Carmen Sognonvi

Transcript

Hi, I’m Carmen Sognonvi.

This is part 3 of a 3-part video series on how to get publicity for your local business.

In this video, I’m going to show you how to ensure that no matter which quote of yours a journalist chooses to include in their final story, it’ll be one that makes you sound smart, interesting, and compelling.

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1. Prepare three talking points

Once you know what kind of story the journalist is working on, come up with the three main points you want to get across in your interview.

Each of these three points should relate to the action that you ultimately want people to take.

Let me show you how this works.

We’ll go back to the example of the health food store owner.

She’s being interviewed about how parents can help their kids lose weight.

The main action she wants is for more families to buy natural foods and prepare healthy meals at home.

But she can’t just repeat that over and over again, so she comes up with these three talking points:

1. Cooking helps maintain weight
Research shows that people who cook their own meals are less likely to gain weight than people who eat out all the time.

2. Fad diets don’t work
If you want sustainable weight loss, you have to make an overall lifestyle change.

3. Parents are the best role models
Parents need to model the behavior they want from their kids. So if parents don’t eat healthy themselves, neither will the kids.

Each of these points brings a richness to the discussion, but they also allow her to easily transition back to the importance of buying natural foods and preparing healthy meals at home.

2. Always bridge back to your talking points

Let’s say you spent an hour on the phone with a journalist.

There’s a good chance that only a one-sentence quote from you will end up in the final story.

Now, if you allowed yourself to get sidetracked and go off onto different tangents, that one quote might have absolutely nothing to do with what you originally wanted to say.

That’s why it’s so crucial to take control of the interview process.

The most important technique to master here is that no matter what question the journalist asks you, you need to bridge it back to one of your three talking points.

How? Just answer the question very briefly, then link it back to your message.

For example, the journalist asks the health food store owner what she thinks of a certain celebrity’s campaign to end childhood obesity.

The health food store owner would answer like this:

“I think it’s a great effort. But I also think that if you want to change how kids behave, you have to start by changing the way their parents behave…”

And then she would get into talking point 2, which is about how parents are role models for their kids, and from there she can transition to talking about the importance of preparing healthy meals at home.

If every single answer you give includes one of your talking points, you pretty much guarantee that whatever quote ends up in the story will convey the message you wanted to get across.

3. Talk in soundbites

Journalists have to pack a lot of information into each story.

Let’s say that you give a long, meandering answer.

Meanwhile, the other expert they interviewed gives a short, punchy answer that makes the exact same point you made.

Which quote do you think will make it into the final story?

Right! The short, punchy one.

That’s why it’s really important to learn how to speak in soundbites.

Soundbites are short, memorable phrases that communicate your message in a compelling way.

But what makes for a good soundbite?

Cliches can be really effective.

Phrases like “it’s not rocket science,” or “that’s like comparing apples and oranges.”

Bold, absolute statements work well too.

Statements like, “The Master Cleanse diet is the worst thing to happen to America’s health since the Big Mac was invented.”

Using visual language is another good technique.

You could say something like, “Believing that banning Happy Meals will end childhood obesity is like believing you can empty the ocean one thimble at a time.”

You paint a picture in the reader’s mind and that really brings your message to life.

If you enjoyed this video, I’d like to encourage you to sign up to get free email updates from me!

You’ll get more great tips on how to run a successful local business, along with occasional special offers from me.

If you’re already on my blog, just fill out the form below.

Or if you’re watching this video elsewhere, go to www.carmensognonvi.com/newsletter and sign up there.

If you missed the first two videos in this series, be sure to check them out.

In part 1, I show you how to get media coverage without having to pitch any journalists.

In part 2, I show you how to avoid the biggest mistake you could make when you first get a call from a journalist.

Thanks for watching, and I’d love to hear your tips for how to get publicity for your local business, so please share them below!

Get free local business tips from Carmen

If you found this video useful, enter your email address below and click “Yes, Send Me Tips!” to get more great local business tips and occasional special offers from Carmen:

Transcript

Hi, I’m Carmen Sognonvi.

This is part 2 of a 3-part video series on how to get publicity for your local business.

In this video, I’m going to share with you how to avoid the biggest mistake you could make when you first get a call from a journalist.

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1. Always pick up your phone

When a journalist is working on a story, speed is of the essence.

If they call you and you don’t pick up your phone, they may not leave you a message or try you again later.

They’ll just move onto the next source on their list.

So make every possible effort to pick up your phone every single time it rings.

Even if you’re in the middle of something, it’s better to pick up the phone, make contact, and arrange another time to talk, than to miss the opportunity in the first place.

2. Never do the interview right away

The biggest mistake you can make when you get a call from a journalist is to just delve right into the interview.

Never do this.

Why not? Because you should never do a media interview without first preparing your talking points.

So whenever you get a call from a journalist, find out what their story is about, let them know you’d love to speak to them but that you’re in the middle of something, and arrange a time later that day or the following day to talk.

You can use this technique even if the journalist is on a really tight deadline.

Just ask if you can call them back in 5 minutes.

That’s a perfectly reasonable request.

And trust me – even those 5 minutes of prep time can turn a mediocre interview into a great interview.

3. Know when you’re being pre-interviewed

Let’s say you get a call from a TV or radio producer who’s interested in booking you on the show, and they start chatting with you.

You may think, well, this is not the actual interview. We’re just chatting. So I don’t have to do the whole “find out what the story is about and call them back” thing.

You would be wrong.

Understand that this is not just a friendly conversation.

It’s called a pre-interview.

