategic campaign, one that gets you media coverage.

As to my prospects who want to get featured next month, you are just too late. But don’t despair. With some planning, you can pitch the media with enough lead time to be quoted or appear on air, in print, or online.

Plan Backwards

1023px-Riding_a_Horse_Backwards_1110784Part of the key to successfully pitching publications on a story, a product launch, or an event is to work backward from your event date.

This way, if you were launching a product on February 1 of next year to get mentioned or featured in a print magazine such as Entrepreneur, you would have to start pitching 4 to 6 months before – in August to be safe.

I find planning backward can be can be beneficial when planning events and other promotional initiatives that have a firm date or event that I am building toward.

Here are some media lead times:

Monthly Consumer Magazine – Lead Time is four to six months

Newspaper sections vary [so it is best to check with the publication]

Daily Newspapers – Lead Time is one to three weeks*

TV Morning Shows [National] – Lead Time is two weeks to two months*

When in doubt, you can look at a publication’s media kit to see when the advertising closes for a particular issue; this will clue you into their lead times. You can always reach out to the publication to ask them precisely what their lead time is

* The one exception to these lead times can be ‘breaking news’. A story that has just happened and is considered very important and/or timely.

Related Content:

Before You Pitch The Media- 10 Things the Media Wishes You Knew

 

You’re An Introvert – I’m An Ambivert. So What?

Introvert_Ambivert_Publicity for IntrovertsThere is a lot of talk in the news about introverts lately. It’s the topic of conversation regularly for my publicity shy prospects and clients, and me.

The stories and articles I am seeing sometimes make it sound like it’s a competition – the introverts vs. an extrovert, which always troubles me. Why not celebrate our uniqueness and each other’s?

Introversion or extroversion are not new concepts or ways of being. Carl Jung is credited with coining the term ‘introverted person’ in 1918. Susan Cain’s book “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking”, published in 2013, became a bestseller and has helped bring the conversation into the forefront.

The only reason that it matters if you’re an introvert or extrovert is that it can help you to know yourself better and help you leverage your strengths in your business, marketing and promotion, and in life. It can also help you in your interactions with other people by understanding their natural personality tendencies so you can communicate better with them.

Businesses have long recognized the value of personality and strength profiling and have adopted the use of tools like the Myers-Briggs or DISC assessments as part of an interview process or during on boarding of new hires. Entrepreneurs have used Strength Finders to help assess their natural strengths in an effort to better understand and improve the way they work.

There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum. Carl G. Jung

Meet the “Ambiverts”

I just recently came to understand that I am an ambivert – a combination of introvert and extrovert. I didn’t even know there was such a personality type or a name for it before I started exploring introversion in my publicity mentoring work. As I sought to better understand some of the resistance my clients were experiencing and how I could help them get better results for themselves by harnessing their strengths, I observed publicity shy folks who were introverts, extroverts and ambiverts. This initial foray into understanding introverts formed the research for my book Publicity for Introverts™.

I never would have thought of myself as being an introvert, even if only partially, as I am outgoing in social situations and like to talk about my thoughts and feelings [just a few of my extrovert tendencies]. That said, I really enjoy and need to spend alone time working, reflecting and recharging my energy [my introvert traits]. I actually never gave this much thought to this until it became part of my client work, but if I had to choose one team, I would have leaned toward extrovert.

Turns out that according to Jung’s analytical psychology each of us has both – traits of extroversion and introversion. One set of traits may be more dominant in individuals, and to make it even more interesting, people do not always behave according to their behavior type all the time.

I’m not a big fan of labels, but I do find them empowering as a tool, and use their associated traits to understanding myself and my clients better. It makes sense that our personalities aren’t all black and white, and it’s clear to me now that I am an ambivert.

How do you identify yourself, and what impact does it have on your marketing and promotion?

The biggest challenge I see with my clients is the way they think and speak to themselves about doing publicity.  This includes a lot of ‘shoulds’, ‘ought tos’… and generally, unnecessary and self-defeating thinking.

What makes this self-talk abuse is the comparing yourself to someone else and how they are promoting themselves and their business. The only thing you should be doing is what is right for you, and then finding a way to do it that is empowering, and transforms it from a ‘supposed to’, to a ’want to’ and has you taking action, without the internal struggle.

