Transcripts
1. Let's go: Once you secure media coverage, but not sure how
look no further. Forget being a lesser known professional competing
against others to win clients and customers
lineup features and well-known publications
to establish your credibility as an
expert in your field, build your audience
and have customers and opportunities coming to you. Most people don't do this simply because they don't know
where to get started. They assume that you
need industry contacts, a huge budget, or lows
of luck to be featured. But actually, that's not true. You can create a system
for securing coverage. And this class is
here to show you how. My name is Jodi Cook. I'm an entrepreneur and
author of ten year career. Before selling my social
media agency in 2021, I have contributed my
comments to hundreds of well-known publications
as a social media expert in print and online. The list has included the BBC, The New York Post, Forbes, Reader's Digest, ITV
bustle and so many more. These mentions helped me and my company stand out
in our industry. It helped our potential
customers find us, and it helped him
prospects into clients. I was also approached by book
publishers straight through my website as a direct
result of this coverage. In this class, we will
cover how you can do exactly the same to
get amazing results. Whatever industry you are in, you can be secure and coverage as an industry thought leader, I know from my own
experience how much this can catapult your personal brand
and business to new levels. I'll go through every part of
generating inbound requests for your expertise from journalists working
in your field. I'll show you how to position
yourself to be found, how to set up and
respond to requests, as well as some
pitfalls to avoid, will talk about having a social media strategy for
press coverage. And I'll show you specific
methods by which to identify and
approach journalists and contribute to platforms. This class will
get you set up for success with a system to follow. By implementing what you learn, you can access and
benefit from coverage and well-known publications
and access all the business
benefits of doing so. I look forward to
seeing you in class.
2. Creating your expert brand: In this lesson, you
will learn how to start creating
your expert brand. The first thing you
should do to set yourself up for securing
featured experts lots is get crystal clear on the exact area of expertise
you want to be known for. It has to be something
that you could comfortably answer
questions and talk about. If this sounds obvious, it's probably because you
already defined this, in which case, great, because
that is a solid start. For most people, their
specific area of expertise will
probably relate to the work they do and
the field that it's in. Take this time to define
exactly what your area is. Next, put the word expert after it and get comfortable
with hearing that phrase, which is your area of expertise, followed by the word expert when you're defining your area, I think as narrow as possible. So one example is
my friend Anita. She's education
lawyer and she works across all areas
of education law, but her specialist area
and the phrase that she chose is special
educational needs. So she's known as
an SEM experts. While that acronym might not
mean something to everyone, the journalists and
the publications in her field know exactly
what it means, and that phrase makes
her easy to find. Another example is dude. Dude field of work is child development and she knows all about that whole area. But her expert title is
potty training experts because that's the part
of her work that she enjoys and is most
passionate about. You could be in any
vote in the world and you could still think
of an expert title that totally sums up the
work that you do and give someone an immediate
understanding of who you help and what you know about your task is to find a phrase that you will use as
your expert title. So write down your options, play around with how they
sound and see if it's possible for you to go even
narrower in your scope. And then when
you've decided that that the phrase or the title, that's what we'll use for
everything else in this class. At this point, I just
want to say that sometimes people struggle
with the word experts. They didn't like it. They think it makes them sound like they've stopped learning. They think it means
that they need to know absolutely everything
within a field. I want to reassure you
that that's not the case. The definition of expert
is a person who is very knowledgeable about all skillful in a particular area. And I'm sure that you likely
meet that description with the knowledge that you already have contained within your head. Right now, you will
not be expected to perform or to have all
the answers straight away. We are definitely not
setting you up for any uncomfortable situations
are conversations, I promise. So now it's time to
think of yourself as a brand in your own, right. I imagine if you've
set up a business, or if you work for a business, that business has
its brand clearly defined on a purely
functional level, that business
should know what is delivering and who
its customers are. But on a more fundamental level, it knows its mission and it knows its vision and
what it stands for. Online. This translates
into a brand's identity. Say picture, any brand
that stands out to you, Your favorite snack, your
favourite cosmetics product, or your favorite restaurant. It will likely have a
recognizable presence in the words it uses in
the tone of his voice, in its brand colors or
fonts or its images, and the kind of vibe that it
puts across to its audience. Now, I want you to
think of yourself and your expert title in this way and start to
create your own identity. That's going to turn into
your signature style. Think of yourself as a brand. This is about creating
an online persona that publications can
understand and relate to. We want them to get
what you're about and to know what they
can ask you about. And then we want them
to feel like they can approach you for comments. Let's start with your image. Uh, you the caring
and smiley type. Are you crossed arms
and stern phased? Or are you funny and jovial? Are either seasoned veteran? The answer to this
question is going to dictate the type of
head shops you used and the design of your website
match your personality and how your expert self will come across with the images
that people see. Help them understand
who you are. So if you are an expert
in commercial property, you'll have a
different persona as someone who specializes in cakes for special occasions or wedding planning or being
a professional life coach. Really intentional about
defining this and make sure it translates into an online
appearance to match. Next, think about your voice. So it would be really
easy to just try to match the publication
you're commenting for or hoping to be featured in. And that is important. But overall, your
own voice should be crafted before it's
applied elsewhere. So let's define it. Are you serious? I use sharp and to the point, do you write in lengthy
and descriptive sentences or more bullet points and
actionable one-liners. You, the voice of reason? Or do you lean towards a certain political
standpoint even? Or is your aim to be
controversial and to get a strong reaction is not just how you look
and how you communicate. It's what you talk about. One exercise you can do to find the exact topics
you're going to be sharing your views about is
the zone of genius exercise. So this involves answering three questions in
a Venn diagram. The intersection of your
answers becomes your topic, which will then
underpin everything you say and do on your own site, your own social media, and the publications
that you write for each of the three circles in the zone of genius
Venn diagram is for your answers to the
following questions. What do I enjoy? What am I good at? What does the world need? The first two questions
will help solidify your expert title and
your area of expertise. The final one will help
you write down how your expertise relates to
topics that people care about, those that have
commercial value. So this will not only help
you craft your expert voice, but further down the line, it's going to help you come
up with headlines to pitch. The more defined you
can make your voice, the more congruent
you will be online. It will mean that your opinions match up across the Internet so one won't find conflicting
information or viewpoints. Everything they read
will match brand. You. People who read your
work will feel like they know you and they like
you and they trust you. So get writing
down what you know about and what you
feel strongly about. Maybe include what you
don't feel strongly about, so that you can present
a balanced case because that's fine too. So there's Expert
version of yourself. What are some of the
phrases they would say? What are some universal
beliefs that they hold? And what would they never say? What are the topics they
love talking about? And what are the topics that
they steer well clear of. All of this is information
that we're going to use to make your expert page. And that's exactly what
we're gonna do next.
