Podcasts about help a reporter out

I've been watching the new Steve Martin documentary, and it includes a clip of him accepting the Mark Twain Prize.He calls it “The only significant American award for comedy…except for money.”It reminded me of our own industry, but in a different way. We have many awards for creativity, and I am a creative person so I love them, but ultimately this art we do is a business art. And the ultimate measure of success is often monetary.So when I saw this lesson in a podcast guest application – ‘make people money' – I wanted to dive deeper.To hear the story behind that lesson – why he left another job function to join the marketing department – along with many more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Brad Gillespie, GM of Cvent Consulting, Cvent (https://www.cvent.com/).Cvent was a public company, until it was acquired by Blackstone for $4.6 billion last year.Gillespie estimates that over his 20 years in marketing his campaigns have influenced $1 billion in revenue.Stories (with lessons) about what he made in marketingHere are some lessons from Gillespie that emerged in our discussion.Top-down vs. bottoms-upMarketing's number is the sales' numberMarketing's job is to help the product winMake people moneyBe the causeGet it done. Do it right.Discussed in this episodeMarketing Research Chart: What information do marketers ask for on list registration forms? (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/information-list-registration-forms)Marketing Career: How to become an indispensable asset to your company (even in a bad economy) (https://marketingexperiments.com/value-proposition/marketing-career)Get even more ideas by pasting the URL for this episode into the Analysts – Video Transcript expert assistant in MeclabsAI (https://meclabsai.com/). It's totally FREE to use (for now). (Meclabs is the parent organization of MarketingSherpa).Get more episodesThis article is distributed through the MarketingSherpa email newsletter (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/newsletters). Sign up for free if you'd like to get more episodes like this one.For more insights, check out...This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages (https://meclabs.com/course/) free digital marketing course.Apply to be a guestIf you would like to apply to be a guest on How I Made It In Marketing, here is the podcast guest application – https://www.marketingsherpa.com/page/podcast-guest-application

It's time for a wild ride with Peter Shankman. The New York Times calls him “a rock star who knows everything about social media." Disney, Google, Adobe, SAP and three dozen more of the biggest companies in the world work with him to guide customer experience and the neurodiverse economy. He is a 6x best selling author - including the insanely popular Faster Than Normal. His first children's book The Boy With The Faster Brain is out now. He created and sold Help A Reporter Out in just three years. But those are accolades, the real Peter is even more fascinating. He gives out 200,000+ airline miles in a year to send needy families home for the holidays. He sleeps in his workout clothes so he can jump on the Peloton at 4am. And he's never once turned down one of my crazy ideas, including being on this podcast. He's one of the most fascinating people I know and I'm excited for you to meet him, if you haven't already.

It is Day 3 of our 30 Days of Podcast Episode Content, and we are talking about my favorite resource for establishing yourself as an expert and getting inspiration! It's HARO! Help A Reporter Out! https://www.helpareporter.com/ --- Catch me at the Book more Weddings Summit, August 22 - 26th https://ido--heidithompson.thrivecart.com/wedding-pro-power-pack-aug-2022-v3/ --- Visit our Sponsor, Wedding-preneurs Content Club https://ido--carissakruse.thrivecart.com/wedding-preneurs-content-club/ Visit I Do Wedding Marketing https://www.idoweddingmarketing.com/ Follow Nina Addeo on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/nina-addeo-699898ab/ Follow I Do Wedding Marketing on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/idoweddingmarketing/ Follow I Do Wedding Marketing on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/idoweddingmarketing/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nina-addeo/message

Ever heard of HARO? It stands for Help A Reporter Out and its your shortcut to finding journalists in need of the expertise and information you have to share. Tons of well-known, reputable media outlets use HARO including the Wall Street Journal,  Forbes, Mashable and Time Magazine.  Get your pitch ready and tune in to hear 5 proven strategies I've used to land free publicity using HARO as part of my public relations efforts.For more information about this episode and the partners mentioned in it, visit erinkraebber.com/podcast.Erin Kraebber is a marketing strategist for local businesses and service providers.Find Erin on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ErinKraebberBrandSolutions/Find Erin on Instagram: @erin_kraebber

Do you want to land amazing press coverage? Are you curious about using HARO? Would you like an endless number of PR opportunities to grow your brand and drive more customers? In this episode, you'll discover How I Use HARO To Land Brag-Worthy Media Coverage (Help A Reporter Out). Here's what you'll learn: - How to use HARO (Help A Reporter Out) like a pro - The easiest way to land PR for your site - FREE ways to drive generate press coverage - Why HARO is one of the best ways to get PR - How to grow your brand and land more customers using Help A Reporter Out

You can subscribe and listen to every episode of the "Unleash the Awesome" podcast at https://gambrill.com/podcast . 1:24 "How to Win Friends and Influence People" - Dale Carnegiehttps://amzn.to/3bE6i3S . 2:42 The sweetest sound to people is the sound of their own NAME [not their voice, I misspoke - yet another reason you should check the show notes :) ]. 3:20 "The Magic of Thinking Big" - David Schwartzhttps://amzn.to/3bBqTpJ . 4:10 "Abundance - The Future is Better Than You Think" - Peter Diamandishttps://amzn.to/3oCwi51 . 5:50 "Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion" - Dr. Robert Cialdinihttps://amzn.to/3u4wzyL . 5:53 "Dr. Robert Cialdini Shares Powerful New Insights Regarding Influence and Persuasion" - Episode 66 of the "Unleash the Awesome" podcast with Dave Gambrill. https://gambrill.simplecast.com/episodes/dr-robert-cialdini-shares-powerful-new-insights-regarding-influence-and-persuasion . 8:17 "The Four Hour Work Week - Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich" - Timothy Ferriss.https://amzn.to/3ysYFXM . 11:13 OnlineJobs.ph - Outstanding virtual assistants and contract workers.https://gambrill.com/onlinejobs . 13:15 Fiverr - find people to do small jobs, tasks for you online at a reasonable price.https://gambrill.com/fiverr . 14:35 The Tim Ferriss Show - Tim's amazing podcasthttps://tim.blog/podcast/ . 14:49 "I Will Teach You to Be Rich - Second Edition - No Guilt, No Excuse, No BS, Just a Six Week Program that Works" - Ramit Sethi.https://amzn.to/3f3jLEJ . 19:59 - "Trust Me, I'm Lying" - Ryan Holidayhttps://amzn.to/3f1vrb2 . 22:57 - Help a Reporter Out (HARO).https://www.helpareporter.com/ . 23:50 "Expert Secrets" by Russell Brunsonhttps://gambrill.com/expertsecrets . 23:57 "Traffic Secrets" - Russell Brunsonhttps://gambrill.com/traffic . 23:58 "Dotcom Secrets" - Russell Brunsonhttps://gambrill.com/dotcomsecrets . 24:59 Clickfunnels is an amazing software platform to help you sell your products and services online.https://gambrill.com/clickfunnels . 25:16 "Russell Brunson Shares Powerful Insights from His New Book 'Traffic Secrets'" - Episode 23 of the "Unleash the Awesome" podcast with Dave Gambrill.https://gambrill.simplecast.com/episodes/russell-brunson-shares-powerful-insights-from-his-new-book-traffic-secrets . 25:20 "Instagram Secrets with Russell Brunson" - Episode 32 of the "Unleash the Awesome" podcast. https://gambrill.simplecast.com/episodes/instagram-secrets-with-russell-brunson . 27:02 Audible Audiobooks free trial.https://gambrill.com/audible . 28:03 "The best time to look at the map is before you go into the woods." - Brendon Burchard Come join the conversation in our communities... Digital Marketing Mentorship with Dave Gambrill Facebook Grouphttps://www.facebook.com/groups/dmmdavegambrill . Digital Marketing Mentorship with Dave Gambrill Telegram Channelhttps://gambrill.com/telegramdmm . And let me know what you thought of this episode and what you'd like me cover in future episodes over on Instagram.https://www.instagram.com/gambrill/ .    #unleashawesome #greatbooks #entrepreneur #dalecarnegie #influence #cialdini #4hww #magicofthinkingbig #davidschwartz #abundance #peterdiamandis #success #growthday #timferriss #funnelhacker #ramitsethi #ryanholiday #mindset #skillset #10x  #sidehustle #davegambrill   #techtools #digitalmarketing #jmtdna #dotcomsecrets #clickfunnels #audible #haro #virtualassistant #va #fiverr #onlinejobsph #toolset    CONSUMER NOTICE: You should assume that I have an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this broadcast and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.

In the latest episode of the PR Talk podcast, Amy talks with Peter Shankman about PR as a career for people with ADHD, tips to harness the power of ADHD, how PR people can serve and strengthen relationships with the media, and more. Peter Shankman is the founder of the PR tool HARO (Help A Reporter Out) which he sold to Cision 11 years ago. Today Peter is an author of five books, host of the Faster Than Normal Podcast, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and leader of the ShankMinds Breakthrough Network. Read the entire write-up at https://www.veracityagency.com/podcast/peter-shankman/

Are you looking for a new way to market your private practice? We've got a great idea for you! Utilizing TV appearances, such as morning news shows or reality TV, can be a great benefit for your practice. There are a number of ways to get your foot in the door to get started in TV, and we're here to help!This week, Julie sits down with Esther Boykin to discuss TV appearances and how it's helped her grow her private practice! Esther Boykin is a psychotherapist who wants to live in a world where everyone believes that Therapy Is Not A Dirty Word. As the CEO of Group Therapy Associates, a private practice in the DC metro area, she works every day to make mental health accessible, innovative, and culturally relevant for all people. In 2017, Esther launched Therapy Is Not A Dirty Word, a brand new division of GTA designed to bring mental health conversation outside the traditional office setting and into the community through media, webinars, social events, and retreats. In addition to her role as a licensed marriage & family therapist and CEO, Esther is also an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech teaching the business of therapy, author of The Date Deck, and a sought-after relationship and mental health expert. She was recently named a top 21 relationship expert to follow by Cosmopolitan magazine and has appeared on Bravo's Real Housewives of Potomac, HuffPost, Good Morning Washington, the Wall Street Journal, Refinery 29, and a myriad of other media outlets. Episode Highlights:If you want to get started, just say YES!Focus on social media to make connections - Follow TV hosts and their crew (producers, content creators, marketers, etc.) and introduce yourself. Expand your network and present opportunities to collaborate.If someone reaches out to you, step out of your comfort zone and say yes (even if it is something completely new to you!)Utilize freelance services to build up your skillsYou can use services, such as Help A Reporter Out, to connect with professionals that are looking for experts to quote in their work. This will help you develop talking points and become more confident speaking about your profession.Remember, YOU are the expertAs you are reaching out (and people start to reach out to you), keep in mind that you are the expert in the segments you're being featured in. Confidence and energy are key.Links & Resources:Esther BoykinGroup Therapy AssociatesTherapy Is Not A Dirty WordThe Business of TherapyThe Date Deck by Esther BoykinThe E-Myth by Michael E. GerberHelp A Reporter Out (HARO)GreenOak AccountingTherapy For Your Money Podcast

