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How to Pitch, Land and Use Media for Brand Visibility with Kerry Barrett Ep 138

• Brenda Meller • Season 1 • Episode 138

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A live chat with Brenda Meller and Kerry Barrett on "How to Pitch, Land, and Use Media for Brand Visibility"

LINKS MENTIONED:
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Connect with Kerry: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerrybarrett/

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My name is Brenda Meller. I'm a LinkedIn coach, consultant, speaker, and author. My company is Meller Marketing and I help business professionals get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie.

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Speaker 1:

Hey, it's Brenda Baller and I'm delighted to be here today with Keri Barrett. Hey, keri, how are you doing today? I'm well, I am delighted to be here with you. I'm going to ask Keri to do her introduction. Tell us about yourself, if you could Tell us your name, a little bit of your background, and what are you doing today and who are you helping. So go ahead and take the floor.

Speaker 2:

My pleasure and you would make a good news anchor because we were constantly multitasking and that is my background. That is my background. Thank you again for having me on the show. I was in broadcast news. I was a network news anchor, reporter and producer, at least for a little while producer aspect For 20 years.

Speaker 2:

I wrapped up my broadcast news career in New York City at NBC, with a couple of Emmy awards and some tellies under my belt as well, and now I help executives, lawyers, business owners with public speaking and virtual presentation. But what I'm really excited to talk about is a new offering, a new service that I have, which is where I help small business owners, founders, entrepreneur types not only with their media training so understanding how to absolutely knock their interviews out of the park but also how to pitch the media. Earned media is such a great opportunity for businesses to gain visibility that is soaked in credibility, but for a lot of people it's really a tricky puzzle. They don't know who they should pitch or how they should pitch, or how they should pitch or what they should pitch or why, and so taking away all the mystique and peeking behind the curtain and letting helping business owners know how to pitch, what to pitch, who to pitch, and then again ace their interviews once they have them scheduled.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome and the good thing is because you do come from a media background, working in the industry. I'm guessing, carrie, that when you were in that seat you were being pitched all the time from people from different angles cell phone, and I know Carrie and I saw her at the deli and here's an email and then there's social media. So now you're getting Facebook messages and Instagram and LinkedIn and you're probably you are probably the recipient of a lot of those pitches. Is that fair?

Speaker 2:

to say, oh my gosh. Yes, and let's not forget the PR agencies. I would say that, on average, I probably would get 70 to 80 pitches a day and, honestly, most of them were so bad it's just delete, delete. You don't even open them because they've spelled your name incorrectly or they've called me Mr Carrie Barrett or any host of other issues that will occur. So yeah, 70 to 80 pitches a day, and I'm almost embarrassed to admit how long I've been doing this business thing now for four or five years and I just figured out that, oh yeah, this probably would be really helpful for people to know, and I have all of this experience, and I pitched myself to NBC as a business owner, not as the news anchor, and secured appearances for myself. I could probably help people do this. So yeah, so now I'm doing a lot of that.

Speaker 1:

Wow and I want to ask cause I I feel like there's probably other people going wait. There's like a wrong way to pitch people and I'm curious like you said, you got a lot of bad pitches. So are you comfortable sharing what makes a bad pitch? Because I think maybe we'll start from there and then we're going to talk about the right way of pitching, landing and gaining media for your business, but what's a bad pitch?

Speaker 2:

look like Actually, it's interesting. I did a post about this on LinkedIn myself this morning. But the number one reason that and I apologize, I don't know if you can hear that my cats are going insane no, it's totally fine.

Speaker 1:

The good thing is our microphones are probably so good they're only capturing like from here. But I always tell people, carrie, like we're live, like we are live, and sometimes I'll have a door slam or my dog will go after a squirrel in the background and somebody will walk in there. Guys, you're going to bear with us here. If we're here, live, you're going to see it all. Live, you're going to see it all. It's not like an overly produced studio here.

Speaker 2:

We're just two people talking, so you're totally fine, you might see the fur balls fly behind me. So the number one way that media pitches fall flat is that they focus on marketing rather than on news, and I understand as business owners, that's what we're focused on. We're focused on marketing. We're looking to secure media because we are looking to market the business. But marketing our business is not newsworthy and it's definitely not the media's goal. They're looking to bring their audience value.

