Episode 23: Best (And Free!) PR Tools to Leverage Now to Get Your Business Featured This Year
Do you want to know the best PR tools on the market? I’ve got you covered.
I’m all about sharing the best tools to help you land media, whether they’re to help you connect with journalists, monitor your PR efforts, or research what’s trending.
I’ve handpicked the best tools that you need to be using, and I’m sharing them in this episode. The best part is, all of these resources are free!
There are so many tools out there that it can be hard to know where to find the good ones. That’s where this episode comes in.
Even if you don’t have any industry connections or related contacts, this is for you.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
How to use Google News Alerts
The importance of absorbing what is already being published
Why you should sign up for HARO
How to connect with journalists
Why you should publish on Medium as well as your own blog
Using Medium to learn about PR
Hashtags you need to be following on Twitter
The Facebook group you need to join
Are you ready to make this your year? You might just be starting out, but that doesn’t mean this year can't be huge for you. Plus, what better place to start than this episode?
If you’re ready for this year to be the year that you land press and stop hiding behind the scenes, I want you to join our Facebook group. It’s the number one place for small businesses looking to go from unknown to being seen, heard, and valued. It’s the perfect place for you to make connections, find support, and get accountability. Go to www.getfeaturednow.com to join.
Additional Resources:
Join the Small Biz PR Pros FB group
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Transcript
SBPR Episode 23 Final.mp3
[00:00:00] If you want to know the best PR tools out there on the market for you to land media, this episode is for you. 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, because let's be honest, we simply cannot make the impact. We're here to make, by hiding behind the scenes. 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. Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Small Business PR podcast. Now, at the time of this recording, it is Q one of the New Year, and I'm all about sharing the best tools so that you can use it this year to land media, right? Whether it's to connect with journalists, to monitor your PR efforts to do research on what's trending and so much more. There are so many tools out there to help you do this. So without further ado, I'm going to just dove right in and share with you the tools that you must have to land media features this year. If you don't have any industry connections or any kind of contacts, that's totally OK.
[00:01:23] So the first one is I want you to install a Google news alerts. Simply type in Google news alert into Google, and you're going to be able to set up an alert that comes to your email every day during the frequency that you like. So whether it's one time of day or three times a day where you're going to be able to know all of the trending news stories based on a keyword or a set of keywords. So for example, if you're in clean beauty, you can simply type in clean beauty articles and Google news alerts will share with you all of the articles and anything that's published online about your keyword clean beauty. Now, this is a great way for you to start to think in terms of what is the good headline. What do journalists want to write about? How can you make your subject line super punchy? Because again, we're all about making sure that your message gets across to the person who is receiving it right? And what better way to know how to write stories and give it to them in that format than digesting every day? What are the news stories that are being published? So this is a key part of what I teach in my PR masterclass in terms of subject line is when we actually pitch to the editor, we want to give them a subject line that tells them exactly what the story will be. So instead of putting in my name, my product, please feature me.
[00:02:32] You want to put in a headline that's similar to what's already being published, so it might be three clean beauty ingredients that are actually toxic for you, or three best ways to level up your clean beauty routine this year, right? Whatever it is, but install a Google news alert and that way you can start digesting and absorbing what is already being published. So that's number one, is install a Google news alerts and it's, by the way, one hundred percent free. Second one I want you to do is sign up for HARO, which stands for Help a Reporter Out. And I've talked about this on episode 12 of the Small Business PR podcast. And again, I've talked about it in my Facebook group. So many PR PR starter pack members and members of my community have successfully used horo to land top tier media and as well as get into blogs and podcasts and so much more. So again, Help a Reporter Out is what HARO stands for, and you can register by going to helpareporter.com. Now what it is is a place to connect with journalists, and you can sign up as either a journalist or a source, in which case, if you're listening to this, you're most likely going to be a source because you want to be a source for the for the subject of the interview, right? So you're going to sign up as a source on helpareporter.com.
[00:03:48] And every day it's going to send you emails of the hundreds of inquiries from journalists and bloggers all around the world who are looking for sources to interview. Now there's a way to hack this because it can get very time consuming, and I don't want you to be spending hours sifting through it. So do go to episode 12 of the Small Business PR podcast, and then you can figure out how you can hack this with just under five to 10 minutes a day. Now, usually what I like to do is I want you to not only sign up for it, but know exactly when it sends you emails so you can send. You can decide for help a reporter out to send you inquiries either once a day or three times a day, and it's as simple as doing a control f and type in your keyword. So, for example, if you are in fitness, then you might do control f after help a reporter send you that email and type in fitness, and you'll be able to see all of the different, the different inquiries for journalists looking to interview fitness experts, right? That's going to save you time. So you don't have to read this very, very lengthy email that's going to be asking for people to be interviewed throughout 10 different industries because they're not all going to be related to your industry. So that's one way to hack it. I go into more again about this in episode 12, so you can definitely go to Gloria Chow Pro 12 to listen to that.
[00:05:08] So that's number two is sign up for HARO at www.helpa reporternow.com. The third tool is medium. I know a lot of you have heard about this, but Medium has really taken off in the last few years. It's really a place where serious bloggers, influencers, thought leaders. That's where they go to read the news, to connect with each other and share their writing as an individual right. It's a leading writing and networking platform. It has really strong SEO capabilities, and there is a chance that if you write on there that it could go viral, that it could get picked up and also build your SEO credibility. So the thing about Medium is that it's entirely free to sign up and if you are someone who loves. Right. And if you feel like writing content is in your wheelhouse, you definitely will want to publish on Medium. Now a lot of people say, Well, what about publishing on my own blog? And that's OK too. But why not also share it on Medium, a platform that has already been a leading writing and networking platform? So definitely, if you are sharing on your blog, what I would recommend you do is actually write on Medium first and then share that link on your blog, right? So that way you are leveraging the audience ship of Medium for your content so that you're not just spending hours writing content for your blog that it's not going to get that many visitors right? So leverage medium.