I am a firm believer that life begins at the edge of your comfort zone.

The key is to figure out your own PR Persona™, which harnesses your own unique strengths and traits, as well as where you have decided you are willing to step out of your comfort zone [for a new action or strategy].

Writing this article made me think of a cartoon book I read years ago entitled, “I Am in Training To Be Tall and Blond”. You don’t need to be in training to be anyone but the best version of yourself!

If you’re interested in getting visibility whether you’re an introvert or someone who is spotlight shy, but the thought of it makes you uncomfortable, then let’s talk. I can show you ways to become more being visible and getting media attention without compromising who you are.

To your publicity success!

with love,

Jane

PS. After I drafted this article, I saw a copy of “I’m in Training To Be Tall and Blonde” sitting on the top of the free bookshelf in my apartment building! Synchronicity?

Publicity Shy? Here are 6 Tips To Overcome It

Want Publicity? 6 Ways A Dress Rehearsal Will HelpI was watching the Tony Awards the other night, and thought I was about to witness something I had just been thinking about – the value of dress rehearsals. Literally.

It was around the third wardrobe change for co-host Kristen Chenoweth that I began to wonder if they had done a dress rehearsal in the latest dress. The neckline of this black coat dress was cut low and with every dance move that had Kristen bending forward, the dress revealed more and more…I thought we were going to see much more than she intended. – flashback to Beyonce and Janet Jackson Superbowl wardrobe malfunctions.

That may sound like an extreme example, however if you think about it, you don’t know how you or your clothing will look or perform in a public situation, unless you hold dress rehearsals.

A rehearsal is an event that occurs as preparation for a performance. It is undertaken as a form of practicing, to ensure that all details of the subsequent performance are adequately prepared and coordinated. Most commonly employed in the performing arts as preparation for a public presentation, rehearsals are nevertheless used in other contexts, as well, to prepare for the performance of any anticipated activity [source: Wikipedia]

I’ve been thinking about the difference between publicity shy or nervous about seeking media attention and putting yourself out there, and being confident. A dress rehearsal can be the best gift you can give yourself; and not just the shy, introverts, and newcomers, experienced individuals still need to do a trial run or be at risk for a variety of unnecessary mishaps.

A dress rehearsal, in every sense of the word, can make all the difference. Whether you are seeking publicity and on camera interviews or public speaking opportunities or even a job interview, you can benefit from a complete dress rehearsal. You may ace your interview brilliantly, and the last thing you need would be a wardrobe mishap or malfunction.

 

Here are 6 ways a dress rehearsal will help you be a media darling or ace speaker:

Build Confidence – Practice may not make perfect, however it builds your speaking or interview muscles and along with them your confidence. Each time you do an activity, even in practice, you get a little more confident.

Master Rhythm and timing – A speech or interview can take a few tries before you develop pleasant pacing and delivery.

Shape Your Ideas and talk into concise sound bites – The media love you to speak in concise, easily quotable sound bites. Speaking in this fashion for most of us requires practice.

Get comfortable with technology – whether it’s a head set or a PowerPoint clicker, you want to learn to use them without a live audience watching you fumble or struggle with them.

Wardrobe – A full tryout of your head to toe outfit and make up while give a speech and doing all the activities you will be doing in the public eye, will ensure you don’t have embarrassing surprises. Try getting in and out of a car, climbing stairs, standing and sitting in your outfit. The wrap dress that looks great while you are standing on stage, may unwrap when you sit, causing a very revealing problem for a seated interview.

Try it on for color – A few photos and videos from head to toe while standing and seated, will ensure you like the way the outfit looks on film, and catch any other potential color clashes in advance.

Background Check – A distraction in the background can detract from your success. If you are going to be on a televised show, ask what color the background is, and check clips online to see what color outfits past guests looked best wearing on air.

If you are going to shoot your own video, have someone photograph you on the spot where you will be standing to record. Make sure the clothing works with the background, and also that there are no distracting objects behind you or that appear to be growing out of your head.

You can always hire a coach or mentor to help you build media skills and confidence.

