How to Get Famous (The Hidden Art of PR) | Mickie Kennedy

Credibility is a great way to increase your conversions, as well as bring new customers, as well as keep more of your existing customers. Churn is a predictable number for a lot of people. If they see you, you know, by you sharing these links with them on social media and your newsletters, they're gonna say, "Oh, these people are killing it. There's no need to consider working with someone else." Mickey, appreciate your time today, man.

Thanks for, uh, stopping by the show. Glad, glad to be here. Great. Well, I thought press releases were dead and they didn't work anymore. Uh, I, I've been hearing that for, like, 25 years.

Um, uh, the truth is, uh, press releases have probably never been more effective than they are today. Um, there's been consolidation in the US, so we're basically a duopoly of newswires. So, um, you know, if you're looking to get a press release out, uh, you know, you wanna make sure that you hit either Business Wire or PR Newswire. Uh, all of our releases go out through PR Newswire, which charges, um, a f- uh, little over $1,800 to move a 600-word press release nationally, and through us, it's about a quarter of the price. Uh, the caveat is you have to be a small business or entrepreneur or startup, basically someone that the, uh, corporate sales team at PR Newswire would not be interested in working with.

And, uh, we certainly help those people and onboard them through press releases. I think a lot of small business owners in particular, they don't even think about press releases. They don't think about PR in general. Uh, and one of the things that I talk to a lot of my clients about is oftentimes marketing is the nonsense and PR is what actually moves the needle, uh, done right, uh, done with a strategy, not just blasting out random news or thoughts, but, uh, press releases with a purpose. Um, one, is that a, though a broad stroke, a, uh, an a- an accurate statement?

Um, and two, how, how do you c- like, what is a moment where a s- a small business, a Main Street business, a startup, what is a moment that warrants a press release? What is the trigger in their brain to go, "You know, this is something that we could put out into the world that would help move our business forward"? So I like to tell people that everyone should try to do PR and, um, you know, a PR campaign is not one press release, but it's a series of six to eight, and they should be strategic. And, uh, you know, by that, I mean it should be... it should basically solve the problem of a journalist, which is they are looking to, um, basically entertain or educate their audience, and you are coming through very selfishly trying to promote just yourself. And so I always tell people it's sort of like putting the pill in the cheese, uh, that you feed a dog, is how can you accomplish your announcement, you know, hopefully sell, attract attention, uh, but also be entertaining or educational for, uh, a, you know, an audience, um, and therefore a journalist would want to share your story.

A lot of the press releases that we get at eReleases are, um, product launches or service launches, and usually it's just, "Here's the product or service and here's a list of features." For a journalist, there's not a lot of meat there for them to write an article. Um, if you look at articles in most papers and, um, blogs and trade journals, they follow a story arc even if they're small articles, you know? The story arc is something that's ingrained to us from, you know, telling kids stories, uh, uh, reading stories to 'em, sitting around fires and share, you know, sharing ghost tales or, or just, uh, interesting jokes. Um, and yet we don't give journalists the, enough information to build a story arc.

So one of the easiest things you can do with a service announcement or a new product announcement is incorporate elements that would make a great story. Um, these products and services come out after being beta tested, so take someone who had an amazing outcome and share that story. Like if you have a new logistics software solution, you know, point out that, you know, 63% of new transportation companies fail in their first five years 'cause they don't achieve profitability. Take a publicly available data point like that and use it. That shows the stakes.

And then say, "Here was a company that was losing, uh, money for three years. They're three years old. They started using your software, and at the end of a six-month trial, they're projected to have a 12% net increase for the first time, uh, a profit at the end of the year." And that's something that you can put a data point to, have an outcome for this, uh, company that would otherwise be perhaps a casualty in your industry, and, uh, show a, a, a rapid turnaround, um, you know, rapid by being months long. But, um, you know, th- that really shows the value of your product and service and a journalist knows that that's gonna be a much more compelling story of a way explaining what your product does.

Also, have quotes by them saying, "Hey, we always thought we just needed to win more bids, but we could win all the bids in the world, but if they're not profitable, we're gonna continue to lose money. And by using this software, it allowed us to be able to know when we needed to drop out of bidding and it, it was no longer profitable for us." And so, uh, these are all the ingredients of a story and those are the things that I think a lot of people who come to press releases selfishly don't realize that they're missing, and it's easy to put those stories back in there. Inject a little personality into press releases. Um, you know, there's a reason that the people who go on Shark Tank, one of the first things they do is they don't open with their numbers.

Um, and I mention Shark Tanks because about a third of the people who appear on there do a press release before their episode airs because the producers recommend that. And, um, you know, they share Usually human interest thing. Like I was laid off or, you know, uh, I had just gotten a divorce and all of a sudden I, I, I had this idea and I wanted to implement. Or I used to have this thing that me and my dad made, and after he died, you know, I was sitting there thinking, "Could I turn that into a business?" And it's these things that make us want to care because they're little, the little building blocks of a story of humanity.

And, you know, those are the things that anybody can go back and put into a press release and make it what I call strategic. Um, there's also, you know, um, there's this thing that came out, I guess, over 15, maybe 20 years ago, um, called newsjacking. And, uh, it worked for like 10 minutes then and hasn't since, but it still gets a lot of mileage, is when there's something trending in your industry, join the conversation. Well, the thing is, everyone's doing that. But if you're the one person willing to poke your head up and say, "I disagree with everybody else," that's where you could really get a lot of mileage out of newsjacking.

And, you know, everybody who, um, you know, generally t- talks about newsjacking things are just agreeing with everyone else. Like, "Oh, electric cars are great. They're good for the environment. They're gonna save us, you know, they're the future," and all this stuff. But if you're the person saying, "Hey, not so fast.

Uh, you know, what are we gonna do with the batteries at the end of their life? What about the environmental toll of mining these minerals and, you know, political wars a- at play regarding that?" Not to mention, sometimes it takes eight fire trucks to put out a car fire that involves a lithium battery. So it's a way in which you can rationally join the conversation but be counter to everybody else. And why is a contrarian viewpoint so valuable?