Speaker 2:

So the example that I like to point to quite often is when people pitch the fact that they have written a book to the media. One of the ways that you might find this habitually to fall short is that they pitch that I have just written a new book. That's marketing, that's not news. What is newsworthy about the book? Is it on page 59 that you give the three tips on how to live your best life, uncover your true power and I don't know discover your soul's purpose? I'm making it up right?

Speaker 2:

Those are the three sort of juicy, newsworthy nuggets that you use to pitch the book, not the fact that you've written a new book. The book, not the fact that you've written a new book. And if, oh, by the way, your PR campaign or your media campaign happens to coincide with an example I used this morning was it is personal awareness month bonus, because now you have an additional timely element that hooks into why these particular nuggets in this particular book are important at this particular time. So it's a hook, it's having a timely, newsworthy element. You don't always have to have something visual, but visual rather, but it is absolutely having a pitch and a purpose that appeals to the end user, which is the audience. The audience, unless you're JK Rowling or Stephen King, doesn't give a hoot whether you've written a new book and whether it's out on bookstore shelves now. They care about how it improves their life. So it's news, not marketing.

Speaker 1:

And what you're looking for as a reporter or as an anchor or whatever, is like stories that are relevant to your listening or viewing audience, and it might be news to them that they've written a book and it's. I finally got around to writing a book. Good for you, but I don't know who you are, and 300 other authors have pitched me this week and I finally wrote a book. What's the relevancy for your viewing audience? And I love the angle that you said, like if it's financial literacy month, we're looking for financial literacy topics. That's the name of the game right now. So I think having that element that ties into your needs or something that's trending is really important. Go ahead.

Speaker 2:

Sorry. One of the things I like to do when I'm onboarding a client is I have a calendar that is created. It's a sort of a cumulative of a bunch of different calendars that are out there and you can do this for yourself. But I go and I look at what events are being celebrated this month and there's thousands of them. It's National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day, it's National Donut Day, it's National Hug, a Newscaster Day, and if you find, if you look through, find a calendar online. If you don't have through, find a calendar online. If you don't have mine, find a calendar online and see what you could potentially tie into.

Speaker 2:

That gives your hook or your pitch that timely angle. So, for example, when I pitched NBC News in May, I pitched them because it's Small Business Awareness Month and I tied that into the fact that in the government we're talking about a TikTok ban and why it's important for small business owners to be able to speak effectively and compellingly on camera so that they can market their businesses. And so my story was the fact that I overcame a severe, debilitating fear of speaking to become a news anchor and now teaching other people how to develop those same skills themselves. But the timely element was Small Business Awareness Month and the fact that we were talking about banning TikTok, and so we needed to explore whether options there were out there for getting our message out. But that's what made it, that's what made it timely, that's what made it newsworthy, not the fact that it's time to learn some public speaking tips.

Speaker 1:

It's not about you, it's about them, it's about the audience. And when you were talking about date calendar dates I my go to is national day calendar. I just dropped it into the comments because we talk about National Peanut Butter Day and I'm a big fan of pie, so I have all the pie dates, like March 14. But there's also like a National Pie Day, which is in January, and then there's a National Apple Pie Day, national Cherry Pie Day, and if it were me and if I were just publishing my book, social Media Pie, I would be like if I had worked with you back then, carrie, I probably would have done a better job of letting it to align with a news day. Yeah, but I love that you're saying there's resources out there that people can use to align things with here. And for those that are just joining us, I'm here with Carrie Barrett today and I'm so delighted.

Speaker 1:

And, carrie, you and I came across each other because of a LinkedIn post, but I have to believe it was Kenneth Lang that put me on your radar and I don't know if you hosted him, and then after that, he was talking about me in a post and maybe you saw my name and that's when the LinkedIn algorithm started saying, hey, here's some Brenda Miller posts, but it's it was relevancy to you that brought you to me, and we had actually had a little bit of exchange. You interviewed me on your show, which aired recently I'm going to drop the link in comments and then I said hey, I want to have you come on my show because I think my audience can learn from you as well, and we're here today talking about how to pitch land and use media for brand visibility. There may be people that are watching, that are just getting started with the process, keri, so what advice do you have for them?

