The Catch 22 of business growth stems from the fact that you need exposure to make it happen, yet it’s tough to afford a PR professional until your business has grown to a certain level. Is there a way to do it yourself? What is the best approach for pitching yourself to local or even national media outlets?
Christina Nicholson spent ten years as a news anchor and reporter, and in that time she received an overwhelming number of pitches from publicists looking to earn exposure for their clients – who were approaching it the wrong way. She transitioned to the field of media relations in 2015, hoping that a traditional work schedule would be more family-friendly, but she quickly grew weary of the pressure to be in the office late and answer email at all hours.
Christina created her own public relations firm in 2015. Media Maven seeks to help small business owners gain exposure via media relations, video production, writing, and blogging. She employs the lessons she learned in broadcasting to land her clients coverage on The Rachel Ray Show as well as local TV in a variety of top ten markets, and in print and digital publications including Newborn Magazine and countless websites and blogs. Today she shares her strategies for selecting clients and developing customized PR packages. Listen to understand the right way to pitch yourself to the media and establish your expertise in a particular market!
Key Takeaways
How Christina landed her first few clients
- ‘Beggars can’t be choosers’
- Utilized job boards like Upwork
- Said ‘yes’ to everything
- Worked for less and over delivered
The PR services Christina offers her clients
- Customized packages to achieve specific goals
- Media relations, video production, blogging and social media
How Christina selects her clients
- Works with any business owner she can help with a great story/content
- Likes the restaurant, health niches
- Less inclined to take clients in fields she doesn’t enjoy (i.e.: finance)
Christina’s process for developing a client package
- Establish client goals and develop customized plan
- Determine how the client’s product/service can solve problems
- Tie client expertise into newsworthy local/natio nal story
When small business owners should outsource their PR
- Money to invest (minimum of $2,000/month retainer, six-month contract)
- No time to do on their own
The importance of patience and realistic expectations
- Traction takes time
- National outlets receive thousands of pitches
- Keep pitching from different angles
- Local/small opportunities can lead to national coverage
Resources
Connect with Christina Nicholson
Christina Nicholson is a former TV reporter and anchor who now owns and operates a public relations firm, Media Maven. She helps small business owners earn exposure through media relations, video production, writing, and blogging. She also recently launched Master your PR – an online course that teaches small business owners how to handle public relations on their own. Christina also has a local lifestyle and family blog, Mascara Maven. She lives in South Florida with her husband and two young children.
Full transcript:
Laura Pennington (Host): Hello and welcome back to the Better Biz Academy podcast. As usual, I have a very interesting guest for you all today as a lot of experience as it relates to publicity and media and she’s going to be telling us all about how she got into that and how you can make the most of publicity and media in your own business. My guest today is Christina Nicholson. She is a former TV reporter and anchor who now owns and operates a public relations firm, Media Maven. She helps small business owners earning exposure through media relations, video production, writing and blogging. She recently launched ‘Master Your PR’, an online course that teaches small business owners how to handle public relations on their own. She also has a local lifestyle and family blog, Mascara Maven, and she lives in South Florida with her husband and two young children. So, welcome to the show, Christina.
Christina Nicholson (Guest): Thank you so much for having me, Laura.
Laura: I’m excited to have you, you know, we run in a lot of the same Facebook entrepreneur groups and I’ve seen you everywhere and I feel like the issues that you talk about are things that a lot of business owners just don’t understand or don’t really know where to start or how to do it properly. So, I’m excited to talk about that. But I’d love to hear a little bit more about so first, so how did you get involved in reporting and journalism? Was that something you were always interested in?