The Whole Earth ‘lectronic Link, or WELL, was started by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant in 1985, and is still available at well.com. We did an episode on Stewart Brand: Godfather of the Interwebs and he was a larger than life presence amongst many of the 1980s former hippies that were shaping our digital age. From his assistance producing The Mother Of All Demos to the Whole Earth Catalog inspiring Steve Jobs and many others to his work with Ted Nelson, there's probably only a few degrees separating him from anyone else in computing.  Larry Brilliant is another counter-culture hero. He did work as a medical professional for the World Health Organization to eradicate smallpox and came home to teach at the University of Michigan. The University of Michigan had been working on networked conferencing since the 70s when Bob Parnes wrote CONFER, which would be used at Wayne State where Brilliant got his MD. But CONFER was a bit of a resource hog. PicoSpan was written by Marcus Watts in 1983. Pico is a small text editor in many a UNIX variant and network is network. Why small, well, modems that dialed into bulletin boards were pretty slow back then.  Marcus worked at NETI, who then bought the rights for PicoSpan to take to market. So Brilliant was the chairman of NETI at the time and approached Brand about starting up a bulletin-board system (BBS). Brilliant proposed NETI would supply the gear and software and that Brand would use his, uh, brand - and Whole Earth following, to fill the ranks. Brand's non-profit The Point Foundation would own half and NETI would own the other half.  It became an early online community outside of academia, and an important part of the rise of the splinter-nets and a holdout to the Internet. For a time, at least.  PicoSpan gave users conferences. These were similar to PLATO Notes files, where a user could create a conversation thread and people could respond. These were (and still are) linear and threaded conversations. Rather than call them Notes like PLATO did, PicSpan referred to them as “conferences” as “online conferencing” was a common term used to describe meeting online for discussions at the time. EIES had been around going back to the 1970s, so Brand had some ideas abut what an online community could be - having used it. Given the sharp drop in the cost of storage there was something new PicoSpan could give people: the posts could last forever. Keep in mind, the Mac still didn't ship with a hard drive in 1984. But they were on the rise.  And those bits that were preserved were manifested in words. Brand brought a simple mantra: You Own Your Own Words. This kept the hands of the organization clean and devoid of liability for what was said on The WELL - but also harkened back to an almost libertarian bent that many in technology had at the time. Part of me feels like libertarianism meant something different in that era. But that's a digression. Whole Earth Review editor Art Kleiner flew up to Michigan to get the specifics drawn up. NETI's investment had about a quarter million dollar cash value. Brand stayed home and came up with a name. The Whole Earth ‘lectronic Link, or WELL.  The WELL was not the best technology, even at the time. The VAX was woefully underpowered for as many users as The WELL would grow to, and other services to dial into and have discussions were springing up. But it was one of the most influential of the time. And not because they recreated the extremely influential Whole Earth catalog in digital form like Brilliant wanted, which would have been similar to what Amazon reviews are like now probably. But instead, the draw was the people.  The community was fostered first by Matthew McClure, the initial director who was a former typesetter for the Whole Earth Catalog. He'd spent 12 years on a commune called The Farm and was just getting back to society. They worked out that they needed to charge $8 a month and another couple bucks an hour to make minimal a profit.  So McClure worked with NETI to get the Fax up and they created the first conference, General. Kevin Kelly from the Whole Earth Review and Brand would start discussions and Brand mentioned The WELL in some of his writings. A few people joined, and then a few more.  Others from The Farm would join him. Cliff Figallo, known as Cliff, was user 19 and John Coate, who went by Tex, came in to run marketing. In those first few years they started to build up a base of users. It started with hackers and journalists, who got free accounts. And from there great thinkers joined up. People like Tom Mandel from Stanford Research Institute, or SRI. He would go on to become the editor of Time Online. His partner Nana. Howard Rheingold, who would go on to write a book called The Virtual Community. And they attracted more. Especially Dead Heads, who helped spread the word across the country during the heyday of the Grateful Dead.  Plenty of UNIX hackers also joined. After all, the community was finding a nexus in the Bay Area at the time. They added email in 1987 and it was one of those places you could get on at least one part of this whole new internet thing. And need help with your modem? There's a conference for that. Need to talk about calling your birth mom who you've never met because you were adopted? There's a conference for that as well. Want to talk sexuality with a minister? Yup, there's a community for that. It was one of the first times that anyone could just reach out and talk to people. And the community that was forming also met in person from time to time at office parties, furthering the cohesion.  We take Facebook groups, Slack channels, and message boards for granted today. We can be us or make up a whole new version of us. We can be anonymous and just there to stir up conflict like on 4Chan or we can network with people in our industry like on LinkedIn. We can chat real time, which is similar to the Send option on The WELL. Or we can post threaded responses to other comments. But the social norms and trends were proving as true then as now. Communities grow, they fragment, people create problems, people come, people go. And sometimes, as we grow, we inspire.  Those early adopters of The WELL inspired Craig Newmark of Craigslist to the growing power of the Internet. And future developers of Apple. Hippies versus nerds but not really versus, but coming to terms with going from “computers are part of the military industrial complex keeping us down” philosophy to more of a free libertarian information superhighway that persisted for decades. The thought that the computer would set us free and connect the world into a new nation, as John Perry Barlow would sum up perfectly in “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”. By 1990 people like Barlow could make a post on The WELL from Wyoming and have Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus, makers of Lotus 1-2-3 show up at his house after reading the post - and they could join forces with the 5th employee of Sun Microsystems and GNU Debugging Cypherpunk John Gilmore to found the Electronic Foundation. And as a sign of the times that's the same year The WELL got fully connected to the Internet. By 1991 they had grown to 5,000 subscribers. That was the year Bruce Katz bought NETI's half of the well for $175,000. Katz had pioneered the casual shoe market, changing the name of his families shoe business to Rockport and selling it to Reebok for over $118 million.  The WELL had posted a profit a couple of times but by and large was growing slower than competitors. Although I'm not sure any o the members cared about that. It was a smaller community than many others but they could meet in person and they seemed to congeal in ways that other communities didn't. But they would keep increasing in size over the next few years. In that time Fig replaced himself with Maurice Weitman, or Mo - who had been the first person to sign up for the service. And Tex soon left as well.  Tex would go to become an early webmaster of The Gate, the community from the San Francisco Chronicle. Fig joined AOL's GNN and then became director of community at Salon. But AOL. You see, AOL was founded in the same year. And by 1994 AOL was up to 1.25 million subscribers with over a million logging in every day. CompuServe, Prodigy, Genie, Dephi were on the rise as well. And The WELL had thousands of posts a day by then but was losing money and not growing like the others. But I think the users of the service were just fine with that. The WELL was still growing slowly and yet for many, it was too big. Some of those left. Some stayed. Other communities, like The River, fragmented off. By then, The Point Foundation wanted out so sold their half of The WELL to Katz for $750,000 - leaving Katz as the first full owner of The WELL.  I mean, they were an influential community because of some of the members, sure, but more because the quality of the discussions. Academics, drugs, and deeply personal information. And they had always complained about figtex or whomever was in charge - you know, the counter-culture is always mad at “The Management.” But Katz was not one of them. He honestly seems to have tried to improve things - but it seems like everything he tried blew up in his face.  So Katz further alienated the members and fired Mo and brought on Maria Wilhelm, but they still weren't hitting that hyper-growth, with membership getting up to around 10,000 - but by then AOL was jumping from 5,000,000 to 10,000,000. But again, I've not found anyone who felt like The WELL should have been going down that same path. The subscribers at The WELL were looking for an experience of a completely different sort. By 1995 Gail Williams allowed users to create their own topics and the unruly bunch just kinda' ruled themselves in a way. There was staff and drama and emotions and hurt feelings and outrage and love and kindness and, well, community. By the late 90s, the buzz word at many a company were all about building communities, and there were indeed plenty of communities growing. But none like The WELL. And given that some of the founders of Salon had been users of The WELL, Salon bought The WELL in 1999 and just kinda' let it fly under the radar. The influence continued with various journalists as members.  The web came. And the members of The WELL continued their community. Award winning but a snapshot in time in a way. Living in an increasingly secluded corner of cyberspace, a term that first began life in a present tense on The WELL, if you got it, you got it. In 2012, after trying to sell The WELL to another company, Salon finally sold The WELL to a group of members who had put together enough money to buy it. And The WELL moved into the current, more modern form of existence. To quote the site: Welcome to a gathering that's like no other. The WELL, launched back in 1985 as the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, continues to provide a cherished watering hole for articulate and playful thinkers from all walks of life. For more about why conversation is so treasured on The WELL, and why members of the community banded together to buy the site in 2012, check out the story of The WELL. If you like what you see, join us! It sounds pretty inviting. And it's member supported. Like National Public Radio kinda'. In what seems like an antiquated business model, it's $15 per month to access the community. And make no mistake, it's a community.  You Own Your Own Words. If you pay to access a community, you don't sign the ownership of your words away in a EULA. You don't sign away rights to sell your data to advertisers along with having ads shown to you in increasing numbers in a hunt for ever more revenue. You own more than your words, you own your experience. You are sovereign.  This episode doesn't really have a lot of depth to it. Just as most online forums lack the kind of depth that could be found on the WELL. I am a child of a different generation, I suppose. Through researching each episode of the podcast, I often read books, conduct interviews (a special thanks to Help A Reporter Out), lurk in conferences, and try to think about the connections, the evolution, and what the most important aspects of each are. There is a great little book from Katie Hafner called The Well: A Story Of Love, Death, & Real Life. I recommend it. There's also Howard Rheingold's The Virtual Community and John Seabrook's Deeper: Adventures on the Net. Oh, and From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, And the Rise of Digital Utopianism from Fred Turner and Siberia by Douglas Rushkoff. At a minimum, I recommend reading Katie Hafner's wired article and then her most excellent book! Oh, and to hear about other ways the 60s Counterculture helped to shape the burgeoning technology industry, check out What the Dormouse Said by John Markoff.  And The WELL comes up in nearly every book as one of the early commercial digital communities. It's been written about in Wired, in The Atlantic, makes appearances in books like Broad Band by Claire Evans, and The Internet A Historical Encyclopedia.  The business models out there to build and run  and grow a company have seemingly been reduced to a select few. Practically every online community has become free with advertising and data being the currency we parlay in exchange for a sense of engagement with others.  As network effects set in and billionaires are created, others own our words. They think the lifestyle business is quaint - that if you aren't outgrowing a market segment that you are shrinking. And a subscription site that charges a monthly access fee to cgi code with a user experience that predates the UX field on the outside might affirm that philosophy -especially since anyone can see your real name. But if we look deeper we see a far greater truth: that these barriers keep a small corner of cyberspace special - free from Russian troll farms and election stealing and spam bots. And without those distractions we find true engagement. We find real connections that go past the surface. We find depth. It's not lost after all.  Thank you for being part of this little community. We are so lucky to have you. Have a great day.

Sign up for Help A Reporter Out here - https://www.helpareporter.com/ Want to contribute to online blogs and magazines? Start with some of these to check out how submissions work: https://www.smartmeetings.com/editorial-policies https://thriveglobal.com/stories/becoming-a-thrive-global-contributor/ https://newyorker.submittable.com/submit Check out Carrie's Blog - www.awomanwithdrive.com Get Rachel's weekly motivational newsletter and podcast episodes delivered straight to your inbox - sign up here! Connect with Rachel on Instagram! Link up with Rachel on LinkedIn for her latest articles!