Speaker 2:

Carrie. So what advice do you have for them? Okay, this is a big question it really depends on. Okay, I'm going to. I'm going to go down to some of the very basics. One of the great things about is, once you get on a reporter or an anchor or a producer's radar, the nice thing is that the pitching element really can dial down for you, because they already you're a known quantity to them. They know that you can carry an audience, they know that you will energetically support the host and they know that you're stuffed. So, for example, back when I used to work in Philadelphia, we had a lawyer who was a regular contributor on our show. Actually, there were three of them. And you might think, really, morning TV in Philadelphia, like how many legal topics are there that could actually be interesting?

Speaker 1:

that would require three regular legal contributors on your show almost on a weekly basis.

Speaker 2:

The fact was we brought one of them in to talk about something that was going on in the city at that time and I can't remember off the top of my head what it was, but she was so good at what she did that she sold herself and we're like we don't have a legal contributor and we don't do a weekly legal segment. But you understand what the audience needs so well and what's interesting about these cases to the consumer. If you will that let's do a weekly show. And so she was on the show every single week just because of the nature of her very first appearance on our program. So once you're on the radar, all of this becomes quite a bit easier.

Speaker 2:

It's that initial, the initial let's say three months or maybe six months really to get yourself on the radars of the reporters, the anchors, the producers, that whose shows you want appearances on or whose publications you want features in or who you want to be quoted in. That's where the real tough work is, and it depends on whether you are pitching sort of an enterprise story. What I mean by that is if you are. For example, I have a client who is getting ready to launch a nonprofit the story of how she launched the nonprofit. I wish I could share the details, but I promise not to until her show hits. But the story of how she started the nonprofit is really what makes this nonprofit very interesting, aside from the fact that it aligns with the LGBTQ community we're in the middle of.

Speaker 2:

Pride Month, and so those things align very well. Now, if she was a doctor, right, I've got a doctor client. The story element is not quite as important. What we're working on now is things that are going on in our environment. Here on the East Coast, we're in the middle of a heat wave.

Speaker 2:

And so when she's pitching stories and we're pitching stories about three top ways to stay cool. When you're working out three fruits and vegetables that you can eat to cool your body down, those sorts of things. You have to think about whether you're pitching an enterprise story, something that is really focused on who you are, and something that you're creating versus pitching yourself as an expert, and what are the key differentiators between those two, and that's what you have to put in your pitch. It also depends on where your audience is. If you are somebody, for example, who is in finance, a little bit more of a buttoned up or perhaps traditional industry, the right show for you may not, in fact, be TMZ. It may be the Wall Street Journal, and so your pitch is going to be maybe a little less sexy than the TV pitch, but it's going to be a pitch for a digital or written publication.

Speaker 2:

One more example to give your audience some idea I have a client right now who is in the job hunt space, and while we're pitching recent college graduates, we're pitching struggles for parents with college graduates who can't find jobs, et cetera, et cetera. We're also talking about how the protests are affecting new and recent college graduates' chances for finding a job, and of course, I'm talking about the protests that are going on with Israel and, of course, gaza and what we're seeing in the Middle East right now, and the truth is that TV is going to want that story. That's the story that TV is going to want to pitch, so that's the frame or the lens through which we're pitching her job expertise to TV, whereas on the print side, we're talking strictly about how it is that you're navigating this post-college job hunt slump, and so it differs in your publications as well as to how and what you pitch.

Speaker 1:

So we're talking about how to pitch and we've got three things. When I said what do you want to talk about, you said how to pitch, land and use media for brand visibility. Maybe let's change gear. So you did the pitch. So let's talk about the next part in the process how do you land it? So do you follow up until you get an answer? Do you wait for them? What's the etiquette? And is there a dance here? And then how do we do that dance?

Speaker 2:

Most journalists will tell you they'll accept one follow-up before they start to get irritated. So one follow-up. Now, here's the thing. When you are pitching, let's say you are pitching and I'm going to go back to the story of my client who is launching a nonprofit having to do with the LGBTQ community and she is not local to New York City, but I'm going to use that as an example.