The producer wants to test you to see if you’d actually be an articulate and interesting guest for their show.

If you screw it up, they’re not going to book you, and you won’t even realize that you failed your audition.

That means you need to treat this kind of call the same way you would treat a call from any other journalist.

Find out what the segment is about and arrange a time to call them back later, after you’ve had a chance to prepare your talking points.

If you enjoyed this video, I’d like to encourage you to sign up to get free email updates from me!

You’ll get more great tips on how to run a successful local business, along with occasional special offers from me.

If you’re already on my blog, just fill out the form below.

Or if you’re watching this video elsewhere, go to www.carmensognonvi.com/newsletter and sign up there.

Make sure you check back for the last video in this 3-part series on how to get publicity for your local business.

In part 3, I’ll show you how to ensure that the journalist picks a quote that makes you sound smart, interesting, and compelling.

Also, if you missed part 1, be sure to check it out!

In that video I show you how to get media coverage without having to pitch any journalists and how to position yourself as someone they absolutely must interview for their story.

Thanks for watching, and I’d love to hear your tips for how to get publicity for your local business, so please share them below!

Get free local business tips from Carmen

If you found this video useful, enter your email address below and click “Yes, Send Me Tips!” to get more great local business tips and occasional special offers from Carmen:

Transcript

Hi, I’m Carmen Sognonvi.

This is part 1 of a 3-part video series on how to get publicity for your local business.

In this first video, I’m going to show you how to get media coverage without having to pitch any journalists and how to position yourself as someone they absolutely must interview for their story.

Make sure to watch till the end because I’ve got a bonus power tip on how one small tweak to your website will double or even triple the number of media inquiries you get.

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But before I dive in, let me give you some quick background on my own experience with publicity.

Before I started running Urban Martial Arts, our karate school, full-time, the main focus of my career was on race and diversity.

When I started blogging and speaking about race in 2004, I was a complete unknown.

Fast-forward a couple years, and I was being quoted as an expert in the media by outlets like USA Today, The New York Times, NPR, Newsweek, the Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times, and randomly, even Glamour Magazine.

I also did a ton of TV interviews on networks like Al-Jazeera English, MSNBC, and CNN.

In this video I’m going to tell what I figured out along the way, and how you can get media coverage for your business using the same techniques I used.

1. Be discoverable

Most guides on how to get publicity tell you to issue press releases and find journalists who cover your industry and pitch stories to them.

If those methods work for you, then go for it!

But I’ve always had the best results by simply blogging about stories in the news, having journalists stumble across those blog posts while researching a story, and contacting me for a quote.

For example, one of the first big breaks I got was when I was quoted in USA Today.

The reporter came across a blog post I had written about racial stereotypes in the media, and thought I’d be a great person to add some analysis and context to her story about a new reality show.

2. Don’t use cutesy headlines

Let’s say you own a health food store and you want to write about childhood obesity.

You use this headline:

“Children Find Weight A Heavy Burden to Bear”

Guess what? No journalist is going to find that blog post because you’re not using the actual keyword phrases they’re typing in.

So instead, use a headline like this:

“Childhood Obesity’s Psychological Side-Effects: Obese Children Teased for Being Overweight.”

By packing the headline with relevant keywords, you’ve just multiplied the chances for a journalist to find your blog post and contact you.

3. Craft a powerful bio

If you want to get publicity, a journalist has to see you as someone worth their time to talk to.

In other words, you need to position yourself as an expert.

Quick sidenote: If the word “expert” makes you queasy, you need to get over it.

Go watch my video on how to embrace your expert status.

Click there or on the link below the video.

You need to write a powerful bio that showcases your credentials.

And when I talk about credentials, I don’t just mean academic ones.

I’m referring to anything that can convey to a journalist that what you have to say on a topic is worth listening to.

What media outlets have you been featured in?

Which publications have you written articles for?

What awards have you won?

Have you written any books?

How many years have you been in business?

How many customers have you served in your lifetime?

Make sure to put the most impressive credentials first in your bio.

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BONUS POWER TIP

I’ve got one more bonus power tip for you but before I get to that, I’d like to encourage you to sign up to get free email updates from me!

You’ll get more great tips on how to run a successful local business, along with occasional special offers from me.

If you’re already on my blog, just fill out the form below.

Or if you’re watching this video elsewhere, go to www.carmensognonvi.com/newsletter and sign up there.

Now as promised, here’s your bonus power tip.

Add bio to your sidebar

If you want to maximize the number of media inquiries you get, add a brief bio and your contact info to your blog’s sidebar.

That way it’ll show up on every single blog post, no matter which one a journalist first lands on.

Once I started doing this with my race blog, the number of media inquiries I got went through the roof.

Why? Because it makes the journalist’s job as easy as possible.

They don’t have to hunt around for your About page, or your Contact page, or your Media Room.

At a single glance they can see who you are, what you’re about, and how to get in touch with you.

For an even bigger impact, include a headshot of yourself.

It not only helps humanize you, but it draws the eye over so makes it more likely that a journalist will see your bio.

Makes sure you check back for the next two videos in this 3-part series on how to get publicity for your local business.

In part 2 I’ll share with you how to avoid the biggest mistake you could make when you first get a call from a journalist.

And in part 3, I’ll show you how to ensure that the journalist always picks a quote that makes you sound smart, interesting, and compelling.

Thanks for watching, and I’d love to hear your tips for how to get publicity for your local business, so please share them below!

Get free local business tips from Carmen

If you found this video useful, enter your email address below and click “Sign Up Now” to get more great local business tips and occasional special offers from Carmen: