October 10, 2024 • 20 mins
Can digital PR platforms truly transform your business? Tune in to uncover how the evolution of these platforms, starting with Peter Shankman's pioneering HARO, has reshaped the landscape for design professionals seeking press coverage. You'll gain insights into Shankman's latest venture, Source of Sources (SOS), which aims to rekindle HARO's original accessibility. As we navigate this transformative PR terrain, we also address the pivotal role of AI, cautioning against over-reliance on shortcuts that promise effortless media placements without the requisite effort.
Join us as we explore the nuances of leveraging platforms like Quoted, Connectively, and a nod to Harrow's evolution. Discover how Quoted's approval-based system, though intricate and costly, offers rich insights for crafting effective pitches. Learn about Connectively's AI-driven approach to matching journalists and sources, and the emphasis on creating original content to maintain credibility. With actionable steps to simplify your marketing and boost business growth, we also invite you to enhance your strategies through our Designer Discussions Academy membership. Stay with us for practical tools and insights tailored to elevate your design business.
If you would like to get the links and show notes for this episode, click on the link below:
The links mentioned in the episode
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Designer Discussions is a partnership of three experts: Jason Lockhart, CEO of KABMS; Maria Martin, founder of DesignAppy; and Mirjam Lippuner, founder of Get Ink DIY
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jason Lockhart (00:00):
Hello and welcome to Designer Discussions
with Jason, miriam and Maria.
Today we are talking about theevolution of digital PR
platforms.
Maria Martin (00:11):
Welcome to the Designer Discussions podcast
with.
Jason Miriam and Maria, wherewe talk about marketing, pr and
business advice for designprofessionals business advice
for design professionals.
Mirjam Lippuner (00:30):
Hey everybody, it's Miriam, and today I am
going to walk you through alittle bit of the history of
what has happened with platformswe can actually use in PR, and
we'll talk about how they'vedeveloped and how we can utilize
them for our businesses today.
So obviously I have been forthose who don't know me, I have
been doing PR for I don't knowtwo to three decades, with all
(00:56):
different kinds of systems andprocesses and platforms that
have been involved, and it'sreally astonishing to think
where we started out 25 yearsago and where we are today, and
so much opportunity is availablenow for anybody who wants to
take advantage of it that wedidn't have five or 10 years ago
(01:19):
.
So let's talk a little bitabout that.
We have a few episodes where Italk about getting quick press,
and in the past we mainlyreferred to a platform that I'm
going to talk about brieflytoday that really are a good
(01:48):
option for you to take a look atif you are interested in
getting PR placements that canreally help you and your brand
stand out and differentiateyourself from your competition.
It's important for PRprofessionals also, and for
business owners, to understandall the changes that have
(02:09):
happened recently.
Let's go back a little bit andsee where this all started out,
since we're talking aboutdigital platforms, which are
obviously the newest ones of thebunch.
But there is a gentleman calledPeter Shankman and he's an icon
in the PR industry.
He was the founder of Harrow,helped a reporter out in 2008.
(02:33):
And he realized that there wasa gap between journalists and
sources.
So think about journalistsalways working on stories and
they're often looking for peopleto get background information
or direct quotes expert quotesfrom for their articles.
And there was really nobody whowas facilitating that
(02:57):
connection.
So he founded HARO, and itreally was just a series of
emails that he sent out everyday, where journalists submitted
their questions to him, saidhey, I'm writing an article
about white kitchens greatestwhite colors and designs and
(03:24):
images for my article and so hewould put that in his email and
then you or anybody else whoreads it and is an expert in the
area and has the informationhe's looking for, could send it
to that source.
So he really bridged the gapbetween journalists and sources
by providing real-timeopportunities.
(03:45):
You know we're talking.
These things are happening fast, within like a day or two or
three.
So that truly was revolutionary, and this was in 2008, and it
became super successful.
I remember hearing about it Idon't know, it was probably
around 2010-ish.
I was working for a big brandand we didn't need those types
(04:11):
of opportunities, I would say.
