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PR that pays - A conversation on the eReleases journey
16 Plays7 days ago
Why do some press releases make headlines while others go completely unnoticed? Is public relations only for big brands, or can small businesses use PR to build credibility, land media coverage, and drive real results?
In this episode of The Entrepreneur Speaks, I sit down with Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases and a PR expert with over 25 years of experience helping small businesses get featured in top media outlets. Mickie has mastered the art of writing and distributing press releases that journalists actually pay attention to without the need for a massive PR budget.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- Mickie’s entrepreneurial journey and the origin story of eReleases
- Why most press releases fail and how to fix them
- Common mistakes businesses make when trying to get media coverage
- Insider strategies to boost credibility, conversions, and visibility through PR
- How to leverage press releases in the AI era without getting lost in the noise
- Real-world success stories of small businesses that used PR to scale
- Mickie’s advice for entrepreneurs new to press releases
Whether you’re a startup founder, small business owner, or marketing professional, this conversation is packed with actionable tips to help you get noticed, build trust, and grow your brand with PR.
🔔 Don’t forget to subscribe for more entrepreneurial insights and strategies that can help your business thrive.
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Transcript
Using Press Releases for Media Attention
00:00:04
Speaker
Ever wondered why businesses get featured in the media while others get ignored? Is PR just for big brands or can small businesses use press releases to build creditability and drive real results?
00:00:21
Speaker
Today's guest, Mickey Kennedy, has spent over 25 years helping small businesses learn media their coverage that actually matters. As the founder eReleases, he has cracked the code on getting press without a big budget.
00:00:39
Speaker
Get ready for insider PR strategies that can put your business on the map. Miki, welcome to Entrepreneur Speaks. Thanks for having me.
00:00:50
Speaker
All right. So let's start with your origin story.
Founding eReleases: An Unexpected Path
00:00:53
Speaker
What really inspired you to start eReleases? So I had finished graduate school. I had actually majored in a master's of fine arts and creative writing with an emphasis in poetry.
00:01:07
Speaker
So I wasn't really ever intending to work in business. I was just going to wait tables. I had done that all through college. But when I started to do it full time after graduating, I found that, you know, there's a difference between working 20 hours a week as a restaurant and then working 40 to 50 hours. And I felt I was just physically exhausted and emotionally just, I found it taxing. And so I looked for an office job and I got hired at a telecom research startup as employee number three. And of the many things they wanted me to do, they said, write press releases because of everybody here, you have ah more of a writing background.
00:01:46
Speaker
And so I did, and we faxed them out, and it took a long time to program a fax machine and send it, and we weren't getting any pickup. And the owner said, yeah, press releases don't really work. And i'm like, well, why am I doing it? And they're just like, I don't know. Some people say it works, so just keep trying.
00:02:04
Speaker
And so I read a lot about press releases and it didn't really help. And then I started looking at the articles in newspapers, magazines, trade publications, and I found they all like to follow a story arc.
00:02:19
Speaker
And we were publishing a lot of data tables and there wasn't a lot of story there. So I took one that we had just done and it was like Caribbean telecom traffic. And i was like, what's the story behind this? And one country stood out as having way more inbound and outbound traffic to the U.S. than all the others. And it was because it was the 1-900 call center for the U.S.,
00:02:41
Speaker
All 1-900 numbers, or most of them, were routed through this country. And so at the time, and this was the nineteen early 1990s, these 1-900 numbers were really popular, good call, and for you know the prices varied, say, 75 cents a minute. You could get your horoscope on an automated phone call.
00:03:01
Speaker
Or for like $4 a minute, you could talk to a live psychic. And it was everything from pet advice to adult lines. And it would just be billed to your landline ah phone bill each month.
00:03:13
Speaker
And so i rewrote the press release that we had sent, which is data tables, to be about the story people.
Evolution of eReleases: From Email to PR Newswire
00:03:22
Speaker
1900 numbers in this country and its role behind the 1900 number.
00:03:26
Speaker
And we got picked up by the Financial Times, The Economist, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and several trade publications, including ah Red Herring magazine, which was really popular at the time.
00:03:37
Speaker
And so I saw all the you know the phones ringing, sales going through the roof. We were getting sales from people that weren't our typical customers, which at that time was just other local and national and international phone companies and telecom attorneys. Now we're getting sales from investment companies, hedge funds, just a lot of people ah finding our data really interesting. And so I continued to write press releases and get picked up.
