GarthBox

There are a few ways you can go about a successful media relations strategy for your business.

1. Know everyone in the industry, not just those covering your beat. This is difficult to do because of the mass amount of journalists, but it’s nearly vital with the amount of turnaround, layoffs, beat changes and acquisitions shaking up the reporting industry. By the time you establish a relationship and present your pitch, they’ve moved, but it won’t matter if you know them all.
2. Create, to the best of your ability, a pitch calendar and stick to it. The problem with many pitches is you don’t know who you’ll be pitching to until you know what you’re pitching. The sooner you can get what you’re pitching on the calendar, the sooner you can start establishing the relationships you need.
3. Meet and greet the outlets you think you’ll be pitching to. The best first pitch you can make is yourself. Before the pitch calendar and on your path to knowing everyone in the industry, begin by setting up a meeting at an outlet. It’s much like an informational interview where you learn who to talk to, what they care about, the best way to pitch, how they handle their stories, etc,.

Media relations is a time intensive strategy. While that’s not to say you won’t land something by shooting off an email. It’s a lot less likely and, being forward, you’ll enjoy the process a lot less.

Do media relations because you love to, not because it’s your job. It’s what most journalists do.

 

Stay Positive & Media Relations Is Another Case Of You Get Back What You Put In

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The scary thing about trying something new is that the first 15 minutes are going to suck.

No one wants to pay to suck. No adult, anyway.

The first 15 minutes you spend snowshoeing are going to entail you figuring them out. Just so happens that once you do get the handle of it, you’ll pay more to keep doing it.

That’s why some of the best businesses offer free entry, free trials, free first-times.

If you’re not, why not?

 

Stay Positive & Better Yet, How Can You Make Those First 15 Suck Less?

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I’m sure the majority of those who share Johnnie Walker’s Joynomics didn’t actually read the whole PDF.

Most who see there is a testimonials page for a business realize just having a testimonials page is good enough for them, no need to click in.

Those who have a paperback book on the shelves sell more ebooks, not because people fell in love with the first chapter of the print book, but because the fact there is a hardcover validates the book is important enough.

I’m not sharing these bits to entice you to ship crappy content. I’m sharing to remind you that it’s more more important that you have something to show, give, sell than it is to have nothing.

The fact you have something is powerfully influential.

The real questions now are what are you holding onto? And why?

 

Stay Positive & Stop Waiting, Start Giving

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I used to feel extremely guilty about taking a lollipop from the lollipop jar at the local car wash when I was younger.

I used to feel extremely anxious about taking control of a situation at work when the boss was taking a day off.

I used to feel like taking was bad. Now, I’m an advocate for it.

Too often we wait to be given something (responsibility, hope, time, a break) instead of taking it.

We’ve culturally grown up in a state of waiting to be given, waiting to be picked, waiting to wait instead of taking (and not feeling guilty about it).

As much as I want to say taking is easy for me now, I don’t think the comfort of taking will ever really go away.

I can say, however, that it is infinitely more rewarding, fulfilling, and fun than waiting to be given.

I still feel a bit guilty when I take a lollipop, but I do enjoy it a lot more.

 

Stay Positive & Fight Fear Back By Taking Initiative/Responsibility/Time For Yourself/?/?/?

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People like me are avid analyzers of what worked and what didn’t work.

When we need to show metrics quickly, it’s easy to compare two incomparable things. It’s easy to look at the reach of a post or open rate to say this did better than that.

However, when we take the time to truly ruminate on what worked and what didn’t, we’ll often find that you can’t compare the two. They are both outliers and outliers on two sides of a spectrum are very (very!) rarely comparable.

Outliers are subjective, but, likewise, cogently telling.

When you discover a pin with a muffin quote does significantly better than all pins and a horizontal pin of a muffin recipe does the worst of all – it’s easy to say one works and one doesn’t.

The tougher question to answer is why didn’t one work for who we wanted it to and who truly did the other one work for. You may discover that it’s quote lovers, not muffin lovers who engaged with your muffin quote. So, are muffin quotes really working if you sell muffins?

We need to shift our comparisons from what works and what doesn’t to providing meaning behind each, separately.

This goes for more than pins on Pinterst. This goes for the story you’re telling your customers. This goes for the way you ship your art. This goes for the meetings you walk out of and think “that was the best  meeting ever.” Why?

 

Stay Positive & You’ll Find People Care More About The Why Than The What

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The real way mentorships work is this:

You reach out to someone and ask to connect.

They agree.

You then proceed to ask them personal questions about their life, their business, their dreams.

Then you reconnect again and again through the months going forward.

That’s it.

There’s no stock email to send asking if someone would be your mentor. There’s no proven website to connect with mentors that will guarantee your success. There’s no path to purchase, so to say.

Mentorship is simply connecting with people and asking the right questions.

Here’s a handful to start with.

How can I work smarter?

What is your one major success?

What would you do differently?

What are your guiding principles?

What do you think is the biggest mistake we are making today?

What used to be your biggest weakness?

What has been difficult?

What motivates you?

What do you wish you knew at my stage?

 

Stay Positive & Start Sending Those Emails