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Get Press for Your Passion Projects (with no budget)

teacher avatar Jamie Benson, Choreographer, Comedian, Marketing Pro

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introductions

      1:45

    • 2.

      Build Your Press List

      4:32

    • 3.

      How to Be Newsworthy

      4:31

    • 4.

      Pitching Humans (not news machines)

      2:43

    • 5.

      Write Your Own Story, aka Press Release

      3:53

    • 6.

      Construct a Captivating Press Kit

      3:57

    • 7.

      Step by Step: Roll Out Timeline

      6:55

    • 8.

      Stunts and Case Studies

      4:12

    • 9.

      In Closing

      1:22

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About This Class

BE HEARD ABOVE THE DEAFENING ROAR OF THE INTERNET

This class is about playfully and creatively persuading press contacts to feature you and your passion projects in major newspapers, magazines, podcasts, news programs and a plethora of other online publications.

YOU’LL LEARN HOW TO:

  • Find direct email info for the contacts covering your field
  • Build a dynamic press kit
  • Identify what makes you newsworthy
  • Write persuasive headlines and hooks 
  • Personalize one-on-one pitches to break through the noise
  • Maximize email marketing to increase your odds of success
  • Create a media stunt that grabs attention

TIPS FOR ANY ENTREPRENEURIAL PURSUIT

These outreach methods work to cut through the noise of any industry. Whether you’re looking to increase visibility for a side hustle, new project or established business, there are media outlets catering to a potential audience for you. No experience is required. All you’ll need is a way to send email, and perhaps a free account with an email marketing service like Mailchimp or Constant Contact.

UNCONVENTIONAL METHODS / HUMANISTIC APPROACH 

Press contacts are overworked, underpaid and pitched hundreds of times a day. We do not spam them! (it doesn’t work anyway) I’ll reveal real life case studies that show how I leverage my marketing savvy and care for human people to catch press attention- and how you can definitely do it too.

HISTORY OF SUCCESS IN DOING AND TEACHING

20 years ago, tired of feeling invisible as an artist, I started using my imagination to develop singular methods for getting featured in publications like The New York and LA Times, Good Magazine, NY1 News, Backstage and more. Now, I experience a deep catharsis in sharing what I wish someone would have taught me back then. Learn more at jamiebenson.com.

As a marketing director and consultant, I've worked for Houston Symphony, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Joyce Theater, and Sony Pictures. As a workshop leader, I’ve led thousands of entrepreneurs in digital marketing workshops through New York University, Actors Fund, Theater Development Fund and more. Visit jamiebenson.myportfolio.com for more.

SATISFACTION FOR THE ATTENTION STARVED

It’s easy to feel invisible in this world sometimes. Help press people, as well as potential funders and clients, get a good story and support your causes. Press coverage is a win-win if done properly. Let me help you.

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Jamie Benson

Choreographer, Comedian, Marketing Pro

Teacher

Hello. I am a choreographer, comedian, and accidental marketing professional. Wielding a bold, irreverent voice, and informed by a scrappy and singular past, I employ unobstructed imagination and technical savvy in bold marketing campaigns for culture-making companies. I aim to revolutionize how creative entrepreneurs and industries advocate for worthy causes through: 

marketing strategy social media press solicitation email marketing advertising graphic design website / SEO

I have worked with Sony Pictures, Houston Symphony, Trent and Company PR, Pilobolus Dance Theater, CUNY Dance Initiative, LMCC, Conductor Ming Luke, Joyce Theater, Karole Armitage, NYU Tisch, and famed film composer David Newman. Learn more at jamiebenson.myportfolio.com.