Speaker 2:

It's very easy to go on the bios, the biographies of your local television stations and even your national television stations, and see which reporters and anchors have an affinity for that particular cause. You might see that they have emceed pride parades before, or they may be open about the fact that they're lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in their bio. That is a great person to pitch for that particular story. One thing you want to make sure you do is that if you're pitching multiple reporters or multiple anchors or producers at one outlet so let's say you're pitching WNBC and there's five reporters at that station that you want to pitch them all individually because they want to feel special, and, by the way, if they see that there are four other people that are on the pitch, they're going to assume somebody else is going to pick it up anyway.

Speaker 1:

So you're saying like send each of them their own individual email. Now I would be worried like what if I pitch all five of you and two of you say I want to take the story, then do I let you two hash it out and figure out who gets to take it or you?

Speaker 2:

won't be the one figuring that out. Their assignment manager will be the one figuring it out. So what will happen? And I would also pitch the assignment manager. They won't have a bio on the station website, but you can usually find, and it's usually something like this, assignmentdesk at NBCUNI. That's not the real email address.

Speaker 2:

Right, it's hypothetical, settle down everyone. It's purely hypothetical. It's assignment at or assignmentdesk at, wherever the, whatever the email format is, and you want to send it to them as well, and you'll have two reporters and really what it comes down to is, if both reporters happen to want to cover it, they'll be in your, their assignment meeting that morning and one person will just happen to be the one who goes first and they pitch it, and then somebody else will say damn it, I got that pitch as well. Sorry, joe, it's yours. Or the assignment manager will say Joe, I know you wanted to do that story, but we actually have you slated for something else. Jamie, you can pick that story up instead. So you as the person who is pitching it?

Speaker 2:

you don't have anything to do with that yet.

Speaker 1:

It's out of your hands at that stage, okay, so we pitch it. We do one follow-up to try to get to land and everything. Anything beyond the one follow-up is annoying as well.

Speaker 2:

Anything beyond the one follow-up is annoying. You can make a phone call. One thing that I would suggest you do before you make a phone call, though, is turn on the TV and make sure that there's not something breaking going on at that point, because, for example, somebody would call and pitch a feature story for example the new nonprofit and they'd be pitching it during crane collapse. That is happening in lower Manhattan. That has been on the airways live for 15 hours and it's still going strong, and at that point you're just a giant pain in the You're just noise so check before you make a phone call.

Speaker 1:

Okay, all right, good to know. And really paying attention, I think, to the outlet is great advice too. So you talked about how to pitch, you talked about how to land it, which is in the follow-up. Let them figure it out. And then now, how do we use this media? So what do we do next? We've gotten an interview, we've got the coverage. Is that it? Do we just let the universe take care of it at that point, or do we do any merchandising? And what's the etiquette? And I'll just use like I was recently on your interview. You interviewed me and I said should I, are you guys sharing it? Should I share it? Can I comment? I'm like, I'm like doing this dance. What do I do with it now? So do I just put it in my media section of my website? Do I promote it on social media? So what should we do to merchandise it, if anything?

Speaker 2:

Everything and anything you can possibly think of to do with it. That's your material. Yes, technically it is the stations, but as the person who was interviewed or provided the quote or guessed it on the show, it's absolutely your material as well, and your intellectual property. You use it any single way that you want. Blast that logo up all over your social media. Blast the logo as Dean on NBC or Wall Street Journal or whatever it is. Blast that up on your LinkedIn banners and on your featured sections.

Speaker 2:

Pull clips of it. Use clips of it to tell stories on your LinkedIn banner, on your LinkedIn profile. Rather, use clips of it on your website. Use it everywhere and anywhere that you can possibly think of and leverage the experience. When you're there, send a thank you note, make sure that you know that you're available if they have a story that they're interested in getting some expert commentary on, and then make sure that you actually can do it. If you say no, they'll give you an opportunity, maybe one more time to turn them down, but beyond that you won't have another chance to get on the air so make sure that when the opportunity arises, you do everything humanly possible to make sure that you can be there.