Christina: Yeah. I remember going back to 8th grade and we had to have a career day. We lived in a small city so I kind of go to like the local news station and shadow somebody. I went to a local cable station and I read church announcements on – it was like one of those channels that nobody really watches but I was like, oh this is my anchor moment. I’m sitting at this podium and I’m reading these announcements for a church. So, that was in the 8th grade, and I went to school for journalism and by then, I was in a big city so I could intern at a real TV station. So, the way it works in TV is, you don’t really use a paper resume – you do use that, but that’s not what’ll get you hired. You create a resume tape and it is basically you reporting and – not so much anchoring…maybe a little anchoring but it’s mostly reporting – and that’s what I did. I sent it out and it’s a very competitive industry so I literally remember sending hundreds out. And I can’t believe I say I feel old – I’m 33 – so but this is how I sent my tape out. I remember being in my apartment and having one of those VHS machines where you could transfer something from a VHS to a DVD, and I would have to do it in real time so I would press play on my tape and then it would record on a DVD, and then I would send out all of those, like, hello I should have created a YouTube channel but I don’t even know if YouTube was around then. This was like in 2005 so I wasn’t privy to that technology yet. But, I did that and I ended up working out my way in as a TV reporter and anchor. I worked in New York City, Beaumont, Texas, Fort Minor and my last station was in Miami where I worked for four years so that was my background, I was telling stories in the field, in the studio, and I was getting pitched by a lot of publicists and small business owners who wanted me the exposure. And that kind of led me to where I am today.
Laura: Wow, that’s so interesting. It sounds like you’ve always had the passion to be doing something with the media and it’s just taken a little bit different form now based on the experience that you had as a reporter. So, tell me more about the transition from a more traditional career in reporting to doing what you’re doing now. I mean, it’s kind of a leap to go into entrepreneurship and doing things on your own. So, I’m curious how you did that.
Christina: Yeah, so I have a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old and I left the news business almost two years ago. And the thing about the news business is that it’s not family friendly. You can work at two in the morning, you can be called away on Christmas Day because breaking news happens, you can be working at a 11-o clock at night. My husband also works a job that does not have traditional 9 to 5 hours. We don’t have family here, so it was tough to make things work having two young kids. So, that’s when I got into PR and a lot of journalists move from their job as a journalist to public relations, because we work hand in hand with publicists a lot, like I said. I was getting pitched at least a dozen times a day from a public relations firm who wanted to earn their client exposure. And the reason that I went into that business was because 9 out of 10 of those pitches were terrible. I mean, it was so obvious that a lot of these people pitching the media never worked in media, they did not know how to pitch the media. I was getting these long press releases. There was no story there. I mean, it was basically, hey here is my client, can we give them a free commercial. There was nothing to educate the audience. There was nothing to entertain them. No emotion behind the story. Sometimes they would be pitching me in South Florida, the story had no South Florida ties. It was just very obvious that they were throwing a lot of stuff against the wall hoping something would stick. So, I said, I know how to pitch the media because I have been covering stories all day every day for ten years; why don’t I work with small business owners and help them earn media exposure, but I’ll do it the right way. So, I started working at a public relations firm. Finally, somebody hired me. I actually had a tough time getting into public relations. Nobody would hire me because they would say, well you don’t have any experience in public relations; and I would tell them no, but I have experience being pitched by you almost on daily basis and I can tell you why I have never covered any of your stories. And they were like, no…no thanks, you don’t have any experience. So, I was kind of like, okay. So, finally somebody hired me and they actually happened to have a news background and understood the importance of that. And I worked at that firm for six months and I was having the same problems – it wasn’t flexible. I was being blown up with emails from 6:00am until 11:00pm and I had to be in the office between 9 and 5, and it was – I think a lot of us go into business for this reason. It was those situations where if you leave at five, you’re kind of getting attitude from your boss because you should stay later, and if you take an hour lunch break, it’s like, you are not a motivated employee. There was so much emphasis put the work you were doing in an office. Like never mind emails that are going out at 6:00am and 11:00pm. It was more like the appearance of you sitting in an office and working at a desk and I just thought that that have nothing to do with the work that I am doing. You know what I mean? It just doesn’t make any sense to me. And I really – I am very productive and I am very – I guess I am very practical at how I spend my time and if I am going to spend all day in front of a computer working, I figure, why not stay two hours dealing with traffic and doing my hair and make up to go into office and just work from home. I got a computer at home. I don’t need to deal with rush hour to sit at a computer in an office. So, I said, you know what? Obviously, nobody is going to give me a flexible schedule. I have to do it on my own. I am in a service based industry, so I don’t have a bunch of startup costs. Obviously, I have to pay for some things, but it’s not like I am creating a product or I have a brick and mortar or anything like that. So, I said – after six months at that firm – I said, you know what? Screw it, I am just going to do it on my own and since then it’s been almost two years.