3. Creating your expert page: In this lesson,
you will learn how to create your expert page. Now you've got your
expert title and your expert brand well
and truly defined. It's onto your expert page. When journalists are looking for comments on particular topics, there are a number
of places they look. The first might be
their publications, own database of
featured experts, which we'll come onto later. But the two other ways, or Google and social media, if you can set yourself
up to be found on Google, especially for
your expert title, you will be sought out
by journalists who were looking for your
contribution to their story. For this step, you
will need to create a fresh page on your website. So this might be something
that you can easily do yourself or you might need to ask your webmaster to do this, but the title of
the page should be your specific expert title. So SDN expert or
kitchen design expert, or you basically use the phrase that you
have just defined. The page doesn't
need to be linked from your main website menu, but it does need to
be carefully planned. The body of the page. So all the writing contained
within it should be over 800 words that are there
to build your credibility. So you might be
thinking 800 words, that's super long,
but it's very doable. Getting this page right
is all in the planning. This page is going to act as your central hub or
your squeeze page. Effectively. It exists to compel someone into making
an inquiry for commentary. It has to be coherent
and compelling. It has to signal that
you know your stuff. Before you start writing
your expert page, make a list of how long have you been
working in your field, specific projects that
you've completed, the type of results that you've
secured for your clients. Any awards that you've won, any places that you might
have already been featured. And finally, your passion and your knowledge
for your topic. Even if you're
starting from 0 in terms of awards and
existing coverage, you can still go to town on your knowledge
and enthusiasm. The next step is
taking these notes and building them out
into your expert Page. Decide whether you write
it in first-person or third-person based on
the rest of your website. So if your website is
all in third person, write in third person
here to say use Jodie is. And if your website is you personally talking to
your audience, use IM. Maybe you're adding your expert page to
accompany website, in which case you
use Jodie is so people know that you are a separate entity
to the company. And if you don't have
a website at all yet, one registered the
domain name and build a really simple website
using something like Wix or Squarespace or card. You're going to need it
for absolutely everything that we discussed in this class. The first thing I'd like
to see on your expert page is three paragraphs that
answer the question, why are you an expert
in this topic? I'd also like to see a professional smiling
picture of you on this page. I want journalists and
writers to be able to see your face and see your page and instantly feel like they know
like and trust you. You can achieve
this by making sure the picture and the
text, or in daring. Within the text, you're not
having to prove anything. You're not saying you're
better than anyone else. You're simply stating
your expert case with examples to back it up. Three paragraphs. Next, think about
what you wrote down from the last section and
add some bullet points. So start with the sentence. Topics I can offer comment on include and then put down
four or five broad topics. It's really important
here to make clear that these things aren't all
you could talk about. They're just some of the
things that you know about someone who
was an expert in the entrepreneur journey
could say they're able to talk about common
mistakes that entrepreneurs make
or how entrepreneurs could benefit from
changes in technology, or how entrepreneurs
could position themselves for success no matter which stage of
their journey they're, keep them really broad, but make them juicy topics that you know for sure that
you could talk about. For example, if someone
asks you to talk nonstop for a few minutes
about one of them, you could do it really easily. The next thing if
you're expert page, is supporting information of the three paragraphs that
you have just written. So if you're able to write
press and media inclusions as the title of this
section and then bullet point anywhere so far that
your name has come up. It doesn't matter how small
these publications might be. My very first expert
inclusion was in the very regional
Birmingham post. But the link still
went up there on my page until I had bigger
ones to replace it. Underneath the title
of this section. And before you start
bullet pointing anything, use the phrase media friendly. It could be. Jody regularly contributes to publications on the
topics of x, y, and z. She is media friendly and
happy to help with your piece. Something as simple as that, but make sure you get the phrase media friendly in your page. Other things to
include, there are any videos or any images of you. Perhaps you've spoken at an event or on a
panel discussion. Images that show you
either onstage with an audience or just all miked
up in front of a camera, signal that you know what
you're talking about. So get them right on there. Videos, videos are great because a journalist looking for
experts for TV slots, for example, might want to make sure that you come
across well on camera. So make it really easy
for someone to be reassured that you
are the real deal. The final thing to
add to this page, or at least linked
to from this page, is a contact form. Contact forms are a million times better
than email addresses for your site because they make it super easy for someone
to get in touch. The easier it is for someone
to get in touch with you, the more inquiries
you will receive. I promise. So on your contact form, have only the minimum
fields that you need. You're very welcome to
visit Jodi Cook.com, forward slash contact to see
my my form has the fields, firstName, lastName,
company name, if applicable, email
address, telephone number a. How did you hear about Jodie
and then your message? As with all marketing, the how did you hear about this piece is so
important because it lets you trace the source of your inquiries and helps
you learn what's working. If you know how to tie that contact form and
with a CRM system. So that leads go
straight into that, definitely get that hooked up. But whatever you choose to do, make sure you test the form. Even if you don't hook it
up to another program, you should you should get an email every time
someone completes it. Start writing your page. Now, there's a space in your workbook for
you to jot down ideas for each of the sections. And then from that information, put a draft together and
make it into a single page. Then either set the page at
yourself if you're able to, or ask a trusted friend or a website Pro to
do this for you.
