5 (free) digital resources that can explode your business
Exposure — a bad thing during bad weather. But exposure for your business is a good thing, when you want to save marketing dollars while generating massive amounts of leads for your sales team.
Every business pro knows this, from those in the smallest company to the executives in the world’s mega corporations. In this article, you’ll learn how to gain the exposure that can present some special and profitable opportunities for your company.
I did a crazy thing when I launched my previous brand, SalesAutopsy.com, 15 years ago. Like most entrepreneurs, I decided that to get noticed as quickly as possible, I would contact media people who worked in print, radio and online. But my story was unique. It was a collection of sales horror stories — hilarious examples of selling stupidity. Like the two reps who drank Slurpies before a call and whose lips, teeth and tongues were bright red and green during a presentation to a potential buyer, the president of a major firm in their industry (no sale, of course). Or the salesman who mistook a picture of his prospect’s wife for overweight football great John Madden (bad ending there, too). Or my own mistake, setting a banquet table on fire during a conference dinner with 3,000 attendees.
My fun and unique stories were doubly unique because I presented them in comic book form.
My media play was to find the business editor for every major newspaper, every trade magazine and every business radio talk show host in the country. For two weeks, I worked late into the night (so as not to disrupt my daily productivity) and searched online for these crucial media contacts. I dug up email addresses and phone numbers, and plowed through hundreds of web pages clicking and emailing, even leaving voicemail, hoping to get the world to discover my business humor website. I was exhausted and grumpy and my family didn’t like me much during that period.
There’s gotta’ be a better way
Did it work? Yes, I garnered over 200 articles and interviews over the next year and launched a brand. Was the effort worth it? Yes, but there had to be a better way.
Here are five outstanding places you can go to leverage your productivity in order to gain media exposure for your offerings. Media sources need you because they want new content on an ongoing basis. You just have to find the ones that make the most sense for your business and get them to point the world in your direction.
Help a Reporter Out or HARO (www.helpareporter.com) — This fantastic website plays matchmaker to two communities, journalists and sources. Media members post information about the stories they are working on. You can subscribe to receive journalist requests for a variety of topics, including business, entertainment, biotech, finance, sports and more. A really unique category is gift bags. It’s for people promoting events who are looking for products to give to attendees. I’ve slipped hundreds of my “Secret Language of Influence” tips booklet into gift bags for a variety of entrepreneur and business events. The secret to using HARO effectively is to respond ASAP, keep the response super short, and explain why you think you’re a strong source.
Hunter is a nifty Chrome extension (https://hunter.io/chrome) that will save you hours of time hunting for email addresses of journalists, bloggers or influential people. (Do not forget bloggers as a resource for your media campaigns!) This superb resource can be set up to save these leads to your favorite software tools like SalesForce or Hubspot. It can pull emails from LinkedIn, too. This is done by analyzing the company’s URL, other details and providing a confidence score on potential accuracy. Note: You can conduct 150 searches a month for free. Beyond that, there are pay plans. Most users should be fine with the free version of this great tool.
ANewsTip (https://anewstip.com) — This website’s home page opens like the Google search homepage, a blank box ready for you to type in your brand, a competitor or tweet keywords. Competitors? Yes, you’re monitoring their activities in the press, right? And another reminder here to embrace Twitter as a resource for all things you need to know. ANewsTip is built for you to discover what journalists are tweeting about. And you can subscribe to receive alerts. Like many apps, there’s a free version and several pay options.
U.S. Newspapers List (www.USNPL.com) – This website gets an A for amazing. It goes beyond newspaper websites and includes national Twitter feeds, TV and radio stations and (love this) colleges. You can even get to the USNPL Facebook page, which posts loads of media articles, videos and more. The site is overwhelming in its massive amount of information.
The Publicity Hound (https://publicityhound.com) — Joan Stewart, aka The Publicity Hound, is someone you absolutely need to know. Subscribe to her newsletters, read her articles, attend her webinars. She is the all-knowing, single resource for all things publicity. Over the years, I have referred hundreds of business pros to her website for help starting companies, launching products, gaining media attention and more. Here are some examples of “workshops” she teaches that I’d never thought of, but was thrilled to learn:
- How to Sell your Story to Hollywood
- How to Pitch NPR Radio
- 200 Powerful Words to Use Instead of “Good”
- 12 Angles for Sparking Controversy that Generates Publicity
- Your Handy Cheat Sheet for Writing Headlines
With over 200 pages of blog posts, and 10 posts per page, you can browse 2,000-plus articles, ideas, stories and resources. You will arrive interested, spend time in a state of fascination and leave a better media pro.
Where to start? I’d download her Best Publicity Tips of 2016 at https://publicityhound.com/blog/best-of-2016
The media needs you
Remember, media members need you in a big way, every day. Launch yourself into adapting these smart, cost-effective ways to enlist the media to gain exposure, generate leads and keep your company top of mind in your marketplace. Start working these web sources and find ways to help the world know that you are an authority on what they’re writing about.
I’d love to know what’s most successful for you.
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