But I became aware of it and Ithought it was really
interesting and by that time andin the coming years, the
platform grew into hundreds ofthousands of subscribers.
I mean, it was hugely popular.
I'm sure everybody who workedin PR professionally was aware
of it, and then a lot ofentrepreneurs and small
(04:34):
businesses started to take aninterest too, because it was
really the only platform thatwas sort of democratic and open
access that they could use andthat didn't cost a lot of money,
like a lot of otherprofessional PR tools and
softwares do.
It actually became sosuccessful that Peter Shankman
(04:59):
ended up selling it to a companycalled Vocus, which is one of
the big players in the PRsoftware industry.
Then they ended up selling itto Cision, which is the biggest
player in the PR softwareindustry, and they currently own
it and they've rebranded itinto what is now called
(05:21):
Connectively and we will talk alittle bit more about that.
But so there's been a lot ofgrowth and a lot of change in
this area, and people havereally it's become widely known
and widely popular to use theseplatforms, which is why we talk
(05:41):
about it on our podcast and inour training programs a lot,
because this is the easiest way,the easiest and the quickest
way for you to get pressplacements that you can use for
your marketing and your business.
So let's talk about theplatforms that are available now
.
There are really threeplatforms that I'm going to
(06:04):
touch on.
There's a lot of other ones outthere that are available, and
AI has just accelerated thegrowth in that space, and some
of them will promise you crazythings that basically they're
going to pitch on your behalfand they're going to write
everything and you don't have todo anything and the media
placements are just going totrickle in.
And that's all not true,because in the end, to generate
(06:30):
real PR placements, you're stillgoing to have to invest a
little bit of time and a littlebit of effort on a continuous
basis to make it happen.
And if you are willing to dothat, here are the three
platforms I think you shouldtake a look at, since we just
talked about Harrow, which wentaway, but Peter Shankman, after
(06:55):
a lot of tumultuous developmentswith the other platforms in the
space.
Now people basically peopleencouraged almost forced him to
create Haro all over again, andnow it's not called Haro, it's
called Source of Sources and theabbreviation is SOS, and it
(07:27):
follows the exact same system itdid in the past.
The beauty of it is it's free.
It's always going to be free.
It comes directly into yourinbox in the form of emails, in
the form of emails.
The downside of it is youactually have to open up all
these emails and you have toread all the emails and find the
(07:49):
queries, so the inquiries thatpertain to you, which that, of
course, can be a little bittedious, but in the long term,
it's going to be worth it.
I will say that SOS right nowdoes not have the number of
queries that Haro used to have.
(08:09):
It's still in the process ofbeing built up, but I am very
closely watching that and Ithink it definitely has a chance
of getting close to where itused to be, because just people
trust the founder, people trustthe process, they're familiar
with it and I definitely expectit to be around for a long time.
(08:34):
So check out SOS.
We will link to the differentwebsites where you can sign up
for these platforms in thecomments of the show notes also.
So that's the first one.
Then there's two other ones.
The best one in air quotes, I'dsay, is quoted, which is a next
(09:01):
generation platforms.
That really it offers a morecurated and approval-based
system.
So you can't just sign up, butyou have to sign up and the
quoted people will grant youaccess.
They're very stringent in howthey manage the platform so you
have to adhere to quite a lot ofrules if you want to get access
(09:26):
and keep access to it, or youcould get banned, like I did,
but that's a whole other longstory for another day.
Quoted really, the beauty of itis that it um it allows you to
do everything within theplatform.
(09:46):
Um it.
It has pitches that you can gosearch for by a keywords, um,
and you can set them up and youwill actually get emails into
your inbox when um, a query goes, query goes, live.
That is within your industry.
So that is really great becauseyou don't have to proactively
go in there and look for it.
It also allows you to track theentire pitching process on the
(10:12):
website.
So if you go in, you'll have tosubmit your pitch.
On the website, you can see ifthe journalist actually read
your submission or not and if heor she responds to you.