4. Getting your expert page found: In this lesson, you
will learn how to make your expert page visible online. The URL for the page
you've created should be your website's URL and
then the forward slash, and then your own expert title. So you can split these
words up by dashes, but makes sure your
expert title is there in the URL ready to be found. Once you're happy
with your page, the next thing to do is to
link it from your homepage. You will see from
Jodi Cook.com that mine is linked in the
copy on the homepage. Make sure you do that too. Then check that the page
looks good on mobile. So make sure your page has a title and a
meta-description that also includes your
expert title and includes the phrase media
friendly in the description. At least. Make sure you add
descriptive alt text to any of the images
that you include. So it's these three
things that helped Google work out
what your page is about so that it
knows when it should include your site and
each search results. Editing the page title and
the Meta description of the page and the alt text of images all in your
webpages settings. So this is going
to vary slightly depending on which
platform you're using. If in doubt, use the help
pages of the platforms, which should tell you how to
find all of these things. The final thing to look
out on your page are the titles and the subheadings, headings on a webpage
or given H tags. For example, heading
one or h one is your main title and then H2 and H3 is a
smaller sub-headings. Google pay really close
attention to the H tags because these are
another indicator of what the page is about. Your main H1 heading should
be your expert term, and there should be a few
other H2 and H3 headers that contains similar
or related phrases. Going forward, we're going to be using your expert page as the main place that
people can find you and book you
for your expertise. If the expert phrase that you've chosen isn't hugely competitive, your page might start to rank
for the term really easily. If it is a competitive term
in a competitive field, it might require a bit more
work and we're not going to use this class as a delve into search engine optimization. But instead, we're going
to look at other ways that your page can be found and journalists can
come looking for you. As these methods start
becoming more successful, you're going to
secure more backlinks for your expert page. And then it's going to
start to rise the ranks. But that is a
longer-term strategy. I want to get some
quick wins right now. Next, we will start the process of being
known by journalists and publications so
that you can join their lists and receive
inbound inquiries. Ahead of that, there are loads of other ways to
be found online. So make sure that everywhere
you have a presence, even if you're not
super active there, someone could know that
you are media friendly and how to get in touch
with you on LinkedIn. Use your summary section to include a line about
being open for commentary on certain topics and make sure you communicate
how someone could reach out. If you've got a Facebook page, it can go in your about
section on Instagram. You could include your
expert title in your bio. You can link your expert
page from your bio, or if you're using link tree or another
multilingual site, then include your expert
page as one of those links. The more you start
being found and perpetuating this
cycle of coverage, the more places
people will chance upon you and your
area of expertise. So take the time now to make sure that it's all
set up for success.
5. Setting up and responding to inbound requests: In this lesson, you
will learn how to set yourself up for
inbound requests. I want to tell you about
two amazing tools. The first is called Hero, which stands for
Help a Reporter out. And the second is
journey request. So both of these are where
reporters and journalists and people writing articles
and looking for experts, go to find them. Let's start with heroin. Once you sign up for free, you're going to restart
receiving e-mails with requests for sources and new, then respond to them
with your answer. So the first thing I want
you to do in physic, Help a Reporter.com, and
register as a source. You then enter the email address that you're going to
be responding from. And you tick all the
boxes that apply to you. At the moment, hero sends three emails per day
during weekdays with each email containing
between 6120 requests. Most of these will not be
relevant to you or your field, but some of them will be very relevant and they're
the ones we care about. The emails might look really
long and really daunting. But very soon you'll get
used to scrolling down skim reading and finding those opportunities that
you'd be perfect for. I'm going to put an example
of a hero requests on the screen right now so that you can see what they look like. So there is a title, there's a description,
there's a deadline, and there's an e-mail address. Most often the publication
name is included, but sometimes they're anonymous. The title will be the first thing that
grabs your attention. And the description contains exactly what the
reporter is looking for. The publication details mean that you can check
it out and you can see whether or not you
want to appear on that site. When you found a hero that you know you will
be perfect for, simply click on
the e-mail address provided and here's where you're going to
type your answer. Before we respond to
any heroes at all. My recommendation
is that you save an e-mail signature with your
template heroin response. So head over to your email signatures and
write the following out. Hello, thanks for
your hearing request. Here's my answer to your question and then
leave a blank space. Then write, my
name is your name, comma expert title at
your company name. Here's a short bio and
then I want you to include a bio of about 50 words. Remember, you have
this information from your expert page. Then after that,
write something like, I hope my answer
suits your request and don't hesitate
to contact me should you require any further
information and then best wishes your name or
however you sign off emails. I also include a line to say, if you use my response, please include a link to my website and then write
your website's URL. It's gonna be such
a huge time-saver if you can save this
template response as an email signature or even as
a document on your desktop or somewhere that you can
really easily copy and paste. Removing the blockers
to responding to heroes is what moves
you can respond to more and get featured
in more places and start receiving inbound
requests even faster. So let's go back
to where we found that perfect heroin
for you to respond to. Click on the email address
that they gave you, load at the template
that you've just made and start filling
out the answer. What is super important
here is that you respond in the exact way that
this report I want you to see if they've
asked for 100 words, give them 100 words. If they've asked for one tip, give them one tip. If they've asked
for one paragraph, then don't write an essay. You get the picture. The easier you can make
it for your response to fit perfectly into their piece, the more likely that
you are to get covered. A bit more guidance for
compiling your answer. Try to write in soundbites, construct your answer
in such a way that they could pull out
single sentences. It would still make sense. Speak with authority. Don't say, perhaps,
don't say maybe instead, be really direct if you can add information that
backs up your authority. So for example, if the specific work that you've done that
proves your point, don't waffle and
avoid using jargon. Even if a journalist is writing about something
really technical, they probably won't assume
that their readers understand every single acronym or every
single technical phrase. And then always look back
over your answer to editor. Make it as clear and
concise as possible and definitely don't
send any typos over. Journalist is looking for, is to be able to