00:04:04
Speaker
And also the phone started ringing with journalists saying, hey, you don't have to fax anymore. You can just email it to me. so you know Email was you just you know kind of new and exciting. And I felt like I could build a Rolodex of email addresses. And so I spent a year reaching out to journalists on bulletin boards and just looking online and asking them if I could send them press releases. And about a year later, I launched eReleases and I did it part time for a while and was just a matchmaker sending press releases on behalf of small businesses and trying to get them ah meaningful results.
00:04:40
Speaker
It has changed over the years. I don't do the email sends anymore. All of our releases go out nationally through PR Newswire. There is an email component that can be added, but it's still predominantly a Newswire distribution in the U.S. Basically, we have a duopoly of press release Newswire. It's PR Newswire and Business Wire.
00:04:58
Speaker
And it's the place that most journalists go to. As a matter of fact, most journalists don't even go to their inbox anymore because there's so many pieces of spam and off-targeted pitches and press releases that makes it very difficult for them to find anything useful in their inbox. And so, you know, they they go to the Newswire, they log in they look at their industry feed, they can customize it by including keywords, excluding keywords.
00:05:23
Speaker
So it's very filtered and ah completely different from their inbox. and And that's it. you know that's That's how I got started. And that's how e-releases has evolved. The press release that ah you know people get ah nationally through us, um you know PR Newswire charges over $1,700 to go out nationally through them.
00:05:43
Speaker
And you get a national release through us. all the industries, everything the same, um and it's substantially cheaper. It's like maybe a third of the price ah going through us. So it's a huge cost savings going through e-releases and going directly through the newswire.
00:05:58
Speaker
And there are caveats, you know, to have this preferred pricing, we do have to move 10,000 releases a year. And in addition to that, we also can't work with certain clients. You know, publicly traded companies, that's what the salespeople at PR Newswire i want to work with.
00:06:14
Speaker
And, you know, these are people with bigger budgets. And so we refer anybody that would be a fit for that directly to the Newswire. And we focus on the startups and entrepreneurs and people with smaller budgets who who maybe can spend $2,000 a year, but not $2,000 a press release.
00:06:31
Speaker
All right. So, Miki, you've given us a very good overview of how is that it started. But how long have you been running this company, eReleases? How long have you been running this? I've been running it since October of 1998.
00:06:44
Speaker
So it'll be, I think, 27 years in October. And it has evolved and I've evolved along with it. But we we still are all about press releases and PR and trying to find the types of press releases that the media will respond to.
00:07:01
Speaker
and so if I may ask, what really informed the name eReleases? So it's funny. I actually started with a different name. ah Okay. And i ah I had one of my writers suggest e-releases saying, hey, you you email press releases. Why don't you call it like e-releases or e-press releases? And so I just thought that was better. So i I switched it up a little, I think within the first year or two that I started, i originally started, i think on a cc domain And I thought, you know, they're kind of new. I felt like everything that was.com was taken even back in 1998. But I just found you got to be more creative. And my writer was a lot more creative than I was. And she brought that domain, that name to me and the domain was available. So I switched it to ereleases.com and...
00:07:48
Speaker
It has changed a bit. I i always wanted to be PressReleases.com, and I did buy that domain several years later. But I felt like the brand of eReleases was so well known that I just redirected to eReleases rather than change the company name.
00:08:02
Speaker
ah Okay. So you've been running this since the 90s. ah What was the landscape of PressReleases like when you started? And what gap were you trying to fill at that time?
00:08:13
Speaker
So at the time, there was nobody really servicing really small businesses. I remember one of my first customers was a plumber who won an award in his industry. And he's like, this is a national award and I'm just a little plumber and I want to get the word out. but I called PR firms in the yellow pages and they said, we we start at $10,000 up. And he goes, I just want a press release written and sent out to the media.
00:08:41
Speaker
And so i i I was able to help him, but there wasn't really anybody out there servicing these really small ah businesses that maybe just needed, wanted to buy la carte press releases. They didn't want to lock into ah a one-year commitment with a PR firm.
00:08:57
Speaker
And so that was sort of the space that I wanted to enter. And I felt like if I do it all a la carte, you know, I'm proving myself to the customer. I'm not locking them into a big, you know, commitment.
00:09:09
Speaker
And I just felt like it was a more honest arrangement. Okay. so So you've been at this for quite some time. You've been at this since the 90s.
00:09:19
Speaker
What would you say has been one of your proudest moments as an entrepreneur?
A Life-Saving Press Release
00:09:23
Speaker
I'd say I have a few, you know, making a huge, meaningful difference in someone's life and their business is one, you know, really driving a ton of sales and helping a company really, you know, launch and and go wide is big. I do have one ah customer who credited me with saving his life. He had come to the United States from Russia and he had some kind of status here.