Laura: Wow, I can identify with so much of that. First of all, I feel like a lot of the best business ideas are born out of your experience and the fact that you see a gap in the market. So, in your particular situation, you were getting pitched by these public relation firms, but they weren’t doing it properly and really, what a shame for their client right. I mean, you pay a publicist a lot of money to do those things for you and on the client and you may not even know what’s going out or if it’s actually an appropriate pitch to a reporter, and to hear that so many of them were off the mark. I mean, that was such a golden opportunity for you to say, I might have been interested in this person if you had done it in this particular way. And what you talked about with a traditional job, that was the number one thing that I could not stand at the company that I worked at before freelancing full time. I mean, I showed up early every single day because I was most productive in the morning and I’d usually get my work done by 2 o clock in the afternoon and it just drove me crazy that my value at the company was based on me sitting at a desk between 8:30 and 5:00, no matter if I had things to do or not, but – so, sometimes I would get a project and I would drag it out as slowly as possible. I don’t want anyone to walk by and think I am not working. And I had asked my boss can I go part time. No, they didn’t want me to go part time. So, I completely get that. I am the same way. I am productive. I want to work within a schedule that works for me and not on someone else’s time, just essentially sitting at a desk, running out the clock every day and waiting for it to hit five o clock so that I can race out the door. That just drove me absolutely crazy. So, you are making this transition, one of the biggest challenges that people who are going into business for themselves face, is getting those first couple of clients. So, did you do that while you still were working? Was that something you jumped in feet first? What were your tips for landing those first couple of clients that make it a reality to work for yourself?
Christina: Yeah! Well, that was the hard part because honestly I thought, oh yeah, I can do this job, I can promote myself. And I definitely am somebody who practice what I preach. I treat myself as my own clients, I earn media exposure for myself. So, I got that covered. I got the actual work covered, but then I remembered, oh crap! Now I have to get my own clients. I hate sales and now I have to be my own sales person. And something that I did not want to do that I thought a lot of PR firms deal with is overpromising to their clients. I saw them saying oh, yeah we can get you on today’s show and this would be great in the Washington Post; I have contacts there. Hell, they’ll get you in there for sure! And the thing is that no matter how great your contacts are, that is not a guarantee you are going to earn media coverage. I have, one of my friends worked on Good Morning America and that doesn’t mean he is going to put whatever I pitch him on the air. You have no control over the producers, on these reporters, on these editors. So, you cannot promise anything. So, when I was doing my client outreach that was something that I made sure to let my potential clients know. Like, look I can’t promise you anything, but I know works and what doesn’t. I know different strategies to take from being on the inside and I am going to use that. It’s kind of like going to a doctor. And the doctor will try their best to make you better. They will use their expertise and their time and you are paying them to do all of that, to make you better, but they can’t guarantee that they are going to make you feel better. They can only do what they know to get you to that goal. So, it’s kind of like the same thing. And something that I did, which I don’t do now, but I think everybody starting out kind of needs to do it, is I was saying yes to everything. I was going on all of those sites that I haven’t been on in over a year, like Upwork and – I think Upwork was basically the only one. I am not sure, I wanted to go to Craig’s List. I think Craig’s List is a little – it can be sketchy. But I was definitely using Upwork and a couple of those other job boards and I would just pitch myself and I was working for way below what anybody would pay somebody working at a firm to do their publicity. They were paying me way below, but I was over-delivering. So, I was working like crazy and I was making good money, but I was stressing out because I put a lot of pressure on myself to over deliver. So, at one point, I was doing like 17 – I counted the different clients, the different jobs I was doing; I was doing 17 different odd jobs and I was doing that for about six months and I was going crazy and then I reminded myself, ok wait, you got into this to have a flexible schedule. And I know as entrepreneurs, we work longer hours for ourselves than we worked for anybody else. The joy though of that is I could take a break at 4 o clock in the afternoon to take my child to swimming lessons or at 11 o clock, I can stop for a minute, load the washer and then come back and get to it. But I was saying yes to so much that it was burning me out and making me stressed out and I had an attitude problem because I just had so