Believe it or not, journalists outside of politics like to be fair and balanced, and if they are writing articles about this and nobody's raised their hand to discuss the other side, they often just go to print with all the favorable pro-environment stuff. But if you're the one person raising your hand, you stand a likelihood you can be sort of put into every one of those articles as saying, "Not so fast," says this person, and here's their reasoning for it. And so, uh, you know, i- you need to be strategic with PR. You need to be creative and think about it. But the great thing is, if you're a small business or an entrepreneur or a startup, you are really at a, a great advantage over well-funded, well-known companies.

Journalists don't get accolades, and they don't get a lot of shares for articles, uh, when they write about the Microsofts and Googles of the world. They have to. They have to cover the big companies in every industry, but they often get the most accolades, the most article shares, which is a measurement that a lot of them use for, you know, covering an unknown company, a new company, a mom and pop, a new product, a new service, a side business. Putting the spotlight on something that most people in your industry don't know about. It makes the journalist seem like a curator, makes him seem, uh, really good, and it can really make a huge difference for, uh, a fairly new company, um, a company just starting out, a company that's not extremely well-funded.

PR is not one of these things that you have to wait until you've reached a level of success to embrace or, you know, you've had 20, $30,000 to fund a PR firm. Um, it's something that I tell people, get in there, uh, be creative, be strategic, and think your way into, uh, you know, reverse engineer what you want to announce to solve also the journalist, uh, quandary of, "I'm looking for content that's going to, you know, tantalize, educate, entertain, uh, my audience." And if you can sort of figure that out and reverse engineer that, you can really, um, you know, get a lot of success. And by success, I mean, you know, three or four articles, uh, from a press release. Um, you know, not every press release you do in a PR campaign is going to get pickup, but if you do strategic series of press releases and you do a campaign of six to eight, there's no reason that two or three of those can't result in, uh, considerable earned media.

I have one idea that always generates usually between 6 and 14 articles, and that's to do an industry survey. Survey your industry, take their temperature today, right now on a series of topics. If there's things that you can't wait to go to a trade show or conference to say, "Have you noticed this, or is it just me?" Those are perhaps i-- uh, the types of questions you could ask. Um, you could also ask other questions that are going on in your industry, things that are concerns.

Um, is AI affecting your industry? You could ask questions around that. You could ask questions about, you know, whether people are hiring or laying off. Um, you know, what's the economic situation in, uh, across your industry? Um, but, you know, just be creative and spend a little bit of time there.

And the great thing about it is you being the author of the survey, you're going to get a lot of recognition every time an article is published with these, about this data, and you're gonna have a quote that you put in the press release that's going to get replicated in a lot of different articles out there about why you felt the numbers skewed in a particular way on one of those hot-button issues. And the great thing about it is you don't even need a giant Rolodex of people in your industry. I always tell people to, um, seek out the small and independent trade, uh, associations in your industry. Everybody knows the big ones, you know, the ones you see at the big giant trade shows often putting them on. Um, they don't see the benefit of working with you, but, you know, do a little bit of homework.

There's a lot of them out there. Um, in the PR world, I had, you know, someone say, "Well, Mickey, our, ours is different. There's only PRSA, Public Relations Society of America." I had to break it to her. There is over 700 other, uh, trade associations for PR in the United States alone.

Some of them are very small, like, you know, Florida PR firms. Atlantic PR firms, North American-owned PR firms. But there's also ones like, you know, uh, independent PR firms of 50 employees or less, which probably represents more than 80% of the market, and it also is a really nice size. You know, by taking your, your link to your survey, I use SurveyMonkey, reach out to them and say, "Hey, could you send this to your members? In exchange, I will put your organization in a press release I'll be issuing over PR Newswire in the coming weeks."

About two-thirds of the time, these independent and small trade associations will say yes. And so that's a great way to tap that audience and, uh, to get the responses that you need, and then sort of look through the questions and figure out what are the two or three that are gonna be the most shocking, and make that the focus of the press release. Yeah. There's, there's a lot to unpack there, but I thought that was, that was brilliant. No, I, I loved it.

I, I mean that in no, no, no disrespect. I think the point you made around being contrarian is, I think one that I'd like to spend just a little more time on, because I was reading, uh, um, I'm reading this book, uh, Hacking the Human Mind. It just came out, and I'm gonna butcher the authors, but I'll go back and, and look at them. And one of the things that, that's in that book was talking about the psychologic- this, this psychological study, the psychology study that was done around the fact that when you have a contrarian viewpoint, even if the person reading that viewpoint doesn't agree with your take at all, they immediately apply, um, like a intelligence indicator to you. Or like, like they, they...

It gives you authority even if you disagree, just by taking a different viewpoint or having or arguing a different viewpoint, even if you don't agree with it, right? Your article could be, "Here's the contrarian take and why it's wrong." But by, by presenting a counterargument to what someone sees, you know, 90% of the time, it immediately applies a level of authority to you, um, from a psy- from a psychology standpoint. Like immediately the person reading it goes, "Ooh, this guy or this gal, they think differently. They, they...

You know, I don't agree with what they're doing or what their, their take is here, but man, I, they're thinking about this differently." And it elevates you from an authority, uh, place by having that contrarian take. Um, and I actually, uh, not to plug my own work on my own podcast, but guys, if you go to findingpeak.com, I just, I have been fighting this myself, 'cause I, I don't wanna fall into that like, um, you know, y- you know, yes and, yes and, yes and kinda loop. And I created a ChatGPT prompt, which I just posted, that actually checks to see how consensus my viewpoint... Uh, like so I'll have an article, and then I'll run that article through this ChatGPT prompt that I created, which actually checks and scores it to say like, "This is 90% consensus."

Like, "This is what everyone else is saying." Or, you know, "This part's a little different, but the rest is all the same." And to try to force myself to say like, "Is this really what I think about this, or am I just kinda parroting some..." You know what I mean? Like to try to catch myself to make sure I'm not like falling into that loop.

Um, uh, guys, you can check that out at Finding Peak. I'll have the article in the show notes. But I wanted to ask you about surveys particularly, because I've gotten this question before where someone will say like, "I'm interested in doing a survey. Maybe I see the value. But like I can't pay for a, one of those professional surveys that's $30,000."

Like can you use a SurveyMonkey survey, I think, to, to present your... Like is that good enough? Is that data worthy of a press release? Or like are we, is, are those days gone where it has to be done by some professional survey firm? It does not have to be, uh, you know, a, a professional, uh, you know, questionnaire survey firm.