 

Lily Binns,... See full profile

Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Introductions: Are you starved for attention like me? Do you have a passion project that you wish more people knew and cared about? Is your budget to promote set project nearly nothing or very nothing? I can definitely help you. [MUSIC] Hi, I'm Jamie Benson, a reformed fine artist, funny guy, accidental marketing professional and human person. Cliff Notes, I once felt invisible as a choreographer and comedian with no pedigree network or resources, I developed my own scrappy methods of self-promotion, including how to get this face plastered across a bunch of media outlets. Now I train creative entrepreneurs like you, how to get maximum visibility for your own causes with literally any budget. In this fun action-oriented course, you'll learn how to create relevant contact list, write persuasively about your work and quickly pitch yourself to members of the press. Beyond acquiring press, though, these skills will help you apply for grants, residencies, sponsorships, and other business opportunities. Not to mention impress your friends and family. This experience will be invaluable for entrepreneurs at any level. Beginners, you'll hit the ground running. Intermediates will expand audiences beyond their friends and family and advanced students will learn outreach methods not found in school or PR firms. All you need is something to promote and a way to send email. Ideally, you'll have or be able to start a free email marketing service account, which we'll talk about. In closing, self-promotion can be intimidating. Just know you don't need to be famous or exaggerate your skills in order to be newsworthy. With some help, you can more effectively share your human story with other humans that will help that story be seen by even more humans. Let's have some fun and courageously put ourselves out there together. I'll see you on the other side. [MUSIC] 2. Build Your Press List: Let's talk about press list. Your initial pitches to the press are going to be through e-mail, which means, you need a ton of direct e-mail addresses for the editors, journalists, show producers that you're going to want to reach out to. I should note, this course is for those that don't want to spend any money. But I would be remiss not to mention a paid database called Cision. If you have a bunch of money to pay for a searchable database of press contacts, go for it. Even if you do though, everyone benefits from collecting their own contacts. Let's do that. First, create an Excel style table, we going to keep it simple. The cells can be e-mail, name, publication, and the topics that they cover like arts and culture, fashion, sports, technology, local news, etc. I also like to have a notes cell on there. Say, I can't find it a direct e-mail address. Maybe I have the link to their contact page on their website or their social media links, maybe a personal affiliation that I have with them, whether that's we know the same people or I've read something of theirs that I really enjoy, that sort of thing. How do you find these direct e-mails? Let's talk about it. You want to be aware of first and foremost, be conscious of who's writing the articles you're reading every day. We're constantly consuming news. Also take a note of who's covering your peers, your rivals, those that you aspire to be like. Visit their websites, look at their press pages, go directly to the people and the publications that are talking about them. Oftentimes, in an article, you can see the journalist's name at the top or the bottom of the page. Those names will even be links to show all the articles that they've been part of. Sometimes, you can find the direct e-mail address on this page. Most publications on their website have what's called a masthead, which is just a mega list of all the names of the journalists they currently have working for them, what they cover, and sometimes, even has their direct e-mail address there. Most writers and journalists have a website. Get on the Googles, take a look at the personal websites for the writers that you're interested in. Even if you still can't find a direct e-mail address, many of these writers will have a contact page on their website. You can pitch them through the contact page and then if they respond to your actual e-mail address, then you've got their direct e-mail address and you just copy and paste that sucker into your new table. Most writers and journalists also have Twitter accounts. You'd be surprised how often you find a direct e-mail address in the bio of a writer's Twitter account. Again, you don't need to be super active on Twitter. In fact, I even recommend you visit at Jamie Benson. If you look at my lists, I even have a Media Magic list. I think, I also have some New York Times lists so that when you click on these lists, you can follow them, I believe. You can click on them and then everything in your news feed will only be journalists, so you can develop relationships that way. It's really important to have a vast mix of sources that you're going to be pitching. You're not always, in fact, rarely will you be pitching to be on the cover of Vogue. You definitely want publications of different sizes and different niches. Niches can be just as effective, in fact, maybe more because you can get more coverage in some of these smaller-focused publications and also have a more direct link to the exact people that are most likely to be interested in what you're doing. Really important, this is critical. Your list is never finished, it's alive. Constantly, it's like the cells in your body. They're constantly turning over, and you're producing new ones. You're