Speaker 2:

The great thing now is that even if the Today Show does want to interview you, it doesn't make sure that you can be there. The great thing now is that even if the Today Show does want to interview you, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to fly from Oregon all the way over onto the East Coast. We do so much of it, even at the network level, via platforms just like this. That is a lot more convenient for you to show up and make your media appearance.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and for those people that are just joining us, we're talking today about how to pitch, land and use media for brand visibility and as a follow-up to that, Keri, there's going to be people who are watching saying wait, isn't that like I'm patting myself on the back if I say, hey, look at this interview and yay me. I was interviewed by Keri Barrett and look at how amazing I am. Is there a way that we, can you give us advice on how to showcase this on social media or with your email list? That doesn't feel like we're just doing this to pat ourselves on the back.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's always the challenge, isn't it? I feel like that's one of the biggest struggles. It certainly is for me as a business owner. I don't want to feel like I'm bragging, and I think that's a challenge for all of us. So the idea is to turn it into story, just the way that it would be valuable for that audience.

Speaker 2:

In you know who? I'm going to use the today show as an example. Yeah, this is. You were on the today show and you were talking about a I don't know a new lip balm as part of your summer lineup, and the reason it's so great is because it's lip balm awareness month and it happens to have a new special SPF in it. Right, that's value to the audience. It's the same thing to your audience on social media. You're sharing value. So think about it again. Not necessarily and this is where the twist is not necessarily in terms of marketing, although that is ultimately the goal but you're sharing value. That's really what it comes down to. And so you share value about your new lip balm and you get to say and, by the way, I spoke about it on the Today Show, if you'd like more information or you'd like to check out the clip, head on over here and click on the link, or it's embedded in the email.

Speaker 1:

That's a great, and maybe even you just gave me an idea too, from a marketing standpoint. You could summarize hey, check out this interview by the today show where I cover these three tips and then maybe a bullet tip one, tip two, tip three. So then it's not yay me, I was on the today show. It's taking the emphasis off of you and it's moving the emphasis to the content, and I always think about. There's this very special station that all of us watch, the W I F. What's In it For Me channel? What's in it for me to read this post? What's in it for me to read this email? What's in it for me to watch this segment on TV? So if we can position that in a way, I think that can help and maybe make it a little less icky. What do you think, carrie?

Speaker 2:

I 100% agree. Again, it's all about adding value and sharing value. It's the same reason that the fact that you wrote a book is not the newsworthy element. The newsworthy element is what are the features of the book that help the audience? If you think about the way to share your experience being featured in the Wall Street Journal or on the Today Show or wherever it is within the same lens, you're giving the same value to your audience, your social media audience, your email subscribers, your website visitors, et cetera.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, good. So we've got very much like we're in the same mindset there in terms of how we do this. So what I'd like to do is I want to open this up for our audience. So those that are those of you that are watching live and we are live on three networks now LinkedIn, youtube and on Instagram don't be shy, drop your questions into comments and I'll pull a few of those up on screen.

Speaker 1:

I do see that there was a question that had come in and Joey is a fellow New Yorker. Joey's a part of my VIP. We do a Friday once a month, first Friday of the month we do a VIP job seeker office hours call and Joey always comes on there and I always let people know Joey's from New York, so he's going to be direct and blunt, and I'm from the Midwest, so I'm a little bit softer in my approach, but Joey and I both use this approach when we ask questions, which is the asking for a friend type of a scenario. So Joey is saying he's interested in your opinion about which media is most effective for brand visibility print, radio, tv. What do you think, carrie?

Speaker 2:

At the end of the day it's usually still TV. I say usually because it depends a little bit on where your audience is. Are there more people that are watching the Today Show, let's say, than are perhaps reading an article in the Wall Street Journal? There likely are, although digital has skewed that a little bit. But if you are in finance, you might find that the majority of your audience is reading the Wall Street Journal versus watching the Today Show. Or if you are in investor, you might find that the majority of your audience is reading a business journal versus watching Good Morning America. Or they're watching Squawk Box on CNBC instead or something on MSNBC. So, traditionally speaking, Joey, to answer your question, I would order them in TV, being the highest visibility, then print, and I'm going to say slash digital there because it's intertwined.