Um, I, I see a lot of my clients get pick up again and again. Um, usually the barometer is, um, you, uh, mention the population that you surveyed and the, uh, the number of responses. Uh, generally the media is okay with 100 or more responses. They know that it may not have the best statistical relevance, but it, it's a barometer, indicator of this population that, hey, we asked this population and this, uh, this group, uh, responded, and this is what they're seeing. It could be like we asked graphic designers if they thought AI was gonna replace them, and 67% said they believe it will over the next five years.

And then you go in and you, you have a quote where you say, you know, uh, you don't have to agree with the quo- with what the numbers say. You could say, "While I, I believe that's a bit alarmist, I do think that those, uh, graphic designers who don't know how to use AI as a tool to help them with their, uh, design efforts are gonna be at a huge disadvantage in the coming years. But I do believe that, you know, not two-thirds of the designers are gonna lose their job because of AI." Yeah. I, I'm, I'm glad.

I, I had a feeling that that would be your take, but I have definitely gotten that question where people are like, "You know, well, the SurveyMonkey or whatever tool you're using, it's, you know, that's not like official." And like it's like people create these narratives in their head around why they can't do certain things that they see other people do, and it's like it's really, if you're just open and honest about, "Hey, I sent this to 1,000 people. 600 responded. Here's what they are. Here's what the demographics, why I chose those 1,000 people," that's all people wanna know.

Right. Like they just wanna know that, you know, what was your thought process to get to this group of people, right? Really, really what people are trying to make sure is you didn't like bias this in who you chose. As long as it's a general pool of people and that pool is reasonably, like you said, 100, that's... I mean, everybody knows 100 You know, quasi-random people that you can send something to in a contingency to get something back from.

I mean, particularly if you have clients, right? I mean, if you have a, a, a business with 1,000 clients, right, you could survey them. It's a natural built-in audience and, you know, you could get some insights out of them. Um, I, I love that because it, it, it shows authority, it shows, uh, insights, and not to mention, if you actually take it seriously and think about the questions, you could actually learn some things that could help you grow your business too, not just- Right ... not just better PR, right? Right.

And, and when I construct my surveys in SurveyMonkey, I usually do multi pages with, like, four questions per page. The thing is, if someone leaves after doing three pages, you've got, like, 12 responses and maybe they didn't finish the last page, so they- you didn't get their l- the last four questions. But you still have, you know, that information on, on, you know, from them. And, you know, on that last page, I always tell people, "Put something in there that's strange or left field question or something a little weird." Um, you never know when sometimes, you know, uh, you might be able to put together something there that's even more interesting than a survey.

Uh, we had a one that we did for a auto repair shop in Pennsylvania that was looking for, um, uh, links- Links ... uh, for SEO from a- automotive trade publications. And so they did a survey, um, uh, with an association that they belong to, Independent, uh, Repair Shops of America. And, uh, you know, the, the question we had on the last page was not even, you know, uh, multiple choice or anything. It was just, "What's the strangest thing a customer's left in their car?" And we left information, you know, all those fields so they could write something.

And so none of it was statistically relevant, but it was very entertaining. It was- Yeah ... so entertaining that we put, um, I think in the press release, we put, uh, I think it was 15 of the strangest ideas, but we linked to both the survey, all the questions and answers, but also, uh, that included the roundup of, I think there was a total of 80 responses we got from that. So we, y- we didn't even bother to put, uh, have 100 for that, but it did really well. I think over 10, uh, automotive trade, uh, publications, uh, wrote about it. Six of them actually included the link because it had all the other crazy things that people left, and, uh, people really liked it, and it had sort of a viral component.

And then that's one where there's not even, you know, data and numbers that are material in that survey. But the numbers we got back from the survey I felt were overall lackluster, not surprising or shocking, um, that I felt like we would do better by, by focusing on the more viral human interest element of what are some strange things people left in their car, and everything from a boa constrictor to- Oh my God ... uh, I think a grandmother was left in an urn that had to be retrieved after hours for memorial and stuff like that. So they were just quirky, fun stories and the type of things that a lot of people will respond to. So sometimes you can use the survey, but you know, maybe it's not heavy on data. Maybe it's heavy on, you know, uh, either outside-the-box experiences that people had, or maybe, you know, ask people for out-of-the-box ways to solve things that are going on in your industry, and maybe you get some, uh, ideas that n- you haven't thought of and maybe others in the industry haven't thought of.

Yeah. I, I love that. And the, the other thing too is you can, you can kinda open loop that, where it's like, you know, answer this 10, uh, question survey and the 11th question, uh, you're gonna have so much fun with. Or, you know, the 11- the 11th question you're really gonna have to think or something, like that kinda like, uh, clickbaity, uh, open loop kinda thing that gets them to go through because they, they wanna find out what that last question is to kinda put in their crazy answer. Um, and, and, and honestly, it's, it's the, it's the quirky stuff that, that, you know...

I think some people would, would, could potentially hear that, maybe someone who's more cynical or, or scarcity mindset and be a little like, "Well, you know, what does anybody really care about who left..." And the truth is, that's the interesting stuff, right? The, the, the 10 data points before that might just validate things they already knew or already thought, like you said, but it gets the, it gets to reaf- you get to reaffirm those statistics because they're gon- have to read through those to get to the fun stuff like, hey, someone left their grandmother in the backseat in an urn, right? Like, and you know, we, we didn't tell them that we had used it to do, you know, chug contest at wherever, you know. But, uh, you know, the, the, the, it's...

Like, we're still human. Like, I feel like sometimes with things, particularly like PR, which I think to a lot of small businesses feels like magic, right? I think we, we see services like, like eReleases or, or PR Newswire or whatever. It feels like, oh, you know, that there's some magic to how you get picked up. If I just put my, if I just put my, my, my news release out on one of these services, yeah, it goes out and it gets picked up by Yahoo News, whatever.

I get some backlinks, but it doesn't, it doesn't... Like, no one's really gonna write a story. And what I hear you saying is, well, yeah, if your press release is boring and doesn't provide any reason for someone to write about it, but, but journalists are actually tapping into the wire. They are actually getting... Like, they are actually looking at these stories and potentially using them as inspiration to write about, right?

It's not just, um- Correct. And- ... like a friend of a friend or a PR firm push, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Correct. And what we're seeing even more now is that, uh, these newswires are more important than they've ever been, uh, which is unfortunate from the standpoint of the power they have and the prices that they charge. Uh, you know, over the last, uh, 25 years or so, um, the big thing that we've seen is these media databases Or, you know, you can get them for as little as five to $10,000 a year, and all of a sudden you have access to quarter of a million to 600,000 journalists.

And you get a golf club company that just, you know, spent 10 grand on a license to that. They blast the 2,400 people that are indicated to cover the golf industry, and all of a sudden the owner's like, "Well, you know what? You know who likes to play golf? Bankers and financial people and Wall Street people. So send it to bankers, financial analysts.

Hey, there's probably like 70,000 more people we can send it to." They will never, ever write an article on golf clubs. Uh, but they get all these off-targeted emails, and that's happening in every industry. And it's made it so that the way of pitching, which used to be done, uh, by a lot of, uh, PR professionals by email, has become really, really hard and difficult, requiring a lot of phone calls to say, "Hey, I pitched you." And then you explain how they can try to find your pitch in their inbox because there's so much spam, um, and you're not whitelisted.

And so, um, it, it, it's, it's made it very difficult for, uh, people to, to pitch through email or even by phone. A lot of, uh, people are having a hard time, you know, getting through. Uh, but the great thing about the, being a duopoly in the US is journalists can just go to two places. And because journalists are expected to write more articles than they ever had before, and they're, you know, not making as much as they used to, um, uh, you know, they're, they're-- They like the fact that they could just have to hop on two places and cov- look at their industry feed. And so they'll, um, log in with the journalist access.

They might cover, uh, let's say fashion, but they can actually customize that feed so that, uh, keywords that are mentioned aren't, you know, they won't show those releases in the feed. So maybe they cover high fashion, but they don't cover stuff that's like ready to wear at JCPenney and other places. So they set keywords to blo- you know, to be blocked or whatever. So it's, it's the opposite of their inbox. It's like everything in this feed is potentially relevant to them and their beat and what they write about.

And so, um, you know, that, that's why I think that, um, you know, getting a release on the wire, um, is, is so important. And, you know, there's also having to educate people out there that are like, "Well, I went over XYZ wire." If it's not PR Newswire or Business Wire, it didn't reach journalists. Uh, there are a lot of wires out there where the goal is to syndicate, so the release appears on a bunch of places. It happens with Business Wire and PR Newswire too, but these other places, that's all that happens.

It doesn't reach journalists. Journalists aren't going to these other wires. They're, you know, th- they, they know that if they go to Business Wire and PR Newswire, 98% of the people, you know, the businesses, uh, that, uh, send out releases are covered there. And so they're not out there hunting for other places. Um, a- and so that, that's, that's the real value of it.

And, you know, there's other wires that people have probably heard of, like AP, Associated Press, Reuters, and things like that. They don't, they don't issue press releases. Um, they might accept press releases. They often pull them from Business Wire and PR Newswire, but everything that they run is written by them. Those are articles written by them, and they license them to newspapers and other places.

And so in the US, the wires to watch out for, um, for, you know, running press releases for a fee are Business Wire and PR Newswire. So one of the things that you've kinda, I'll say, uh, danced around, but not in a bad way. I just mean we haven't specifically addressed it. Uh, but I've seen in your content you use this term credibility engineering, like this idea of, of, of, like you've talked a little bit about six to eight, telling a story, um, maybe using surveys. What are, what are some other ways that we can really dig in if I'm sitting here and let's say I run a, let's say I run a, um, a local, uh, uh, a local marketing firm, right?

I run a local marketing firm and I'm, and I'm not one of the, uh, one of these BS like I'll make your website for 150 bucks and forget that you exist kind of places. But like, hey, I'm in the community. I have hundreds of clients. I'm helping them. I'm helping them grow.

And, you know, I feel like I know this, but marketing's my thing, not PR. And, but I wanna start to really separate myself from all these kind of gimmicky AI marketing firms that have come out of nowhere, right? And I've seen that a lot with some of my friends that have marketing firms, et cetera. You know, their big thing is not, like there's almost more business than ever before, but there, there's also way more noise than there was before and, and they wanna stand out and be the signal. Okay, so they wanna, they wanna do some credibility engineering versus, um, you know, some of these upstart, uh, places which they would call kind of lowbrow.

How, how would you recommend they approach maybe brainstorming this six to eight, uh, uh, uh, news release campaign that they're gonna put together? Like, is it start story then like it, should it be one narrative? Is it a series of six to eight different stories that all kind of lead to the same thing? Like how do you start to structure this if you're thinking through putting a real PR campaign together? Right.

So I, I always say six to eight different press releases and, uh, the goals should not be the same other than you're trying to get recognition for your company or your product or services. Um, you know, you know, one of which could be, uh, you know, talking about, uh, you know, pick a milestone that you're facing. You know, maybe you've been in business for 20 years. It's pretty soft news, but one of the things that you could do is really, you know, mine Your, uh, origin story. Uh, you know, what was it that made you want to go in business?

What was it that made you create that product or that service? And, you know, generally, uh, you know, it, it may t- be talking to other people that were there early on and get their perspective on it. Um, you know, these are the things that, that they lead with on Shark Tank, you know, these, these origin stories. And I always tell people, think carefully, brainstorm. What were the things that you were going through?

And, you know, a- and sometimes you can just get these out of people. I was talking to s- a, a woman once, and she's like, "I don't really have anything. I just wanted to create my business and blah, blah, blah." And it's like, well, what'd your family think of it? And it was, "Oh, my mother was my biggest cheerleader.

She always told me, 'I hated just being a housewife and not having any value.'" And I was like, ugh, what a gut punch, you know? And he goes ... And she goes, she goes, "I loved my mother. I loved that she was always there and available for me."