Welcome to A Counselors Journey To Private Practice. I'm your host, Juan.In this episode, we cover Ways To Market Your Counseling Private Practice. Here are the key takeaways:Consistency and repurposing. Always think ahead. If you do a video, take the content and create an infographic. If you have a Facebook business page, be consistent when you are marketing. Stick to a schedule. Use average Joe Terms. Focus your marketing on using average joe terms. Instead of “I utilize CBT to address cognitive distortions” transition to “I help people that want to have healthier thoughts”. Be a guest on other people's platforms. This includes but not limited to blogs, podcasts, social media,…Start a podcast focused on your private practice. Each week share tips and tricks focused on what takes place in your counseling office. This gives the world a taste of who you are.Stay True To Yourself. Market-based on who you are at your core. If you feel comfortable doing YouTube then go for it. If that's not your style don't do it. Marketing has a lot to do with what works versus what doesn't. What works in my private practice or city that I'm located in may not work for you.Business Cards. Having a clean and usable business card is effective in promoting your brand and marketing your practice. When it comes to the style of a business card my recommendation is to include the following: (a) a professional picture of yourself (b) location, phone number, and email of the practice (c) name of the practice (d) logo and (e) something that the person can use. For example, you can have a discount for the first session, or a punch card that gives a 50% off the session at the 10th session, or a short positive affirmation. HARO. Help A Reporter Out. Write for a reporter and see if you can get listed on a publication or major magazine. This is a great way to get your name out there. Click Here to read all about HARO.Focus on language. o   If you are marketing a solo practice focus on “I”.o   If you are marketing a group practice focus on “WE”.Are you interested in receiving help with your counseling business?CLICK HEREThank you for listening.Please leave an awesome review and subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode in your journey of private practice.I'm always looking for awesome counselors that are ready to share their story. Visit the link below, let's connect.Visit http://acounselorsjourney.com/be-a-guest/Watch the episode on the YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/M2d0z5ziQawVisit the website: http://acounselorsjourney.com/Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/juansantos)

Before the Internet came along, I built my entire career using publicity. People would hear me on the radio or see me on TV or in print. I always let it be known I was available to speak. One of my quotes hanging on the wall at my school is that the only way to exceed the average income in your profession is to become better known. Publicity does that for you. Screw The Commute Podcast Show Notes Episode 280 How To Automate Your Business - https://screwthecommute.com/automatefree/ Internet Marketing Training Center - https://imtcva.org/ Higher Education Webinar – https://screwthecommute.com/webinars 02:55 Tom's introduction to Free Publicity 05:15 Publicity makes you more believable 06:32 Publicity can turn into direct sales 07:15 Be aware of "Pay for Play" 08:48 Help A Reporter Out (HARO) 09:35 Radio, Podcasts, TV, Print and Live Entrepreneurial Resources Mentioned in This Podcast Higher Education Webinar - https://screwthecommute.com/webinars Screw The Commute - https://screwthecommute.com/ Screw The Commute Podcast App - https://screwthecommute.com/app/ College Ripoff Quiz - https://imtcva.org/quiz Know a young person for our Youth Episode Series? Send an email to Tom! - orders@antion.com Have a Roku box? Find Tom's Public Speaking Channel there! - https://channelstore.roku.com/details/267358/the-public-speaking-channel How To Automate Your Business - https://screwthecommute.com/automatefree/ Internet Marketing Retreat and Joint Venture Program - https://greatinternetmarketingtraining.com/ Help A Reporter Out - https://www.helpareporter.com/ Podcast Hosts - https://screwthecommute.com/podcasthosts/ Publicity Hound Free Sample - https://www.antion.com/publicityhoundTOC.htm Internet Marketing Training Center - https://imtcva.org/ Related Episodes Andrew Allemann - Podcast Booking - https://screwthecommute.com/156/ Margy Feldhuhn - Podcast Booking - https://screwthecommute.com/203/ Rebecca Kirstein - https://screwthecommute.com/279/ More Entrepreneurial Resources for Home Based Business, Lifestyle Business, Passive Income, Professional Speaking and Online Business I discovered a great new headline / subject line / subheading generator that will actually analyze which headlines and subject lines are best for your market. I negotiated a deal with the developer of this revolutionary and inexpensive software. Oh, and it's good on Mac and PC. Go here: http://jvz1.com/c/41743/183906 The Wordpress Ecourse. Learn how to Make World Class Websites for $20 or less. https://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com/wordpressecourse Join our Private Facebook Group! One week trial for only a buck and then $37 a month, or save a ton with one payment of $297 for a year. Click the image to see all the details and sign up or go to https://www.greatinternetmarketing.com/screwthecommute/ After you sign up, check your email for instructions on getting in the group.

EP#8 - SEO with Digital Marketing Specialist Guest Jyles Kerr-Smith. Join us as we talk SEO and discuss:What is SEO and why is it important?How do se arch engines workKeyword researchOn page & off page SEOThings that will improve your website's google ranking:Speed - no-one will ever hope that a website loads slower. That was one of the fundamental principles that drove google founders to be obsessed with loading times. Make sure your site isn't heavily loaded with high resolution photos and videos. You can check your loading speed here. https://gtmetrix.com/Accuracy of information. If people are searching for something specific, like ‘Best steak restaurants in South England' make sure your site shows good up to date information and is presented clearly. Clear formatting. It needs to be nice and easy to read and split into subtitles. Don't go crazy on large blocks of copy. Mobile optimisation. 60% of the internet is viewed from a mobile. Make sure your website works great on both desktop and mobile. Backlinks - if possible the more websites with good authority that link to your site the better. Try and pull a few favours if you know someone with a decent well established website and ask they link to your site. Even better volunteer to make them some content that's relevant to their audience and link to your site. Internal Links - the more  links you have in your website that links to other content the easier it will be to be found by google's “crawlers” - more on that in the next section. How do search engine's work?Crawl - this is the “spiders” that essentially go from link to link and collect information. This is then collated and stored in Google's index.Index - the register of information linking to websites. Rank - this is the result of 100s of different factors and what SEO is all about.Other tips:You can help google out and give your website a boost by Creating a search console and getting a site map creator. Check out your domain authority by using the moz chrome extension. This will keep you informed of your progress as you go. Find the Moz toolbar here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mozbar/eakacpaijcpapndcfffdgphdiccmpknp?hl=enKeywordsThere are two different types of keywords, short tail and long tail. Use the google keyword planner that's associated with a google adwords account to find out what people are searching for. Just like Amazon it's about finding high volume keywords with low competition. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6325025?hl=en-GBWe're brought to you by onthejobmarketing.comIf you're a tradesperson, you need a website and marketing to get more customers. Speak to the people that know your trade and can help with all your marketing needs.

Peter Shankman, creator of Help A Reporter Out and author of "Faster Than Normal," explains how to turbocharge your focus, productivity, and success with the secrets of the ADHD brain. Plus, I detail what innovations are likely to result from the economy shutdown. Also, I have a message for entrepreneurs who are hurting and terrified.

In this episode, Jason interviews Peter Shankman! Peter is a dad, author, keynote speaker, and entrepreneur. Among all of his accomplishments, he is also the Founder of HARO, Help A Reporter Out, which became the standard for thousands of journalists looking for sources.Jason and Peter talk about lifestyle-related health problems and working on root causes that are contributing to health problems versus throwing bandaids on the issue. They discuss the key principle of self-discipline and the importance of knowing yourself well enough to live in moderation.  Stay Connected with Peter Shankman WebsiteFacebookTwitter Stay Connected with Jason Priest WebsiteFacebookInstagramLinkedInAbout The Dad Bod PodA podcast for men looking to improve their health and re-define their Dad Bods. A place for men to learn, grow and live the healthiest life possibleDon't forget to follow us on IG @thefatherhoodexperience!

Free publicity. I built my entire career long before the Internet was around with what I called media marketing. What I'm covering today is based on a four hundred ninety nine page book I wrote with Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound, which tells you how I got on radio and TV and in print all around the world. Screw The Commute Podcast Show Notes Episode 223 How To Automate Your Business - https://screwthecommute.com/automatefree/ Internet Marketing Training Center - https://imtcva.org/ Higher Education Webinar – https://screwthecommute.com/webinars 02:56 Tom's introduction to Free Publicity 06:50 What the media wants 11:32 General etiquette that you need to keep in mind 14:20 A few things you should do 16:12 Tips for Radio 19:12 Tips for Print 20:34 Tips for Television 23:16 Tips for Pitching 24:53 Online and Social Media 25:19 Sponsor message 26:41 Press releases 29:43 More publicity tips Entrepreneurial Resources Mentioned in This Podcast Higher Education Webinar - https://screwthecommute.com/webinars Screw The Commute - https://screwthecommute.com/ Screw The Commute Podcast App - https://screwthecommute.com/app/ Know a young person for our Youth Episode Series? Send an email to Tom! - orders@antion.com Have a Roku box? Find Tom's Public Speaking Channel there! - https://channelstore.roku.com/details/267358/the-public-speaking-channel How To Automate Your Business - https://screwthecommute.com/automatefree/ Internet Marketing Retreat and Joint Venture Program - https://greatinternetmarketingtraining.com/ Publicity Hound TOC - https://antion.com/publicityhoundTOC.htm (use coupon code HOUND) Expert Click - https://www.expertclick.com/ Contact: Mitch Davis 202-333-4904 Via email: expertclick@gmail.com PR Web - http://www.prweb.com/ PR Newswire - https://www.prnewswire.com/ Help A Reporter Out - https://www.helpareporter.com/ Internet Marketing Training Center - https://imtcva.org/ Related Episodes Mitch Davis - https://screwthecommute.com/42/ Ilya Pozin - https://screwthecommute.com/222/ More Entrepreneurial Resources for Home Based Business, Lifestyle Business, Passive Income, Professional Speaking and Online Business I discovered a great new headline / subject line / subheading generator that will actually analyze which headlines and subject lines are best for your market. I negotiated a deal with the developer of this revolutionary and inexpensive software. Oh, and it's good on Mac and PC. Go here: http://jvz1.com/c/41743/183906 The Wordpress Ecourse. Learn how to Make World Class Websites for $20 or less. https://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com/wordpressecourse Join our Private Facebook Group! One week trial for only a buck and then $37 a month, or save a ton with one payment of $297 for a year. Click the image to see all the details and sign up or go to https://www.greatinternetmarketing.com/screwthecommute/ After you sign up, check your email for instructions on getting in the group.