copy and paste what you've written into their piece, straight into their piece. The easier that you make it for someone to
do exactly that, the more likely that your
response is to be included. If in doubt, send
left field responses. So avoid descending over
the most obvious answer or point because chances are that someone else will have
already said that. Be as specific as
you possibly can. Most likely, they're trying to write articles that are
actionable for their readers. So they tend not to like general points or
general musings. Think specific, clear
and actionable. Next, look at what else
they've asked for. So always include a small
bio of you and I recommend using 50 of the best words
from your expert page itself. If they ask for a longer
bio use that I always link to a head shot as well as loads of publications
after the one. You can use the URL
of the head shot that you've already added
to your expert page. So a few more tips and
responding to heroes. Tip one, make a note
of the deadline, especially the time zone because it might
not match yours. Once the deadline has passed, that e-mail address
just won't work. So it's super important that you make the deadline tip too. If the publication is something
that you don't recognize, copy the URL, head
over to moz.com. So MOs add.com and paste that URL into their
domain authority checker. So this is how you work out
the quality of the site. As a general rule, sites with the domain
authority of above 25 worth going for most
Harry reporters, they're going to include
a link to your site as a thank you for your
help with that piece. And you only really want good quality websites
linking back to yours. Tip three. When you've responded to a hero, head into your send messages
and drag your response into an e-mail folder that
you call her responses. So this is how you keep track
of the ones you've sent. And then finally tip for is
to check out the reporter or the publication on social
media and give them a follow. So think about it. They might be receiving hundreds of responses
to their requests. I've sent heroes myself and
received over 400 responses. How are you going to
make your stand out? Firstly, by writing a
great answer that query. Secondly, by providing the exact information
that they're looking for. And finally, by becoming
known to them somewhere else. If you can find them on
Twitter or LinkedIn, do so and give them a follow. So you can even tweet
them and you can let them know that you've
just e-mailed them. This is the kind of stuff that works and it helps
you to stand out, aim to stand out in
a really good way, and aim to make life
really easy for these reporters because it's in both of your best
interests to do so. So that's how rho but the other place I mentioned
is Janet requests. So it's found at
January requests.com. And this is a site that pulls the hashtag
journey request, media requests and PR
requests from Twitter. And it puts them all in one
space for you to respond to. It also sends you a daily e-mail of requests that are
relevant to you. Say most of the requests
are going to require you to respond by Twitter
instead of email. So it's a little bit
different from heroin, but the premise is
exactly the same. So it's worth signing
up and checking out. There is another
called sauce bottle and loads of other ones. But my recommendation is
to start with how rho get familiar with their process and then build up
gradually from there. I need to warn you here that
you have to be patient. You won't be featured
in all the publications that you pitch to you via
hero and journey request, it might be just 10%, it might be a bit
less than that. Sometimes these articles
take weeks to publish, so there was a huge
lag and this is why being consistent
over time pays off. You have to keep
going and you have to know the results that
will come in the future. Everything so far, we'll
have meant you're set up perfectly for
inbound inquiries. And you've started
to respond to heroes and you've started to
secure coverage there. I very much see hero as a
way to get you started. So once you've been
covered in a few places, once you've become found in
searches, ideally inquiry. Start finding you when your inbox is filling
up with requests. You can get away
with responding to fewer heroes and you can
just use it as a top-up. Once you become known as the expert for your
particular niche, you might find that other
people recommend you to journalists when they see the journal request
hashtag on Twitter. And that's when it
becomes really powerful. Because then you've always
got this publicity team around you that is helping
your efforts go further.
6. The 4 pitfalls to avoid: In this lesson, you will learn the four pitfalls to avoid
when responding to requests. I thought it was really
important to include this topic because I've been on the
other side of Harry requests. I've received them,
absolutely terrible ones. I've sent out how
a request before as a writer looking
for responses from experts in specific fields to include in my
Forbes articles. And I've received a real
mixed bag of responses. So each time I've received anywhere between 5400 responses, the ones that stand out
in a really good way, and those that have been
included in my articles, the ones that have fallen into these pitfalls that I'm about to tell you about have
normally been deleted. So this is the top four
mistakes that people make when submitting
high-rate responses. Firstly, they don't
follow instructions. So the request has asked for a 100 words and they sent 500. Or maybe the request
has asked for a personal story and the response has sent
General commentary. Or maybe the request
asked for respondents to include a link to a head shot and they
didn't include one. Journalists using heroin want you to make their life easy. And many might not even
bother following people up. If they haven't provided
the right information, they'll pretty much just
delete and move on. Secondly, the
responses I received that fell into the
pitfalls didn't proofread. So sending through and answer
that is filled with typos. We'll just get a hard
pass from the journalist. It is always worth
proofreading your submission. Just think, could
this be literally copied and pasted into an
article and published? If not, they'll
probably just move on rather than
editing your work. Next, respondents
sometimes provide a bio and then they ask
the journalist to email back for more information. Oh, they have to set up a call or they provide
half or response. What you submit to hero
should be your best and final interpretation of
your answer to the hero. It shouldn't be a
response to start a conversation or
to setup a call. You want to include the
response that can stand the very best chance of being
included in that piece. And finally, your response
has to add value. The worst Howard responses
I've seen aren't crafted like inclusions
for articles. They crafted like short
responses to questions. So almost like a one word answer that a moody
teenager might give. For example, I set out a hero query that
asked the question, where are you mainly motivated by inspiration or desperation? Please provide one story under 200 words for potential
inclusion in article for folks. One person responded with a really vague answer about
how their mom inspired them, which was all very lovely. But to a reader, it just
wouldn't have added any value. The best responses dug
a little bit deeper. They talked about how they
were inspired or how they were driven to succeed from a place of inspiration or desperation. The best ones made the absolute
most of the word count. And they wrote stories that in gross me so much
that I just thought, Oh wow, my readers would
absolutely love to read this. If you're going to respond
to these types of requests, you really do need to do it. Well, there's just no point in sending a half formed answer. So you might as well
just not do it at all. These are the top four
pitfalls to avoid. Hopefully you are now far better equipped to
go all in and start sending some amazing
responses that secure you some
amazing coverage.