00:09:49
Speaker
ah where he actually testified in Congress about some of the crimes and things that were going on in Russia and named names. And all of a sudden, years later, the administration changes and he found that his status in the U.S. changed and they said, you no longer qualify.
00:10:10
Speaker
Russia's are, you know, a friend of the United States. So it's not like It's a corrupt country, so therefore we're going to send you back. And he exhausted all appeals, spent over $100,000 in legal expenses, and actually had a flight. He knew what seat he was going to be on the flight back to Russia about a week later.
00:10:30
Speaker
And so I sent out a press release. The Wall Street Journal wrote a story about it and published it that day, which is rare. The Wall Street Journal generally will publish write an article and schedule it for the next day so that it's both in the newspaper and online at the same time.
00:10:47
Speaker
But this, they broke online and then published it the next day in the actual newspaper. And he was actually contacted by his local congressperson and he pulled strings and got that stopped.
00:11:00
Speaker
And this person said that he had actually received threats from some of the people he had testified against. people that are now oligarchs in Russia that said, once you hit ground, we'll be there to pick you up and you will be dead within an hour.
00:11:16
Speaker
And he swears that, you know, that press release saved his life. And it really strikes home the power of press release and what it can, you know, potentially do in a situation like that. That's probably one of my most meaningful experiences.
00:11:33
Speaker
All right. so So just as I said earlier, you've been on this journey for quite some time. The entrepreneurial journey is not smooth sailing. has its ups and downs.
00:11:44
Speaker
So let's talk about your low points.
Overcoming Business Challenges
00:11:47
Speaker
ah Can you share some major challenges or low points you faced on this journey with us? Well, I think one of the biggest low points was my first hire was a really close friend. And over the years, the friendship sort of vanished. And I talked to this person and they just said, you know, i just feel like mixing friendship and business didn't work. So I just want to be professional in all business.
00:12:13
Speaker
And that hurt. That was, that was hurt me quite a bit. The second thing was i was always losing editors in my business. They would stay about a year and I had huge turnover and I didn't know why. And I had joined a marketing mastermind many years ago and I would always complain about turnover and not being happy with the staff.
00:12:34
Speaker
There was an HR person there that mostly worked with large corporate clients. But finally, she said, Mickey, you're wasting all your time in the marketing mastermind about this issue. i could probably solve it by interviewing your staff, interviewing your customers and looking at your job postings and figuring out why you're hiring the wrong people.
00:12:52
Speaker
And then she did that and came back to me and said, Mickey, your customers love your staff. Your employees aren't the problem. It's you. You're a micromanager. And you're constantly nitpicking them and they feel like they can never do anything right. And I i know where that was coming from. i was really into this Kaizen belief that you make all these small incremental changes. So every time a customer would call and an employee would talk to them, I'd say, ooh,
00:13:20
Speaker
You know, when they hung up, I'd go, hey next time, answer it this way. And I was always behind them telling them something better they could do. And rather than seeing it as I'm helping a little bit, it felt like I was putting them down all the time and they could never do it right. And so I just found out that I was a micromanager.
00:13:40
Speaker
I decided, OK, I have this knowledge now. I'll just stop. And i found I couldn't. And so after like another day of me catching myself, jumping up, wanting to ah get behind them when they got off the phone and tell them exactly what they should do next time, I just decided i was going to go home. I was going to focus on the marketing and strategy of the business. And I would put someone in place who would manage the editors.
00:14:07
Speaker
And there was already someone there that was senior to them and someone that they already looked up to because she was a little bit older. And so I just put her in charge and that was April of 2015.
00:14:20
Speaker
And so I walked away from the day-to-day operations of my business and it freed me. All of a sudden I had 20 hours a week where I was constantly monitoring the staff and giving them suggestions. I was focusing on let's grow this business.
00:14:34
Speaker
I was focusing on the things that and actually, you know, put fire and fuel on the fire of the business. And we've more than tripled since then. And I don't know that we would have if I continued to be in the business and churning the staff because it takes a long time to learn all the minutia of my business.
00:14:53
Speaker
And if you're just, you know, constantly replacing people after a year, it's very difficult. Almost everybody that was there in April of 2015 still there. And so turnover is no longer a thing at the business.
00:15:05
Speaker
I was the problem. And, you know, I tell this to a lot of people and they're like, wow, you know, a lot of people would have resisted that. They would have said, I'm not a micromanager or it's my business. I want it to be perfect.