updating this list constantly. The journalism industry is in a massive state of flux at all times, essentially in the 21st century, so people are changing jobs, people are losing jobs. Three really important things to know about your press list. It is a numbers game, so it just keep adding. In fact, I try to have hundreds of relevant press contexts at anytime. It's also relationship game and a long game because of it. Even if you don't get responses right away from some of the people you're pitching through these lists, it doesn't mean they aren't becoming more aware of you and might be considering you as time goes on. Sometimes, you have to continually pitch and cultivate relationships with these contexts before you get big results from them or continued results from them. Go ahead and copy and paste what you find, place it into your Excel document, and keep it pushing. 3. How to Be Newsworthy: What makes someone newsworthy? I'm glad you asked. We're going to identify some key elements that can make you more newsworthy or help you be aware of the newsworthy elements of your personage. But any sort of public-facing event people can buy tickets for, or maybe a product launch of some kind, you are having a big event to celebrate those kinds of things can absolutely be pitched to press. The larger scale, the more press-worthy it generally is, but that's not always the case. Any sort of new hire that you've brought on often in a leadership position or you've garnered a new position yourself, you can send a press release and do some pitches about that as well. Challenges that you've possibly are overcoming. Sometimes this qualifies as what's called a human-interest story when your personal circumstances become something that people relate to, root for you because of, what are the personal circumstances you're facing? You don't have to tell your biggest secrets or anything with this, I never mean that. But you can tell your human experience and how that factors in to the work that you're doing and why you're doing it. If you've had any recent breakthroughs about the work that you do, if you're doing it in a slightly different way or a very different way from other people in your industry, you can definitely send WordPress about that. Anytime you get an award or recognition of any kind, even smaller boards, it can be very useful when you're pitching press because it helps build some trust with the work that you're doing when you have people in your industry recognizing the work that you do. Topical associations can really factor in easily. This is relevant for socially charged topics. If you can contribute meaningfully with your work to a conversation that's already happening in the culture, then sometimes your work becomes even more relevant and therefore more press-worthy. Yes, you don't need to be famous in order to be quote, unquote newsworthy, but it does help. Anything associated with a celebrity, if a celebrity has partnered with you in some way as being maybe the face of something that you're doing, uses your product, et cetera, all of that is a reason to pitch press. If you're partnering with any new artist, technology expert, a venue that's presenting your work, a company that's teaming up with you for some project, all of those kinds of things can be announced to the press. Ultimately, I tried to consider what is also distinct about the work that I'm doing? What is different about my methods? How do I bring my unique background into the work that I'm doing? If it's not very distinct, perhaps I actually push what I'm doing a little further. That can be an unspoken benefit of pitching yourself to the press. We want to tell the who, what, when, wheres of the work that we're doing, the thing that we're promoting. Sometimes I find it's even more important to tell the how and the why. How am I approaching this differently than maybe other people are and why am I, my unique self doing this work? Because that's something that audiences relate to. If you remember nothing else from this lesson, the most important thing when you're pitching is to serve a story, a ready-made story to the press that they can just ****** up and place in whatever television segment article that they're working on. Many people that I worked with consider themselves storytellers, and yet they don't access that creativity in their promotional work. It's a real shame and missed opportunity because that type of creativity is the thing that's going to help you stand out amongst the press and stand out for potential audiences. What are the stakes for you? You can share that sort of thing with members of the press. Each of these elements could be the focus of a new press release. You could also have one more general press release about your work and then base your pitches on some of these newsworthy elements. This brings us to our class project on writing your own headline. Try some different headlines for your work that are inspired by some of these newsworthy elements and add them to your project for this course. Create your project if you haven't already, type in headline ideas and jot down something to promote, whether that's an event, a new award, job, method you've discovered, or just the unique circumstances you're in. It doesn't need to be a full sentence or even a real thing yet. We can be aspirational. Write something newsworthy you wish was happening as a powerful step towards achieving that exact goal. Either way, we'll clean these ideas up later, practicing how to frame our projects for people working in the media. I encourage everyone to give each other feedback, ask questions, and show support. [MUSIC] 4. Pitching Humans (not news machines): Let's talk about