This will also come straightthrough the website and in an
email.
(10:32):
So it's really what you wouldexpect from a software platform
today.
It's easy to manage and it'squite effective, and there are a
lot of good queries in there.
Actually, from a qualitystandpoint.
The downside to it is that youonly get two free queries per
(10:55):
month.
Otherwise, you have to pay $99,which, for most people, is
probably not going to be worthit.
The other downside of it isit's a little bit more involved
when it comes to setting up yourprofile.
But it's definitely doable andeven if you only have two
queries a day, I'd say use it,because it is paid and a little
(11:20):
bit more involved.
There's a lot fewer people onit that submit to the queries,
so your chances of gettingpicked up are a lot greater.
So definitely check out Quoted.
Then there is Connectively,which is what Harrow evolved
into.
So all the Harrow queries theystill call them that actually,
(11:41):
but they feed into theConnectively platform.
It is AI-powered in how itmatches the connections, the
sources, with the journalists.
Not quite sure what that meansit's still not quite as
sophisticated as quoted, but youalso have the possibility to go
(12:04):
in and search via keywords,which helps you narrow down the
opportunities that are right foryou.
The burden, however, is on you,so you have to actually go on
the website and look for thequeries.
They will not send you emailsunless you sign up for a paid
(12:24):
version, which I honestly justdon't think it's worth it,
unless you're super serious andfully want to focus on PR or
you're a PR professional.
But you do have 10 freesubmissions per month, which is
pretty good, and if you thinkabout 10 submissions, that's
more than two to three a week.
(12:46):
It's probably about what youcan reasonably manage if you
have a full-time job that you'rehandling and you just are doing
this PR thing on the side.
So I would say definitely checkout those three platforms.
That's where it's at today.
(13:07):
There's a lot more out there,but I would say let's leave
those on the side because mostof them, in my personal
experience, are not worth it, aswe can see from these examples.
You know there's been so muchchange, and there really has
been.
The rise of digital PRplatforms is real.
(13:29):
There's PR used to be very muchone-on-one either phone or
email pitches, and digital, andAI, in particular, have changed
that quite a bit.
So it's really what theseplatforms prioritize is speed
(13:51):
and accuracy, and they're stillpersonalized, though, because
the pitch still comes from you,and we'll talk about this a
little bit more when I'm goingto give you advice on how to use
AI and how not to use AI whenit comes to these opportunities.
But data has become soimportant in everybody's
(14:14):
business, especially.
Jason talks a lot aboutanalytics on the digital
marketing side, but it's just asimportant on the PR side, and
when you put in the effort,being able to track it with
digital placements that are easyto find and possibly have
backlinks that can really boostyour SEO, all that is super,
(14:37):
super valuable.
That being said, aboutartificial intelligence and how
to use it in PR and these typesof pitching opportunities, I
personally use chat almost everyday for something you know, but
what I usually use it for is tohelp me brainstorm, to help me
(15:03):
generate ideas, and you candefinitely use it as a writing
help for certain things likesocial media posts or emails.
You know anything that whennobody cares about whether or
not AI helped you write it ornot, but when you submit pitches
(15:29):
to journalists, don't ever usea response that was fully
generated by AI or that is evenrecognizable as being generated
by AI, because the journalistsneed original input.
They need original quotes,because it's not just bad for
(15:52):
them, but they could get introuble with whoever they're
writing the article for if theyuse AI-generated content,
because Google doesn't like that, the media don't like that,
because they want to make suretheir content is different from
everybody else's.
So if you use it, maybe go inand have it.
Give you two or three ideas ofhow you could answer a specific
(16:13):
queries, but then make it yourown.
And what I always say when itcomes to writing these so you
don't have to spend hours doingit, but write it as you would
say it to somebody else, becausemost of the time, the way
you're going to get picked up isin a direct quote.
So using language that youwould actually use when you
(16:35):
speak is the right way to do it.
If you're too long-winded ortoo sophisticated or your
sentence structure is just notnatural, it's not going to make
it into the article.