00:15:15
Speaker
What made you so willing to just say, yeah, I'm the problem. I'm getting out of the way. And I was like, I'm a poet. I'm not a business person. I don't have a huge ego. When someone that I trust tells me something and then I recognize that what they said is true, I'm just going get out of my own way and out of the way of my business and out of the way of my staff. And so ah that was another big you know blow to me to realize that I was the problem.
00:15:40
Speaker
Okay, so challenges always come with lessons. So looking back, what are some key lessons you've picked up on this journey, Sober? I think that, you know, the lessons of...
00:15:52
Speaker
always being open to opinions of others, but, you know, also testing it and recognizing it. You know, I learned a lot about marketing and this marketing mastermind I was in and A-B b split testing was new to me. And I learned about statistical relevance, which means, you know, you just don't compare two ads after two days. There has to be enough metrics to determine, ah you know, can you make a comparison and which ad's doing better.
00:16:21
Speaker
I also realized that, you know, I got feedback from one customer who said they found this welcome box that I sent to be unprofessional. I used to send what I called a shock and awe package to all new customers.
00:16:34
Speaker
It was like a big box of Baltimore, Maryland, which we're we're from the Baltimore, Maryland area. So I sent like crab seasoning chips, Edgar Allan Poe action figure with a raven that says never more.
00:16:47
Speaker
a book and just a lot of fun stuff, confetti, all kinds of fun stuff in a box. And it was about $60 that I was sending to each customer. And this person said they found it unprofessional. So rather than be offended, and, you know, I mentioned it to a couple people they go, oh, don't listen to them. It's it's cool what you're doing.
00:17:05
Speaker
I just said, no, i'm i'm going to I'm going to split test it. So I took six months of new customers and half of them received that box. The other half just received a book and a welcome letter. And After six months, it was pretty apparent the people who received the the book, they they were coming back and ordering at a higher frequency. And at a year, um it was almost double. And at two years, it was quadruple.
00:17:31
Speaker
And so I was spending $60 to turn people away. They were less likely to come back and become repeat customers. So when I started sending $10 and letter...
00:17:44
Speaker
and letter people received it better and they were better customers and they kept coming back. So, you know, ah listen to criticism. Don't believe it always, but see if you can test it.
00:17:55
Speaker
And so I try to split test as much as I can and just learn from these types of experiences. Okay. So now going spend time talking about press releases, what you do so well.
00:18:05
Speaker
So many entrepreneurs send out press releases that go completely ignored. So from your experience, why do press releases often fail?
Crafting Successful Press Releases
00:18:14
Speaker
So the reality is that probably 97% of press releases that go out over the newswire don't generate earned media.
00:18:24
Speaker
And that's what we call it when you get articles written about you. Every time a release goes out, it'll show up on certain websites like Yahoo and ah some of these places. There's nothing excited to be excited about there. That just happens. It's automated. It's called syndication.
00:18:39
Speaker
And so I think in the case of PR Newswire, it's like maybe 50 to 100 places will post the press release. But very few people see it there. It's not anything you excited about. We want journalists to write an original article.
00:18:53
Speaker
And so um i i think that in the in the cases of of of that, there's a lot of people who don't recognize the the value of ah being on a newswire and and what could happen. So what you're looking for is those original articles.
00:19:10
Speaker
And so... You're wanting the New York Times to write about you. You're wanting your your trade magazines or websites, blogs, whatever, to write about you. You're wanting to get, you know, local media pickup. You're wanting to go out even, you know, TV and radio. So it, it,
00:19:28
Speaker
It's kind of interesting that you have to be not necessarily just newsworthy, but you have to be creative. And, you know, not everybody has the most newsworthy things happening to them.
00:19:40
Speaker
But if you're creative, you can find different avenues to be newsworthy. um You know, one of them is, ah you know, what what is an industry blind spot?
00:19:51
Speaker
What is something that you can't wait to go to a trade show or conference and ask people about? Because you've noticed this trend that no one's talking about. You know, it could be I've noticed that ah everybody who's coming in is really concerned about ai and and their job security. Or I've noticed that, um ah you know, I've everybody's taking longer to pay. Instead of net 30, they're dragging it out to net 60, net 90.
00:20:20
Speaker
And you're like, you want to ask other people in the industry, have you noticed this? you know So that it's not just you, it's it's not just your company. Is it a trend? And anything that the the industry is trending towards and hasn't reported on is a blind spot opportunity. And I've had this work really well.
00:20:38
Speaker
Again, you have to be creative. You have to sort of test and talk to other people. You have to talk to people, coworkers, as well as others in your industry to sort of get a feel for it. But, you know, but that's really great. Another thing you could do is do an industry survey. You know, what what is going on in your industry right now that people would want to know the results of? You know, is it questions around AI? And you could you can have a survey that covers a lot of different things. I feel like I like to use SurveyMonkey. I like to have four questions per page.