pitches. There are three main parts to your PR apparatus. You have your pitches, your press release, and your press kit. A pitch is a short persuasive story idea that's personalized for the person you are reaching out to. Usually, it's done by email first. My email pitches are usually three to four sentences and I make sure to hit swiftly some key points. First, I always open with a reference to their work. Hey, I read your piece about such and such in the New York Times. Then I tie in how what I do meets what they do. I also do work like this that touches on a lot of these similar themes. Then I introduce what I'm promoting and throwing some newsworthy elements. I just got a grant to partner with this organization for a production that's happening this day and this time and then I finish up with a call to action. I invite them to feature me, to interview me, to visit a rehearsal or something, and then I connect them to a press release and press kit should they want more information, and then I walk away. This all ties into the write your own headline course project that we have. This shorthand to describe your work can be used as the email subject line for the pitch that you're doing. It could also just be the headline for your press release which you would share with your pitch. It might even be used, this type of sentence structure, within the pitch that you do as a way to quickly express the work that you're doing. Go ahead and open your project and let's play around with possible subject lines for a pitching press. Take one of your newsworthy headline ideas from a previous lesson and make a complete sentence out of it. Now, pick a way to start the subject line based on what could be in the email. Is it a story you want to tell, or will you be inviting them to something, or is it a topic that would be great to discuss in an interview? Here's a successful real-life example of an email subject line of mine that resulted in a lot of press. Keep playing around, there are a ton of reasons to pitch press and many ways to write a headline. We'll also work more on this later. One main thing I want to emphasize here is that journalism is hard. It's harder than ever for a new site to function right now. The people you're pitching have less time and more responsibility than they did maybe even a few years ago. There are also perhaps receiving hundreds of pitches a day. Even if you're good at what you're doing, they have specific limitations, editor requests, et cetera, which means that your project might not be the right thing for them to cover at this time. I think it's really critical to be very humane when pitching press for all of these reasons. For example, here's how I pitched in York Times writer on LinkedIn, but make sure to include a picture of a baby cow because I read on their website that they love that thing. I'm relating to them as a human by doing so, letting them know that I actually am interested in their work and who they are. [MUSIC] 5. Write Your Own Story, aka Press Release: It's time to discuss press releases. Now a press release in and of itself, that outline of it is it pretty simple, by nature, but it's really imperative that you streamline the information and make it as skimmable as possible with a few little sparks to entice. The very top of the page, you're going to have usually some logo, contact name, title, and phone number, email address. Then you also put when this information is going to be available to the public. For the most part, many of us can just put for immediate release. You have a headline and a potentially a subheadline. This goes to our project for the course. This is really where it's going to shine. Let's try creating a press release headline and subheadline now in your project, essentially you're attempting to get across the most pertinent information about one key happening that you're promoting, whether that's alive, event, new discovery, product launch, etc. As you'll hear me say again, attempt to answer the who, what, when, where, and why. You're a person doing things add up this place for reasons. Under that at a clarifying statement that further describes what you're promoting. Here's another successful example from my past. Usually I have the headline in bold with the subheadline slightly smaller and in italics. I encourage you to have fun with dynamic ideas and wording. You'll see here though, newsworthy element is that I was given a grant and then the subheadline you'll see there's more clarifying information. Real people dance, real transit stories in historic subway cars. There was real people doing the dancing, not professionally trained dancers. The work is based on real transit stories. We did a lot of crowdsourcing of information for this work. It's not just any subway cards in historic subway car. I usually try to include the date or a general time frame within these sentences. But like with this example, if I don't the dates and time frame or in the first sentence of the first paragraph and in the email subject line I'm sending. Your first paragraph should be really cut and dry in terms of answering the four W's. If you were the who, what, when, where. Then you also want to weave why you're doing this throughout anything that you're presenting to the press. Often after the first paragraph, I put some quotes either by myself or by a collaborator or even an audience member or other press person to give a sense of who I am, what I'm doing, and what could they actually be snatched and use within someone's feature. Then usually you offer some mini, and when I say mini, I do mean mini. Mini biography quickly disseminating who you are, your background, your biggest highlights. The final