So use AI for ideas or anoutline and then just write it
as you would speak it and hitsend.
(17:00):
Some other best practices to usethese platforms are um some of
them do require you to set up aprofile.
You have to have, you have tohave a login for all of them.
But um quoted requires you tohave a pretty extensive profile.
And um SOS, it's very short, uh, connectively, you pretty much
(17:22):
just sign up to.
But just make sure that youcomplete what you need to
complete and, if you do quote it, spend a little bit of time to
really make sure the informationis accurate and complete,
because that will increase yourchances of getting responses
from the journalists if they seewho they're actually being
approached by.
(17:43):
The other thing is speed.
It is important to respond asquickly as you can, which means
don't look at the deadline, andthe deadlines are usually
between one and three days.
But so don't focus on thedeadline, but focus on getting
it done as quickly as possibleif you see a query that you like
(18:06):
, because that willsignificantly make it more
likely that you're actuallygoing to get picked up.
Of course, make your pitchespersonal and original, somewhat
unique.
You know, don't send supergeneric responses.
You know, really tailor itspecifically to what the
(18:27):
journalist needs.
And then, of course, when you doall of this, don't forget to
track your results.
If you do it and quote it,it'll track it for you, which is
really kind of nice, but theother platforms don't do that.
So make sure you set up GoogleAlerts or have another process
in place for you to find out ifyou actually were picked up in
(18:52):
any of the articles that youpitched for, because the
journalists are most likely notgoing to tell you when they
include it, so it's up to you tofind the article.
You when they include it, soit's up to you to find the
article.
Those really are my biggest tipson how to leverage the three
(19:16):
most pertinent PR digitalplatforms out there in the
marketplace right now for yourbusiness.
And if this was a lot, I knowit can be.
In our membership program,which is called the Design
Discussions Academy, we talkabout these types of pitches a
lot.
Actually, we just kicked offour new training this month and
(19:39):
if you're interested in learningmore, please reach out to us
and I can definitely help youget over any hurdles or
obstacles that you have in orderto get your press placements
flowing.
Thanks for listening and I hopewe'll see you again in two
weeks here on Design orDiscussions.
Maria Martin (20:00):
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Our Designer DiscussionsAcademy membership with your
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(20:24):
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(20:46):
, visit designerdiscussionscomand follow us on social media.
Hello and welcome to Designer Discussions
with Jason, miriam and Maria.
Today we are talking about theevolution of digital PR
platforms.
Maria Martin (00:11):
Welcome to the Designer Discussions podcast
with.
Jason Miriam and Maria, wherewe talk about marketing, pr and
business advice for designprofessionals business advice
for design professionals.
Mirjam Lippuner (00:30):
Hey everybody, it's Miriam, and today I am
going to walk you through alittle bit of the history of
what has happened with platformswe can actually use in PR, and
we'll talk about how they'vedeveloped and how we can utilize
them for our businesses today.
So obviously I have been forthose who don't know me, I have
been doing PR for I don't knowtwo to three decades, with all
(00:56):
different kinds of systems andprocesses and platforms that
have been involved, and it'sreally astonishing to think
where we started out 25 yearsago and where we are today, and
so much opportunity is availablenow for anybody who wants to
take advantage of it that wedidn't have five or 10 years ago
(01:19):
.
So let's talk a little bitabout that.
We have a few episodes where Italk about getting quick press,
and in the past we mainlyreferred to a platform that I'm
going to talk about brieflytoday that really are a good
(01:48):
option for you to take a look atif you are interested in
getting PR placements that canreally help you and your brand
stand out and differentiateyourself from your competition.
It's important for PRprofessionals also, and for
business owners, to understandall the changes that have
(02:09):
happened recently.
Let's go back a little bit andsee where this all started out,
since we're talking aboutdigital platforms, which are
obviously the newest ones of thebunch.
But there is a gentleman calledPeter Shankman and he's an icon
in the PR industry.