00:21:09
Speaker
So you can have 12 questions over three pages or... I don't go usually above 16 questions, four pages, four four questions each. And the reason I like multiple pages is if they stop halfway, you still have the initial eight responses.
00:21:24
Speaker
And I wait it so that I find the questions I think are going to be most meaningful in the beginning of the survey. So, ah ah you know, that's something where you can then get the results and you don't need a Rolodex of people to send it to There are a lot of independent and small trade associations in every industry.
00:21:45
Speaker
The large trade associations, ah they're not going to cooperate with you, but the smaller ones and there are. many in every industry. There's a lot that you don't know. Just do searches on Google and you'll find some of these smaller ones and reach out to them and say, hey, would you be willing to share this link ah to your members? I'm conducting a survey.
00:22:05
Speaker
If I get 100 responses or more, I'll include you in the press release I'll be issuing over PR Newswire in the coming weeks. And about two-thirds of the time, the first trade association we ask will say yes.
00:22:18
Speaker
And ah you know they'll send it out. If you don't get 100 responses, you can tell them, hey, I hate for you to lose this opportunity, but i really need to get 100 to be statistically relevant. And they'll generally push it on social media, maybe do another email send.
00:22:32
Speaker
and get it out there for you because they don't want to lose that opportunity either. And then you look at what what would be surprising. You know, what but question here was the most meaningful or what was the most shocking response and build a press release around that.
00:22:47
Speaker
Go ahead and put all the questions and answers on a website. a page on your website and link to it in the press release, but make the press release focus on one, maybe two questions at most and put some great quotes in there as to why you felt the number skewed that way.
00:23:01
Speaker
You're the expert, you're the author of the survey. But generally when we do this and work with clients who do this, they generally get at least ah four to six media pickups And the ones who've been doing it for a while and doing it really well often get eight to 14 articles. And these are original articles. These are generally in trade magazines, sometimes in newspapers, but they can do extremely well. And a lot of them will link to that page where you have all the questions and answers and you build it out as a resource.
00:23:29
Speaker
And so that's another link to you from a really great trade site or a trade blog or something along those lines. It just works extremely well and almost never fails. And so those are the types of things that you can do. Just be creative and do these more meaningful types of press releases, avoiding the press releases that everyone does, the new hire press release, which rarely does anything unless you've got a new executive who's really important or you brought on an industry veteran out of retirement and now they're leading your sales team.
00:24:02
Speaker
Outside of that, it's hard for the media to really respond very well. to to new hire releases. So take the money from those and put them on more newsworthy press releases.
00:24:15
Speaker
If you want, you could take the new hires, headshot, little bio, send it to your local newspaper, your local business magazine or newspaper, maybe trade publications. A lot of them have an on the move section and you can just, there's usually an email address or contact form and you can do that.
00:24:32
Speaker
You'll probably have the same results rather than you know spending hundreds of dollars sending it over a service like ours. Okay. So you've been at this for quite some time now. So in your experience, what are the most common mistakes businesses usually make when trying to get media coverage? ah doing Doing it from an area of greed.
00:24:51
Speaker
You know, a lot of people are like, hey, I have this important product launch. So I've written the press release and it's just talks about how great we are. And they don't think about having satisfying the story elements that a journalist needs.
00:25:06
Speaker
For example, how, how, how have you made this so that a journalist sees it and says, my God, my audience would really love to know about this. And, uh, you know, one of the easiest things that you could do with a product launch or a service launch is to have a ah use case study. You know, most products and services don't come to the market without people trying them out.
00:25:28
Speaker
Share some of the successful use case studies. Like, you know, if you have a logistics software solution, you know, maybe someone used it and They're new company for three years. They've lost money each year.
00:25:41
Speaker
um And after a 90-day trial of using your logistics software solution to produce invoices for customers, they're projected to make 5% profit this year. That's meaningful. And that's a something that tells a story of like, hey, this is something that happens to a lot of new companies in this transportation industry.
00:25:59
Speaker
And ah you could even take a publicly availabl available data point, like how many people fail as a new company in the transportation world. And maybe it's like 67% of new transportation businesses fail in the first five years ah because they don't achieve profitability. So that shows the stakes of why your solution is so important.
00:26:18
Speaker
Adding those elements does. builds a story, shows the stakes of importance, and makes a journalist more likely to say, this is going to matter to my audience. And so, so many people are like, I don't know why the press release didn't do well.