How (and when) should you use public relations in tandem with your inbound marketing strategy?  This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Ruby Media Group Founder Kristin Ruby breaks down the myths surrounding PR and inbound marketing. In this conversation, she gets into detail about who should consider using PR, when to use it, how much you should expect to pay, and what kinds of results you should expect.  In addition, Kristin covers the difference between PR for brand building and PR for SEO, as well as the difference between reactive and proactive PR. There's lots of practical information here for any marketers who has ever considered using PR as part of their strategy. Highlights from my conversation with Kristin include: Kris is a PR specialist, which is different than a media relations specialist. PR can encompass anything in the communications plan and marketing plan whereas media relations is specifically about interaction with the media.  PR is a good strategy for any business that is looking to build a long term, sustainable funnel of leads, as well as to build their brand.  One of the big benefits of PR is that it can contribute to building your domain authority, which is great for SEO. In terms of setting expectations for a PR engagement, Kristin says that the results you can get are very dependent upon the news cycle and what journalists are interested in covering.  Kristin says you should expect to commit to working with your PR firm at least one hour each day. There's a difference between reactive and proactive PR. Kristin specializes in reactive PR, which entails responding to reporters' requests for sources, as opposed to proactive PR, which she characterizes as going out to the media and spamming them with unsolicited pitches. When it comes to PR, its important to build up on line authority and get others talking about you so that the media sees you as a credible source. For clients looking to get started with PR, Kristin recommends that they begin by publishing content that is aligned with what they are hoping to get coverage about. This can be published on their website, LinkedIn profile, etc. The cost of a PR engagement can vary widely depending upon the scope of services and the type of media coverage that you're looking for and then the size of the firm you want to work with. A reasonable range that PR services start at would be anywhere from $3,500 or $5,000 a month, but some of the larger firms could be charging $35,000 or $40,000 a month.  If you plan to be on TV at all as part of your PR plan, it could be worth investing in media training as part of your PR package, as it will prepare you to be on camera. Resources from this episode: Visit the Ruby Media Group website Check out Kristin's person site Visit medicalpracticepr.com for information about PR for doctors Get Kristin's Ultimate Media Relations Guide Listen to the podcast to learn more about public relations and how you can use it as part of your larger inbound marketing strategy. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. Today, my guest is Kristin Ruby who is the founder and CEO of Ruby Media Group. Welcome Kristin. Kristin Ruby (Guest): Hi, thank you so much for having me. Kristin and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: I'm so happy to have you here. You are in the field of PR and we don't get to talk about PR a lot on the podcast so I'm really excited to dig into it with you, but before we do can you just tell my listeners a little bit more about yourself, and about your company, and what you do? About Kristin and Ruby Media Group Kristin: Sure. My company is called Ruby Media Group. I have been a practicing public relations practitioner for over a decade now. I work with clients and businesses of all sizes from small to midsize companies to even Fortune 500 companies, and particularly with a lot of medical practices and doctors as well. We assist with brand building, content creation, social media, public relations, and really help people get found online. What we're really best at is taking people of thought leadership offline and translating that online. Kathleen: Great. It's interesting. When you and I first spoke what I really liked was... My question to you was obviously this podcast is all about inbound marketing, and people have mixed opinions about where PR, public relations, fits within that mix as an inbound marketer. I think there's also a lot of misconceptions about what public relations is, especially today, like as it's evolved over time. You had some really interesting viewpoints on that, and I wanted to just actually start by having you explain what you see as what PR is, and the different uses of it, because there's obviously PR for SEO, and then there's other types of PR. Kristin: I mean, so it's a really interesting question. To start with I think there's a difference between PR and media relations, so I want to also explain that to your listeners. PR can encompass anything in the communications plan and marketing plan whereas media relations is specifically about interaction with the media. To clarify, I do a lot of media relations work whereas some public relations practitioners will sort of do community outreach, and sponsorship, and a larger umbrella of what PR is. So in terms of public relations basically a publicist will help you in terms of all your interactions with the media, getting you out there, handling media inquiries, anything of that nature. When should you invest in PR? Kathleen: Okay, great. What do you see as the value of PR for the companies that invest in it? Who is it right for? When should you do it? That sort of thing. Kristin: That's a great question. PR, it really depends with what stage you're at in your business. For example, let's say you're a medical practice, and a doctor, and you've been around for 10 years, you already have a waiting list of patients, but at this point you have other goals. Maybe you want to become a paid speaker. Maybe you want to write a book, and you want a publisher, and you need a social media following for that, or maybe you're at a different level in your career where now you just want to focus on putting out educational content to reach the masses because your time is limited, and you can only see a certain amount of patients a day. For that type of practitioner I think PR is ideal, because it fits in the brand building bucket. I think if you're someone that is saying, "I need more patients in the door tomorrow, and I've just launched a practice," I would still say more traditional inbound marketing would make sense for that, including some direct marketing and advertising as well. I really think you have to evaluate are you looking for sales and leads tomorrow out of this or can you have a longer sort of sales funnel in terms of what you're doing with all of this? Kathleen: Yeah, that's a good point. I often hear about PR a lot from startups, especially B2B technology startups. There seems to be this assumption that in the beginning PR is something that you should invest in almost before marketing. I think part of it is this desire as a startup to plant your flag in the ground, in the marketplace, and get your name out there. But then, the other part of it is also, from my perspective as a marketer, it's building domain authority. That goes back to the PR for SEO thing, so I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about that. PR for brand building v. PR for SEO Kristin: Sure. I have a great case study in terms of PR for SEOs. We worked with a client, and we started everything from scratch for them with a new website, and we had not done any direct marketing, and we've only done PR for them. Their ranking right now is a 32, Domain Authority, and that's only from public relations. So all of that authority they have not done any paid advertising. It's all back links from PR articles that I've gotten them. Now, again, that was never even a primary goal of why we did PR for this person, but I think one of the amazing things about that campaign is that it just sort of compliments, and comes out, when you're not even trying for it, right? I think public relations practitioners there's often this sort of disconnect with SEO, and with PR, because they're so focused on getting the hits, and working with producers and journalists that they don't actually realize they really are building someone's back link, and Domain Authority while they're doing ... Now, of course you can never guarantee any placements, and we could talk about that as well, but if you get them it can be great, especially if you are securing it for a client in that third-party national media outlet, and that outlet has very high Domain Authority, well then, you're benefiting from that. Kathleen: Yeah. It is tremendous potential if you have a well known media entity. Those back links can be worth a lot. Kristin: Yes. What should you expect from a PR engagement? Kathleen: I want to talk about expectation setting because that can seem very alluring, and I'm sure you have clients who come to you and say, "Get me mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, or on TV, et cetera," so can you talk me through when you first start working with a new client how do you, A, determine what's possible, and B, how do you set expectations around that? Kristin: Sure. The first thing that we ask a prospect that's interested in working with us for public relations is what does PR success look like to you? So how are you going to evaluate the engagement here, and what do those metrics and KPIs look like? For example, if they're saying, "We want to be on the today show, within a month." Obviously that's going to be an unrealistic expectation. If they're saying, "We're looking for around three or four press placements, and digital mentions a month." That's a realistic expectation with my firm. I'm not sure if it is with every firm, but for us I know that I can deliver that. If they're saying, "I want you to guarantee a set amount of bookings whether that's on radio, or television, or any outlet." That's something that's not realistic, because no PR firm that's worth their salt is going to be able to give those guarantees, and the reason for that is because we are working with the media. The media dictates what they want to use and what they don't want to use. I think the problem is that people hire publicist and think that the publicist have much more power than they do. I don't know if that's because PR just misrepresents what they can do to try and close a deal, or what it is, but it's just not realistic, right? We are working with the media at any given time. For example, if you look at any week on the news cycle there's a lot of political stuff happening, whether it's Trump, and whether he should be impeached or not. What if you had a client that's booked on TV this week? All that's going to be canceled, because of the news cycle. Kathleen: And if it wasn't canceled no one would probably pay attention anyway because everyone's attention is diverted somewhere else I would think. Kristin: Exactly. But this is why it's so important if you're doing PR right now, especially in this news cycle, people need to understand that the news cycle, and breaking news, dictates what's being covered. It's not your client that dictates it, right? So if you can come up with some great tie-in to the news, or if your client's a political expert and they can comment on what's happening, then great that adds value to whatever story's happening. That lends itself back to your original question, which is how do you sort of determine if someone's going to be a good client? In this heavily political climate that we're in right now a lot of PR people will definitely gravitate towards clients, or prospective clients, that can comment on those things, because they know that they can get them booked, and get hits for them. So you have to think about that as well. So we sort of go through an internal checklist about who's going to be good. It has to do with expectations, are they realistic? The next is, do you have at least one hour daily to work with your PR firm if you hire them? People make the mistake of hiring a firm and then they don't give them what they need to do their job. You have to supply content to your firm so that they can get you out there. You have to let them know if something's going on that you can comment on, tell them. If there's a link that you think is interesting share it with them, but this notion that you're going to hire a PR firm, and then you're not going to talk to them, and they can get you hits is just very unrealistic. What makes for a newsworthy story? Kathleen: Yeah. Now, someone comes to you, and their expectations are realistic in the sense that thy say "Hey, I would love to get four press mentions this month." I'm assuming that as you say there's some kind of content that's needed, like you can't just call up a reporter and say, "Hey cover this company," full stop, period. There needs to be some kind of a story. So how do you work with clients to determine what that right story is, and kind of cultivate something that's newsworthy? Kristin: Sure. There's two different types of PR. There's proactive PR and there's reactive PR. I'm a specialist in what I call reactive PR. So reactive PR is when you're using different databases, whether it's a HARO or a Profnet, or Cision. There's a lot of new ones coming out right now where those journalists are saying, "We're writing this story, do you have an expert to speak on X?" That's when I plug my clients in to be able to comment on those stories, reactive. Proactive PR is I think a more traditional old school approach where you're sort of just going out to journalists and I would call it spamming them, which is saying, "I have this great idea, why don't you cover it?" But the problem is they may or may not be writing that. So I think just the success rates are significantly higher when you practice reactive PR, which is what I call it. Because you're giving them what they want, want they're already working on and it makes their life easier. Kathleen: Okay, so you really, in that case then, don't have to necessarily have a breaking news item or a piece of content. It's really just authority and expertise that you're pitching? Kristin: So it's authority and expertise, but it's also answering a lot of questions, and usually those questions tie into something. So if someone is working on a vaping story. Right? You could have authority and expertise, but you also need to have expertise in that new's component that's happening with vaping in the country right now. So I think it's a combination of all of those factors together. But to answer your other question about, how do you sort of package that? I have a motto. My motto is, "Package, pitch, promote." Phase one when working with someone is how can we package this story. Who are they? What do they look like? What does their brand look like? The first thing I'll do is do a deep dive on Google. I want to look at their website. Do they have a usable working site? If not, that needs to go up before we even work with them because journalists are going to look for that. Next, what has been written about them online? Do they have a critical mass of authority online? If they don't, again, that needs to sort of be created. Third, who are they? What do they want to be known for? What is their area of expertise? If there is going to be a lower third for their title tag on television, what would it say? Expert in what? Right? So we need to sort of figure all that out. Finally, do they have a higher res headshot for the media and do they have an executive bio? All of that sort of has to be done in the first two months of us working with someone. Even though it sounds sort of simple, most people don't have all of that ready to go. So we definitely get that lined up for someone before we start with them, and then next we start putting together an FAQ document in Microsoft Word. I actually just put together a helpful media 101 pitching checklist that I can definitely share. Kathleen: That would be great. Kristin: With your listeners. Kathleen: Yeah. Kristin: That would be great. As well as a media guide too, with a lot of answered questions that for them that are helpful. Building online authority Kathleen: Now, I think it was the second thing you mentioned there, was they need to have... After the website, they need to have some sort of critical mass of online authority established. What does that mean? What are you looking for there? Kristin: I'm looking to see that other people have talked about them and have quoted them. Right? I think that sorts of lends itself very nicely to the new Google... I recently put up an article on this since we last spoke about the Google's authority and what they're looking for in this term called Eat. It's very important. It's all about having authority online. That's where PR can really help if you're trying to increase your Eat on Google, you need authority. So Google, one of their quality raters what they look for is, it's not... I'm going to actually say this. It's not about just you saying that you're great. When we look online we need to see that other people are saying you are great and that you are an expert in what you're saying you are. So I think this is a very interesting time, and this is sort of changing the game in general for PR. So you can't just pivot. You can't just say that you're an expert in everything anymore. You have to say you're expert in one thing and it doesn't matter how many times you say it. If no one else does it, you're not an expert. So this is going to be a major game changer for PR. How to get started with PR Kathleen: So if somebody comes to you and they don't have a lot of mentions online, can you work with them? Can you get them coverage? How do you start? What's that first step? Kristin: So the first step is that I feel like for them we have to do more of a brand audit and it's sort of different campaign where we're building that out for a longer period of time before we ever pitch anything to the media, and I think how you start with that is definitely content marketing. So if they want to show their expertise, they have to put out content that aligns with that expertise. So the best place to start if they don't have other people mentioning them is to start putting out their content on their own site or on LinkedIn where they're showing what they know, or doing an Ebook, or any sort of other inbound campaign, which I think is just very important. Having people link back to that to start to build up the authority even if they have no other outside media coverage. Right? That's where I would start for something like that. Why inbound marketing is necessary for PR Kathleen: That's helpful because when you think about how inbound marketing and PR go together, like I've said, I've talked to lots of companies that think you start with PR, then you do inbound and then maybe you do PR again. But if what I'm hearing what you're saying is correct, it sounds like it does make sense to begin with some inbound marking first so that you have that content already created. You have potentially gotten mentioned, you're starting to establish some authority. Is that accurate? Kristin: Yeah, it is accurate because here's the thing. You can say that you're an expert and have no content to back that up and expect people to write about you. Kathleen: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kristin: Because you're only... At that point, you're just a self-proclaimed expert. If a PR person is going to pitch you and that journalist looks you up, and they don't even see content written by you, how are you an expert? It doesn't make any sense. So I think that's a major mistake that a lot of people make. So there are some PR people who obviously skip this whole content marketing part and that's not really practicing the new method of PR. I would say that content marketing and inbound is critical to work in silo with public relations. I don't think it should be separate. What does PR cost? Kathleen: Yeah. Now one of the questions I'm sure that anybody has if they haven't worked with a PR firm before is, this sounds great but what does it cost? I'm not asking what do you charge, but can you give me a sense of if somebody's considering beginning to do some PR and they're going to work with somebody outside of their company to do it, what sort of budget should they have just to get started? Kristin: Sure. It really depends on, for example, are you willing to work with a public relations freelancer? Are you looking to work with a larger size firm? So the scope of services and the type of media coverage that you're looking for and then the size of the firm all dictate the answer to that question. Typically, I would say a reasonable range that PR services start at, you can see them anywhere from $3,500 or $5,000 a month and then up. For some of the larger firms, they could be charging $35,000 or $40,000 a month. So it really, again, depends on the size of the firm. It also depends on the other ancillary services. So for example, do you nee media training? That's typically going to be a cost. If you need a press kit, that's going to be an outside cost. If you need a personal branding website, that's going to be another cost. If you need photography and head shots, another cost. So a lot of times those costs are not actually built in to the ongoing campaign. I think that managing scope creep is also very important in PR to understanding what the role of a publicist is, and if not, it definitely matters too. What is media training? Kathleen: Let's talk about media training for a minute because this actually came up in a conversation that I recently had. Can you explain what happens in a media training and what are you being trained about? Kristin: So media training is really supposed to prepare you, a lot of the times for on camera interviews, and how can you be prepared, particularly in television in a breaking news environment. How can you answer questions? How can you not say things like um while you're doing interviews. Anything like that. So typically when I do media training with executives, I will record them and we'll go play back what they sound like. If they do a segment, we will sort of rigorously critic that segment, and say, "This is great, but here are all the things you need to do to improve that." So for example, can they maintain eye contact. That's what we look for or are they sort of looking all over the place? Are there a lot of transition words? Can they cut back on that? Are they using modifiers like in my opinion. That can be cut and that don't add to the interview. Are they talking for way too long and have they not been trained in speaking in sound bytes. So all of those things are components in media training. Kathleen: It's so funny because listening to you describe it, it makes me think of podcasting because I've been doing this now... I'm on episode 110, and when I podcast, I always send my audio off to be transcribed and then I have to edit the transcription for the show notes. Reading the written version of what I say is the most horrifying thing in the world. I have discovered that I start just about every sentence with yeah. My guest says something and I'm like, "Yeah, let's talk about that," or, "Yeah, and I have a question." It's just so funny and I imagine it's the same thing with media training when you play back a recording. All of a sudden you're like, "Wait, I say that, that much? I had no idea." Kristin: Yes, exactly. That's why it can be scary and that's why it's really important though. For example, in addition to running a PR firm, I'm also a television commentator. So I've personally been on TV more than a hundred times on Fox News or other outlets, and still even if it's segment 101, I'm still rigorously assessing what I sound like because if I'm not doing that I'm not learning and I'm not getting better. So I think that people don't realize that people that are on air all the time are still doing this very same thing. It's not just something that you start when you hire a PR firm. You have to keep doing it. How to handle the tough questions Kathleen: Yeah, and one other... See there I did it. I said yeah. One of the other questions I had is... Because this is part of what came up in the conversation I was having, how do you advise people to handle it when they don't want to answer a question? Is it, "I don't comment on that"? Is there a certain way to gracefully avoid answering. Kristin: So I think there's two things. One, I'd call bridging. So