And I was like, well, maybe there's a conversation that you can have, uh, not with your mother per se, but maybe you should. But a, a conversation about I grew up with a mother who always felt that she was less than, and, uh, she empowered me to be able to go out there and build something on my own. And now that I have a successful business, I look back as not just I did this for myself, I did this for my mom who always felt disenfranchised because she never went out there. That's, that's, that makes you care a little bit. Uh, you know, a- and, um, it, it sort of shows one of the things about expectations put on women, and some women feeling like it's career or being a mother or stay at home, and how over the last 40, 50 years that's changed considerably, but there's still a bit of, uh, you know, some shame with people who choose to stay at home as opposed to, uh, you know, go out and either work for themselves or build a business and what that looks like.

Um, you know, so do a big inventory. You know, brainstorm around, talk about it. Uh, you know, I'm not saying lie, but, uh, during the early, well, late 1990s, early 2000s, you know, every eBay article talked about how the founder created it to solve the problem of I think his girlfriend who was wanting to sell her Pez collection. Turns out it's a completely made-up story by a PR firm who just said, "Eh, online auctions and development and having all these features, it's hard for people to grasp that. So we're just gonna say you needed a marketplace to sell Pez dispensers."

It just breaks it down like, oh, that makes sense. She had a collection she wanted to get maximized sales, so she sold them individually, and, uh, this was, allowed them to do it. It was something that, uh, every article, Red Herring, uh, uh, Wired, all of them ran with that story because it was something that took a complicated idea and made it very understandable and, and also kind of cute in a geeksy way, where you're like, oh- Yeah ... this is how a, an engineer boyfriend solves a problem of like, rather than go to the yard sale, let's create an online marketplace to sell your Pez d- uh, dispensers. Uh, but, um, you know, I, I think that when you look back at, uh, your origin story, your why, these are great things to mine and start build that, you know? And, and craft that story.

Um, maybe use story brand telling to sort of own it, and get a elevator pitch where you can say in one or two sentences, "This is why I created this company," and it, it- make it uniquely yours. And, uh, you know, also mine stories that happened throughout your company. Um, I walked away from the day-to-day operations of my company in 2015, and I realized I lost a lot of stories because we work with a lot of different characters. Uh, so I, I encourage my staff to share the strange stories, the empowering stories, the, the beautiful stories and, uh, you know, give them gift cards. And it allows me to take that and make that part of our, our story and make sure that when I'm telling conversations and sharing things with people, I talk about, uh, you know, the, the guy who tried to do a press release with, uh, quotes from celebrities that weren't celebrities.

He had found a Tom Cruise in Ohio and paid him $100 to be quoted as Tom Cruise said this. Uh, you know, that guy thought he had solved, uh, you know, using celebrity likenesses as quotes, uh, by actual getting, uh, people and, uh, that's kind of fun. And, you know, all these other different, uh, customers that we've had over the years who've done really interesting things and, you know, preserving that. And so, make sure that you're doing that and you're sharing that, uh, because these are the, the human interest elements that I think that people latch on when you do PR and press releases. Did that work?

Did he, did that, did that, uh, uh, s- we'll call it celebrity jacking, did that, did that work? No, it didn't. We, we had to break it to him that, uh, that would not work because there's the- Yeah ... assum- assumption of you didn't mention Tom Cruise of whatever, Ohio. Yeah. You want people to assume it's a celebrity.

And so, that, that did not fly. But, you know, we've, we've had, uh, um, you know, lots of interesting, uh, clients over the years. We had one who h- uh, had, had come up with the idea of basically, I think, dumping basically what would be like soap into a hurricane, and it would lose its ability to grow. Believe it or not, he got tapped that hurricane season by the military to test it, and they dumped his soap product over three or four hurricanes, and it did not seem to work But, uh, you know, his-- by doing a press release, he got asked to be on Good Morning America, he got asked to be on a lot of places, and the military saw it and said, "Let's test it." And it turns out it didn't work.

But man, what an interesting story. We did, uh, press releases for a company called Allerca, which was a genetically engineered cat to, to be n- allergen free. And, uh, they, they, they... At one time, I was at Midway Airport, and I looked at the newsstand, and they were on the cover of Discover magazine. They were on the dis- uh, cover of T-Time magazine.

It would be another week or two before they were on the cover of Newsweek. But they were on the cover at that time, eight or nine ma- uh, magazines, and they did phenomenal, uh, media pickup. Turns out it, it, the company failed. Uh, it turns out that the allergen that they had blocked, y-you know, uh, they say nature finds a way. It turns out people are, are generally allergic to several different factors, and they had only solved one.

And some people had favorable results, but the majority of people, they still had, uh, some allergic reactions. And so it didn't really work or anything from, from a standpoint of solving the problem. But, um, you know, it just showed, you know, what a huge response they could get. Now, much of their s- uh, coverage wasn't great. I, I think that Newsweek and Discover were both like, "Should we be playing God?"

And had a picture of a cat on the cover and stuff like that. So, um, but you know, they, they sold, you know, millions of dollars of deposits for people wanting these cats. So, you know, that showed the, the real success of, of what PR can do as far as like driving sales. Um, we have a case study on our website, uh, where, um, the, uh, Dining Bond Initiative was set up, um, sort of a grassroots effort to help restaurants that were closed early in the pandemic. And basically, if the, um, you called and nominated your favorite local restaurant, and you wanted to give them money, they would, you know, the, if the volunteers got ahold of the restaurant, you could give money that went directly to them to help keep the lights on, maybe help keep some of the staff employed.

It was a very uncertain time. We were sent home for two weeks to flatten the curve, and we saw how that ended. But it raised over ten million dollars, um, got picked up in over a hundred places, um, you know, all the big places, Wall Street Journal and stuff like that. But, uh, even more importantly, it got picked up, uh, I, I think over a hundred daily newspapers picked it up. And I think the reason it did so well, it was, uh, positive news, and, you know, it was actionable at a time where we were very passive and felt powerless.

And so, uh, you know, when y- when there's moments like that, journalists are liking, like to plug it in with empowering things like, "Hey, we're sent home. We're powerless. What could we talk about that would be like empowering?" And so this was sort of solved that vacuum and probably why it did so well. A lot of particularly small business owners that I run into, and I create a lot of content, it's a big part of what I do and what I help people do.

They'll, I'll get this like, "You know, I, I'm not a storyteller. You know, that sounds great, but I don't know how to create that. I don't know how, I don't have the money to, to pay a PR firm to create that for me." And ChatGPT or, or AI, to me, it feels like, you know, y- it can help you become a storyteller, you know? And, and what I, what I, what I've done for some of my clients is basically create a set of prompts that'll maybe use a, a certain storytelling framework where they talk to text the story into the prompt, right?