00:26:32
Speaker
It mattered so much to me. They didn't communicate that importance to the journalist and make it matter to them. And even more importantly, make it matter to their audience.
00:26:43
Speaker
And so you kind of just have to look at it and reverse engineer it through the eyes and lens of a journalist. And how can I make it so that this satisfies the kind of thing that they're looking for? Let's still build on your submissions.
00:26:59
Speaker
What are some simple and actionable fixes and entrepreneurs, for example, can implement to increase the effectiveness of their press releases?
Enhancing Press Releases with Quotes and Images
00:27:09
Speaker
Well, I think that including publicly available data points can really ah highlight ah some important things in your press release. You don't have to be the author of all this data, but just collecting useful data can really show things in perspective. Other things that work really well is having amazing quote. If a journalist can easily paraphrase what you said in the quote and it doesn't really affect the content, it's not a good quote.
00:27:34
Speaker
If a journalist was to paraphrase your quote and you ached for what you had written because you said something either beautifully or you said it with conviction, um lot of active verbs, and you condensed it and made it as tight as possible, and now they're having to take two sentences to describe what you said in one sentence, that means that your quote's good.
00:27:56
Speaker
And so you want to make sure you have a great quote because a great quote could really... you know, make a journalist more likely to gravitate towards your press release, especially if they're care comparing two press releases that are similar in newsworthiness.
00:28:09
Speaker
They'll use the one that has an amazing quote because when they write the article, they know in the middle of it, there's going to be this great quote and it's strong. um But if the other one has a mediocre quote, they know that they can write the best article, but They'll either have to paraphrase what the quote is or include a mediocre quote. So have an amazing quote is a really great a lifeline to to make your press release more like likely to succeed.
00:28:35
Speaker
Also, most people are putting their content online. Even places that have print are often putting it online as well. So make sure you take advantage of the fact that you can include two photos or images that you can upload with your press release. Don't waste it on a logo.
00:28:50
Speaker
Logo is not important, but upload your product or ah picture of someone using your service. Candid pictures that are just taken with a phone are completely fine today.
00:29:01
Speaker
You do not want to use a professional photograph of your product on blue satin and with a, you know, professionally lit and everything like that because people don't like that anymore.
00:29:12
Speaker
People are more likely to engage online with pictures that seem ah that they can relate to. And people don't relate to those professional shots like they used to anymore. And so the less of the photo looks like a stock photo and more it looks like a candid shot, it's probably going to be better received online. And so a journalist who's looking at two press releases of similar newsworthiness and one has so really a couple of good images and the other one doesn't have any, they're more likely to gravitate to you because they know that when they post that online, they're
00:29:45
Speaker
that article probably have better engagement and attract more people, and people will be more drawn in because of those photos. So how does media coverage affect a company's credibility, especially for small businesses?
00:29:58
Speaker
Right. So credibility is one of those things that you can't make it. It's kind of given to you. So when a journalist chooses to write about you and you have articles written about you, that's a huge credibility boost.
00:30:11
Speaker
And so, you know, you can put an ad in the Washington Post and nobody will care. We have blinders when it comes to ads. We recognize an ad and we don't really entertain it. But when a reporter that we follow in the Washington Post that always covers tech and all of a sudden covers you, we recognize this is good. this is the hes He's bringing to our attention this company we'd never heard of perhaps.
00:30:35
Speaker
And we get excited and, you know, we get drawn into the article. And so that credibility is very important. It is like, you know, an implied endorsement. It is like social proof.
00:30:46
Speaker
It is a big, strong indicator, a signal of trust that you are legitimate and you are someone ah that people should consider looking into,
00:30:57
Speaker
um You know, i ah you don't get that with ads. You don't get that with landing pages. But it's something that still exists and continues to exist with journalism, where people really respect companies that ah journalists have chosen to write about and and sort of, you know, discuss ah either their products or services or just something interesting that they're doing.
00:31:18
Speaker
So what role does consistency play in press release campaigns? Does it play any role? Absolutely. So when it comes to media attention, it's hard in the beginning.
00:31:31
Speaker
But what a lot of people will tell you is once I started getting picked up, I found it easier to get picked up. Journalists see you. Maybe, you know, that they they see the newswire.
00:31:43
Speaker
They're streaming every day. They come across your company. Maybe they come across your company, look at your website and decide, yeah not today. But you know, it makes them more likely to consider you down the road.
00:31:54
Speaker
It's not unusual for people to even get contacted by journalists ah when they haven't done a press release. Maybe they've done three or four press releases and someone had saved you because they thought you might be interesting to cover one day.