Speaker 2:

I'm the last person that picked up a Wall Street Journal and was reading it like this they're all reading it on the phone and then I would say radio comes after that.

Speaker 2:

But you have to caveat that, with understanding where your audience is, the nice thing about all of them is that they're still cloaked in, or drenched in, credibility. I always like to use this example. If somebody were to wake you up in the middle of the night, sitting on the end of your bed, and start rattling off the day's news and what was coming up, you'd likely escort them very quickly out of your house with a baseball bat or worse. But people who are on news programs have that kind of access to their audience all the time because the audience has already decided that they're going to trust them, and that means the people who are on those shows are already trusted resources. They have been vetted, and so anytime you're on any one of these platforms, it's great for your credibility. It just depends on where your audience is as to which one is the right for you in terms of visibility as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I love how you brought digital in, because I felt like I was reading this and I was like, should we talk about social media and digital? Because I feel like there's this whole other outlet. And I started my career working in media planning for an ad agency and back in the day we were only doing print outdoor TV, radio and I think that was it. Magazines, I guess, wasn't going to print, but there wasn't social media. Now there's a whole other avenue that people can be found and I always like to think, carrie, you want to try to reach people in the networks and through the platforms from which they can be found. But, to your point, tv does have the broadest general reach. Yeah, we can turn, any of us can turn on a TV or, nowadays, turn on a computer and navigate to a website for the TV station If there's something major that's happening in the world. We do one of those two we turn on the TV or we go to the internet and we try to find the news source, because we want to find it, the information.

Speaker 1:

Now, another question that has come in, and this one is from Kenneth Lang. I go, I call him Kenneth too, I don't. Do you call him Ken? Or do you call him Kenneth? How well do you know him?

Speaker 2:

I usually call him Ken, but maybe I'm doing it wrong. No, I think you're.

Speaker 1:

I think you're right. I think he prefers Ken. But the problem is, when I first got to know him, I called him Kenneth all the time and I didn't know until six months later that he preferred Ken.

Speaker 2:

So now.

Speaker 1:

I'm like his mom and I'm always calling him Kenneth, and everyone else At any rate. He asked is there a best time a day of the week to do a pitch? Good question, what do you think, Carrie?

Speaker 2:

Not Friday, unless it's something specifically for the weekend. But even so, before that, if you are a chef and you have a restaurant opening and you have an event on Saturday, friday is not the day to pitch for that. Friday is usually the worst day to pitch. In terms of the other days, it really is just a matter of how far out you are from whatever. If there's a specific event that's taking place, I would say no less than one week prior. Other than that it's any other day of the week is fine.

Speaker 2:

In terms of the time usually morning meetings at TV. Really this applies to all newsrooms, it applies to print as well. They're usually 9 am. They have their story planning meeting at 9 am. Most reporters will be trying to source their day's stories the day prior. So I would say the day prior to when you are interested in being interviewed is the very latest that something should come out. But if you are interested in having someone cover something that day, certainly no later than 8.30 in the morning. That way the assignment manager will have it and they can pitch it during their morning story meetings. The second story meeting for the day usually comes at 2 pm and again, this is applicable to newsrooms pretty much across the country, and so if you're looking for some coverage for something in the evening, then sometime before 2 PM is the right time to pitch. But again, pitching day of is not a best practice, so I would always be at least a few days in advance. That gives you an opportunity for follow-up as well.

Speaker 1:

Okay, good, and I have two follow-up questions of my own. I'll wait and see if there's any more audience questions that are coming in, but so the first is in the pitch. Should it be short and sweet or should we give them links to photos and articles and resources that they can use with the story? Is less more or is more better?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, less is always more. However, there is again a caveat with that. So if you look at my perfect pitch framework and I can put a link up on my LinkedIn profile if somebody wants to take a look at it I have created links in there and so I link to when I say May is small business awareness month. Small business awareness month is a hot link, so they click on it and they can see that yes, in fact, may is small business awareness month. I want to make this pitch as much of a one-stop shop as I possibly can.

Speaker 2:

Then I dove into the TikTok ban and I did a hot link where it said TikTok ban so that they can look. They're familiar with that story, but just in case they want the latest research. Then I said here's my personal story, here are the five things that I can talk about today. And then I said and here are five suggested questions I've never had an anchor or reporter use any of the questions that I've suggested and, as an anchor and reporter myself, I never used the questions that were suggested.

Speaker 1:

However.

Speaker 2:

I always put them in there just in case. I want to make this as easy as humanly possible for this to be a yes. And then the final thing that I did was a very short bio. I'm not talking about your long CV. I did this and back in 88, I was voted whatever most likely to be class clown or whatever right. You're putting your one paragraph bio. And then, if you are pitching TV, you ideally want to have some sort of video clip. If you're pitching national TV, you absolutely must have local TV coverage prior to getting national. They will not even talk to you unless you have local TV coverage, unless you were the only person who was there to see this big thing. And they absolutely need to talk to you because you're an eyewitness. But you're not pitching that anyway, they're finding you.

Speaker 1:

So is it a link? Do you point to the website? Some providers will like they won't push emails through if they contain an external link. So what's the best way?

Speaker 2:

I will absolutely not do an attachment, 100% not do an attachment. An attachment will automatically get flagged as spam. I copy and paste the entire pitch, I stick it in the body of email and then I'll put my personal link is to my YouTube channel and I say for clips of me on video or in my last news appearances, click here. And I've never had a problem with them getting through.

Speaker 1:

Okay, good, and as a follow-up question to that and I just said, what should we put as less more in there? Is it okay to do this on your own, or is it better to work with somebody to do the pitching for you? And I guess this is a nice segue to I think this is a service that you offer, but give us some high-level pros and cons as we start to close our conversation here on that.

Speaker 2:

The high level pros on doing this on your own is that you can be incredibly targeted with your outreach.

Speaker 2:

If you are, for example, in the New York City area, you may have a business that is more widely geographically spread than New York, but it's very easy to. I want to say it's very easy. You can focus and really get to know your local news players, your reporters, your anchors, your producers, in a much more intimate way. You can watch them. It's easier to watch them, you can get an idea of their personalities, and so you can create very targeted, very personalized pitches for each and every one of them.

Speaker 2:

And yes, you're right, your pitch should be less is more the actual pitch itself, like 250 words or less. Okay, the rest of it is the fluff and the stuff. What you're making it a one-stop shop, but the cons to doing that is that you have to learn how to do it.

Speaker 2:

You have to either sit down and figure it out through trial and error on your own, or you have somebody like me who has experience on both sides, to guide you through it. The benefits of using a PR agency are that the work is done for you.

Speaker 1:

You go like this you go, carrie, I don't know what to do, and you go like that and Carrie does it all for you.

Speaker 2:

And they make it happen for you. The cons of that are if you're using a good PR agency, you're talking about $3,500 a month and you're running, let's say, a three-month campaign. Media is not a guarantee. There could be any number of things that happens during that three-month campaign. That means that whatever you're pitching is not going to make it on the news because they're in such a crazy news cycle, it's elections or there's war or there's any number of things going on.

Speaker 2:

That means that whatever it is you're talking about just isn't a priority. So media is never a guarantee. And if you've paid 3,500 bucks a month for three months and you've gotten a couple of small podcasts, well, that's great, but was it really worth? You know $11,500? Whereas if you're paying somebody to teach you how to do it, yes, it's still not guaranteed and you're doing the work, but now you know how to do it and you can do it as long as you want to on your own, for as many different outlets as you desire.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and it sounds like you do both the do it for me, or the show me, train me. How Is that fair to say?

Speaker 2:

I do the, show me, train me how. And then, if you do, show me, train me how, and you want to move on to more full and complete PR services, I have a partner that I work with.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wonderful. Okay, so I'm showing your LinkedIn profile up on screen and, for those of you who are listening to the podcast later, you'll have to look her up on LinkedIn. And, carrie, are you open to accepting invitation requests from anyone on LinkedIn, or do you have any recommendations for them, adding a note or anything we should be aware of there?

Speaker 2:

I listen. As long as you don't give me an immediate cold pitch slap, I'm fine with accepting almost any and all invitations. However, if you send me one without a note and then immediately following comes a pitch slap, there'll be blocked. Less lead going on.

Speaker 1:

It's an immediate, and it's funny how I don't know why people think that this approach works, but I think so many people are the same way. I'm the same way and others are as well. Linkedin is a long game. It's not a. It's not a come in and get your prospects and go do business. It's a build relationship model and that's where you really get your success over time. But I want to share that and then I'm also going to share I'll put this into the comments as well but the interview that Carrie did with me trying to find it, by the way what's that?

Speaker 1:

You were fantastic. Thank you. It was such a great interview. Obviously it was a great interview. This is where you can tell this is what you do for a living. But we had there was some other folks that were on when we were doing it and then it looks so seamless. I'm like it was just stitched together so nicely and it was, and I need to merchandise it.

Speaker 1:

I'm probably going to do this tomorrow, cause there's a good rule of thumb you should post no more than once a day on LinkedIn, and I knew that we had the live today, so I did a share of something else this morning, but tomorrow I'll be sharing the link to this webpage, along with watch and learn, and I'll put like the top three takeaways that were covered in here. But you did such a great job. So for those folks that are in New York, hopefully you were able to catch the interview live. If you did, let me know. But Carrie is such a great interviewer and, as we wrap up here, carrie, if people want to learn more about you, should we go to your website?

Speaker 2:

Is that the best next place for us, or where should we go? You either go to LinkedIn, which I thank you for having the screen up there and showing people where it is and then also go to my website it's carriebarrettcom. Forward slash resources is probably the easiest place to find all of my free resources. You can book calls with me free strategy calls through that page as well and there's a lot of tools to help you get your media journey started.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I'm trying to get the page loaded and it's. I'm buying time. In radio we used to say hitting the post. Do you remember that term when the radio, when the disc jockeys, would talk until the song started playing? Yeah, so in web loading terms, I don't know if there's a term for it, but sometimes when you put a link in and it takes the computer a minute to pull it up, I wanted to hit the post there. So you've got some great. Are these all free resources?

Speaker 2:

on here.

Speaker 1:

Yep, great. So we've got webinar, wisdom, checklist, the ultimate guided video, all kinds of great resources on here. So thank you so much for sharing those resources with us here, carrie. And as we wrap up our conversation today, is there any final advice you have for us on how to pitch, land and use media for brand visibility?

Speaker 2:

I know for a lot of people they feel like that there's nothing really interesting about them, that they struggle to figure why on earth anybody in the media would want to talk to them, and I'm here to tell you that it's not always the person with the flashiest marketing, it's not always the person with the biggest social media following. It's really mining who you are and what you have to offer, and finding those interesting nuggets and we all have them I have yet to come across a person who doesn't and then learning how to showcase them in a way that grabs people's attention. But at the end of the day, getting media is really fun and that's what you should take away from this. It's really fun to do and it adds not just visibility and credibility to your brand and your business, but it also adds a new layer, at least to my experience of confidence and pleasure as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. This was a great conversation. Carrie, and I call this show enthusiastically self-employed, and I can tell you are enthusiastically self-employed. You've taken all the talents from your corporate career. You've turned them into a career that you love and I'm so glad that our paths have crossed and I hope it will continue to be resources and possibly even referral partners for each other, sending business back and forth.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. I would love to Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

All right and for our audience. I'll let you know as soon as you're done, either watching this video or maybe listening to the podcast episode. I want to encourage you to share it with someone that might benefit from all the great advice that Carrie offered here today. If you are sharing it on LinkedIn, I would encourage you, when you click to share, make sure that you tag us. Use the little at sign the A with the circle around it to tag us in the post. That way we'll get notified and then maybe share a key takeaway or two. You never know who that post is going to help, and then you could be seen as a valuable resource for someone in your network.

Speaker 1:

And Carrie and I don't get performance reviews anymore At least I don't know. Do you have performance reviews anymore? I don't think you know. If you enjoyed this show, please let us know in comments. We live for feedback from our viewers and, with that said, everyone. Have a wonderful day. We look forward to seeing you on LinkedIn and be sure to reach out to Carrie if she can help you. Take care everyone.

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