[00:06:28] Another thing about Medium is that it has a far stronger and more powerful organic reach than probably your own blog. That's another reason why you want to publish on Medium as well as your blog. Right? The power of Medium is that it's already being used by so many leading thought experts, and there's different groups that you can join, for example, A.I. or fitness or mompreneurs. And so you can publish your article relating to your industry in that niche and as well as connect with other influential thought leaders. A lot of people also go on to Medium to look for experts to interview. So it's a great place to leverage medium and to showcase your expertise through writing. So obviously for medium, it's free. You can produce your own engaging content, but it's also another hack is you can use Medium to become more knowledgeable on PR. That's right, if you put in the word PR in two mediums search engine, right, you're going to see so many articles and get a crash course on the subject. You're going to see case studies, you're going to see strategy pieces and a lot of different PR people sharing what they've learned about PR. So that's also another reason why you should use media, even if you're not a great writer. If you don't feel comfortable writing on Medium, that's totally fine. Right? So the next tool that you must, must, must use is following the hashtags journo request, blogger request and PR request on Twitter.
[00:07:52] So Twitter is a very powerful tool for a lot of journalists to connect with everyday people like you and me so that they can interview new people. Right? And how do they do this? They usually send out a tweet saying, I'm looking to write a story about X, Y and Z hashtag journal, request, blogger request or PR request, right? So if you follow on Twitter these three hashtags, you're going to be able to very quickly discern who is looking to interview someone who is looking to, you know, get in touch with a blogger, if that's you. Who who is a blogger that's looking to interview a subject, which is you. Right? So that's how you do it on Twitter. So you can honestly, you don't need to have a Twitter presence to do this as long as you have a Twitter account. So you can literally set up Twitter account and start following these three hashtags. I'll repeat it again. #journal request . Second, one is #bloggerrequest. So that is someone who is a blogger and looking for people to interview. And if you follow that, you might very well get to be on that blog if you fit the bill, right? The third one is PR requests, which is pretty self-explanatory. Now, if you follow those three, you're going to be able to see every day the people who are looking to connect with experts like you for an interview.
[00:09:09] That's on Twitter. And I realize that you can also do this on Instagram, for example, on Instagram. If you follow the hashtag General Requests, it has over twenty point five thousand posts. But I will say that a lot of the people on Instagram who are using this hashtags are also people that are like me and you who are looking to land media, whereas on Twitter it's a little bit more targeted. It's a lot of the actual legitimate journalists who are looking for people to interview. So if I had to pick one or the other, I probably would pick Twitter. If you just have to follow one of them, right? And again, you don't need to have a big Twitter presence. You can literally get into Twitter right now, get a free account. You don't have to post anything and simply follow those three hashtags. Ok. The good thing about Twitter and Instagram and everything is that you're already on social media, right? It doesn't take so much legwork for you to be doing this and the time that you're spending on social media anyways, just use it smarter. Use that five 10, whether you're on it for hours to look at the requests that people are asking for. So again, I'm all about working smarter, not harder. And if you're already on Instagram or Twitter, why not follow those hashtags right? It works.
[00:10:17] And it's probably one of the top tools for getting organic media by connecting with journalists through these hashtags. Now, the last one is I would have to tell you, obviously, you're in the right place by listening to this podcast, but I also have a free Facebook group. It's the number one Facebook group for small business owners looking to get from unknown to legendary. I go live every Friday. I have tons of trainings and it's a place to connect with people like yourself who are trying to get into the media without any connections, maybe without even being launched or totally bootstrapping without a website, you're going to find support and accountability, and I might surprise you with some additional trainings that are really going to help you, and you'll be able to get face time with me when I go live. So that is another another tool on top of obviously listening to this podcast, by the way. Thank you so much for being here. Please join my free Facebook group. You can go there at getfeaturednow.com. Say hi, tell me how you found me. Drop a link to your business so that we can support you. And as a Facebook group grows, we have nearly three point five to four thousand people in there. You never know if you're going to be able to connect with a business bestie, see a podcast host, even sell to your ideal customers and connect with me. So there you have it, my friends, my top PR tools, you must must must leverage this year and I would encourage you to do it sooner than later.
[00:11:38] That way, you can know exactly how to connect with journalists, how to get support and accountability, and how to know exactly if you are the right interview subject for a journalist. And again, you do not need to be a fancy, super well-known company to do this. There are people every day who are just starting out who have expertise to share, who have ideas and stories to tell that the journalist is looking for. So why have it not be you? All right. Until next time, my friends, thank you so much for listening to the show. Hey, my friends, thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Small Business podcast. Now if you are ready for this year to be the year that you land, press and stop hiding behind the scenes, I want you to join our Facebook group, the number one place for small businesses looking to go from unknown to being seen, heard and valued. This is a special one of a kind space for small but mighty business owners at every stage of their PR journey, and you can come join us at www.getfeaturednow.com. You might meet a podcast host. You might be able to get on to a podcast, meet a business bestie and you'll be able to see me where I go live in it every single Friday. I cannot wait to
[00:12:48] Meet you in the group and I look forward to joining us.