So they can be like, "You know, my mom, you know, was always the most, you know, my biggest fan, and even when I was crying after year two when I was back to zero clients, you know, she was right there for me," and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then enter, and it can, you know, okay, here we're gonna do this, and here's the pivot, and here's the open loop, and then we build tension, and then... And it can start to do that for you, right? So it's almost like the excuses to be able to craft these, uh, has gone away. However, and this is where I'm interested in your opinion, is done improperly or without the right thought, AI can genericize and like, uh, uh, preamble and, you know, uh, em dash your, your content into being as forgettable as possible.

So, you know, obviously AI is on everyone's mind. It's a topic that everyone talks about constantly. Um, and I use it a lot. I'm a, um, an advocate in its proper usage, we can say, I think. Um, w-where are you seeing the impact?

You know, is it increasing the velocity? Is it increasing the slop? Like how do you leverage some of these tools to get the, the power out of them without sounding like everyone else or, you know, coming up with a very like kind of dull, genericized AI-sounding content? So I always tell people, you don't need to hire and spend a lot of money. Um, you know, PR press releases is something that you should be able to do.

If you don't feel writing is your strong suit, lean on AI. The one thing I tell people never to do is go to AI and say, "Write a press release on this company." AI has been trained on the bulk of the press releases that are out there, most of which probably did not generate earned media. And so it will end up with a press release that feels like a solid press release, but it's probably not gonna generate earned media for you. So I always say, come to AI with a strategy, knowing exactly what you want to be covered, and, uh, then you can use it to write the press release.

Now, don't ask it to write a six hundred word press release on this subject. I always go to it and say, "Here's my company. Here's what I want you to write a press release about, uh, uh, uh, write a press release about. Don't write the press release. Give me a outline of how you would structure such a press release."

90% of the time it still writes the press release. I just disregard it and say, "Okay, how about an outline?" And then, and then I disregard what it wrote. And then I go like, "Okay, let's start with the headline. Give me 10 headline options for this."

And then I'll... If I'm happy with them, I'll say, "Hey, I picked this headline. Now give me three opening paragraphs using this headline." And, and I go paragraph by paragraph through it. It takes 10 minutes as opposed to, like, 30 seconds.

But at the end of it, I think you're gonna end up, if you were to look at what you end up with and that initial press release that it spit out at the beginning, it's gonna be by far so much stronger. Um, I, I usually lean on the quote and say, "Hey, um, in that paragraph, that quote is weak. I want a quote, very strong active verbs, says something with a lot of conviction. Um, is there something contrarian on this subject I could say? Um, you know, ask me some questions to figure out if there's a contrarian viewpoint I'm comfortable with."

And, you know, uh, play with it a little bit. A quote is gonna be s- probably the, the biggest hidden thing that people don't realize can save a press release. When a journalist is looking at two soft news press releases and they're like, "I could go with either one of them to write an article," two things will, uh, greatly improve your chances of getting picked up. The quote's the most important. The second one being, did you upload a couple of images or photos that would do well, um, online?

Because a lot of the content's getting posted online, and they know that a good, uh, image is going to create more engagement with people. And the best photos are ones that are more candid. The professional shots and the well-lit stuff and, you know, the realtor photographs that people have that are perfect, you do not need that. What you take on your iPhone or Android is more than sufficient. And, you know, candid shots of the product or service being used or people using it, a real messy desk, those work well.

People, people engage with that better. Now, back to the quote. If a journalist is looking at this and says, "Hey, I could write a really good article on either of these two soft press releases," but they also know at the end of it, this amazing quote's gonna be in there, and over here, this really soft quote's gonna be in there. They know that the article's gonna stand out probably better by a factor of two or three by having an amazing quote. So that is a great way to make sure that they pick you because you have an amazing quote.

And, you know, like I said, active verbs. Basically, you said that one sentence, and I will allow a second sentence if you must, uh, to, to, to really just nail in that you've said something that if the journalist was to paraphrase it, people who had read the quote previously would say, "Ooh, he said it so much better in that sentence. Go back to that sentence. That, that, that had more conviction, had more strength. It was tighter."

You know, just a really polished quote. So many quotes come across as soft, weak verbs. They look like they've been written by committee. They don't say anything conviction. I mean, one of the reasons to put a quote on something is you said something controversial or something that people may not agree with.

You know, that's why they always, if you have something contrarian, you, you put it up in a quote. But y- you know, the other reasons that people quote is because you said something eloquently or very succinctly or powerfully. It just smacks. So make sure that your quote does that, and it doesn't look like something that was written by committee. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

The nu- I mean, I've put out the number of... Like, having been a chief marketing officer for a bunch of, uh, corporations in my career, um, the number of like, like just I wanna... Like, this makes me wanna, like, just crawl under my desk and die quotes that, like, get approved by corporate lawyers and stuff, where it's just like, "The CEO says that this company will probably be good because of this new product line that they think will probably do well with their cons..." And you're like, "Oh my, this is, says nothing." Like, literally, these are just words.

Like, lit- Like these words in this- No, no one gets fired for- Yeah ... super safe quotes, just like they used to say no one gets fired for picking AT&T as the long distance thing, so. Yes. No one sticks their head out to, to suggest anything else. But the thing about it is, uh, no one's gonna be fired, but you're, no one's also gonna get a lot of pats on their backs for saying, "Wow, that was a great press release. Got us a lot of coverage," you know?

Um- Well, what happens is the attorneys don't get fired, nor does the CEO, but then when there, no, it doesn't get picked up, the chief marketing officer gets called in to go, "How come the five press releases we did didn't get picked up?" And you're like, "Because they, they said nothing." You know? Like, like, people could've Googled us and known we exist, and that's all these press releases basically were saying. Um, so I wanna do something, um, uh, very selfish for a second and ask you a question, uh, about, say, like this podcast, okay?

Let's say I wanted to put a PR campaign around a media entity like, like this podcast. And, uh, I work with a lot of podcasters. I have a project coming up, um, that I'm gonna be launching with a very good friend of mine. More, more news on that coming around helping podcasters tur- or helping creators turn their podcast into a business, right? So let's say I wanted to start promoting this show through, through, through PR.