He was the founder of Harrow,helped a reporter out in 2008.
(02:33):
And he realized that there wasa gap between journalists and
sources.
So think about journalistsalways working on stories and
they're often looking for peopleto get background information
or direct quotes expert quotesfrom for their articles.
And there was really nobody whowas facilitating that
(02:57):
connection.
So he founded HARO, and itreally was just a series of
emails that he sent out everyday, where journalists submitted
their questions to him, saidhey, I'm writing an article
about white kitchens greatestwhite colors and designs and
(03:24):
images for my article and so hewould put that in his email and
then you or anybody else whoreads it and is an expert in the
area and has the informationhe's looking for, could send it
to that source.
So he really bridged the gapbetween journalists and sources
by providing real-timeopportunities.
(03:45):
You know we're talking.
These things are happening fast, within like a day or two or
three.
So that truly was revolutionary, and this was in 2008, and it
became super successful.
I remember hearing about it Idon't know, it was probably
around 2010-ish.
I was working for a big brandand we didn't need those types
(04:11):
of opportunities, I would say.
But I became aware of it and Ithought it was really
interesting and by that time andin the coming years, the
platform grew into hundreds ofthousands of subscribers.
I mean, it was hugely popular.
I'm sure everybody who workedin PR professionally was aware
of it, and then a lot ofentrepreneurs and small
(04:34):
businesses started to take aninterest too, because it was
really the only platform thatwas sort of democratic and open
access that they could use andthat didn't cost a lot of money,
like a lot of otherprofessional PR tools and
softwares do.
It actually became sosuccessful that Peter Shankman
(04:59):
ended up selling it to a companycalled Vocus, which is one of
the big players in the PRsoftware industry.
Then they ended up selling itto Cision, which is the biggest
player in the PR softwareindustry, and they currently own
it and they've rebranded itinto what is now called
(05:21):
Connectively and we will talk alittle bit more about that.
But so there's been a lot ofgrowth and a lot of change in
this area, and people havereally it's become widely known
and widely popular to use theseplatforms, which is why we talk
(05:41):
about it on our podcast and inour training programs a lot,
because this is the easiest way,the easiest and the quickest
way for you to get pressplacements that you can use for
your marketing and your business.
So let's talk about theplatforms that are available now
.
There are really threeplatforms that I'm going to
(06:04):
touch on.
There's a lot of other ones outthere that are available, and
AI has just accelerated thegrowth in that space, and some
of them will promise you crazythings that basically they're
going to pitch on your behalfand they're going to write
everything and you don't have todo anything and the media
placements are just going totrickle in.
And that's all not true,because in the end, to generate
(06:30):
real PR placements, you're stillgoing to have to invest a
little bit of time and a littlebit of effort on a continuous
basis to make it happen.
And if you are willing to dothat, here are the three
platforms I think you shouldtake a look at, since we just
talked about Harrow, which wentaway, but Peter Shankman, after
(06:55):
a lot of tumultuous developmentswith the other platforms in the
space.
Now people basically peopleencouraged almost forced him to
create Haro all over again, andnow it's not called Haro, it's
called Source of Sources and theabbreviation is SOS, and it
(07:27):
follows the exact same system itdid in the past.
The beauty of it is it's free.
It's always going to be free.
It comes directly into yourinbox in the form of emails, in
the form of emails.
The downside of it is youactually have to open up all
these emails and you have toread all the emails and find the
(07:49):
queries, so the inquiries thatpertain to you, which that, of
course, can be a little bittedious, but in the long term,
it's going to be worth it.
I will say that SOS right nowdoes not have the number of
queries that Haro used to have.
(08:09):
It's still in the process ofbeing built up, but I am very
closely watching that and Ithink it definitely has a chance
of getting close to where itused to be, because just people
trust the founder, people trustthe process, they're familiar
with it and I definitely expectit to be around for a long time.
(08:34):
So check out SOS.
We will link to the differentwebsites where you can sign up
for these platforms in thecomments of the show notes also.