paragraph is often for any partnerships or affiliations that you have. If you do have a collaborator, a sponsor or grant, that thing, often they'll actually present you with the exact verbiage you want to put here. The press release is actually just a easily skimmable, digestible breakdown of what you're presenting to the public. But there are a few things you can do to spice things up. You should, if you can embed a reasonably sized photo somewhere, it doesn't need to be super highlight, but it doesn't need to be sharp and clear. Then you can wrap the text around that and it should be illustrative of what you're talking about wherever its placed. Often I'll end up putting an image through next to the mini bio that I have that helps illustrate who I am and what I do. You could also use it sometimes perhaps right under the headline and subheadline. Again, you just want to demonstrate what this thing is that you're promoting, what it looks like. Although it's pretty antiquated or standard or old fashioned. I still like putting three hashtags at the very bottom of the page just so they know that you finished with the information. Can't have a press release this more than one page, but I desperately try to contain all the information I present within one page. [MUSIC] 6. Construct a Captivating Press Kit: So what goes into a press kit anyway? Let's talk about it in a press kit. Usually you have a combination of media and documents, both illustrating and detailing the work that you do, where you come from, who you are, all of that jazz. Have a folder for images and a folder for videos, downloadable videos. Usually you'll try to put five to ten of your highest quality pieces of media in these folders. For photos, you definitely have a mix of portraits, ideally, even editorial style portraiture like what you would see in the magazines because that's what we're trying to get in our demonstration shots of what you do mean if you dance, there should be some photos and some videos of you dancing. This kinda stuff is great for B-roll or things they can cut away to intelligence segment. Then in articles of course, you can invent these things in and it definitely helps round out the feature. What I recommend doing is putting the credits in the filename of either your photos or your videos. Meaning you actually have maybe the name of your organization in the photo title with a photo credit by and then the name of the photographer or the videographer that took the video, also sometimes put the venue that I performed in. This is just a no nonsense way to let the people featuring, you know, who to credit. And quickly, we did a mini many, many biography in our press release. The press kit is where you can really lay out all your whole life, ideally in a page or less. But still you can definitely flesh out your background, your accolades, where you come from, where you're going, and all the cool things that happened in-between. I do try to break up a full-page biography into various areas, sometimes with a bold header at the top of each paragraph to help orient people on what they're reading. I'll also put hyperlinks to the examples of the work that I did where I form them can embed some photos in there, really spice things up. Also, you can include a one sheet is what they call it in the biz. Usually this is a visual infographic style breakdown. Your facts and figures at a glance, how many performances have you done? What kind of awards have you gotten? Where did you go to school? What's been said about your work, your social media include five things you didn't know about me. This may be super beneficial for a journalist when they're interviewing you and also helps demonstrate you as a human person. I know I said the word human a lot, but I really do think that is where the rubber meets the road with press pitching because they are inundated with spammy requests. If you continually point out that you're a human that cares about their work you're doing, and then cares about the work they're doing. You will get better results. And you can use graphic design program like Canada, for instance. Some of them even have templates ready to go that you can just implement your information. Most importantly, try to make it convenient to digest information and access information. One way to do this as a to have a digital press kit? Yes, in your email pitches, you could attach PDFs and various videos are links to videos. But that does weigh down the memory of a person's inbox and I personally don't enjoy it. I'll create a press kit on Google Drive or Dropbox, or even a page of my website or client's website. And I'll have all of these things visible, able to view and also downloadable. And then within the documents that I provide, the press release, the infographic, the biography, I'm also embedding hyperlinks to helpful sites when I'm referencing them, whether that's my personal website, a project website, venue that I'm working with collaborators that I'm working with, maps. I'll hyperlink the address to open a map to show the press people where this thing is happening. 