How would we go about that? Would it be highlighting certain guests? Would it be acknowledging maybe we hit a certain ranking? Like, what are some of the things out of, say, a media property or a media business like this that, uh, you think could be newsworthy, and how would you start to position them, um, to develop a campaign? So one of the things is you had mentioned about, uh, you know, showing creators how to turn podcasts, uh, into businesses.

Yes.Um, you know, uh, h- uh, help mentor a couple of people and show, "Hey, this is, this is what we did for them, and now we c- you know, we're offering as a product or service." Um, you know, so having that, uh, you know, start building that out, the beta testing of that, and then having the, uh, that that you can turn to, and then having quotes by them of saying, uh, you know, "This, this has been our experience, and it's been phenomenal," and, you know, we, um, you know, w- I, I thought this, and it was this. You know, those type of things do very well. It's like, um, because it sort of, uh, overcomes one of the objections that people is, "That just seems too messy. That seems like too, you know, I thought it would take 10 hours a week, but it really turns out I show up, uh, you know, they, they handle the production or whatever it is, or they've helped me hire people, and it's really just a small commitment, and it's opened up so many avenues for me.

I'm making deals. I'm, uh, making connections and networking with my ideal customer." And, uh, you know, t- uh, you can sort of talk about that. Um, you can build around milestones. Uh, I've, I've had one person who did really well where they were a new podcast, and they didn't so much write a press release from the standpoint of their podcast, but more from the standpoint of, uh, uh, them talking about, uh, a top 10 list of podcasts in their vertical, and they put themselves as, like, number seven, and they surrounded themselves with really great podcasts in that specific industry, and it just looked like co- you know, a busy, uh, uh, place.

USA Today does this a lot. They'll see something like this and go, "Oh, top 10 history podcasts." Copy and paste and put it, you know, as, uh, content on, on, in their newspaper. And so, uh, you know, that's one of the ways in which you achieve legitimacy by appearing around so many others that it legitimizes you even though you're sort of new. Um, that, I call that sort of like a, a feature article approach to a press release.

Uh, but, uh, you know, other things that you can do is, uh, you can certainly showcase if you have somebody amazing on there. Um, but I also think, like, you know, do something a little bit special like, "Hey, um, one of the things I've always asked, uh, people, or, you know, people that I've asked recently in my podcast is a secret question in the green room before we go on the air, and now I'm releasing this, um, you know, uh, re- you know, resource page or a download of, um, you know, what, what, what's the top three tools that you use in your business that you feel, um, makes the biggest difference, uh, to your company?" Or something like that. And just something like that that's like, ooh, that sounds really cool, and it's not something that everybody who listens to the podcast is gonna get, so it's a little bit of an extra. Hmm.

And it's something that you can focus on. Yeah, I, I, uh, I, I like that. You know, there's, um, the guys at, uh, My First Million, uh, do that, where they have, essentially they have someone on their team do a, like a wrap-up one-pager where if they, any tools they listed, any resources they talked to, if they had a guest, like their guest information, and essentially they drive you to get email subscribers, and then they push that out, and you can see that. And I'm like, that's a really good strategy. And then the way I think about it is, and I, I'm always trying to look at what other people are doing, not always just in the context of say, okay, that's what podcasters should do.

But, you know, I think business owners as well, right? Content is such an important part about, um, you know, creating, you know, inbound traffic, building credibility, authority, brand value, et cetera. Like, thinking of these little ways that you can take one piece of content, like an hour-long interview that you do with someone, and chop it up into, uh, a few different segments, and then also paring that down into text content, which could be, hey, you know, founder of, uh, eReleases comes on show and announces that contrarian takes are the number one way to get credibility in the press release space, right? Something like that. Obviously, you have to get the person's approval.

But now your guest, you know, you can drive them back to your show. Your guest is getting, you know, getting some, some play on a thought that they had, and you're, you know, now you're kind of raising everybody up, and you could do that same exact thing with your clients. Say, if you're an insurance agency or that marketing agency that we talked about, right? You go to one of your big clients and say, "Hey, what's your biggest contrarian idea around growing your business?" And then put something together, uh, in that space and, and try these kinds of things where it's like a, like you don't have to announce just that you're doing business together.

Like, there can be, there, there really needs to be more for anyone to care unless you're, like, Microsoft investing a billion dollars into OpenAI, right? So outside of something like that, um, you know, s- you know, the Johnson Marketing Agency partnering with the, the Stevenson Insurance Agency, you know, no one, no one cares. But if the Stevenson Insurance Agency says their key is that, you know, they're, uh, you know, they're, they're woman-owned, and they've cracked this market of female business owners, and they've developed a community around that, and that's how they've been successful, and by partnering with this marketing firm, it allowed them to reach even more women. Now you have something where you're like, oh, there's like a real there there around that story. And, and it's nothing more than you guys just working together to find an angle to, to, to, to build attention.

So it's not like, I feel like sometimes people get caught, and again, I'm, I'm, I'm throwing these ideas out there. I want you to push back on whether the legitimacy of them. But it feels to me like sometimes people get caught in there has to be like this specific event to have a press release or, or there's, there's nothing there, and it doesn't necessarily have to be that. No, I think that, uh, sometimes if you can highlight the value of something and show the, the value being delivered, often you can have the media come and push that, uh, to people. Um, you know, white papers and, uh, survey results and things like that are often, uh, the types of things that we feel like- People don't care about, but yet, you know, in the case of the, uh, person who did the automotive press release, they had out of the ten plus automotive trade publications picked up, six of them linked to the resource page that listed all of the experiences that people had.

And, you know, uh, the New York Times, uh, just like, uh, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and others, they have a no-link policy that if they write an article about you, they're not gonna put a link in there. That being said, I've had the New York Times, uh, online link to a resource page where it showed all the questions and answers and resources of a survey. It was just the value of it was so tremendous that they made an exception to their rule to actually link to you. And so, um, you know, there, there, there's a thing about delivering a lot of value, sh- um, putting it together, making it easy for people to digest, feel like you're giving value where the media feels like, "Hey, we're willing to put a spotlight on that and to push people there," and, you know, how can you accomplish that? And so you may not know this, and not that I would expect you to, but I have been a client of eReleases in the past.

