Note From Jane: Hey Friends! This is a guest post from Ellen Malloy, publicist, digital strategist, marketing coach, and about the smartest, coolest person you EVER will meet. I’m thrilled to be able to snag her for a guest post because she’s used to working with the likes of Michael Jordan, Oprah’s chef (Art Smith), and James Beard award-winners (the Oscars of food). Enjoy!
There’s a lot to say about pitching the media in a way that will get them to respond and show you some love. Today I’m starting with 15 things I think you should know, and believe to your core, about generating press for your creative business.
1. Good looks attract the eye. Personality attracts the heart.
2. When it comes to journalist relationships, you should be fostering connections for yourself, not ceding all control and responsibility to someone who could be gone tomorrow.
3. Right now, there’s a lot about promoting your brand you don’t know. And if you are really trying to learn, that list will always be long.
4. When it comes to getting press coverage, your willingness to keep climbing back on the horse and try again is far more important than knowledge, experience or ability.
5. Journalists are busy, if you can’t articulate your unique story in one compelling sentence, you’ve already lost them. Keep working, it’ll come.
6. Never bite the hand that writes about you.
7. No matter how slow your publicity progress, you are still way ahead of all the small business folks who don’t even try.
8. To get more media attention, focus on how good your execution is instead of how clever your ideas are.
9. If you’re not getting the results you want from media and are resistant to changing up your strategy, you probably could use a little changing.
10. The folks in your industry who get tons of press worked harder than you. Really.
11. Getting what you want from media in the long run often takes giving up what you want right now.
12. You can’t make a journalist pay attention to you (or care about you), but you can make yourself do anything you need to do to keep learning what works and what doesn’t and keep trying to hit the mark.
13. The one greatest failure of most small business owners is their addiction to their own story.
14. Those who whine the most about having no time are the ones who “do nothing” the most.
15. Most of marketing and PR mistakes you worry about will never happen. Most of the marketing and PR mistakes that do happen you’ll never have imagined you needed to worry about.
I hope this helps you get into the best possible mindset to go out there and generate press for your brand.
Thanks,
Ellen
2 Responses
I was encouraged by #4 (as I tend to be persistent with things) and I’m excited to learn more about #12
Hey there, Hilary. Tell me what you’d like to know about #12? We talked about this on the webinar a bit, that journalists’ jobs are to write about what they’re audience wants. But I’d be delighted to give you more detail!