7. Using your social media : In this lesson, you'll
learn how to use social media to further
establish your credibility. This section is all about
being visible and relevant. It is about ensuring
you become known as an expert in your field and
not leaving it to chance. Getting intentional
about this involves following a process
of commentary. So the first step is to find the thing that
to comment on. There are loads of
ways to do this. One is by setting
up Google alerts. Google Alerts is a
system that sends you emails whenever certain topics
are mentioned in the news. And it is absolutely
invaluable to the process of securing
expert media coverage. Use Google Alerts to set up alerts for phrases
related to your industry. When you've done this, you're
going to start to receive emails with the
article links in them. Once the results stop
being emailed to you, you can see how relevant they
are and you can always head back to Google Alerts to
refine your search from there. So let's imagine
someone setting up as a workplace culture expert. So they might set up alerts
for workplace culture, remote working,
workplace happiness, and all these other terms. And then they can sit back
and they can let them arrive into their inbox and then they can decide what
to do with them, which we're going to
discuss in a minute. As well as the Google Alerts. You could also subscribe to specific news sites so that
you have their stories first. Or you could bookmark them in your web browser and you can set reminders for
you to check them. You could follow these
posts on Twitter wherever you find
your inspiration isn't really important, but what is important
is that you find it. I want you to have this
constant stream of relevant updates ready
for you to comment on. So now I'll take these
updates from your inbox, from your bookmarks and from your social media and put
your own spin on them. So what do you think
about what's just happened or what do you think about what's being discussed? What haven't they said, what would you ask next? Pose out these comments on
your Twitter or your LinkedIn, or even on your blog. If you have one, you
could refer back to the original article or
news source by linking it, but it's better to
summarize it in one sentence by before
you add your comment. For example, for a home
decorating expert, news just in that 375 C is the
Pantone color of the year. And then maybe they might add, so it's a perfect color for accessories and
soft furnishings, but avoid painting your
walls in that color. So that's just a
made-up example. But the point is that
you're taking the news, you're putting your
own spin on it, and you're linking yourself to that entire topic just
by talking about it. Your comment should demonstrate your expertise and it should add something of
interest to readers. But I'm really confident that that's gonna be the easy part. You'll probably find yourself
having some news within your industry and having an
automatic reaction to it. The difficult part
and the part that takes a bit of work is turning that into a comment to run alongside it and
to post that out. Include your own spin
on a new story using your social media at
least twice a week, more often if you can do it, do it at least once
a week without fail. I guarantee that you
can find two things per week in your field to put
your spin on and post out. It is totally doable. It's the consistency of your message that
taps away at the subconscious of
your followers and anyone looking for
experts in your field. Really important to
note that this approach is stay positive. There's no point adding
criticism or negativity. Just keep it positive. If you don't have
anything nice to say, either don't comment
on it or choose your words so that they
focus on the opportunity. Secondly, stay within
your swim lane. If it's going to work,
your time and attention, it has to be relevant to the picture that you're
trying to paint of yourself. So it has to be relevant to
your field of expertise. Don't feel like you
need to comment on everything that's
going on in the media. The Internet does not need
more uninformed commentary. So save yourself for when it's completely within your
field of expertise. And finally, keep it going. Don't give up after a few weeks. This process requires
a consistent approach, so make it a part
of your routine. If twice a week is
too much aim for one, but just make sure
that you keep it up. If you're super busy,
but you have a team, but maybe you could get help
with finding the stories. So you can ask someone to send you a story
every other day. And it's your job to to add your informed and thought provoking
comment and send it off. Maybe if you don't
have a team set up your Google Alerts and subscribe
to relevant news sites. And then you could do the same and read it or you could do the same on anywhere else that's
current in your field. The goal is that
you become known as someone who knows
about this stuff. And then that leads to cementing your image as an
expert in your field. And it leads to people
seeking out and finding you for commentary
on their articles.
8. Finding the perfect journalists and writers: In this lesson, you
will learn how to find journalists and writers
for your topic. So much of this process is
about building relationships. Jealous, I just real
people doing real jobs, trying to make their own
lives as easy as possible. The more that you can make their lives as
easy as possible, the more coverage
you will secure, the more you build yourself a reputation of being
easy to work with professional in your
approach and able to write amazing soundbites that they can include
in their pieces. The more they're going
to return to you for commentary again and
again and again. It really is that simple. One thing I'm not going
to talk about is writing press releases about your company news and
sending them off. I don't think that's useful. I think it's really rare that
you find someone who wants to specifically write
about your company. I mean, you can get lucky and someone's going to be interested because your business
is so amazing. But I think it's far more common that someone wants
to write about something topical or relevant
that you can then comment on and mention
your business within it. So you still got mentioned, but the piece is
far more likely to gain traction and be read. It's super easy to find a
journalist e-mail address. They often add them
to their Twitter bio. They add them to their
publications website, or even just a quick
google will tell you. But having that e-mail
address does not guarantee that they'll want
your words in that article. They'll probably
receive hundreds, if not thousands, of
approaches every single week. So you need to be relevant to them and you need to stand out. And that's what this
section is all about. This lesson, we'll start
to build your database. Have already
established journalist and publications in your niche. So I'm going to go through
three ways of finding them. And then I'm going
to talk about how to become known to
them and how to be included on their list of
experts that they reach out to. Many publications and
news outlets have their own databases
of featured experts. Reporters use this to look up
a specific phrase and then find an expert who can provide a comment on something that
they're writing about. You want to get on these lists. Once you're on the
list, it can snowball. Once you're known by
reporters as being media friendly and
easy to work with. They recommend you to their
colleagues and all of these compounds and
it helps secure you a lot of coverage. So the first way to
find journalists who write about your area of expertise is to use those Google alerts that
you already set up. From the last lesson on
finding news to comment on. You've already
signed up to receive Google alerts when
your niche area is mentioned in the news. But this has a second benefit. Those same Google alerts are going to draw
your attention to the reporters and
the publications that you need to start
becoming known by, include your own personal
specialist area and other close variations of it in the alerts that
you're signing up to. And don't forget to use speech marks around
phrases as well. The key information from the
alerts that you receive is the publication
name and the name of the journalist who
wrote the article. If you can go through
the website to find a contact e-mail address or
a contact form, then great. If you can find the Twitter
handle and the email address of the journalists
themselves even better. So make a note of these in a fresh spreadsheet
and we're going to talk about what to do
with these very shortly. Apart from Google Alerts, you can search the
news sites themselves. Open up your countries made
national news sources. So BBC News or CNBC, et cetera. And carry out a search within the site for your
area of expertise. Next, open up new sites for your industry and find
their list of writers. Most websites display
their writers somewhere. And if not, you can click on
individual stories and find the writers details at the
very top or the very bottom. When you find these names of journalists and their
contact details, go ahead and add
them to your list, which should by now be
building really nicely. The final places
that is Twitter. However, you don't just
want to search tweets. I want to search bios. You can head to twist it up com, you can login and
then you can type your specialist area
into the search bar. And you can click
on people to show which accounts have
that term in their bio. Or my favorite third-party tool for doing this is
called Followerwonk. And it's their bio search. Follow a walk.com
forward slash bio. Either one of these ways
will pull up a list of people with your
phrase in their bio. So you can scroll
through and you can check out the ones
that look relevant. So from here, you
can follow them on Twitter, you can Google them, and you can probably
find their email address to add to the spreadsheet that you're already
putting together. Advanced tip for your
Twitter searches. If you find someone
who looks like you're perfect journalist
who writes about topics really relevant
to your expert field. Make a note of their
Twitter handle and put it in the
following URL format. Twitter.com, forward
slash their username, forward slash, forward
slash memberships. So this is going
to bring up all of the Twitter lists that
they've been included in. Chances are they
are going to be in lists with people who do
very similar work to them. So it's a bit of a shortcut for finding lots of
relevant journalists, but I really
recommend trying it. After using these three ways of finding relevant people
through Google Alerts, Through searching news sites, and using Twitter, you should have started to
populate your spreadsheet with loads of
journalists and loads of publications who write about the topics that you know about. The next step is
becoming known by them.