I find it to be a very clean, easy, understandable service, and I think it's incredible. And certainly it allows, as you said, um, smaller or organizations that are just getting into using press releases a, an avenue, both from a, an ease of business as well as a price point to do that. Um, you know, just I, I would love for you to give people the pitch because, uh, not so much just the sales if you're uncomfortable with it or whatever, but, like, I do think that this is something that so many businesses could leverage as another tool in their tool belt to drive business in, to build credibility. That credibility engineering is, that you've talked about, like, like what is it about eReleases that you should be thinking where a light goes on and says, "Okay, this is the company that I wanna go work with because this is gonna be the avenue that's gonna allow me to be successful"? Right.

I think that, um, you know, for the big thing is it's, it's the price point. You know, we're about a quarter of what it would cost to go out, uh, through PR Newswire, so it's a huge cost savings. Um, you know, we are doing ten thousand plus press releases a year on behalf of small businesses and entrepreneurs, so we have a lot of leverage there with the Newswire, um, basically allowing them to profit from clients they normally would consider too small to find value in. And that being said, even though you have access to the Newswire, you gotta make sure that you're coming to it with strategy and taking advantage of it. Um, I, I see a lot of PR firms issuing the same types of releases that I think AI would write if you asked it to just pick a topic.

And so I feel like, you know, really focus on strategy. I have a free masterclass that I put together, um, for my customers. It's open to anyone who wants to take it, less than an hour-long video with accompanying materials. But I guarantee that anybody that goes through that, uh, is gonna come out, uh, the other side with probably at least six to ten ideas that they could do that are strategic for their company. And it, it isn't so much, uh, something that, uh, um, you have to be doing state-of-the-art things.

This is the type of thing that if you are a carpet company in New Jersey, y- this applies to you. This is a way to stand out. Um, and, uh, that can be found at ereleases.com/plan, P-L-A-N. And I mention a carpet company in New Jersey because we had one of those as a client, uh, who was doing a press release a month and wanted to work with me directly, and I felt terrible taking their money and nothing happening. And we did a brainstorm of trying to figure out, you know, what's an angle we could do because they're not doing anything.

You know, they're kind of in a commodity business installing carpet. And, uh, when I asked them, uh, you know, who their biggest enemy was, it came up that, uh, their biggest enemy was the big box home improvement stores. And they shared with me why they're so bad in the carpet industry, and what people end up with is not ideal or a good product or service. And so, uh, we, we did that. Um, they got picked up by, I think, over a dozen floor trade publications immediately.

Uh, we continued to, uh, work different angles of that throughout, uh, the next few months, and at the end of the year, they had over thirty articles that they got published. Um, they got in their local newspaper. They also got in New Jersey Magazine, which is a good, uh, high-end consumer magazine, um, that was really ideal for them. Uh, but, uh, even more importantly, they put all the clippings together. They printed them out, and they put them in what they called a brag book.

And every time they went to write a quote, they'd say, "We may not come in the cheapest, but we're recognized throughout the industry and, you know, leading, uh, conversations around the carpet industry and making sure that we're, um, you know, doing things right." And, uh, as a result of adding that to the conversation and to the quote, they started closing seventeen percent more of these consultations- Hmm ... just by having that. And I said, "Oh, they must be spending like half an hour looking through your clips." And he said, "No. Often we just open it and scroll through it, and they might look, uh, you know, close at a couple of headlines, but they just see Floor Trade Weekly.

They see, you know, the Balt- uh, the New Jersey Magazine. They see, uh, the local newspaper, and they just feel like, 'Hey, these people might be three or four hundred dollars more, but I feel comfortable with them. They're not going to, uh, do something that's gonna require the carpet being re-stretched again every couple of years or, uh, have seams that just, uh, don't go away,'" you know, even though they say, "Oh, it'll wear over time," and things like that. So, um, it's, it's very valuable. Credibility is a great way to increase your conversions as well as bring new customers, uh, as well as keep more of your existing customers.

You know, churn is a predictable number for a lot of people. They lose a certain am- uh, amount, and often it's just someone feeling like I've stepped into the shoes, now I've got to, you know, switch it up the vendors that we have or make sure we're using the right ones, or it's been two years, maybe we should shop around. And if they see you, you know, by you sharing these links with them on social media and your newsletters, they're gonna say, "Oh, these people are killing it. They're getting industry recognition. There's no need to consider, you know, working with someone else.

Let's just continue to work with them." Yeah. I mean, you think about it, a couple hundred bucks a month, one press release a month with a little bit of strategy time behind it, and your 30 article. I mean, if, if someone said to you, "Hey, for a couple hundred bucks a month and five hours of strategy time, 10 hours of strategy time tops, you could have a 17% increase in your conversion of clients," would you... I think every single business owner in the world would take that bet, right?

It's not like we're talking about $100,000 and hiring some intense, you know, PR firm. Like, it, it really doesn't have to be that. I will make sure everyone who's listening that, um, the link to your masterclass is in the show notes, so whether you're watching on YouTube, listening, wherever you listen, just scroll down. We'll have the link there, or obviously you can just go direct. If someone wants to get into your world, w- are you creating content, LinkedIn, Instagram?

Like, is there any place where- Yeah, yeah ... people can go and connect with you? All, all my social media is on our website, ereleases.com. LinkedIn's a great place to reach out to me directly, but feel free to call, email, or chat, uh, with the office. Uh, I only have editors, no salespeople or anything like that. There's no quotas or anything like that, and we're pretty much straight shooters, and we help a lot of people who have either never done PR, they've never done PR correctly, and so we're, uh, great at holding people's hands and walking them through the process.

Well, I appreciate you, man. This is, this has been a masterclass in and of itself, the amount of highly tactical stuff that we've gone through. And, um, you know, I could talk to you for another hour, 'cause I would love to talk about your entrepreneur story and all that kind of stuff. So maybe we'll have you come back on in a few months, 'cause I'd love to get into, you know, 25 years in this business and all the changes you've seen. Um, I wanna be respectful of your time and of the audience's, so we're gonna, we're gonna close down today, but I think we've set, set it up for a really nice, uh, uh, second visit to the show.

And I just appreciate your time and, and all the really highly tactical information that you shared with us today. Thank you.