So that's the first one.
Then there's two other ones.
The best one in air quotes, I'dsay, is quoted, which is a next
(09:01):
generation platforms.
That really it offers a morecurated and approval-based
system.
So you can't just sign up, butyou have to sign up and the
quoted people will grant youaccess.
They're very stringent in howthey manage the platform so you
have to adhere to quite a lot ofrules if you want to get access
(09:26):
and keep access to it, or youcould get banned, like I did,
but that's a whole other longstory for another day.
Quoted really, the beauty of itis that it um it allows you to
do everything within theplatform.
(09:46):
Um it.
It has pitches that you can gosearch for by a keywords, um,
and you can set them up and youwill actually get emails into
your inbox when um, a query goes, query goes, live.
That is within your industry.
So that is really great becauseyou don't have to proactively
go in there and look for it.
It also allows you to track theentire pitching process on the
(10:12):
website.
So if you go in, you'll have tosubmit your pitch.
On the website, you can see ifthe journalist actually read
your submission or not and if heor she responds to you.
This will also come straightthrough the website and in an
email.
(10:32):
So it's really what you wouldexpect from a software platform
today.
It's easy to manage and it'squite effective, and there are a
lot of good queries in there.
Actually, from a qualitystandpoint.
The downside to it is that youonly get two free queries per
(10:55):
month.
Otherwise, you have to pay $99,which, for most people, is
probably not going to be worthit.
The other downside of it isit's a little bit more involved
when it comes to setting up yourprofile.
But it's definitely doable andeven if you only have two
queries a day, I'd say use it,because it is paid and a little
(11:20):
bit more involved.
There's a lot fewer people onit that submit to the queries,
so your chances of gettingpicked up are a lot greater.
So definitely check out Quoted.
Then there is Connectively,which is what Harrow evolved
into.
So all the Harrow queries theystill call them that actually,
(11:41):
but they feed into theConnectively platform.
It is AI-powered in how itmatches the connections, the
sources, with the journalists.
Not quite sure what that meansit's still not quite as
sophisticated as quoted, but youalso have the possibility to go
(12:04):
in and search via keywords,which helps you narrow down the
opportunities that are right foryou.
The burden, however, is on you,so you have to actually go on
the website and look for thequeries.
They will not send you emailsunless you sign up for a paid
(12:24):
version, which I honestly justdon't think it's worth it,
unless you're super serious andfully want to focus on PR or
you're a PR professional.
But you do have 10 freesubmissions per month, which is
pretty good, and if you thinkabout 10 submissions, that's
more than two to three a week.
(12:46):
It's probably about what youcan reasonably manage if you
have a full-time job that you'rehandling and you just are doing
this PR thing on the side.
So I would say definitely checkout those three platforms.
That's where it's at today.
(13:07):
There's a lot more out there,but I would say let's leave
those on the side because mostof them, in my personal
experience, are not worth it, aswe can see from these examples.
You know there's been so muchchange, and there really has
been.
The rise of digital PRplatforms is real.
(13:29):
There's PR used to be very muchone-on-one either phone or
email pitches, and digital, andAI, in particular, have changed
that quite a bit.
So it's really what theseplatforms prioritize is speed
(13:51):
and accuracy, and they're stillpersonalized, though, because
the pitch still comes from you,and we'll talk about this a
little bit more when I'm goingto give you advice on how to use
AI and how not to use AI whenit comes to these opportunities.
But data has become soimportant in everybody's
(14:14):
business, especially.
Jason talks a lot aboutanalytics on the digital
marketing side, but it's just asimportant on the PR side, and
when you put in the effort,being able to track it with
digital placements that are easyto find and possibly have
backlinks that can really boostyour SEO, all that is super,
(14:37):
super valuable.
That being said, aboutartificial intelligence and how
to use it in PR and these typesof pitching opportunities, I
personally use chat almost everyday for something you know, but
what I usually use it for is tohelp me brainstorm, to help me
(15:03):
generate ideas, and you candefinitely use it as a writing
help for certain things likesocial media posts or emails.
