“You can provide value to others through your expertise.”
Christina Daves (02:10-02:15)
Every news story breaks in a typical bell-shaped curve. When you understand that news cycle and you have particular expertise, reporters and editors are going to look for your expertise, and that’s your moment to jump in there. In this week’s episode, Christina Daves welcomes her special guest to talk about newsjacking.
David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, entrepreneur, advisor to emerging companies, VC strategic partner, and bestselling author of 10 books, including “The New Rules of Marketing & PR.” David’s expertise is backed by real-world experience building businesses, running marketing and sales teams, and advising highly successful companies. He has a true global mindset born from ten years working in countries outside of the U.S. and as an international speaker in over 40 countries and on all seven continents. People rely on his sales and marketing strategies and tactics to grow their businesses. His eleven books have sold close to a million copies in 30 languages from Albanian to Vietnamese.
Part One of ‘Newsjacking’
Public relations is a perfect platform for every person to share their expertise and provide value to the world. If you have anything unique that you can share that can help others, now is the time to do that. What’s interesting is that people in the public relations industry usually have to get the attention of the reports or editors for them to their story to be recognized. But things are changing because reporters and editors are the ones reaching out for work. They’re searching for people to quote in their stories. They’re looking for alternative angles on the story. Reporters are always looking for somebody to quote. So, instead of us trying to pitch reporters on our time, which is normally what happens, what’s happening now is we are getting in front of them on their time. It’s a huge difference compare to what it used to be.
“There are multiple ways that we can get our ideas out there into the marketplace.” – David Meerman Scott (05:51-05:56)
Get your content out there because the journalists are going to find you because they’re looking for experts in specific fields. There are multiple ways that we can get our ideas out there into the marketplace. The first thing to recognize, however, is that reporters are searching for us. Reporters are searching for experts. So, it’s a good idea for us to be in front of them in the way that they’re searching. You may consider writing blogs that are relevant to worldwide happenings so that more people can find you online, or you can use social media platforms like Twitter.
Every reporter uses Twitter as a tool to find sources. Create pieces of content somewhere else, a video, a blog post, a piece of content, your Web site, then share it on Twitter but use the appropriate hashtags. So, in this case, COVID-19 is a hashtag that’s trending. You could do several different hashtags that the reporter can triangulate. And then, if a reporter is searching on those hashtags because they’re doing a story, and you happen to use those two hashtags, your tweet pops up. If you’re pointing to something in that tweet that will lead them to your videos or website, sometimes they’ll even quote you without contacting you, which is incredible.
Part Two of ‘Newsjacking’
Create content to reach your audience, but remember that a journalist might find it. In other words, make sure you post something that’s valuable. If you know that particular reporters are right in your wheelhouse, and they’re writing about the thing that you are an expert in, you can tag that reporter on Twitter. Do it in such a way that you’re following their work. Maybe they are a newspaper reporter in the city or the town you live in, and they just wrote a story about COVID-19, and they talked about its effect on the local economy. And if you’re in the real estate business, perhaps they forgot about real estate. You can try to ask them if they might be interested to know that you’ve done some studies regarding the impact of COVID-19 to your industry.
“Getting yourself out there in the media helps build your authority and credibility.” – Who Said It. (16:20-16:26)
Being aware of what’s happening around you is essential. And sometimes, the old-fashioned way of doing a letter to the editor, or in some cases some of the news outlets, is to have ways that you can contribute video like CNN. There are ways that certain media outlets encourage members of the public to submit videos and text-based stories in the form of editorials. Many times, in a crisis like this, there aren’t as many well-crafted videos or articles that people write because of the latest happenings. Now is the time to share your message with such a big audience. Getting yourself out there in the media builds your authority and credibility. This is the moment that any one of us can have enormous media hit. We can transform our business in this time of crisis.
How to Get Involved
In only 10 days of following the simple steps of this challenge, you will gain MASSIVE visibility for your business.
So, what’s holding you back? Are you up for the challenge?
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