7. Step by Step: Roll Out Timeline: Allow me, if you will, to hold your hand and walk you through the step-by-step process for rolling out all of this press stuff that we've been talking about. The first thing that I normally do is that I adapt my press release for an email announcement through a bulk e-mail marketing service like Mailchimp or constant contact if you haven't already, I do think it's pretty beneficial to have one of these email marketing services at your disposal, and many of them are free. It's even beneficial if you don't pitch press, because email is a major element for promotion. But because of the HTML quality of email marketing services, you get to add more visual elements and buttons and such to your press release as you can see here, normally I'll make my press announcement with this email marketing campaign, and I'll send it three times, say Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I send it to my fullest on Monday. And email marketing services like MailChimp, Constant Contact allow you to replicate that campaign and then send it to the people that didn't open it the first time. So I'll do that. Sand on Monday to everybody. Replicate the campaign, send it on Wednesday to those that didn't open it on a Monday and then get this I'll replicate it again. Send it on Friday to those that didn't open it on Wednesday or Monday? What? Yes. And each time I rescind, I often will change the e-mail subject line, though. You don't have to also play around with the time of day that I send the campaigns. So maybe the Monday send I did at nine AM, maybe Wednesday, 11:00 AM, and maybe Friday, 02:00 PM. I probably should note that Friday is normally not considered a great day to send pressed information because it's right before the weekend. Although I encourage you to play around and admittedly, I probably will often send send on Monday seconds and maybe that Thursday and then the third time I send it might be the next Monday. There's no hard fast rule. Play around. See what works for the list you have. Now, in-between these bulk reasons, I'll individually pitch the people that we're most interested. The beauty about email marketing services like Mailchimp and Constant Contact is that you can actually see who opened your campaigns, who clicked on your campaigns. That's invaluable information. So I'm trying to give you an example. Monday I sent to everybody say I sent to 300 people on Monday and say, I don't know, 70 people opened that email and maybe a handful of them clicked around. I'll send individual pitches, personalize pitches like we talked about. Make sure you watch that lesson if you haven't seen it already. I'll send personal pitches to the people that opened the campaign and clicked around because they've already shown interests. And then I just rinse and repeat. I probably tried to do a new pitch through bulk e-mail once every couple of weeks. So say ideally you have two months before a product launch or a public event. I'm sending the press release to my email list through MailChimp, Constant Contact about two months out. If possible. I know we all have different circumstances, but usually you want to try to start sending at least two months in advance, especially for magazines because they're considering their next season. Often, you want to give that time, plus you want ample room to pitch different angles and perspectives on your work to that same list because the 1 May 1 not strike their interests, but the way you frame it the next time might be something that they're interested in in this pitching phase. Don't forget social outreach. Here's an example of a pitch that I did for a television news anchor through Twitter. She responded right away and we set up a television news segment for my client. I never really stopped touching base with them. I don't spam them ever. But consider the different newsworthy elements we talked about into what makes you newsworthy lesson can pull up a handful of options. Whether you talk about in one pitch, a new collaboration, whether you talk about the sort of social themes that are relevant in this time that your work explores what happens if you get a bite from one of these press people. What if they respond? Don't panic, but respond immediately or as soon as you can there throwing you align and you have to bite the bait right away. Sometimes have a press person reaches out. Consider you for a feature and you don't respond. They move on pretty quick because they have ample opportunity for content because they are being pitched like we've mentioned a lot every day. If I get a little buzz on my phone no matter where I am in the world. And it says some press person is inquiring about featuring me. I stop what I'm doing and I answer as best as I can, right? Don't panic. Don't push either because they may just be asking questions, but fulfill whatever requests they have, say get featured on a television segment or get interviewed for an article. Don't try to produce yourself too much. Just answer questions truthfully, but have talking points. Think ahead. Usually you can ask the press person. So what kind of questions are you going to be giving me during the interview or the segment? And you can prepare, again, don't prepare a script, but definitely have an idea about what they're going to ask if it's a live feature or an article. And think a little bit in advance about what's the shortest way you can express that answer in an impactful way. Another fun thing you can do if you do get featured by the press is to create visual representations of that for social media, you can use a template from a service like Canva. You can actually screenshot, for instance, the article about you cut some of the fat out just to lead with the image, the title, the logo of the publication, and maybe a little teaser text. Don't, you don't need to share the whole article on social in a photo. Try to just get people excited about what you're doing. Show that you have some momentum and also booster on credibility for the work that you're doing. Because most of the time that people that are following you are rooting for you. Or we hope we can all celebrate together when you do get featured in television, the newspapers, magazines, blogs, podcasts, It's exciting, It's a party. So make sure you're inviting