Episode 67: 3 Ways PR and Visibility in Media Are Changing in 2023
What was news a few years ago is now the norm, and norms change over time.
A few years ago, social media marketing was in the headlines; today it is a standard practice leveraged by every business.
The social media algorithms, the availability of journalists, and the market's attitude towards journalism—they all change. No doubt, such changes will cause the rise or downfall of businesses if they can't approach it with the right outlook.
With all these changes, as small business heroes, you can stay put or prepare well for the succeeding years.
Here at the Small Business PR Podcast, we focus on positively responding to ways PR and media visibility may be affected under any circumstance.
That is why we want to equip you with insider and expert information on how you can stay in the long game.
Without a doubt, the proven and timeless solution to adapt to these changes in 2023 is to invest in earned media, SEO, and organic PR activities.
Nothing beats organic PR efforts. These are built to make you visible and searchable in the years to come.
That's because the journalists and your audience will never ignore PR efforts that have foundations built on trust and relevance.
In this episode, I'll break down the three ways PR and visibility in media are changing in 2023. Most importantly, we'll take time to leverage this knowledge so you can position yourself as an expert that journalists and their audiences will listen to in the long run.
"As small businesses, we are the ones that are changing our communities. We are the ones with the freshest and most diverse and original ideas and perspectives. We need to do the sacred work of pitching that into the media to not only make the landscape more inclusive and representative but to make the landscape more complete."
-Gloria Chou
Discover the three ways PR and visibility in media are changing in 2023! Hit that play button, and learn why leveraging that organic PR is so important in the long run.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
Why you should invest in compounded organic traffic
The harsh realities of social media to your PR efforts
Maximizing ROIs by playing the long-term game of PR
Why you should connect with freelance writers and contributors
The main reason why journalists will refer to small business founders
Leveraging your message to the world through your pitch
If you want to land your first feature for free without any connections, I want to invite you to watch my PR Secrets Masterclass where I reveal the exact methods thousands of bootstrapping small businesses use to hack their own PR and go from unknown to being a credible and sought-after industry expert. Register now at www.gloriachou.com/masterclass.
Resources Mentioned:
Join Gloria Chou's PR Community: Small Biz Pros: By Gloria Chou
Additional Resources:
Join the Small Biz PR Pros FB group
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Here’s a glance at this episode…
[2:05] Earned media and being able to be searchable and credible is going to help you be able to get that traffic and compounding effects of credibility, trust, and likability for decades.
[3:44] Always think about it this way: Are you playing the long game? Or are you just doing the little things right now that don't give you a long-term ROI?
[10:36] Media outlets have less of a budget. They will rely more on contributors and freelance writers. It means that if you make a connection with a writer, the chances are really high that they will be writing for multiple outlets. It means that just getting that one yes could mean you are getting featured in multiple outlets.
[12:44] One way for journalists and outlets to really maintain their trust is to be able to get a variety of different opinions from people with different lived experiences from fresh perspectives.
[15:05] It's all about presenting a point of view. It's not about having the answers to the world's problems. It's just a matter of whether this is a discussion or insight, or trend that I am seeing.