much on my plate. So, I made it my new year’s resolution to raise my prices and to charge what I was worth, and to only take those clients that I really would enjoy working with. But at the beginning, to get those clients, I do think, you know, beggars can’t be choosers; I don’t think you can start off with an insanely high price point. Unless you are crazy well known and everybody for the last couple of years has been saying, you should go up on your own, you would be amazing. I would be one of your clients – and a lot of people start like that. I did not have that. I did not – I signed contracts that said I could not work with a client that I worked with this public relations firms. So, I couldn’t steal a client that I was working with under somebody else. I was kind of starting from scratch when I went out on my own. So, to answer your question it was just basically – I don’t want to say lowering my standards – but I felt like I had to start somewhere and so I was charging less and saying yes to a lot and I did that for six months, and then I started building up my business the way I wanted it to be.
Laura: I love that story and I did the same thing. And I’d like to see it as like paying your dues because it’s very hard when you first start off. A lot of times you don’t know what to charge. You see a lot of other people charging different prices that may be lower than yours and in order to compete, you have to lower your expectations of what you may be able to get. The important thing, though, in that process is to recognize when it is time to raise your prices or to raise the standards you have for your clients. I definitely have made that mistake as well. I said yes to almost every client who wanted to work with me in my first year of business and I had a handful of true nightmare clients that I hope I never encounter people like that again. And even then, that was a painful experience and didn’t make me anywhere near the money that I should have been paid to deal with people who were that difficult. It taught me a lot about, okay going forward, let’s not let this happen again. Let’s figure out the processes to weed people out pretty early on and tell them no. I think a lot of times people don’t consider that you are hoping so much that this potential client says yes to you, but the truth is that you have the ability to say no as well. And sometimes it’s the right choice to make. So, do you offer sort of all kinds of different services or have you chosen to focus in on a niche, like a particular type of business or a particular sort of package of products that you offer again and again or is it kind of a mixed bag?
Christina: Well I definitely customize my packages for my clients’ goals. Not everybody wants the same thing for the same reason and sometimes people do want the same thing, but they want it for different reasons. So, I don’t promote myself as anything public relations. There is a lot under the public relations umbrella. I do three to four main things. One is media relations, which is pitching the media. The other one is video production. As a reporter, I would shoot and edit my own stuff a lot. So, I know the importance of storytelling through a short video and as we know, video is everything right now. If you are in business, you should be using video online because people would much rather watch a video than read text. I also do some blogging. I think every business should have a blog on their website because using those keywords will drive your SEO and that’s how people are going to find you. And then I do a little bit of social media. Social media is not something that I promote because I feel like even though people understand the value of having a great social media presence, a lot of people don’t understand the work and sometimes the money that goes into it. For example, if you have a Facebook page, you are going to need some money on advertisements because Facebook has driven down your organic reach to like 2% of your following. Social media is extremely important, but I still think some small business owners are not grasping the work that goes into building great social media channels. But I pretty much will work with almost any small business owner, if I think I can help them. If the business does not interest me or I just don’t see where I could come up with news worthy stories for you, then I won’t take you on as a client because I don’t want you to pay me and then meet to fail. I will only take you on if I think you got great story and I can get you some placements or shoot great video or come up with tons of content for your blog. I do like the restaurant snitch, just because when I was in college I worked at restaurants and I think you know there is great video opportunities there – there are always stories to tell. And in the health field, there are always stories. I feel like really the only niche that doesn’t get me excited is the financial industry, like when it comes down to insurance or financial planning or banking. That stuff is a little over my head. It doesn’t excite me. It’s hard to make sexy for a news pitch. I mean, it is very relevant – there is something about money in the news so you can make it very relevant and news worthy. It’s just not my jam. I’d rather work with some other clients where I have fun working with the industry.