00:32:08
Speaker
And all of a sudden they're working on a story. They're looking to plug in a company as an example And they remembered you. Maybe they made some notes or saved your press release. And now they're reaching out to you and say, hey, I'm working on a press release.
00:32:21
Speaker
I thought this was related to something, you know, that you would be interested in. Could I talk to you, maybe get some quotes and information for the story? And it's as easy as as that, you know, being more on the awareness of journalists just makes it easier over time. um The use of AI crafting PR content is becoming very popular in recent times.
00:32:45
Speaker
Do you see a future where AI replaces human crafted PR entirely or is the human touch still
AI in Press Releases: Balancing Human Touch
00:32:51
Speaker
essential? yeah So AI can write a good press release.
00:32:58
Speaker
AI cannot choose the subject matter for a good press release. If you go to AI and say, here's my company, what do you suggest we write about?
00:33:09
Speaker
It's going to write and choose something that is is the 97% of press releases that fail because it's been trained on all the bad releases out there.
00:33:21
Speaker
It will rarely take one of the three percenters because it's a bit more involved and requires more thinking and work. So I tell people, if you have to lean on AI to write a press release, that's completely fine.
00:33:35
Speaker
But if you go to it and tell it pick what to write about, you're making a grave mistake. Save your money. It, nothing. I'd never seen AI come up with a good concept for press release. So the way I approach it is, hey, I want to write about this industry blind spot. Here's about my company.
00:33:54
Speaker
This is the blind spot that I've noticed. Can, how would you suggest that we structure a press release like this? And it'll say, but here's the structure. Okay, let's take it piecemeal. Don't say, now write the press release.
00:34:06
Speaker
You'll end up with a safe press release, but not a good one. Say, give me five headline options for that press release. Now let's work. You know, you can even tell it. I chose this headline.
00:34:18
Speaker
You can either take what one that they gave you or tweak it a little bit or maybe have it brainstorm even more headlines, but then go, OK, this is the headline I picked. Now give me an opening paragraph.
00:34:28
Speaker
And then you're going to go back and say, hey, I really want this element to be up there in the in the beginning in that first paragraph. Can you rewrite it and make sure that you include this?
00:34:39
Speaker
And so. Break it down paragraph by paragraph. In this paragraph, I'd like to include a quote by me and say something meaningful, lot of active verbs and very, you know, ah concise and with a lot of strength and, but you know, see if it see what it does.
00:34:57
Speaker
Sometimes I go back and I put the human element in, you know, it's just not my voice. It's not as strong. Spend a little time with that. And this takes a little bit longer. Rather than 45 seconds, it might take 12 minutes.
00:35:09
Speaker
But at the end of it, you will end up with a much better press release by breaking it down piece by piece by piece. And again, it' it's it's something that is still extremely fast and the product will be like so much better.
00:35:24
Speaker
And a lot of people will look at the two press releases and feel like they seem similar, but they're not. I mean, this one is constructed in a way that's so careful. that it probably is going to attract journalists two to four times better than just coming up with the concept and telling it to just write a 600 word press release and When you do tell it to just come up with a 600-word press release on this topic, it generally requires that you go back in and you rewrite the quote.
00:35:55
Speaker
You go back in and you fix what's missing in certain paragraphs. And I just find that if you break it down piece by piece, you'll end up with a much better result. AI is good at writing.
00:36:06
Speaker
AI is good at brainstorming. AI is very bad at distinguishing the little bits of brilliance and creativity that often result in the best was best outcomes. And so for that reason, you know make sure that you always approach it with what exactly the subject is, the topic that you're going to want to write about, and you know provide ah some evidence. You may want to tell it to say, hey, could you go back and suggest a publicly available data point that you could put in this press release that could improve its chances? Go verify that data point.
00:36:41
Speaker
AI will lie. AI will want to give you a data point to reinforce this so much that it'll just make it up. there are There are lawyers that are appearing in court where they cite court cases that never happened and do not exist because AI wanted to give it what it wanted.
00:36:57
Speaker
And they call it hallucination. i call it just AI lying. So just be careful with that and and make sure that you verify every factual point in a press release. All right. So we're just about wrapping up our conversation. But for entrepreneurs listening who've never used press releases before, what first steps or what pieces of advice would you offer to them as they prepare their first release, their first press release? So...
PR Opportunities for Small Businesses
00:37:25
Speaker
Education is the most important part. As I've said, strategic, meaningful, newsworthy press releases is the most important thing. I've, I spent the pandemic looking at press releases that succeed and coming up and condensing those into a free masterclass.