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Gloria Chou 0:00
The time of recording this podcast, we are in the beginning of the new year. And as you know, I love talking about what's going to change what has changed, maybe three things, things that we thought, were a certain way. And this episode is all about the three big ways that I think PR, pitching, media relations and growing your organic visibility is going to change in this year.Gloria Chou 0:24
Hey, friends, I'm Gloria Chou, small business PR expert, award winning pitch writer and your unofficial hype woman. Nothing makes me happier than seeing people get the recognition they deserve. And that starts with feeling more confident to go bigger with your message. So on this podcast, I will share with you the untraditional, yet proven strategies for PR marketing and creating more opportunity in your business. If you are ready to take control of your narrative and be your most unapologetic and confident self, you're in the right place. This is the Small Business PR podcast. So let's start with the first one. Now obviously, if you have read anything in the news, and you know that the age of social media, it is slowly dying out. And it's not just me saying this. It's what's happening with TikTok, maybe it's being banned. It's Twitter imploding, it's IG algorithms being so up and down and changing that people are just sick of it. And so in the age of big social media and these platforms, having less and less faith, let's just say popularity, right, among users who are getting more and more frustrated. It just means that small businesses like you and me are going to need to find other ways to reach your audience. And that's why I have the show. That's why we talk about organic PR, because earning media and being able to be searchable and credible, that is going to help you be able to get that traffic and compounding effects of credibility, trust, likability for decades, right? Because remember, your Instagram reels and stories, they're not searchable. And neither are Facebook Ads, right? You kind of put money and time and you feed the beast, and then it goes away. The one thing that will keep giving you compounded organic traffic deaths, people coming into your world is earned media, and also SEO. So I really think that this year, as social media algorithms or big tech platforms become more and more scrutinized with everything that we're reading, even the small business players are shifting their perspective on doing PR. And as you know, we do this every day by trying to decolonize ourselves, and to remember that, although the industry has told us that PR is maybe was reserved for like luxury or fancy companies with a ton of cash that's really changing, right. And that's why I have the platform I do now is teaching small business owners like you and me on how to not only find our voice, but really use it. And so to go bigger with our message by leveraging those platforms, and pitching ourselves, even though it's a scary thing to do. Another thing to know is that you know, as people become less and less reliant on ads, and social media in 2024, we know that cookies and tracking will go away. Right? This is a huge change that is going to be absolutely unprecedented in recent years for the world of online marketing. Now, traditionally, online marketing, the paid marketing, has relied on cookies and tracking to be able to follow your audiences around and retarget them with ads. Now that that is going to go away. All the marketers are scratching their heads and figuring out what is going to happen with this new wild, wild west? How are we able to get in front of our audience and grow our reach if we are not able to track them? And that's again, another reason why doing your own PR and learning how to leverage that organic visibility is going to be so key for small businesses who want to thrive in 2023. So remember, always think about this way. Are you playing the long game? Or are you just doing the little things right now, that don't give you a long term ROI? So things like spending hours creating reels that maybe get great reach, and then the other day, and then the next day it gets low reach, because who knows what the algorithm gods have planned for us, right? That is really what I call kind of a low ROI task. And remember, your ability as a CEO, to create value and time and charge for your time is based on how much value you create during the hour that you work. So if you're spending one hour creating social media, that is really a $10 to $15 an hour job that you can hire someone else to do. Now speaking on a podcast, getting backlinks, contributing to a platform writing for them, or getting featured and having your company mentioned, that is really a $10,000 an hour task that's going to continue to give you searchability, credibility, and backlinks. Right? So that's really what I mean by taking everything you do for marketing in your business and figuring out which one of these activities is kind of a low ROI activity and which one is a really high ROI activity and PR definitely is really on the high end of the spectrum where it's really going to give you that longevity that searchability for a long, long time to come.
Gloria Chou 4:59
So there's one thing that you think about this year as you plan your business, and how you spend your time because we all have the same number of hours in the day. What am I doing with the time? How am I leveraging my time, so that the one hour that I spend is going to give me 5, 10, 20 times ROI. Right? That's really what I think all the time is, how can I leverage activities that I'm doing? So another thing to caveat to this is as people are pivoting away from just relying on social media, which I never thought was a great idea, because it's really putting your eggs into one basket? How can you, right, play the long game to focus on your message, focus on pitching getting onto a podcast? How can you figure out once you get on to that podcast, leveraging it so that it can even stretch even further? I always say this in my PR program, and on every PR masterclass which is, every single person should get on to a podcast at least once, if not once a week. And here's why. When you pitch and get onto a podcast, right, that audience is already engaged and nurtured. Because people will listen to podcasts historically, research has shown has way more engagement than someone who was scrolling through Instagram, right? Podcasts or long form content, you're in that person's ear for 30 minutes. So if you can convince a podcast host who has spent a long time cultivating that trust with their audience to get on to that podcast, that is six pieces of shareable content that is searchable. That's SEO optimized, that's already published for you. What does that mean? Once again to a podcast? Right? They will create shownotes, maybe even audio grams, or clips that you can repurpose into reels, the show notes can be repurposed into a blog, newsletter, a captions content, all of those things, right? Or even carousel posts with little quotes from the episode.