Laura: So, when you are working with the potential new client and they are not really sure what they need; what’s your process to determining the strategy that’s most appropriate for them given that you do a couple of different things?
Christina: The first thing I do is I sit them and I find out their goals. Like what do you want as far as marketing? What are your struggles? Where do you want to be? What are your goals? And from those goals, we kind of set out a plan. If I can’t help them with everything, then I probably know somebody who can help them with that; events, for example. I don’t do the throwing events thing. I may help you promote the event, but as far as putting it together, I know a lot of other public relations firms do that, that’s something I don’t do. So, I just work with them based on their goals, but the number one thing whether it be for media relations, for a video, for a blog, you have to have a good story to tell. And I think the biggest mistakes small business owners make when they go to promote their business is the only thing they are doing; is promoting their business. Like you need to put that on the back burner. Don’t think of promoting your business. You need to think about your expertise and what you do and how you are solving somebody’s problem; and that is what you going to pitch to the media or that’s what you are going to make a video about or that is what you are going to blog about. Most of the time when you get a feature in the media, if it’s says it’s an online publication, a lot of the time if it’s a couple of quotes, you are cited and it’s a link back to your website, and that’s exactly what you want. That’s what you need. It’s very rare for anybody to give you exposure on the media and it looks like free commercial. Usually you are promoting yourself as an expert in your industry or you have tied what you do into something news worthy that is happening. So, for example, if you work in loans. I know something just happened, we have a new president, making a lot of changes, something just happened with loans, people get further mortgage if they are buying a house. If you work in that industry, that’s a great opportunity for you to reach out to your local media and say look this is happening nationally, I am local expert on this and I would like to break it down and let you know what this means for first time home buyers. So, while you are not saying, hey look at me, hire me; you are saying, I can help you by explaining this big news and I can help you get the message across and really dumb it down, so everybody can understand that. So, then it’s really not a matter of earning media exposure, so all of a sudden everybody will be calling you, it’s earning constant media exposure over time. So, when something does come up, you’ll say, oh, I know that person. I have seen them here, here, and here. We should call them.
Laura: That’s a really important point that you just made because a lot of people going into the process of wanting to get publicity have these big goals and dreams. They want to land an interview on the biggest podcasts that are out there. They want to be on national TV and obviously, those things are important and something to strive for, but doing that once and then doing nothing for six months or spending the next six months trying to land that one thing without doing the consistent smaller steps, it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Now do you think there is – what is the point in owning your business, where it makes sense to outsource your publicity? I mean, is there a general time line or a revenue point or – when do a lot of people tend to come to you when it’s appropriate to hire a publicist as opposed to pitching yourself for things?