if you don't necessarily want to answer something or if you're not sure how, I would bridge it and transition it into something else. So you can say, "This is a really interesting question, however I think this is the larger question." So that would be bridging. That's one option. Two is always be honest. So if someone asks you something and you are not qualified to speak on it, literally just tell someone that. Say, "That's a really interesting question, however I'm not sure I'm the best one to answer this, but if I had to take a stab, here's what I would say." You can say something like that as a modifier or you can say, "I'll get back to you on that one" I don't have time to Google it right now but you could do what Mark Zuckerberg did at the congressional hearing, which every single question he said, "I'll have my team get back to you on that." That's a perfect question of answering your question. Which PR opportunities are worth responding to? Kathleen: Okay, that makes sense. So circling back to PR for SEO and in tandem for inbound marketing back links. When you're pitching and you mentioned that you do reactive PR, how do you screen through which opportunities are worth responding to and which ones are not? Kristin: Sure. The first thing I will do is I will look at the outlet. Is it a well-known outlet, or is it a random blog? I'm not actually the... The back linking part I don't really like look at until the very end until something comes out because you don't really know if they're going to include a link or not. For me, if I'm going to send something to a client, I'm looking at it to think, is this an anonymous query? If it is, we're not replying. Is it a large national media outlet that we've heard of, which would be great to get a mention in regardless of the back link? Then yes, I'll send it to them. Is it worth their time to answer this? How many questions are on there that they want answered, and do I realistically think the client can answer it by the deadline that's given. So all of those things factor into whether or not I think that they should look at that. Again, I look at back links as great added bonus of doing PR, but if people come to me and say, "You need to guarantee back links." I tell them, "There's no way any public relations professional can guarantee back links. Reporters don't even know." So there's a lot of scams out there right now where people will... I'm sure you've received them too. Where they send you this nice long sheet and go, "Oh for X thousand dollars, for this one off I'll get you informed for this mention." Well Google's changing the game right now, rather, with how all of that's handled and if you look at the quality rater's guidelines, they also clearly mention that they can tell and that those links, they're very aware of that and they don't count for much. So I would say that's a waste of time and a waste of money. Spend your time and resources doing PR the right way, and if you get links out of it then that's an added bonus. Kathleen: Now you mentioned anonymous queries, and this is something that I've always wondered about. So I look at HARO all the time and like you said, some of the calls for sources they say, "I'm with this particular news outlet," and then others are just anonymous. I've always wondered about that because sometimes I think, "Oh, well if they're anonymous they're some podunk place." But then other times I think, "If they're anonymous maybe they're someplace big, but they don't want to let people know that." I don't know. What has your experience been with that? Kristin: It's a gamble. It's 50-50. It can go either way. So sometimes it could be like a major outlet, but they have an internal editorial policy, which may state we don't want someone else scooping up this story or we can't use HARO. So that reporter may put it in as anonymous. So technically they're not using HARO. That's one option. Another thing is that it really is a much smaller site and they know that no one is going to answer their query if they say, "This is for my hole in the wall blog that no one has ever heard of." So, it can go either way. How to identify PR opportunities Kathleen: So for somebody who's listening and thinking, "Gosh, I'm not ready to hire a PR firm yet, but I might want to dabble in to trying this out for myself." Are there... There's obviously HARO, which is Help A Reporter Out, which is a great free source that you can read and respond to. Are there any other really helpful places that somebody can go to on their own to see what kinds of stories other reporters are working on and potentially respond? Kristin: I think the best thing that they can do is really just read the news. I know that sounds so simple. So many people don't do it. Everyone is looking for this cheap quick fix on how they can do something, which is why I'm not really a fan of do it yourself PR for a number of reasons, but the main one is that people really... Do it yourself PR can actually be quite dangerous. I've seen people make major mistakes because they're not media trained. They say all sorts of things. They don't really know what on the record versus off the record even means, and then they want someone else to fix it. And that part... And they can't. Right? Because they read some advice somewhere and told them to try it and then it hurt them, and then their CO is not happy. I would say you have to be kind of careful. However, if you're interested in sort of figuring out, "What is the media really writing about?" So maybe you're a digital marketer and you want to get quoted in the news. Go into Google and then click news. Then put in digital marketing. That's the first step I would take. If you don't want to hire a PR firm, that's what I would do and I would set up Google Alerts for that and set up Google Alerts for your name. I would use a site like Mention because a lot of times Google Alerts doesn't pick up everything it needs to now. Then I would start seeing... For example, let's say I comment on Instagram. I have Google Alerts set up for Instagram. Or for Trump's tweets or anything relevant to what I talked about, and then I get... that's just becomes part of my day. So maybe you're a cardiologist and you're speaking on artificial intelligence and cardiology. I'd set up an alert for AI Cardiology. So you start having... That's more of an inbound approach to PR really because it all comes to you. Then you start formulating an opinion on that. I would then take that opinion, write content around it, put it on your own site, and then I think what you're going to start to see is that if its good content and you optimize that content, you can be found for that content by a member of the media. I will say this, people always say, "How did you get started in television?" I got started in television because of content. I wrote a really cool article on how social media was impacting the world of dating and it was for Jdate.com, and this was like 10 years ago. I tweeted that article. I did not have a PR firm at that time and I was still more so in social media. A producer found my article on Twitter. Again, no PR firm. They found the content, they liked the content, and they said, "This would make for an interesting segment, would you like to come on the show?" That's literally how I got started in my career in TV was because of content. I would urge your listeners here to consider that when you're thinking how to get there. That's sort of a do it yourself PR approach, but it's not dangerous because you're not necessarily reaching out to the media directly. It's a content first approach. Why Twitter is key for your PR strategy Kathleen: Now do you find that there are certain channels in which you can publish your content that make it more likely that you will be found by a reporter? Kristin: Twitter. Kathleen: Really? Kristin: Yeah, Twitter and LinkedIn. I mean, just 100% because journalists are the biggest users of Twitter. We have clients that say to us, "I don't want to be on Twitter," and I say, "You don't have a choice. You have to be on twitter because if I'm getting you hits, I need to tweet those hits because reporters want traffic to their articles." So that's my end... Like, I have to do that. Right? That's the other thing. This old school notion that PR is just take, take, take and not give is so antiquated. You can't expect that someone's going to write about you and then you're not going to help push traffic to those articles. Which is why whether it's a podcast, or it's a reporter at a different outlet, they want to see that you're pushing it out too. Social media's an integral part to that process. Kathleen: Twitter is so incredibly misunderstood. I find that with every client I've ever worked with... I was in the agency world for, oh my gosh, 13 years and almost everyone, including the heads of many agencies would say, "Twitter is a waste of time. I don't want to be on Twitter." It always blew my mind because not only is that where all the reporters are, but it's the only platform where you can directly reach out to anybody regardless of where you're connected with them. So the access on Twitter is unbelievable. Kristin: I mean, if you want to get on the radar of journalists, they're on Twitter. The other thing you could do is create a favorite list and look up some reporters and then add them to a favorite list and start favorite them for what they're doing, or replying to them and get on their radar in that way. It's a great way to use Twitter, and obviously, it's strategically hashtag. If you really want to learn how to use PR, go on Twitter and use #PRfail. They will actually grill different publicists or do it yourself PR people, and you can learn from that. You learn a lot. It's just amazing. They'll put out bad pictures on there. I think there used to be a blog called Bad Pitch Blog. I don't know if it's still around, but I mean, you learn how to do PR the right way by looking at it the wrong way. Kathleen: Yeah. See I still say yeah. Even though I try to get myself not to. Now I've also heard that YouTube is really valuable. Especially for getting picked up for television because that allows people to see your on camera persona. Have you found that? Kristin: I think that definitely makes sense more so in the entertainment space. I think it adds to credibility and I think anytime you do a TV segment you should put it on there. Do I think that like, for example, would I have gotten discovered from YouTube if I was just doing something on my own? I don't necessarily think so, no. But entertainment, yes. If you're a singer, if... So that's just a whole other area of PR. You don't as much as I think is valuable for that, and sort of the corporate world, I think it's a little bit different. Kathleen: Interesting. And you mentioned LinkedIn. How do you see LinkedIn playing into this? Kristin: I think publishing articles on LinkedIn is very valuable and using hashtags on LinkedIn can also be very helpful to get found for your content. LinkedIn is at this amazing point right now where they are really almost giving away views in organic traffic, more so than Facebook is at this point because they want to become more of a social network. So there's this massive opportunity, especially with video on LinkedIn right now, if you want people to find what you're doing. So from what we've learned with clients, video definitely does the best. And you could put the same video on Facebook, or Twitter, and Instagram, and you're just going to see the views are so much higher on LinkedIn. Kathleen: Absolutely. I have been testing out LinkedIn Video now for several months, and I did a LinkedIn video recently about it because I looked back at all of my posts and the posts that had video in them, almost in every single case got 10x the number of comments and views as a post without video. It was so starkly obvious what a difference it made. So I completely agree with you on that. Kristin: Yeah, but I mean, they want to incentivize users to be doing more videos. So that's why you can see it. If you look at the analytics, you'll see that that's what they're trying to do. Kathleen: And it won't last forever, I'm sure but right now it's a great opportunity. I want to talk a little bit about results. Obviously, you can't divulge client names and things like that, but can you just, in an anonymized sense, can you give me a sense of what kind of results companies that you've worked with have seen from PR? Kristin: Sure. For example, one company that we work with, they have received over 35,000 visitors in search alone over the past year. Again, we're not doing any paid marketing, any paid advertising. That's just because of content marketing and PR. That's all inbound traffic. Another company is actually ranking in search engine results on page one for specific... In the snippets, which everyone is trying to get in right now. There is content that we created for them years ago that's ranking now. That content hasn't even been historically optimized yet, and it's still ranking. Why? Because we answered questions. That has to do with our approach that we started on Facebook where we grew that audience from zero to over 5,000 fans right now, and basically used their business fan page as a community and group page. Because of that and because we took the time to answer their questions and sort of ask the expert type of format, that has just skyrocketed their search engine results. So I would definitely say that that's something people should be doing. Answering questions is so underrated. People spend so much time on SEO but don't actually answer questions. If you want to appear in snippets you have to do that. I would also say podcasting as been, for that client, a big part of their growth strategy, in terms of being a guest. They've probably recorded over... I don't know. Over 900 minutes of time on podcasts and I can see the analytics for that and I can see the conversion rates. I see people's like, "I heard you on this podcast. I'm interested in coming to you now." I see on their social media page where they say, "I read about you in this article." Well, I know what those articles were because I placed them. So that's PR. I read about you. Are you taking on new clients or new patients? I can actually literally track it from the PR hit to them then going to the social media pages to saying, "Are you taking on new patients?" Or direct messaging that, and then to a new lead going through the contact form, and becoming a patient or a client. So I would say, again, that's not any sort of... that's happened across the board for several clients. Kathleen: It is interesting how it snowballs too, right? You get your name out there and that is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy because you're building that Domain Authority, which helps you get found more. As you said, the content that you create that lives in the snippets can live forever. Kristin: Yes. PR is an investment Kathleen: So it is sort of an investment as opposed to, you think about paid advertising and it's like a drug. You can't ever stop. But this is more like an investment. Kristin: It is, and I would say... I mean, you're right. It does snowball. Media snowballs in other media. That's what people have to understand, and I think people that have the short-term approach to PR, then they shouldn't hire a PR firm. If you're going to hire a firm and you're thinking, "You know what, I need you to do X, Y, Z by this date, and I need it now to do X." It's just not going to happen, and even if it doesn't happen, it's the wrong approach because you're not building a community. You're not building anything that has intrinsic value to others. So you just getting hits is good for you, but how is that good for others. So the clients that I've had great success with are... The one thing that they all have in common is they are other-centric, they're not me-centric. So when you're other-centric it allows us to do the best job we can for them because they're building out something larger than themselves and all of it is around education. So I always say, "Egocentric PR is not a PR strategy." It's very important for people to understand that. The PR strategies that we deploy are education focused, and I think clients get the best results, and again, even if it's education focused sound very similar to inbound marketing. Kathleen: I was just going to say, that's basically the premise of inbound. It's a give before you get kind of mentality. Kristin: Exactly. What's so funny is that these people that work with me and hire me, they just really wanted to get great educational content out there into the world and build up their brand. When they're working with me they're not necessarily saying, "I need more clients or patients or people in the door," because they've achieved a certain level of success and they want to do other things. The most amazing things that happens is all of this happens as a result of it. But it's not because they were even trying to achieve that goal. It's because they put their users and their audience first, in terms of just giving, and giving, and giving great advice and content. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Right, well that's so interesting and thank you for explaining all of that. I want to shift gears now and I have two questions I always ask all of my guests and I'm curious to hear what your responses will be. The first one is when it comes to inbound marketing, is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it and doing it well. Kristin: I thought a lot about this, and it's hard for me to say that any one person is doing inbound well is because the way I look at this is I look at different attributes of how someone is doing something well. So I can't necessarily point to one person. I can give you all the answers that I think everyone else points to all the time. I could say Gary V, and Gary's great, right? Of course Gary V is doing it. I'm sure every single guest in your show says that, so I want to give you a more unique answer. I think that doctors that are taking the time to answer patients questions are doing it well. Again, I don't want to name any specific ones, but I think that in general if you take the approach where you look at the most frequently asked questions that you're asked all the time and you write them down, and you write content around it, I think it helps you and it helps your patients and it helps your clients. Kristin: So anyone that's doing that gets a gold star in my book. Kathleen: I've always really admired Mayo Clinic for that. They are like the Wikipedia of medicine. It almost doesn't matter what you Google, they pop up with an educational article on that thing. Causes, symptoms, treatments, yada, yada, yada. Though we can not name specific doctors, I would say the Mayo Clinic, in general, is an institution has really done a great job and committed heavily to inbound. Kristin: I think if people wanted... just a tip for inbound is use the notepad in your phone, and when people ask you questions or if a prospect emails you a question, literally save that question. That can be a great part, a foundation of your content marketing strategy. People spend so much time trying to figure out, what do I write about? Well, just write about what you're already answering. Kathleen: Yes. Yeah. It's staring all of us in the face, right? Kristin: Exactly. Also, when you write that, write how people are... The language that they are using to type into Google when they ask you those questions. But I think something that most people are not doing today is that they're just missing the boat on optimizing their content for questions. I think that's something that... The term is called historical optimization, which I think is critical of any sort of PR SEO campaign right now where everyone has to do it. Refresh older stuff that you've written. And also, I would say, use PR to amplify the content that you've written. So if you've written a great blog post and maybe you've done a podcast, you should include that podcast link into whatever relevant content that you've already written around that. So you're constantly just adding value to your audience. Kathleen: Yes. It's so funny because I 100% agree with everything you just said, and it's so interesting to me that it's like, somebody from the PR world who so intuitively gets what it is to do inbound marketing correctly because that's really what it is all about. Kristin: Well, I just want to say one thing about that. What really amazes me is I don't understand how people can practice PR today and not have an understanding of inbound because if you don't, you're not helping your clients. Those clients are setting their money on fire. You can not be doing all of this stuff and have SEO in a different area and content and inbound in a different area. It doesn't work. It doesn't help your clients. So you need someone when you're interviewing a firm, you need to make sure that they have an understanding of all of this because what I see is, you could hire a firm and they could get you all these hits, but if you do nothing with the hits then it's all a waste. It's not just about getting press covered. It's about what you do with the press coverage. If you do a podcast and no one hears the podcast, was there any point to doing the podcast? No, there was not. You have to mark it the coverage that you get. Kathleen: Yes, yes. Totally agree. Second question because you are a PR person who clearly understands marketing. The world of digital marketing is changing so quickly. You talked about Google updating its quality rater guidelines. How do you personally stay up to date and current on all of these things? Kristin: Sure. So I read a lot of different search engine blogs currently. So I think one thing is Search Engine Land. I have a lot that sort of come in that I've subscribed for that are kind of helpful. I know even just a PR... I think there's PR Daily that I get. I get so many of these different newsletters. The other thing, again, is that I truly go to Google News and I look for the terms. I will actually go. I will click Google, I will click news, and then I'll put in SEO or I'll put in Google or I'll put in rankings. I mean, that's my own approach because I want to see things that are happening by the hour and not everyone is necessarily searching that way. For me, I think it's important. Same thing with PR, with everything else that I'm researching. I think the reason I got into that habit is from doing news segments. I could literally be booked to talk about something and then two hours later that story has changed. So I constantly... It's one thing to sign up for newsletters, but it's another when you're in a breaking news environment and the story could have changed. Kathleen: That's a really good point for anybody who's preparing to be interviewed to just do a quick Google news search right before your interview to make sure that nothing has changed. Kristin: Yes. Because a lot of the time everything changes. And then you could be- Kathleen: So true. Kristin: ... watching a teaser and they go, "Coming up, so and so is talking about this." And you don't want to be caught off guard by saying, "Who is so and so," and they go, "That's you, and you're live and go." Kathleen: Right. Kristin: You want to avoid that from happening, which again, goes back to the importance of media training and being prepared. I'd also say try not to check your email, especially from clients right before you go on air. Kathleen: Yes. Kristin: Because that can really throw you. A really important media training tip. How to connect with Kristin Kathleen: That's a great piece of advice. Well, so many good nuggets here Kristin. I really appreciate you sharing all of this with us. If somebody is interested in connecting with you or learning more, what's the best way for them to reach out? Kristin: Sure, so if you want to reach out my website is rubymediagroup.com and my other site is krisruby.com. And then I have a third site for PR for doctors at medicalpracticepr.com. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know you heard me on this podcast or email me at kruby@rubymediagroup.com.  Kathleen: Fantastic. I will include links for all of that in the show notes so head there if you want to reach out to Kris. You know what to do next... Kathleen: And if you're listening and you learned something new, or you liked what you heard, of course, please leave the podcast a five star review on Apple Podcasts. That's how we get found. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Kristin: Thank you for having me.  