 

Most of us don’t like surprises. Especially embarrassing ones.

What event do you have coming up that could benefit from a dress rehearsal?

 

The #1 Skill to Master for Successful Publicity and Content Marketing

The pitchI started to write this post about the importance of creating a great pitch or headline for your press release, and I realized a its just as critical to be able to craft a compelling concise email subject line or blog post title.

As Shakespeare said, “Brevity is the soul of wit”

A great pitch or headline can also make all the difference in your business.  Consider this. In our age of information overload, we scan article headlines and email subject lines and decide in the flash of a nanosecond it takes to scan the letters and words making up our opener, if we are going to open it right away, or perhaps not at all.

The #1 skill to master for successful publicity and content marketing, is the ability to craft a great and concise pitch.

As you can see, while great pitches, compelling press release headlines, and email subject lines are key to getting media coverage, this goes beyond Publicity. It impacts pitches to new prospects, partners, investors, journalists and potential partners.

When a journalist, or you yourself, scan your in box, it’s the subject line and possibly the first line of copy that gets seen in the preview window. It’s got to be attention grabbing or it gets deleted. It’s that simple.

In addition to being attention grabbing and compelling people to want to know more, it has to be short and communicate your message in as few words as possible. I know, no easy task.

Your existing email newsletter subscribers and blog readers already know and love you, and yet, they too may be ignoring you – only because of a less than compelling headline amongst a sea of headlines or subject lines in their inbox.

You can think of your headline or subject line as a tough gatekeeper – that can keep you from being in direct communication with your dear/cherished audience. It’s your job to charm the gatekeeper.

How Twitter [X] Can Teach You to Pitch Better

X, formerly known as Twitter, with its 140-character constraint, is a great way to hone your writing skills. You have to say what you need to say within the proscribed character limit or be cut off mid-thought, which is not a good option and can look unprofessional.

Sometimes, getting the words to fit into your tweet is trial and error. Sometimes, a bit of compromise. It can be done successfully, as there are over 400 million tweets sent daily, as well as people who have built massive followings by honing the art of communicating well within the word limit.

Google cuts off news headlines and articles, at 70 characters, so your press releases, blog posts and article titles display best within that even smaller number.

Ready to master the art of concise headlines and pitches?

First of course, you need a story idea. Then, to tell it within 70 or 140 characters, you sometimes need just a bit of help coming up with other words – synonyms or alternate ways to say the same concept or idea.

My favorite tools are the excellent old Thesaurus and the more updated version – Visual Thesaurus– which is actually an online interactive thesaurus and dictionary in one. It’s pretty, fun to use and very useful.

Other tools I find helpful are:

Wikipedia – under any given topic, they have related topics or ideas. This works as a brain jumpstart for me, sometimes giving me just the new word I need.

Photo libraries – sometimes the images that come up for a keyword search provide new ideas and ways I hadn’t yet thought of to voice my idea.

You may have to try a few to find what works best for you.

There are some other cool headline tools out there – watch for my list of them in the next week.

In the meantime, remember – a pitch or a headline is meant to be an irresistible invitation to read more. Its not intended to tell the entire story. In this instance, being a tease is a good thing!

In case you were wondering – My subject line for this post is 52 characters so that it would work well on Google, As an email Pitch, A press release headline, or on X!

It also has another success factor in it.  Do you know what that is?  Post your answer below. I’ll be giving a prize to the first person to get it correct!

Related Content:

How Not to Be One of the 45% of HARO Media Pitches That Suck

Content Marketing Toolkit – For Small Business

 

Content Marketing Toolkit CoverContent marketing—the strategy of creating and distributing content to a targeted audience—is a much talked about topic. It can be very effective for your business because it provides valuable information targeted to your prospects’ and customers’ interests and needs.

It engages without including a direct marketing message or selling, thereby positioning the company as a thought leader. But if you’re worried that this is just one more project you don’t have time for, fear not. There are some great, free tools to help you succeed at content marketing.

