How I Got My First Media Mention

When I first tried, I failed. I, I tried everything that you were supposed to do, and it just didn't work, and I was having pitch after pitch but no responses. I failed so hard, not just once, but twice that I just, I walked away and the first time it took me a few years to get back. The second time, a little less, but I walked away.

I was like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I must be doing something wrong. But then I was having a little bit of a midlife crisis and I was like, I wanna figure this out. There's no reason why this shouldn't be working. I know it's working for other people. I've seen the success, so there must be some trick to making this work.

And so I just dedicated myself to figuring out how do I get quoted? And because I had nothing to lose, I literally, I just tossed out the rule, rule book everything that everybody said of what you should do when it comes to pitching. And I was like, Screw that. I'm going to do what I think works and I'm just gonna keep trying until I find something that works.

One day I got an email, this Google Alert, Google alert that said, Hey, you have been quoted. The reporter didn't tell me that I've been quoted. I never heard from them. I just got this Google alert that I've been quoted, and by the way, I got two girls. She misquoted me in the articles and said it was a son.

I couldn't care less. I was thrilled that I had cotton quoted and so . I went back and I was like, Okay, I, I think I got something here. I started googling around. Turns out I got quoted a few more times. Nobody had bothered to tell me. Google hadn't even alerted me on those, and so I started seeing, okay, what worked, what didn't work?

And after. Literally lots and lots of trial error, and we're talking about a number of years I've come up with this formula that I'm gonna show you of how to make myself or yourself irresistible to reporters. So much so that I now get emails like this on a regular basis from reporters where they tell me, Sorry we couldn't run with it, or we'll get in touch with you about future, uh, articles.

So, What's num rule number one when it comes to asking that question? Which story do you wanna pitch when you get that email from Hero, from quoted, from whoever, and you're looking through that list and there's a very long list and you're trying to decide. Which, which stories to pitch who you should respond to?

Rule number one, ignore the rules. Right? So in all these pitched requests, you'll see they have these requirements, right? They say We only want a real licensed real estate realtor or broker. We want a mom who's comfortable sharing your experience, or a GI specialist or a financial ex, and you've got all of these requirements.

So rule number one, ignore that. And I'm gonna go through, Exactly how to determine which of these you should respond to. But the fact is, even if you're not one of these experts, if you have an opinion or you have a VA or you have value to add to this or you feel strongly about it, then the reporter wants to hear from you.

The reporter doesn't actually know who they want to talk to, they just need to write their article. And so if you think you can provide value to this, then provide value. And I have a little bit of a set of questions to ask yourself to decide whether you should respond, but I wanna point that out. Ignore the rules, ignore what they say to the requirements.

Just throw that out. It's meaningless. That's them being unknowledgeable about what they really want. And you will see sometimes that they'll say, I don't want bloggers and even that, who cares? If I have something of real value, you're gonna tell me no. There are sometimes where it's okay, I really need a specific person who fits this specific criteria because I'm looking for a quote.

I've already written the article and I want a specific quote, but nine times out of. That's not what they're looking for. And even if that is, it doesn't matter because as I'm gonna show you at the end, we are gonna turn this into marking gold, whether or not we get quoted, and that's important, right?

Which I'm getting ahead of myself. So rule number one, ignore the rules. Rule number two. Respond to all pitches if you have any value to provide. So if you can provide, uh, value to the person who is requesting that, if you think you were, you have a valuable opinion, you can provide value, insight, something on that.

You want a pitch regardless of what it says in the qualifications. And this is another one. Rule number three, most people do not respond to those anonymous requests when they don't say what the publication is. I have gotten my best publications, my best quotes have come from the anonymous ones. I, I have no idea why the reporters put anonymous probably cuz they don't wanna get overwhelmed or whatever.

Or maybe they, they don't wanna get overwhelmed. I used to work in recruitment, staff recruitment. If you've got a really good company, go put it in there. You're gonna get, That's the secret, right? Go for those, right, the anonymous ones, cause everyone else ignores it. That that could be someone really meaningful, hidden behind the.

Yeah. Yeah. I've gotten full feature articles from really shady looking anonymous requests, really shady ones. And they then, like, then I get this email and they're like, We wanna do a 45 minute interview. I'm like, Well, who the hell are you? Where do you come from? But yeah, now something else to keep in mind.

So that tells us right, what we wanna look at, but. As I mentioned previously, the goal of pr, the goal of everything that we're doing, we need to keep the end result in mind. The goal is to establish authority, build our credibility with our prospects, and close more business. We have to keep that end result in mind.

We, there's. 1,000,001 people that we can pitch. There's 1,000,001 opportunities that we can take. However, we need to be selective about what we go after because we wanna make sure that whatever we're going after is going to help us build our business and establish our trust and credibility and get a sales.

If you're interested in learning more about how to get yourself quoted in the media, I'm going to be doing a series of classes where I'm going to do a deep dive on my process. I'll walk you through step by step, the entire process, and you'll have an opportunity to ask me your questions. I look forward to seeing you in the class.

Thank you and have a great day.