Christina: Well, I think, the biggest thing is money. I know the pricing on hiring a public relations firm or somebody to handle your publicity depends on where you live and the cost of living, but I personally have never heard of anything less than 2000 or 2500 per monthly retainer. And remember, this is not something that you pay for once and quit. A lot of – most contracts are at least six months long, just because it takes that long to earn media and a misconception is that, oh well you just pitched Forbes and then you get in there the next day. That’s not how that happens. Everything is based on time. There has to be a timeliness to your pitch, the person you are pitching, it has to work on their timeline and remember, all of these outlets, they have schedules, they deal with breaking news, but they also certain things at certain times of the year. So, you really have to – for lack of a better word -‘butter them up’. And when people pay for publicity usually you are hiring somebody just to take all of that off your shoulders. Granted you still need to work with the publicist. It’s not something that you just pay somebody to do and you never see them or talk to them again. I know I am bothering my clients every other day, saying okay I need a quote from you. I need you to say that, I need you to do this. Some things I handle on my own, but if I am just going to send in a direct quote, I want it from that person. So, even if you do pay somebody, they are definitely going to be in contact with you working with you. What I found through my business development; a lot of small business owners want this; they want somebody to earn their media exposure. They want somebody to take a lot off of their plate because as an entrepreneur, you are busy and you do wear a lot of hats, but they could not afford it because they were a startup or they hadn’t grown to where they were yet, and the catch-22 is they don’t have the money to pay for publicity because they haven’t grown to where they want to be, but many times you need the publicity to grow to where you want to be. So, after experiencing so many people saying, oh I really really want this but I can’t afford it, I decided okay well why don’t I just teach people everything I know. I’ll just tell them, how I pitch, how you find your story, why it’s important to have a story, or what your story should include? Who to pitch it to? How to pitch it to them? How to follow up? How to maintain your relationship for more coverage? How to use social media to pitch the media? How to do everything that I do on a day to day basis and that’s when I got the idea to create my online course ‘Master Your PR’ and it’s almost a perfect solution for somebody who does not have the money to outsource something like this, but has to make the time. And that’s the tricky thing, it’s like it’s easy to pay for a course and go through it and learn it, but it takes time to implement what you learn. And you have to implement this stuff little by little every day. And I know a lot of entrepreneurs that either don’t have time to take a course, they don’t have time to implement what they learned, but the truth of the matter is, if you don’t have a budget to outsource stuff, you have to find a way to make time. I mean, I know before I started outsourcing some website stuff, I would spend a lot of time learning all this backend WordPress stuff that I didn’t have to learn but I had to. I had to take time to do it because I didn’t have the budget to outsource this. So, I think when it comes to hiring somebody or learning how to do it yourself, I think the number one thing it comes down to is an issue of money and then number two is an issue of time.
Laura: Now, you’ve kind of talked about this idea of money holding you back and that’s definitely, I mean, I’ve been in that position before and I’ve hired a publicist and it did not work out and part of that was probably my lack of awareness about the situation as well. So, I know you’ve mentioned that it takes four to even seven months to start seeing traction from the efforts that you’re putting into a publicity campaign, but what kind of a result – I know it will depend on a lot on the clients but what kind of results would be reasonable in those first couple of months of a campaign to where you know that things are actually happening for you, and even if the gigs aren’t necessarily being landed, they’re being pitched. Because my experience was that I had a publicist and we were sending pitches, like I was doing some and then they were doing some and in the same month that I landed 30 interviews, their efforts landed one. And so, it just seemed like there was a disconnect there. So, what would be your advice to someone who is thinking about hiring a publicist? What should you be looking for where it’s reasonable where you’re not going in and saying, I want to be mentioned in the New York Times, I want to be on Good Morning America – but where there’s a fair balance there.