You know anything that whennobody cares about whether or
not AI helped you write it ornot, but when you submit pitches
(15:29):
to journalists, don't ever usea response that was fully
generated by AI or that is evenrecognizable as being generated
by AI, because the journalistsneed original input.
They need original quotes,because it's not just bad for
(15:52):
them, but they could get introuble with whoever they're
writing the article for if theyuse AI-generated content,
because Google doesn't like that, the media don't like that,
because they want to make suretheir content is different from
everybody else's.
So if you use it, maybe go inand have it.
Give you two or three ideas ofhow you could answer a specific
(16:13):
queries, but then make it yourown.
And what I always say when itcomes to writing these so you
don't have to spend hours doingit, but write it as you would
say it to somebody else, becausemost of the time, the way
you're going to get picked up isin a direct quote.
So using language that youwould actually use when you
(16:35):
speak is the right way to do it.
If you're too long-winded ortoo sophisticated or your
sentence structure is just notnatural, it's not going to make
it into the article.
So use AI for ideas or anoutline and then just write it
as you would speak it and hitsend.
(17:00):
Some other best practices to usethese platforms are um some of
them do require you to set up aprofile.
You have to have, you have tohave a login for all of them.
But um quoted requires you tohave a pretty extensive profile.
And um SOS, it's very short, uh, connectively, you pretty much
(17:22):
just sign up to.
But just make sure that youcomplete what you need to
complete and, if you do quote it, spend a little bit of time to
really make sure the informationis accurate and complete,
because that will increase yourchances of getting responses
from the journalists if they seewho they're actually being
approached by.
(17:43):
The other thing is speed.
It is important to respond asquickly as you can, which means
don't look at the deadline, andthe deadlines are usually
between one and three days.
But so don't focus on thedeadline, but focus on getting
it done as quickly as possibleif you see a query that you like
(18:06):
, because that willsignificantly make it more
likely that you're actuallygoing to get picked up.
Of course, make your pitchespersonal and original, somewhat
unique.
You know, don't send supergeneric responses.
You know, really tailor itspecifically to what the
(18:27):
journalist needs.
And then, of course, when you doall of this, don't forget to
track your results.
If you do it and quote it,it'll track it for you, which is
really kind of nice, but theother platforms don't do that.
So make sure you set up GoogleAlerts or have another process
in place for you to find out ifyou actually were picked up in
(18:52):
any of the articles that youpitched for, because the
journalists are most likely notgoing to tell you when they
include it, so it's up to you tofind the article.
You when they include it, soit's up to you to find the
article.
Those really are my biggest tipson how to leverage the three
(19:16):
most pertinent PR digitalplatforms out there in the
marketplace right now for yourbusiness.
And if this was a lot, I knowit can be.
In our membership program,which is called the Design
Discussions Academy, we talkabout these types of pitches a
lot.
Actually, we just kicked offour new training this month and
(19:39):
if you're interested in learningmore, please reach out to us
and I can definitely help youget over any hurdles or
obstacles that you have in orderto get your press placements
flowing.
Thanks for listening and I hopewe'll see you again in two
weeks here on Design orDiscussions.
Maria Martin (20:00):
Did you know that your client learns 80% of what
they will know about you beforethey ever contact you?
Now imagine when your potentialclient searches for the perfect
kitchen remodel.
Will they find you or yourcompetition?
We can help you make sure it'syou.
Our Designer DiscussionsAcademy membership with your
favorite podcast hosts provideweekly steps to simplify your
(20:24):
marketing and boost yourbusiness.
Sign up atdesignerdiscussionscom or follow
the link in the show notes.
We hope you've enjoyed thisepisode of Designer Discussions
and all of the helpfulinformation.
Subscribe to our podcast, leaveus a review and share it with
your friends.
We look forward to having youback next week.
For more information on thepodcast and the marketing studio
(20:46):
, visit designerdiscussionscomand follow us on social media.
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