9. How to approach journalists and writers: In this lesson, you
will learn how to approach journalists
and writers. This section is to
talk you through the exact process to follow, to reach out to these people. And what you should say. Remember, these
are likely people who are approached all the time. Your response needs to
clearly and succinctly explain who you are and how
you can be a value to them. So for this exercise, I recommend writing the email that you're going
to send and saving it as another template email like we did with the
high-rate responses. This is going to make
it super easy for you to message new reporters
that you find. The message you
write should first answer the question that
the journalists will have. Who are you? Why are you getting in touch? Followed by, what
can you do for me? Here's how I recommend
composing your email. Hello, journalist's name. We haven't met,
but I'm your name and I'm a specialist in
your area of expertise. I've seen you write
articles about topic and I'd love to be considered for inclusion in any future pieces. I could contribute comments or opinions about specific topics. 123, I'm media friendly
and happy to help. Feel free to add me to your list of sources
in this field. My e-mail address
is email address, and I'll happy, happily provide comment that will help
your future pieces. Best wishes, your name. The email that you write,
it doesn't have to be word for word
the same as mine. You can edit it so it
sounds like your voice. The most important thing is that you're telling this
person how you can be of service
to them and you're making it easy for
them to get in touch. Remember, you're not asking
them for a favor here, you're doing them a favor. Other pointers for
your approach. Firstly, include the
top three topics that you know about and
make them specific. So the education lawyer that I mentioned earlier could
specifically say, I'm an expert in the field of exclusion appeals
school complaints and taking action against independent schools,
for example. Rather than just saying, I'm an education lawyer and
I know about education law. She's gotten narrower. Being as specific as
you can is going to help these journalists when
they're looking for you. Plus when they're searching
their email for your niche, your message to them
is going to appear. Another option is to lead
with your credibility. So if you have a
hard hitting and a very impressive credential
to your name, include that. Maybe you've won an award or your best-selling
author or one of your customers is someone
that they'll know of. Maybe you've maybe
you've been on TV or maybe you've been featured
on mom's net or whatever. Don't throw them loads of facts, but pick the best
one to lead with. If this suits your approach. You could also lead with
the size of your audience, which signals to them how much more traction their piece could
gain if you're in it. So remember, journalists
have targets for views and they have targets
for shares of their work. So they're going to
want to hit them. When you're opening
your email with a credibility statement
or an audience mentioned, it has to be done
in the right way. So read it back. Does it sound arrogant or does it sound assertive and helpful? I mean, early you can decide
what sounds right to you, but securing bold opportunities requires taking bold action. So here's where to
put your mouth. Most confident self forward. At this stage, if
you are feeling any nerves about approaching
people in this way, please don't say for everything I've talked
about in this class, it's really important
that you get comfortable with
putting yourself out there as a reputable and knowledgeable
specialists in your field. It's gonna be great. If you're feeling nervous about
hitting that send button, just think, what's the
worst that can happen? Because the worst that can happen is that they
don't respond. And if so, who cares? At least you gave
it your best shot. You might happen to hit someone's inbox at
exactly the right time, just as they're
writing a piece that your expertise would
be perfect for. The process outlined
involves you going through that database that
you've compiled from your research in
the last lesson. Then sending an individual
e-mail to each person on it using the template
Message compiled. Make your email outreach is
personal and individual. Definitely don't send
them as group emails. Make a note of the date
that you approach them. One, make a note of
when you follow-up. Ninety-nine percent of
people do not follow up. The purpose of a follow-up
isn't a chase or bombards. And one is to gently let
them know that you are available and you are ready
to help with their story. So leave it a week
and then follow up and send another
email, maybe buy them. There have been a few
more stories out, or maybe they've, they've written a few more
articles that you read. And you could say that you're available to comment
on such topics. Topics. Don't just
follow up with a boring. Did you get my e-mail message? Use the follow-up to add
value and do this in every single Philip
that you send after the first to
do them less often, but definitely still do them. When you are sending
out these messages, keep a note of how many
you've sent and then keep track of how many
responses you receive. Make a note to revisit this
exercise every few months for new journalists and new writers
who pop up in your field. Keep your database building, keep your messages going out. It's these tiny, consistent
actions that build up to big opportunities
and huge results.
10. Keeping the cycle going: In this lesson, you will learn how to keep this cycle going. So far, you will have defined your expert title
and you will have setup your expert page for it to begin being shown
in Google searches. You'll have made it
really clear that you are media friendly and you'll have made
it really easy for someone to get in touch
to a contact form. You will have setup
your hero and journey request accounts and you'll have your response template's saved. You will have compiled a database or
relevant reporters in your field and
you'll have reached out to them to be
included in the list. You have a plan to
make it happen as well as all the confidence
you need to go for it. By now, you have everything. You need to turn this
into an amazing success. One that means in
a few years time, you will look back
and you will thank your former self for laying
the groundwork when they did. It's gonna be amazing, but the work to
get there happens. Now. This entire process is
so front end loaded. So after the setup, It's all about maintenance, responding to heroes, messaging journalist coming
up with ideas for stories, or just keeping in touch, which turns into coverage, which turns into becoming known as an expert
in your field, which results in the
inbound inquiries that we're looking
to secure you. We're looking to set up this
system to keep it going, but then build it up
in such a way that the opportunities come to you. One caveat is that
we don't know how long it'll take for those
inquiries to become inbound. What we do know, however, is that we can speed this up by keeping this cycle
of coverage going, by keeping a really
good weekly structure, which we're going to
come onto later by continually assessing where you are and if the level
of requests you're getting is where
you want it to be. Things I want you to do each time you're
featured somewhere is take the link and bookmark it in a folder
on your browser. Call this press coverage. Make sure you save
them all there. Next, find a great logo for that publication and
download it to a folder. And then when you have
your first three or four, add them onto your site. So use the title of
selected media inclusions and add a bullet
point underneath describing what
the coverage was. Commenting on horse well-being, race courses for horse
and found online or discussing strangers
safety for moms. Now you get the idea. So describe your
coverage and then add a link to it and
make sure the link opens in a new tab so that people don't leave your
site if they click on it and then take the logos that you've created
and either add them to your expert page
or add them to your homepage under
the title as seen in, someone might not read
everything on your page. But if they've seen
recognizable logos, it adds to your
credibility immediately. What you can also do is, let's say you've written about some topical issue
for a journalist. Contact your other journalists who write about
similar things and ask if that topic is something that they're
going to be writing about. So say that you would be
happy to add a comment. Remember, journalists
and writers are looking for topics