If you’re a business owner, you’re going to love Help A Reporter Out, or HARO. Why? You will have about 150 topics from journalists looking for expert sources for in your inbox! Full disclosure: In the past few years, it has gone downhill… a lot. Some people are using it to grab free products and others to hunt for advertising opportunities. HARO is not closely regulated, but you can still earn quality coverage by following these tips in this podcast episode that walk you through how to respond to queries. One person responded to everything that he could, that was fit, in one month using the tips I outline in this episode and earned 60 media hits IN ONE MONTH! (FYI – that’s an INSANE amount.) Some resources mentioned in this episode: HARO My YouTube video on HARO PitchPublicityProfit.com Please subscribe to this podcast and leave an honest review on iTunes.   Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.

The New York Times has called Peter Shankman “a rockstar who knows everything about social media and then some.” He is a 5x best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker, focusing on customer service and the new and emerging customer and neurotatypical economy.  With three startup launches and exits under his belt, Peter is recognized worldwide for radically new ways of thinking about the customer experience, social media, PR, marketing, advertising, ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and the new Neurodiverse Economy. In addition to his passion for helping people and companies find success, some of Peter’s highlights also include: Founder of HARO – Help A Reporter Out, which became the standard for thousands of journalists looking for sources prior to being acquired three years after launch The ShankMinds Breakthrough Network, an elite, online mastermind of thought leaders, business experts, and change makers Faster than Normal – The Internet’s #1 podcast on ADHD, focusing on the superpowers and gifts of having a “faster than normal brain,” which has helped thousands of people all around the world realize that having a neuroatypical brain is actually a gift, not a curse The Book: Faster Than Normal Peter On Social Twitter: https://twitter.com/petershankman/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PeterShankman YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ntrprnr ======================  Request to Join the FREE Meredith Atwood Community & Coaching https://meredith-atwood-coaching.mn.co/ ======================  Buy Meredith’s Books: The Year of No Nonsense https://amzn.to/3su5qWp Triathlon for the Every Woman: https://amzn.to/3nOkjiH =======================   Follow Meredith Atwood & The Podcast on Social: Web: http://www.swimbikemom.com Instagram: http://instagram.com/swimbikemom   =======================  Want to Connect?  Email: same24hourspodcast@gmail.com =======================  Credits: Host & Production: Meredith Atwood Intro: Carl Stover Music Copyright 2017-2020, 2021 All Rights Reserved, Meredith Atwood, LLC

Kristen Sala and Allison Richard join producer Michael O'Connell to explain their service, Help A Reporter Out, which connects reporters with expert sources that are guaranteed to be helpful and responsive.