Gloria Chou 6:46
How can you work smarter and not harder? To me, pitching and getting onto a podcast and growing organically is 10 times better than spending all of my time creating reels that maybe will get zero or little reach because the algorithm decides that today they like me or they don't like me. I can't tell you how many times I've heard from people that either the algorithms are always changing, and they used to get so much reach or that somehow for no reason they are banned from Facebook or Instagram for I don't even know a reason. Right. I actually worked with someone who was in my PR starter pack. And I wrote her pitch she has spent over the course of 12 years probably half a million dollars on Facebook Ads, that's 500,000 US dollars on Facebook Ads. One day she lost logs into her account and Facebook and deleted, deleted her profile for no reason. Now she is not selling anything that's contentious. She is literally a real estate agent in Georgia. And so she didn't do anything different. But one day, Facebook pulled the plug on her account, they gave her no human chat support, no human contact, no phone number, no email, she was literally reaching out to people who worked at Facebook to try to get help, with no with no avail, like zero. What's even worse is that they kept charging, Facebook kept charging her credit card. $900 every few hours to the number of $7,300. They stole $7,300 from her credit card, by charging her account after they deleted her account. So she had no way of actually getting into her account to stop those ads. And to this day, she still has not received a single refund from them. Now, I use Facebook ads, I use Instagram Ads. But I just know that there might be a day where something could happen. And the algorithm messes up or something changes. And I will get the short end of the stick. And that is out of my control 1,000% out of my control. So I am doing what I can to get on to podcasts and grow organically and have an email list and have an opt in and own my first party data. That is what I mean by playing the long game. And that's what every small business who wants to see success and grow organically will do in 2023 is less reliance on social media, and also realizing that social media might have really dominated the industry and helped you scale. But there is a diminishing ROI on that, not only from the visibility and searchability point of view, but also with influencers. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't go after influencers, but with the with everyone being able to buy followers and even then being subjected to the ever changing algorithm changes. How far is your money really going to go? Right? Those are just some of the questions that I urge you to ask yourself when you're allocating your money for this year. How you can grow your business? Right? Because we don't have all the budget in the world. Remember, organic or in media is always the best. It's searchable. It reaches the most people and it has credibility, a layer of trust that no ad or Instagram reel can ever get you. So I encourage everyone to just get onto your first podcast, you're going to feel so empowered to do so. You're going to it's almost going to be like an addiction where you're going to want to keep getting onto more and more podcasts and create those relationships with those podcast hosts. If you want to know how to get into a podcast or you can download my podcasts pitching freebie on my website, go to gloriachou.com/podcast or watch my PR masterclass where I walk you through exactly how to write a pitch that's going to get the hell yes from the other person. You can watch the masterclass that 1000s of entrepreneurs have watched to land media of all different tiers, top tier industry, local and more. Go to gloriachou.com/masterclass. That's gloria c h o u pr.com slash masterclass. So that's the first change in 2023 is less reliance on social media and more of a focus pitching to podcasts. So number two that I think is going to change this year is that media outlets because they are having less and less of a budget, they will rely more on contributors, and freelance writers as they slashed their budget for full time writers. And that is actually a good thing for you listening because it means that if you make a connection with a writer, the chances are really, really high that they will be writing for multiple outlets, right, because they're freelancers. So that is a good thing for us. Because it means that that one relationship, just getting that one yes. Could mean you're getting featured in multiple outlets. Remember, it's about planting the seeds and nurturing the relationship. It's not about selling to the journalists. And like using them as an advertising vehicle for free, the more your pitch sounds like that, the more it's going to be rejected. And I this is something that I teach inside of every masterclass and all of my PR students know this. So remember, media outlets will be slashing their budgets. So it means that they'll have less and less full time staff, and rely more on freelance writers, writers who write for very, you know, a multitude of outlets. And that's a good thing for you. Because it means that maybe if you just pitch to one person and get a response, nurture that one relationship, you will have the opportunity to get featured in many different outlets. So that again, is a good thing. So the third thing that I think will be really changing in 2023, is there's this huge problem with fake news, right? With people not trusting in journalism, you know, editorial content. And as the boundaries of pay to play content, and a real earned editorial content gets blurred, that's even going to be a bigger issue for these outlets to maintain their trust with their audience. So what is the solution to that, they will start to really focus on getting authentic perspectives from a diverse range of sources, people like you people like the everyday small business heroes in my PR community, right, because again, if the juror if the journalism landscape is sounding more and more just like a mouthpiece for the fortune 500 companies, it's going to lose his