to write about. It is their profession. They take pride in their work being newsworthy and a
value to that audience. Use Every single piece secured
as a way to secure more. So take the individual
soundbites that you contributed and use them as tweets and maybe put a link
to the coverage underneath. Every single piece of
coverage that you secure can be a new example on
your expert page. It can be a new logo
on your homepage. It could be four or five pieces
of social media content. As long as you frame
it in such a way that it's interesting
to others and it adds value rather than you just telling people
where you are featured. If you've got a good size
network of your own, you could use the
coverage, use a cure, or even the topics that
you talk about to run an ask me anything or
an AMA on that area. So let's say you are a property expert and you
have been asked to comment on trends in people turning
their garages into offices and how this will
affect house prices. So you could take that
topic as a whole, or you could break it down into garage conversions
or home offices or house prices in general. You could run an ask
me anything about it. So then the people
in your network can get their questions answered. Remember, you are the
expert on this stuff. If you're lucky enough for
your area of expertise to be topical,
capitalize on that. You should also set
up Google alerts for your own name and your
own company name. And this is so that you
know when you've been featured because you
get an e-mail through, I recommend following up
the people you reached out to or get in the habit of asking for timescales
right at the start. So ask journalists when
their deadline is, because this normally
gives you an idea of when their piece
is looking to run. One reason that you want to
follow a pure journalists is because if your comments aren't used or that piece doesn't run, you want to use
those comments for your own social media posts. So if you've sent off
an amazing response to a journalist by a hero and
they don't include you. Don't waste the answer. Re-purpose like crazy,
so that you are present and say that you are firmly established as an
authority on your topic. If you wrote a lot, you can even add a
blog to your site with the exact writing that
you sent to the reporter. Over time. You might have loads of links and you
might want to create a separate page that's just
called press on your site. Even ahead of that, you could create a
page called media. And here's where you can
store your head shots and your logos and anything else that journalists
often ask for. Some heroes asked for
a square headshot and some journalists want
a landscape head shot or a portrait headshot, or a square company
logo and so on. If you can make a media page, It's almost like your media
kit so that reporters can download what they need
from that page and you can include it in
your responses. So making new page,
call it media. Then write a friendly
paragraph at the top and then add your
logos and images with a description of
which what each one is and the size in
pixels above each one. The purpose of this step
is to reduce admin. I don't want you to be
searching around in your files every single time of journalists
ask something. I want you to just be able to include the link in your emails. Overall, the more
friction you can reduce, the less time-consuming
this process is. The biggest challenge to keep this cycle going
is the amount of time it can take if you don't have these
shortcuts in place, this system that we've put all this effort into setting up. This is how to maintain it
by keeping the cycle going. This is how to use every
piece of coverage. Use secure as a way
to generate more in a way that will build
up and keep building up. The more you get featured,
the more you can talk about, the more your audience builds, and the more you can add
links and logos to your site, which builds your
credibility even more for future journalists
and clients.
11. How to write responses that secure coverage: In this lesson, you
will learn how to write responses that
secure coverage. There are some things
in your control. There are some things
out of your control. In your control is the response
you send to a journalist. How good it is and how
quickly you send it, how will it proofreads, and how good an answer it is, the things out of your control. How many other responses
that journalists receives, and if your answer is exactly
what they're looking for. Even though there was a
lot out of your control, there are still things that
you can make sure I spot on to stand the best chance of your contribution being used. So I'm gonna go through these
and then I'll move on to applying this when
you're coming up with topic ideas from scratch. Your biggest clue to what a journalist is looking
for is in fact, questions. Chances are, they
will have asked questions in a certain way to lead you down a certain path. Another clue is from the style of the publication
that they're writing for and even articles that they have written for
that publication before. So the first check
and our checklist is simply how I answered
the question. If they're looking for
advice to readers, how I provided that, if they wanted short tips, is that what I've
done and so on? Secondly, have I addressed
the question topics? Have I come back to the
question topics for each question without
going off on a tangent. At this stage, if you're
really not sure what the journalist once
asked them, say, say, is there a particular angle
that you prefer I take, or is there a specific topic
that's most important here? Next is make a strong point. So back in the first lesson, we defined your brand and
we defined your voice. Make sure you use it. Think deeply about the topic and then give a
considered answer that fits with the voice
you want to portray and make sure it's interesting
for someone to read. So imagine that you were
a novice in your topic. Would you find what you've
written interesting? Does it inspire us
and went into action? Or does it give them
a really cool tip? Or maybe it gives
them a piece of information that they might
not have already known. Or even does it just offer a new way of thinking
about something? Make sure every point you
submit is really strong. Next, make sure you edit. Edit your peace way down for waffle or for unnecessary words. If you've used two
similar words to describe something,
chop point out, if you've added alignment,
doesn't add value, or it doesn't progress
your point, chop it out. Always go back over what
you've written and see if you can say what you've
said in a more concise way. Also, edit for typos. Journalists don't want
to proofread your work. Don't use double-space is
before a new sentence. Don't put in double
exclamation marks or unnecessary ellipses. You have to write it in such
a way that someone could copy and paste your
words into that article, right, in an authoritative way. Remember that you
are the expert here. You have to be sure
of what you're saying rather than looking for
someone else to validate it. Be fluffy about the future. Lots of editors
really hate this. Phrase is like time will tell or we will see
what happens next. I just keep them out
of your responses. If you have got an
informed prediction about what might happen next, make it, if not, don't make one at all, and just stick to
talking about what has happened and what
it means right now. Next, make sure you
fit their deadline. So there's a phrase,
speed stuns, and it really does. If you can answer
straight away, do that. If you're super busy and they haven't given a
specific deadline, ask them find out the deadline and make
sure you stick to it, but also leave enough
time for them to be able to come back to you
with follow-up questions. Then finally, on the
actual response, follow the format
they have asked for. Stick to the word count. Include a bio if
they've asked for one, include a headshot link. If they asked for one. Beat, really easy to work with and make yourself
stand out a mile. Other things that help
finding the journalists on social media I'm following
or connecting with them, being super friendly
in your responses. So saying that you think
the topic is great, saying that you're excited
to be writing about it. Saying thanks for
thinking of me. Whatever can humanize your email and let the person
you're writing to know that you are a friendly human being
will help you connect. And when you've actually
sent your response, schedule a follow-up to check that it was exactly what
they were looking for. That is your
comprehensive checklist for ensuring that your
contribution is actually used to follow whenever
you respond to a hero or whenever you submit
an idea to a journalist.