Christina: Yeah. I think the first thing is if you’re hiring somebody, know who you’re hiring. I’ve seen a lot of firms, like you have a sales person and who will overpromise you everything. And then after you hand over your money, this 20-year-old intern who you’ve never met is handling your account. And that’s something that I’ve seen that many of these big firms, the person making the sale and promising all this stuff is not going to work your account. It’s going to be somebody else. So, make sure you know, not the firm you’re working for but the actual person. And I think a hard thing too for me is dealing with realistic expectations. I recently had a client who did not let in any local media, he only wanted national media. Even though he would’ve done great locally, he did not want it local – he wanted national. And I’m thinking, the local media helps you get to the national media. People are not going to cover you locally and why would they cover you nationally. So, I think it’s also important to keep in mind that these people you’re pitching, are getting hundreds of other pitches from people just like you pitching the same story. Many times, your email isn’t even opened because you don’t have a relationship with the person you’re sending it to or your subject line is not exciting enough to get it opened. And that’s just local news. So, thousands of pitches come in to Forbes or Good Morning America, like you mentioned. So, I think it’s really important for people to just constantly be educated on their business and how their business works. And that’s something that I constantly remind my clients. Now, while it does take time to build relationships with the media and it is more, you know, it’s like that same thing where you have to – I guess it’s like the same proven where you have to see something 7 or 8 times before you buy it. That’s kind of like pitching the media. If you pitch them and pitch them and pitch them, eventually, they are going to find the need for you when the timing is right for them. And I think like when you said, 4 to 7 months to start seeing stuff, that could be a timing issue and it could be just getting familiar with you. But I’ve never had a client that I haven’t earned something for in the first month. I try to earn something – if it’s not a media hit, it is people showing interest. So, people I could follow up with in the next month, people I could pitch a different angle to. And that’s important too. You can’t pitch the same things to the same people. You have to switch up your pith and pitch different people with a different angle because you don’t – I mean, if you could pitch the same thing to the same person over and over again, you’re almost like spamming them. So, you want to make sure you’re keeping your ideas fresh, you’re sending them to different people from different angles, and that’ll be good for you because that’ll widen your net and widen your audience. But I think the biggest struggle is people think, oh, well you know somebody at that company so that just pitch them and because you have a relationship with them, they’ll put me in there. And that’s not how it works. It is a very very competitive thing to get a business owner or a business or a brand featured in national media. And I don’t think people should brush off local media or the teeny tiny publications like it’s no big deal because you never know who’s reading that, you never know where that will lead. I have an example; I had a client who I pitched to the Rachel Ray Show. And I pitched them and I never heard anything back. And then I got this client I hit on a website for like little gadgets and they weren’t impressed, they were like yeah that’s not where we want to be. But somebody from the Rachel Ray Show saw that media hit on that website and said, oh yeah, I know about this. They pitched this to us. Let’s cover it. And then a couple of months later, they were on the Rachel Ray Show. It was because I pitched them and then they saw their product in a different online publication and it reminded them, oh yeah, well now is a good time because now we’re covering this thing for these products so let’s go back to it. And that’s how it got on the Rachel Ray Show. So, I don’t want to say any press is good press because obviously if it’s like trashing your brand it’s not good, however, any positive press or any mention, even if it’s just a neutral mention, is good because that could lead to something positive. It could lead to something bigger. You just don’t know. So, beggars can’t be choosers and don’t knock off the little guys like they’re nothing because the little guys are something and they do have influence.
Laura: You’ve made so many great points over the course of our conversation and very very helpful advice for any business owner who is thinking about publicity or someone who is thinking about going off into business for themselves or launching their own publicity campaign. I love the idea of, okay you can’t afford a publicist right now but there are courses you can take from people who have done this for a living, they know what works and what doesn’t and can help you achieve those goals a lot more quickly. So, seeking out a real person who knows what they’re talking about and being aware of those potential red flags of these firms that don’t really give you the attention or the focus that you need. And then also, one of your other key points that I really love is not being focused just on the national media, just on these huge winds, but rather seeing the value in an approach that takes numerous types of strategies into account and can really build up over time. So, I just want to thank you so much for coming on the show. I know I’ve learned a lot and I’m sure the audience will learn a lot too.
Christina: Thank you so much Laura. I really appreciate it.
Laura: Well, thank you everybody for tuning in and listening to the Better Biz Academy podcast. You can find me every week on iTunes and Stitcher Radio.
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