Of course, you’ll first need to create a strategy. Define your voice as well as your goals. Will you be creating original content, curating other people’s content, aggregating content, or some mix of the three? Are you looking to attract new customers, engage deeper and sell more to existing customers, or perhaps enter an entirely new market? Once you have all of the above established, it’s time to turn to these readily accessible tools to get the most out of your content. Here is our Content Marketing Toolkit for Small Business – originally printed in the NY Enterprise Report.

Editorial Calendar

Creating this will help you meet your strategic goals and manage your content marketing initiatives. Most of the work here is on the conceptual side, not in the implementation. A simple Excel spreadsheet, online calendar, or plug-in will make it easy to keep a schedule. If you have a content team, then a Google Docs or Google Calendar can allow multi-user access.

EDITORIAL CALENDAR PLUGIN: If your website uses WordPress, this plugin gives you an overview of when your content is scheduled to post. www.wordpress.org/extend/plugins/editorial-calendar/

 

Keyword Research

If you identify and use the correct keywords, your content is more likely to show up online where your audience is spending time, or searching on the topic. Tools to help you with this include:

GOOGLE KEYWORD TOOL:
 Gives you related terms, how competitive the term is, and how many times the term is searched for in a month. Results are more comprehensive if you are signed into your Google account. https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner

GOOGLE AUTO-COMPLETE/SUGGESTION:
As you type in the search box on Google, the auto-complete offers searches that are similar to yours based on searches others are doing related to your term.

WIKIPEDIA:
This online encyclopedia’s listings offer related terms and links on a specific topic, which can provide additional keyword suggestions. www.wikipedia.com

 

Content Aggregators

Aggregators gather and deliver all the content related to your topic or keyword inputs, from whatever data feeds they use as sources, and compile it in one place.

ALLTOP:
All the top stories and top headlines on popular topics from around the web. www.alltop.com

SCOOPIT:
Aggregator of info on a topic or keyword. It crawls the web for you and aggregates content around a the terms you input. It then allows you to select the best content and easily publish in a magazine format. www.scoop.it

 

If you identify and use the correct keywords, your content is more likely to show up online where your audience is spending time.

 

What’s Trending

A word, phrase, or topic is trending if it is mentioned online and on social networks multiple times. Trending topics become popular either through a concerted effort by users or because of an event that prompts people to talk about one specific topic. Mentioning what’s trending in your own marketing will potentially give you more exposure, but make sure it’s relevant to what you’re selling. For example, a new product release in your industry is a great opportunity to create content and capture some of the volume of social mentions and searches on the trending topic.

Consider writing a product review, a piece on what this new product means for the industry, or a positive personal anecdote related to the product or its creators. It is typically best to steer clear of political or gossipy trends, unless you are in that niche, or can find a way to create related content that won’t be offensive to your audience and can be tied back to your company or product in a way that makes sense.

WHAT’S TRENDING:
 What’s hot in the news, YouTube, and on Twitter. www.whatstrending.com

GOOGLE TRENDS:
 Identifies the hottest searches on the internet. www.google.com/trends

 

Monitoring

This is a recommended strategy to find mentions of your brand, your name, a product name, and news about a competitor in the press and online. You can also use it to find content on your keywords.

GOOGLE ALERTS:
 Monitor the web for interesting new content, delivered to your inbox daily, based on your queries (by keyword or topic). www.google.com/alerts

 

HOOTSUITE:
This social media dashboard monitors social media presence and mentions, and also allows you write and schedule posts that will be dispatched to multiple social media platforms. www.hootsuite.com

SUMALL:
The only reporting tool that can visualize your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube accounts along with any other service you use. Know which of your tweets, posts, photos, or videos get the most engagement in seconds https://sumall.com/20ft

 

Clipping

Clipping is a great way to collect content that is of interest for later use. This is where an editorial calendar comes in handy; when you know in advance what topics you are going to be creating content about, as well as when, you naturally start to gather background info when you find it. Here are some clipping tools to help you with the process:

EVERNOTE:
Multi-platform note-taking application and bookmarking app. www.evernote.com

PINTEREST:
Online bulletin board for collecting, organizing, and displaying information and images. www.pinterest.com

DIIGO:
bookmarking, research, and knowledge-sharing tool with multi-user capabilities. www.diigo.com

 

Content Suggestion Tools

Content suggestion tools are great aids while you are in the midst of blogging or creating content online. They will suggest related articles, videos, and keywords based on what you are in the midst of typing.