credibility even faster. So one way for journalists and outlets to really maintain their trust is to be able to get a variety of different opinions, from people with different lived experience from fresh perspectives. It just means that there's more room for you and me and everyday small business heroes to play. So I know it sounds like a big and scary landscape, right? Traditionally, we've been told that companies with huge budgets and fancy connections, they are the ones that are able to get featured. But as fake news, and as journalists and journalism gets a little bit more blurred, there is going to be a shift back into highlighting more authentic and diverse perspectives from everyday people, right? Because that's really, at the core of why journalism is trustworthy, because they interview everyday people and not just people who maybe have no VIP status, right. So if they want to separate themselves from advertising and still maintain the editorial credit credibility, they will, they will need to really tap into authentic voices, right? People who have different perspectives from all over the country. And again, not just in whether it's big cities, or people who have fancy PR reps. And again, that is a good thing for a small business hero. So that is what I want you to keep in mind. Another thing about what this implies is that, remember, you are sitting on a pile of gold, you have a connection to your audience. Maybe you're in a couple of Facebook groups, or maybe you just know people in your audience because you created a product or a service for that audience. Make sure you tap into that be a conduit of information, how can you use a poll and I mean, like a free 99 Google Forms, survey them compare their attitudes, ask them what's shifting what's changing, because you being on the horizon of that, you being able to give the journalist original data, and it's okay it was if it's from a very small sample size, that is work that the journalist is not going to do. And you will be able to tell them, hey, this is what I'm hearing from my audience, right of mompreneurs or people who homeschool their children or seniors with certain type of pain, whatever it is, you know, your customer avatar, tap into that audience, survey them offer that information up, boom, that's going to make you super, super helpful for the journalists because you're saying these sources are vetted, I am credible. And here is some original data, right? It's all about presenting a point of view. It's not about having the answers to the world's problems. It's just a matter of this is a discussion or an insight or trend that I am seeing. Right? Here is what my community thinks about it. Let me know if you're working on a story similar, and this is why it matters. Right? Again, bring it back to the now why is it relevant to right now? I don't care what industry you're in. We are experiencing crazy monumental changes on every level. So things are constantly changing. And how can you help people maybe explain what's happening? Or or shed a light on something that they don't know yet? Whether it's predictions, trends, what help you, right?
Gloria Chou 15:43
So those are my three biggest takeaways on what how I think PR and media relations and visibility is changing in 2023. And if it's just one thing that you have taken away from this is that all of the signs are pointing to having you succeed this year. Because small businesses, we are the ones that are changing our communities, we are the ones with the most freshest, most diverse and original ideas and perspectives. And we need to do the sacred work of pitching that into to the media to not only make the landscape more inclusive and representative, but to make the landscape more complete, right? It's not just about hearing from the huge companies. It's about hearing from everyday people who are doing incredible things like you. And so you owe it to yourself and your community to not to find your voice because you have one but to use it and to really be empowered to stretch that message, right? Remember someone out there can benefit from your solution, your story, your why, and as long as you do the work of clarifying that message, knowing how to pitch in a succinct way. Right? And I teach that in every masterclass, you will be able to be positioned as an expert and a credible person a credible source that these journalists are looking for. These journalists are connecting with everyday people.
Gloria Chou 17:01
So, why have I not be you? Again, thank you so much for being here. I love love love recording this podcast and thinking about the ways that I can deliver value to you and communicate the things that are on my mind, whether it's personal work related things about the PR industry and more. And if you know of anyone who can benefit from the tips and the strategies and the things that I share on this podcast, please do send it to your friend. And don't forget to give us a rating so that more people can discover this podcast just like you. Now, again, recording this in the very beginning of the year, I want you to know that you are worthy, that you are seen, you're already complete. It's just a matter of going bigger with the messages that you already have.
Gloria Chou 17:45
Hey, small business hero. Did you know that you can get featured for free on outlets like Forbes, The New York Times, Marie Claire Pop Sugar, and so many more, even if you're not yet launched? Or if you don't have any connection? That's right. That's why I invite you to watch my PR Secrets masterclass, where I reveal the exact methods 1000s of bootstrapping small businesses used to have their own PR and go from unknown to being a credible and sought after industry expert. Now if you want to land your first press feature, get on a podcast, secure a VIP speaking gig or just reach out to that very intimidating editor. This class will show you exactly how to do it. Register now at Gloria Chou pr.com/masterclass. That's Gloria Chou c-h-o-u pr.com/masterclass. So you can get featured in 30 days without spending a penny on ads or agencies. Best of all, this is completely free. So get in there and let's get you featured.