Today we're speaking with fellow single dad, Peter Shankman. Peter is the founder of Help A Reporter Out, which is currently the largest free source repository in the world as well as ShankMinds: Breakthrough, an online community of business professionals from around the world who come together to give and get advice, increase their business, and improve their lives. Additionally, Peter is also the founder and CEO of The Geek Factory, Inc., a boutique Social Media, Marketing and PR Strategy firm located in New York City, with clients worldwide. His blog, which he launched in 1995 at https://www.shankman.com, both comments on and generates news and conversation. He's the author of five books including his latest: Faster Than Normal, Unlocking the Gifts of the ADHD Brain and is a frequent keynote speaker and workshop presenter at conferences and tradeshows worldwide. Most importantly, he is a single dad to a five-year old daughter Jessa living in New York. Peter and I talk about a lot of stuff including: be a great co-parent with your ex, breaking the news about the split to a toddler, the philosophy of kids first, how to get through the worst of it and stay positive, dealing with addiction, and being a dad with ADHD. You can connect with Peter on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and LinkedIn at his name Peter Shankman or on his website shankman.com. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

Several times a day I receive an email from a site called Help A Reporter Out or HARO. It is a site journalists use to find sources for their stories. As a subject matter expert, it is a great way to find opportunities to share your expertise. The majority of the articles I see being written are about fashion or sex. “Real Men who have waxed their testicles” or “Men in their 30s willing to talk about their foot fetishes.” Cheating, erections, and male anatomy are in heavy rotation. Here is the problem: The biggest issues facing men today have nothing to do with fashion or sexual performance. With all that is happening in the world right now, there has never been a better time to take a closer look at men. To celebrate the way they are evolving as fathers, partners, and friends. To dive deep into the hearts and minds of those struggling with myriad issues to help them change. Read the original article here:https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/are-we-all-missing-the-point-rbmke-cmtt/

  Have you ever tried implementing SEO strategies on your own? Or maybe this is the first time hearing about this? Wherever you might be, and whatever your business might be, you have to know about SEO and why hiring an SEO specialist is the best decision you will ever make when it comes to attracting more customers into your website. In this Episode of Enlightened Entrepreneur Podcast, SEO expert Brandon Loures talks about his struggles and triumphs with SEO and what business owners should do if they want to get started with implementing this strategy.   Key Questions Asked: How did Brandon get started with SEO? How did he get his very first client? What is the most challenging thing he’s had to face earlier on and how did he deal with it? How did Brandon deal with doubt in those early days? What is the first skill every business owner needs when it comes to implementing SEO strategies? What is the secret to success with SEO? What tools does Brandon use to help him with SEO? What is the role of Social Media when it comes to SEO? Why hire an SEO consultant? Knowing what he knows now, what would Brandon do differently given the chance to start all over again?   Highlights of Lessons Learned:  Starting Out When you’re starting a business, you need to have both the relational capital and financial capital. Relational capital may be even more powerful than financial capital. Brandon got his first clients through capitalizing on his network. Brandon found it challenging to transition from working with a team in an agency to working by himself and having to manage his time a lot more efficiently. To get around that, he had to look into his organization and started using tools such as CRMs. First thing business owner needs to understand is the search landscape. Because SEO is all about what people are searching, Brandon recommends that business owners should read books that talk about the beginner’s guide to SEO.   SEO Tools and Secrets The secret to SEO is having a foundation of good content that covers the main topics of your services on your actual website. One of the tools that Brandon likes to use is HARO or Help A Reporter Out. SEO is not only about what your website says but also what other people say and HARO is a tool that you can use to get media queries. When you’re creating a content for your website, keep the social aspect in mind.   Must-know About SEO If you don’t have a good understanding of SEO and your goal in your business is to get more visibility, you should go ahead and hire an experienced SEO consultant. Going back to the beginning, Brandon wishes he would have known how important search engine partners are. Given that chance to start again, business to business relationships is something that he would’ve started earlier. Another thing he wished he has done more was read business books that talk about his specific industry. Good SEO consultant would be able to look at your analytics and can help you make decisions like whether or not you should offer a certain service in your area. SEO involves a lot of research that can be valuable for decision making in business.

Peter Shankman walks through his unique take on productivity and lessons learned from ADHD that anyone can apply.   You'll Learn: 4 simple rules to be more productive Tricks to eliminate distraction Why you should always ask for a deadline   About Peter: Peter Shankman is a spectacular example of what happens when you merge the power of pure creativity with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and a dose of adventure, and make it work to your advantage. An author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker, this “worldwide connector” is recognized worldwide for radically new ways of thinking about customer service, social media, PR, marketing, advertising, and ADHD. He founded Help A Reporter Out, ShankMinds: Breakthrough, Geek Factory, and more.   View transcript, show notes, and links at http://AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep265

Peter believes that ADHD is a gift, not a curse.  He reminds us to live life with no regrets and to find a tribe that understands us. Peter Shankman is a spectacular example of what happens when you merge the power of pure creativity with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and a dose of adventure, and make it work to your advantage. An author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker, this “worldwide connector” is recognized worldwide for radically new ways of thinking about customer service, social media, PR, marketing, advertising, and ADHD. Peter is best known for founding Help A Reporter Out, (HARO) which in under a year became the de-facto standard for thousands of journalists looking for sources on deadline, offering them more than 200,000 sources around the world looking to be quoted in the media. HARO is currently the largest free source repository in the2 world, sending out over 1,500 queries from worldwide media each week. HARO's tagline, “Everyone is an Expert at Something”, proves over and over again to be true, as thousands of new members join at helpareporter.com each week. In June of 2010, less than two years after Peter started HARO in his apartment, it was acquired by Vocus, Inc. https://www.shankman.com/ https://www.shankminds.com/  https://www.fasterthannormal.com/    tags:  stories that empower, stories, story, that, empower, storiesthatempower, podcast, hope, inspiration, inspire, inspiring, lift up, light, dark, motivate, motivation, motivating, Sean, Peter, Shankman, shankman.com, shankminds.com, fasterthannormal.com

Peter Shankman is a spectacular example of what happens when you merge the power of pure creativity with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and a dose of adventure, and make it work to your advantage. Peter is best known for founding Help A Reporter Out, (HARO) which in under a year became the de-facto standard for thousands of journalists looking for sources on deadline, offering them more than 200,000 sources around the world looking to be quoted in the media.   *** For Show Notes, Key Points, Contact Info, & Resources Mentioned on this episode here: Peter Shankman Interview. ***  

On this episode of Ambition Today we explore Peter Shankman’s journey. Peter is the perfect example of what happens when you combine creativity with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Peter shows us how ADHD can be a gift and a strong advantage in business. He is not only an entrepreneur, but an author and a notable public speaker. Many know him for founding Help A Reporter Out, (HARO). He is also the founder of ShankMinds Business Masterminds and he is the Host of the Faster Than Normal Podcast. Peter was born and raised in Manhattan, and was a New York City public school kid. After graduating from Boston University and going to Graduate school in Santa Barbara, CA, he started his professional career launching AOL Digital Newsroom. Peter is most well known for founding Help A Reporter Out, also known as HARO, which is the worlds largest public group of journalistic sources. In this episode, we talk about how Peter’s ADHD had a great impact on his many successes: Growing up in New York City Launching AOL Digital Newsroom The importance of having incredible mentors like Steve Case  What is happening to the media industry today How Peter built Help A Reporter Out, (HARO) Using ADHD as an advantage How to create life rules to optimize your time Importance of self awareness  Value of asking everyone "How Can I Help"    Ambition Today Question of the Day™: "How do you think about attention management and how do you best optimize your life for it?" The Single Greatest Piece of Advice Peter Has Ever Learned: Join the Ambition Today A-list to listen now! Quote Of The Episode: "You have to put out 10 times the amount of help into the universe that you ask for." Links from this episode: Faster Than Normal Book - Out Now! Faster Than Normal Podcast FasterThanNormal.com Help A Reporter Out, (HARO) Shankman.com Peter Shankman on Twitter Peter Shankman on Facebook WeWork Founder Institute   ========== This episode of Ambition Today is supported by:  Founder Institute New York: goo.gl/RGezjW    WeWork: goo.gl/hyzzuP Toptal: goo.gl/OObfM9 Audible: goo.gl/Urjq6k   ========== Visit Ambition Today on the Web: www.siskar.co/ambitiontoday Follow Kevin Siskar on Twitter: twitter.com/TheSiskar   Follow Kevin Siskar on Instagram: instagram.com/thesiskar Follow Kevin Siskar on Facebook: facebook.com/kevin.siskar Add Kevin Siskar on Snapchat: snapchat.com/add/krsiskar   Kevin Siskar brings you ambitious entrepreneurs inspired by Tim Ferriss Show, How I Built This with Guy Raz, Residual Income, Entrepreneur on Fire, NPR, HBR, TED Radio Hour, the StartUp podcast with Alex Blumberg by Gimlet Media, Pat Flynn, Tony Robbins, The Uncertain Hour, Bigger Pockets, Art of Charm, Dave Ramsey, Planet Money, Jocko Podcast, EntreLeadership, Zigler, APM Marketplace, This Week In Startups with Jason Calacanis, Mixergy, Seth Godin, Joe Rogan Experience, GaryVee, James Altucher, Monocle 24, How to Start a Startup, Crooked Media, and The $100 MBA Show with Omar Zenhom, and Casey Neistat.   Be sure to listen and subscribe to Ambition Today in the iTunes Store for iOS (apple.co/1NRRPzL), on Google Play Music (goo.gl/LmmciJ), or on Stitcher for Android (bit.ly/1Rn01dy).

Peter Shankman joins me on this episode of the podcast. Peter is the founder of Help A Reporter Out and the author of the new book Faster Than Normal. During our conversation, we dive into why he considers ADHD to be a gift, how he leverages dopamine to boost his productivity, and what people without ADHD can do to tap into some of the productivity benefits they have at their disposal. Relevant Links https://www.fasterthannormalbook.com/ (Faster Than Normal) https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/ (Bill Burr | The Tim Ferriss Show) http://www.richroll.com/ (Rich Roll) https://ommwriter.com/ (OmmWriter) https://productivityist.com/productivity-take-flight/ (The Mode That Helps Your Productivity Take Flight | Productivityist) https://www.shankman.com/ (Peter Shankman | Website) Thanks for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it...no matter what speed you used to listen.

This episode of Optimize, Automate, Outsource has a wide variety of interesting apps and resources as usual, so listen up to hear Ari and Nick chat about a great language app Nick’s been using (it includes gamification), how you can create parent-child relationships between Trello cards using a new service, how healthcare professionals can become “on demand” workers, the automation of IPOs, robotic scanning of documents and more. Oh yeah, and Nick tells about his sponge roller water bottle too - it’s all on this episode. A free language app the includes gamification and recorded examples for pronunciation. If you haven’t heard of Duolingo yet you really do need to check it out. It’s an entirely free app that can teach you foreign languages in fun and interactive ways. Ari has used it in the past to brush up on his French and Nick is using it presently. What’s fun about it is that you can learn as you play games - and you can even hear words in your language of choice spoken to you if you’re having a hard time pronouncing them. This is a powerful and effective app and serves as a demonstration of how technology makes learning easier and fun. If you use Trello, you’ve probably run into this limitation… now you can say “goodbye” to it. One of the things that users have complained about in terms of features that Trello doesn’t offer is the ability to “nest” one card under another, creating parent-child type relationships. There are so many uses for that kind of functionality, it’s surprising that the Trello team hasn’t created it yet. So somebody finally got fed up and did it for them. It’s a new service called Hello Epics and Nick and Ari chat about how it works and why it’s so helpful, on this episode. If you’re a healthcare worker who needs extra income, ShiftDoc is for you. On demand work is becoming more and more prevalent throughout the world, and now it’s become a reality for healthcare workers. If you set up a profile on ShiftDoc you are able to choose your availability, pay, and location so offices in need of help can see if you’re a good fit. You upload your credentials so your skills and education can be verified, and then you can be requested to work for offices in need, or apply to work at offices that have posted “help wanted” listings. It’s pretty impressive how the system works. Check it out on this episode. A new solution for records management using robots. There’s a new service called Ripcord that solves the most challenging conundrums of managing your important documents. Here’s how it works. Ripcord uses robots to scan your records and place certified digital copies of them in the cloud. The process makes them safe and accessible - and your paper copies can be destroyed for good. And you won’t have a human being looking at your records as they are being scanned because a robot is doing the work. You have to check this out if you deal with records management issues. Ari and Nick explain it on this episode. Featured Resources Mentioned On This Episode [1:35] Hello Epics: creates parent-child relationships between Trello cards. [2:55] Bloomberg article: Automated IPOs? [3:57] DuoLingo app - learn a language for free, and it’s gamified. [5:22] www.ShiftDoc.com - on-demand work for healthcare workers. [6:19] Ripcord - scanning large amounts of docs using a robot [7:20] Mobot - water container and foam roller combo. [8:12] Genius Network [8:51] Strategic Coach with Dan Sullivan Other Resources Mentioned Text “Leverage” to “444999” to subscribe to the mailing list and get the first chapter of our new book. www.LeveragePodcasts.com Peter Shenkman’s newsletter: Help A Reporter Out www.Trello.com Captcha   Find out more about what we’re doing at Leverage at www.getleverage.com and www.leveragepodcasts.com