people to share that with you. 8. Stunts and Case Studies: Let's break down all this stuff with some real life examples. Sometimes you can just create news by sharing and plotting various chapters out for the press. Leaking to the press can be something that benefits you. I had planned to do an unauthorized performance in a New York subway station, which is not allowed. But I leaked to the press my plan performance and it was published. And then I got to cease and desist order from the New York Transit Authority, which I was very excited about because then I shared that with the press as well and they covered that might cease and desist. Then I found irrelevant loophole for the work and was commissioned by the New York Transit museum to perform. And then I shared that with the press. So my leaked unauthorized performance got coverage from a local publication and the cease and desist got shared by the New York Times. My new event was listed there when I got the transit Museum commissioned. It was featured in three different television news segments. I was able to take an ongoing threat of a story and keep pulling that thread and getting more press out of it to the point where my transit museum performance was so talked about that it's sold out. Let's talk about Sharing difficulties and challenges with your work. I was hired by choreographer Carol Armitage. I was hired to do social media, not press, but all of our social ads were rejected and our ad accounts were closed due to vulgarities or overt sexuality, which was not the case in the work, was kind of baffling and brought up an interesting question about how do these social media platforms regulate and censor people like my client who was an artist. So I added sensor bar graphics to all of our photos on social media, tapping into this charged topic of censorship in the arts. Although I was not in charge of press, I didn't notice through the e-mail marketing service that I was in-charge of for the client. She had a small old Press lists. Many of these were probably not active press members. But I thought what the ****? I quietly shared our difficulties and our social media censorship campaign with the few press that we're on this list. And it got picked up and published within an hour and lead to a dedicated article about this censorship through social media. Later, one small press pitch became two different features about my client and also a little bit about me. You can also use the media to increase the profile for yourself or who you're working with at an opportune time. Let me explain. I was hired to do some light press work for a wonderful conductor by the name of mean Luke. He was a guest conductor for a lot of ballet companies at the time. And he was being considered to be a principal conductor, to be promoted to a full-time position at various ballet organizations that perform with live music. I grilled him incessantly on his story. It turns out he is a conductor who trained seriously and dance and actually debated between going into dance or going into conducting. So he had a shorthand and understood the language difference between musicians and dancers for a lot of these big companies, I actually found out there's a lot of tension between dancers and musicians working at these companies. Ming Luke with someone that could actually speak to both sides and make connections and help all the artists understand each other, which lead to better performances. I did a whole string of press pitching, explaining who this person is and their unique background, what they bring to their industry that's distinct. That raised his profile so much that he then was accepted to be a full-time principal conductor with the National Ballet. And then guess what? We did a whole string of pitches announcing this new position because that is newsworthy and it gave us new outlets to talk to because it was specific to Nashville, Tennessee. The all the research I told you about how to find relevant contacts and we pitched them. And then we got a bunch of coverage announcing him as this new figure in Nashville Arts and Culture. 9. In Closing: My sincerest congratulations. You made it to the end, which is not easy to do with an online course. Now look at you, now you know how to present your newsworthiness, find new potential friends in the media, pitch yourself professionally, and channel your creativity into your promotions. If you're wondering why I just told you so many of my tricks for getting press, it's because I understand the desire to be recognized for your unique contributions to the world, and boy I wish someone would've told me any of this stuff when I was starting out. I know we've gone over what can seem like a lot of steps, but once you get used to it, this type of promotional work can happen pretty fast. Even if you do get overwhelmed, do what you can. There's no one way to do anything, no two press contacts are the same and every project we do is a little different as guidelines of the tips that I've shared can help you develop your own process for cultivating relationships with the media. Now sometimes press contacts reach out to me and ask me what I have going on, which is pretty cool for everyone involved. Ultimately treat yourself and those you're pitching well. There are no promises that you'll get press even with great materials and a strong pitch. Much of success in life is luck and timing. But if you follow the steps I've laid out, you give yourself the most fertile ground in which to grow your visibility. I invite you to team up with me on social media, through my website, my email list for more support like this. Just know I'm rooting for you. Thanks for listening and good luck.