00:37:42
Speaker
It's less than an hour long. It's a great place to start. I tell you, if you go through this hour course, you will probably be able to distinguish better than many PR firms.
00:37:54
Speaker
I've seen so many people spend money with PR firms and nothing meaningful happened. And yet here are actionable, newsworthy things that almost anybody can do. And ah that free masterclass is on my website, ereleases.com.
00:38:09
Speaker
ah You can find it at ereleases.com slash plan, P-L-A-N. There is no cost. It's less than an hour. I made it so that it's easily consumable in this TikTok era.
00:38:21
Speaker
And so, you know, it's a great place to start. And I feel like if you go through that, you should have a brainstorm of several newsworthy ideas that you could do for your business.
00:38:32
Speaker
And if you build a PR campaign of these types of releases, you will have several that will get picked up. Never measure PR by a single press release. It's generally you do a PR campaign of six to eight releases, whether you do that in a year or whether it takes you two years.
00:38:49
Speaker
That's how you want to measure it. And you want to do meaningful types of press releases, the strategic ones, ah focus on the 3%. And your probably you'll probably, you'll definitely have a couple that get meaningful results. And I've had, you know, a person who they produce waste management facilities. They got picked up in waste management, their trade magazine.
00:39:09
Speaker
And all of a sudden they're building three waste municipalities in Australia for over $40 million. dollars And I've had people who have just had amazing success with PR.
00:39:22
Speaker
It's really moved the needle for their business. And you really have to commit to it and test it and try it. And there's going to be failures. But if you are strategic about it, you will eventually have some successes.
00:39:34
Speaker
And you could literally have one of the most effective PR campaigns in your industry. and still have only one press releases out of six that ever gets meaningful pickup.
00:39:45
Speaker
And that's all it takes. And you can build a campaign of six to eight releases using a service like mine through e-releases and not even spend $3,000. And so ah it really is something that can move the needle, takes a little bit of work, a little bit of creativity.
00:40:00
Speaker
But if you don't have ah you know the budget to spend $20,000 month you Spend $3,000 building on a PR campaign. Put some effort and time in it. Take that free masterclass.
00:40:12
Speaker
I think you'll be really surprised at the success that you can have and what that means for you and your business. It'll make it easier to convert your existing leads. It'll make your customers less likely to leave you, reducing churn.
00:40:26
Speaker
Getting PR and getting articles written about you, it it's one of the most biggest signals of credibility and trust that you can have. And it will really help you ah with your sales process as well as retaining customers.
00:40:41
Speaker
OK, so before we sign off, what would be your pieces of advice for our audience? I think it's to to consider PR. I know that a lot of people feel like I'm too small or I don't matter.
00:40:52
Speaker
I'm not important enough. And I'm telling you, journalists don't love covering the Googles and Microsofts of the world. They have to because of their sheer size. they get the most praise and the most satisfaction about putting the spotlight on unknown companies and small mom-and-pop businesses.
00:41:10
Speaker
And so don't feel you have to grow to a certain size to be worthy of PR. Being unknown, being a side hustle, it's completely appropriate to go out there and get the spotlight put on you now.
00:41:23
Speaker
And so just, you know, be creative, considerate, put in a little bit of effort, and you'll be really surprised at the the the the benefits you can get by getting earned media and getting people to write about you and cover you.
00:41:38
Speaker
All right. So before I sign off, do you have any last words for my audience before we sign off?
Creative Media Engagement Strategies
00:41:43
Speaker
I think the only thing is, ah you know, measure as much as you can, test, try things, and more importantly, be creative.
00:41:51
Speaker
And, you know, sometimes don't approach it always as you as the business owner, but now I'm putting on the head of me as the journalist looking at me as a business owner. What could I do to make myself more irresistible to the media?
00:42:05
Speaker
And that sometimes can be, you know, might be where you can brainstorm with AI. Maybe it's something in brainstorm with others, but But just looking at it differently through a different lens can yield more results and more opportunities for you to take advantage of. Right. So thank you, Mickey, for sharing your rich experience with us today on the Entrepreneur Speaks podcast. We wish you the very best.
00:42:28
Speaker
Thank you. All right, so this has been another exciting next episode of the Entrepreneur Speaks podcast. I'll come your way next time with another inspiring episode. I remain your host, Kofi Anymedu.
00:42:41
Speaker
As always, do take good care of yourself and let's continue to keep hope alive. Cheers. Please be sure to subscribe to the Entrepreneur Speaks podcast on all your favorite podcast channels. And if you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to us on social media or in the comments section below.
00:43:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's the entrepreneur speaks.