12. Your success plan: In this lesson, we'll create
your weekly success plan. I'm going to split your
weekly success plan down into exactly what you should
be doing and how often. This is all based on
you having your expert Page Setup and having compiled your initial
database of journalists. Sharing new coverage. Whenever you mentioned in
any article on a news site, use that as social
media content itself. Twitter and LinkedIn are the best places for
these types of posts. Share a link to
the article, tag, the publication in
your tweet or post and pull out some quotes
from what you said. If you wrote a load of stuff
that the journalists didn't include that out and see if
any of it makes sense to add. The main point of the
post is that you say commenting on X topic for why
publication near the top. And then go ahead and add additional text as
well as the link. The goal first and
foremost here is that it's interesting for
your audience to read. The second goal is
they get to know you as being an expert
on those topics. Social media commentary,
read Google Alerts and form opinions on
current news stories on topics in your industry. If you can do this two or three times a week because
that is perfect. Maybe it's a Monday
morning bit of research and then you're scheduling app commentary throughout the week. Use the guidance in
the last section to add your own unique
voice to whatever is happening or whatever it is remarkable in your
field of expertise. I guarantee you there will
be something to talk about. You want to become known as the person who knows
about that stuff. If there are popular hashtags
for news and your industry, use them too so that your tweets are included
in these conversations. Predictions. Even better than commentary is that you think and form
your own predictions. Start with what is going on
in your industry right now. See if you can
predict the future and think about what
this might mean. For example, there are
always advancements in technology and in human
patterns of working and living. What will be the knock-on
effect to your industry? Which websites do
you predict growing? What trends in human
behavior do you see and what's going
to happen next? You can be one step ahead
of the actual news, then you're more likely to make the news get making
predictions and sharing them out
there one pitch and per week would be
absolutely brilliant. Social media content if you've
been included in a piece in the past and that topic is suddenly become
relevant again, dig it out and post
a new slant on it. Firstly, approach the original journalists
that you spoke to, suggest that they write
a follow-up piece. Now this new thing has happened. Secondly, send it out over
your Twitter and your LinkedIn and accompanying it with
commentary on what has changed. So you could phrase it. Last year I talked about X
topic and why publication. Amazing to see that
prediction came true. Or things are different now that something else or since
then this has happened. The point of this is that you're reminding your network
that you're there and that you are using your former self as your source for
current posts. Respond to heroes each week, however you systemized it, check your hero
and your journey, request emails to see if there are any that are
relevant to you. Some heroes have
short deadlines. If you can check
three times a week, that would be perfect
and respond straight away so that you are one of the first responses
that journalists sees. The Herero emails are long, so I recommend first skipping straight to the
section most relevant to you, which might be the
business section or the health
section, for example. Then take a skim
through that and then use Control
F or Command F as a keyboard shortcut
to search for specific words and to search
for your field of expertise. Sometimes, especially if
your industry crosses over a few relevant request might appear in
different categories. So check the deadline and get responding systemized the higher responses so that you're doing them every single week and
use the email signature that we made to send responses
off in an efficient way. Next, keep approaching
journalists. By now, you'll have built your own personal database and you'll probably
be on good terms with a few journalists aimed
to add five new ones to list every single week with the hello message that
we discussed earlier. Then aim to reach out
to someone your list about specific stories
or specific topics. So your goal here is to become
a really useful source, one that they look
forward to hearing from because they know that you
will have a good idea. And this is the stuff
that snowballs. Alongside keeping
in touch via email, keep in touch via social
media. Like their tweets. Respond to what they say and
generally engage with them. You want to become really
familiar with them so that you are a first person they think of when
they need a source. So that your approaches to them and more likely
to be considered. From a more administrative side. Keep your database updated. Add notes on who you spoke to, the responses that you
send and follow up. Follow up people who
asked you for quotes, find out when the
coverage will be out. Keep an eye on
your Google Alerts to find out where you've been featured and add those links
onto your expert page. And then feel
expert page itself. Look at it every month. So look at it from the eyes
of a journalist and think, would I approach me, proofread the copy, make it
as compelling as possible. Add your new links onto the page and then
add the logos for those amazing places
that you've been featured to keep the
credibility markers flowing. Then finally, revisit
the approaches folder that you made in your email and
follow up those two. It is these regular
and consistent actions that will lead to
consistent results. So I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to make your
schedule and stick to it.
13. Over to you: Congratulations, we have very nearly completed this class. We have covered a lot. So I hope you are ready
and raring to get putting everything into practice and
securing awesome coverage. Before I leave you to it, I want to answer to
frequently asked questions. The first is, which parts
of this can I outsource? My answer is that, well, everything included in this
class involves a process. Many of the processes themselves,
it could be outsourced. So while I would always recommend writing
your own responses, it could be someone
else's job to read through the Herero emails and let you know which
to respond to. Doing the research and compiling the database
could also be outsourced. As long as you give
really clear instructions on the types of people you're
looking to reach out to. It should be
straightforward for someone who isn't you to put
this together for you. It could even be something you
list on a freelancer, say, the code outreaches to journalists could
also be outsourced, But they should come via you and your e-mail address rather than somewhat on behalf of you. Finally, are there any
pitfalls to be aware of? So I have a personal policy not to give responses
via telephone call. I think it's too easy for
them to be misconstrued. So I'd always rather
write a response, especially if it's
going to be read. Sometimes journalists want
to get you on the phone, but I always ask them to send
me the questions instead. If they really do insist
on interviewing you over the phone for an article
that will be printed, asked to see a proof
copy first to make sure that nothing is being written differently to what you meant. Big fangs and that is
it from me for now, use the accompanying
workbook to get prepared and to
start taking action. You could also upload your
project to this class. So revisit any of the
lessons as much as you like. I wish you every success
for your onward journey. And I look forward to
seeing the results.
Jodie Cook, Entrepreneur, writer, athlete.