ZEMANTA:
Suggests images, links, tags, and related articles while you write your blog post, and promotes your content. Also available as a browser add-on. www.zemanta.com

REVERB FOR CONTENT:
Makes your content even more relevant and interesting. Offers all the features of Zemanta as well as a built-in dictionary and thesaurus. Add text or thumbnail images. www.wordpress.org/extend/plugins/related-content-by-wordnik/

 

Schedulers

Streamlining the content marketing process is a must for busy business owners and marketers. Scheduling tools vary from a simple one like LaterBro for managing one brand, to something more robust for managing multiple brands and social profiles, like HootSuite. Here are a few tools that allow you to schedule content in advance.

LATERBRO:
Schedules Facebook and Twitter updates. www.laterbro.com

TWEETDECK:
Schedules tweets and posts and connects you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace. www.tweetdeck.com

SOCIAL TOMORROW:
Facebook and Twitter posts. www.socialtomorrow.com

HOOTSUITE:
Helps you monitor and manage multiple accounts and schedule posts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Ping.fm, and WordPress profiles. www.hootsuite.com.

 

PLEASE NOTE: You may want to watch this video I created on using Google Alerts for Content & PR Monitoring: http://youtu.be/9dD4JxtbT9Q

Related Article: Why PR Should Be Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy

Have a favorite Content Marketing tool? We’d love to hear about it. Post it in the comments below!

 

Publicity, The Lottery and Your 90% Advantage

luck and PR

luck and PRWhen it comes to publicity, there are a few takeaways from the lottery that are worth considering. Getting publicity can feel like winning the lottery as it often comes with a lot of the positive attention and benefits. It can also create a cash windfall it that can help to attract more clients who now see you as a top expert who they are willing to pay top dollar to work with you.

The takeaway I want to bring to your attention is, a concept that has been used to promote the New York state lottery for years. Their campaign slogan: You have to be in it to win it.

It’s an apropos statement that applies to Public Relations. 90% of entrepreneurs and small businesses don’t do any PR, missing out on incredible free opportunities for visibility, increased traffic and recognition, as well as the value of transferred authority that media mentions convey.

Simply by adding PR to your promotional initiatives, you can jump into the top 10% of businesses, many of whom may be your direct competitors. Advantage Yours.
I recently wrote a guest blog post entitled: Why PR Should Be Part of Your Content Strategy

There are 2 great reasons PR should be part of your content strategy.
“We are living in a world now where visibility creates opportunities and reputation builds trust,” according to Dan Schwabel, author of Promote Yourself and a Forbes magazine contributor.

Your content can achieve both for you – create visibility and trust – in one easy step with public relations. Consider this: you are already creating content. Why not designate some of your pieces for public relations. You’ll need a few strategic pieces written for and pitched to targeted media where your audience already flocks.

When it comes to PR, don’t depend on Luck
Unlike the lottery, where luck and odds are your silent partners, PR shouldn’t depend on luck.

By definition, PR is the professional maintenance of a favorable public image by an organization or a famous person. Its also, the technique or process of attracting attention to people, products, etc.

A competitor’s media coverage that you may think was a stroke of luck for them, was most likely the result of a savvy strategy, PR plan and consistent implementation on their part.

I believe that Publicity happens when preparation meets opportunity. By becoming PR savvy and actively creating and implementing a PR strategy – you prepare, create and attract media opportunities on a regular basis.

With the definition of media and the number and type of outlets continually expanding [think Instagram, tablet magazines… ] there are increasing opportunities for media coverage and mentions. Journalists, bloggers, publishers all need steady stream of fresh content and expert sources – in other words they need you and your stories.

Your advantage gets even better if you utilize optimization. Create your pitches and press release on topics of interest to your target audience, utilizing language or keywords that they themselves would use. It helps create an emotional connection with your audience, resonating deeply and helping them connect with you better. It can also help you potentially rank higher in the search engines for your targeted keywords.

Ready for a PR win? Time to get in the game.

Want my help with your PR efforts? – check out my program Magnify Your Message

Magnify Your Message