They met at Tropical think tank in the Philippines and now they are ready to sit down to podcast 12 months in the making!   Who is Janet Murray   Janet Murray is the founder of soulful PR specializing in helping small business owners sculpt and pitch their ideas and stories to the media. She’s a freelance writer/editor who runs a successful Paid web group called Soulful PR Studio. Alongside a booming podcast and masterfully written blog, Janet is always on the go. I must also mention she has an amazing book called Your Press Release is Breaking my Heart. Let's not forget her Facebook group Soulful PR going almost 10,000 strong.   "I guess the most important thing about my story is that I teach PR but I have never worked in PR," Janet explains.   From The Guardian to The Independent and The National posts, Janet has spent the last 16 years freelance writing and editing for some of the biggest publications in the UK. Never mind the handfuls of magazines; Janet has been there and edited that!   One thing that Janet learned early on in her freelance years is that bad pitchers are everywhere. She began to grow sick of a number of bad pitch emails filling her daily inbox; Hard working people throwing their money into PR firms that just don't get it.   She was inspired to take a stand. It was time for a change, and Janet decides to set out to teach others how to get noticed.   Janet runs the event Your Year in PR, where she takes 8 national journalists and roughly 80 small business owners, stuffs them in a room, and teachers. They learn what it is that consumers look for in a pitch and what sets a good pitch apart from a bad one. Janet says, “You don't need a big budget or fancy PR firm to get top Notch media coverage. The importance of standing out.   Khierstyn cleverly asked which pitches Janet had heard over the years that she still remembers being the worst. Janet skillfully responds that she really can’t recall any terrible pitches. Instead, the ones that that stand out she said are the good ones. Here are the 3 criteria to use to get noticed!   First, you need to show evidence that you actually read or listen to a publication. If it's radio or the newspapers take the time to do your basic research. Journalists have such a small area they can fill and endless crap to sift through.   Second, you must have really strong header/subject. It is important to be direct and to the point, Journalists work fast and read even faster. Avoid trying to be witty or the use of puns in your header. You want to keep the body of the text short and to the point as well adding strong visuals or audio clips. Janet gives us the tip of trying to picture yourself in the shoes of the journalist you are trying to reach.   " In Journalism, we have a term called the 10-word top line." Janet explains that this means if you can't summarize your story in 10 words or less you are not ready for launch.   Third, knowing the different types of media content is very important as well.   News: Reporting on something new that is happening. Opinion article: Published in a newspaper or magazine, that reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Personal article: A story that leads to the point, can be the reason for why you made what you are pitching.   Janet tells us that, rather than starting with your story, tailor each outreach to every different publication.   What advice would you give to the first time entrepreneur trying to find their pitch?   " First off! Anyone that owns a business can get media coverage."   One tool that reigns supreme is HARO, Help A Reporter Out, a place where journalists go to find stories to write about.   Janet takes the time to recant a story of a current client that is working on a app for people with food intolerance. Now, the App is not quite finished but that has not stopped her client from being all over media publications for the last year. Even if you can't get the coverage you want, get any coverage you can! By the time you are ready to launch you have made the bridges and started your following.   Be where the journalists are. There are always events going on; Find a way to be apart of them, set up booths, ask for coffee meetings. You need to find ways of getting into the public eye.   Above all else don't write a press release! You are basically saying you have already sent this story to every other publication you could find. Journalists want a scoop, tailor, tailor, tailor every email you send. Continue listing as Janet teaches you some simple steps to follow when tailoring your pitches.   Episode Outline   Introduction: Pitch Perfect; How to Get Media Coverage at Any Stage   [02:25] Who is Janet Murray [13:12] The importance of standing out [23:00] BackerKit [24:00] What advice do you have for new business owners   Resources and Sponsor Tropical Think tank Janet’s book: Your press release is breaking my heart A Soulful PR Studio HARO http://www.janetmurray.co.uk/ Crowdfunding uncut Jan_Murray Twitter Soulful PR Facebook   Sponsor: BackerKit - use the code “uncut” to get 50% off setup services

Peter Shankman is an author, entrepreneur, speaker, and a worldwide connector. Peter is best known for founding Help A Reporter Out, (HARO) in 2008, which in under a year became the number one website for thousands of journalists on deadline to connect with experts and sources for their stories around the globe. In June of 2010, less than three years after Peter started HARO, it was acquired by Vocus, Inc.   Peter is the founder of ShankMinds: Business Masterminds, a series of small business entrepreneurial-style masterminds in over 25 cities worldwide. Additionally, Peter is also the founder and CEO of The Geek Factory, Inc., a boutique Social Media, Marketing and PR Strategy firm located in New York City, with clients worldwide.   Peter is the author of four books: Zombie Loyalists: Using Great Service to Create Rabid Fans, Nice Companies Finish First: Why Cutthroat Management is Over, and Collaboration is in, Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work--And Why Your Company Needs Them and Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World.   In this episode you'll learn: [01:26] How Peter differentiates his pitch by showing up with pizza in the client's offices? [03:00] How not to suck as a service provider? [04:48] What are the questions Peter asks the client on the first meeting? [06:40] How should an agency come up with a hook to a PR pitch? [07:40] Why spotting trends is crucial for pitching? [08:21] How are Peter's businesses structured right now? [10:40] How did Peter get his first speaking gig? [11:20] Peter's process for coming up with a talk idea that captivates the audience? [14:45] Why did Peter build ShankMinds? [17:45] How Peter ensures that his mastermind members get value out of it? [19:38] How Peter structures his day? [22:07] How did Peter find out he's a terrible manager? Links mentioned: Peter Shankman Website Peter's podcast: Faster than Normal   Brought to you by Experiment 27. Find us on Youtube here.   If you've enjoyed the episode, please subscribe to the Digital Agency Marketing Podcast on iTunes and leave us a review for the show.   Get access to our FREE Sales Courses.

Today Sandro concludes his three-part series on the basics of link-building. In this episode he mentions Help A Reporter Out or HARO. You can find it at https://www.helpareporter.com/ Episode 0246 Have a question? Email us questions@60secondmarketing.net we'll give you and your company a shout out in addition to answering your question! Or be part of the conversation, join us on our Facebook Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/60secondmarketing and you can also find us on Instagram @60SecMarketing and Twitter @60SecondMktng

Today's Guest: Peter Shankman, public relations guru 1 of 3   There are a handful of people that social media aficionados and professionals follow religiously for their insight and direction, people such as Chris Brogan, Seth Godin and Robert Scoble, for example. If you know who those guys are, you should probably also get to know social media guru Peter Shankman. Shankman is an industry unto himself, a networker of the first degree who has taken the practice of public relations and marketing to new heights via his mastery of social media. He is best known in journalism circles as the founder of Help A Reporter Out—a.k.a., HARO—a repository of expert sources intended to help out last minute reporting assignments. Journalists send information requests in to HARO—more than 1,200 requests come in a week—and Shankman hooks them up. Shankman also is the founder and CEO of The Geek Factory, a Manhattan-based marketing and PR strategy firm. Over the years, his clients have included Snapple, NASA, Walt Disney World and many more. Peter Shankman Website • Help A Reporter Out • Geek Factory • Twitter • Facebook 2 of 3   3 of 3 Kicking Through the Ashes: My Life As A Stand-up in the 1980s Comedy Boom by Ritch Shydner. Order your copy today by clicking on the book cover above!   The Party Authority in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland!

In today's episode of The Art of Passive Income, Mark and Scott are joined by Peter Shankman—Shankman.com.  Peter is best known for founding Help A Reporter Out, (HARO) which became the de-facto standard for thousands of journalists looking for sources on deadline, offering them more than 200,000 sources around the world looking to be quoted in the media.   The New York Times has called him a public relations all-star who knows everything about new media and then some.  His Faster Than Normal Podcast embraces the concept that having ADD or ADHD as a gift and not a curse.  Peter is also the author of five books. His latest, Zombie Loyalists: Using Great Service to Create Rabid Fans, he wrote while on a plane to Hong Kong and back again with only a 2 hour layover in between. His only agenda for traveling to Hong Kong was to write the book!  It's about knowing the way you work and being able to master that in such a way that you do it well.    He talks to us about the premise behind Zombie Loyalists—someone who is so in love with a brand or a product, they want to share that with the world. And how to create Zombie Loyalists in your own business.   A few factors are:  Going above and beyond. Being accessible And making sure that everyone in your audience is benefiting by the information you're giving.  Peter also shares how you can find the right audience for YOU!   Plus, in what area does Peter see companies ruining their marketing plan?  Listen in to find out now... TIPS OF THE WEEK Mark: Learn more about Peter by going to his website at Shankman.com. Scott: Check out the new and updated Process.st. They have new tools, platforms, etc.  Peter: Go and check out Reddit.com. It's a website that allows you to learn anything you possibly want. There are topics on every conceivable thing known to man.  Isn't it time to create passive income so you can work where you want, when you want and with whomever you want

Shah is an online friend that I was fortunate to meet through and because of the podcast. It feels like we've known each other for quite a while now but this was our very first IRL (in real life) conversation. She runs the Etsy shop  which, unlike most Etsy shops, started off first as an offline pop-up shop then migrated to an ecommerce website and then finally to Etsy! I like the evolution of her business and how she eventually found her way onto Etsy and you'll get to hear the unique story of exactly how it happened in our convo this week. Have you longed to get media exposure and have the positive "fallout" that follows that? Well listen in to hear how Shah's business received a great deal of press and how you can replicate a similar process for your own business. But there's a caveat... You'll have to listen in to hear what it is :) We had a nice long conversation and here are some highlights of what you'll hear us discuss in-depth: Working with a business partner & going it alone Product line development Running an independent website - pros, cons, and tips for doing it well Balancing an Etsy shop vs ecommerce website Shah's D.E.B.R.A system for keeping up with business tasks Etsy Resolution and why you might want to participate the next time it rolls around From Buzz Feed to Interiors Addict to Babyology... Getting media attention and how to capitalize on it and keep the momentum going Shah's experience being a finalist of the 2015 Etsy Design Awards Shah's Etsy Shop ShoutOut - Phoenix is the cool lady behind this Etsy shop where she sells whimsical greeting cards, mugs, and gifts. Hi Phoenix!! :) - Lauren Munn set up this group for moms who sell on Etsy and want to connect. Lauren has been a valuable member of the Etsy Conversations community for a long time and I highly recommend that if you;re a mom and you sell on Etsy you strongly consider joining Lauren's Facebook group Resources Mentioned Freelancers: -find people of all skill levels and price ranges to do website (and other technical and non-technical) tasks for you Search Engine Optimization tools:  - SEO plugin for WordPress websites;  - website by Brian Dean with information about using link-building for website traffic and SEO Getting media exposure: (Help A Reporter Out), (similar to HARO) Recommended Reading: this article by Lauren Munn is a refereshing and honest piece on why her Etsy shop failed but there's a really great message in the piece - Contact Shah Etsy Convo: on Etsy Email: Shah [at] LilSpaces [dot] com Social media: , Please take a minute to subscribe and leave an honest review of the podcast in and . That really helps to get the word out about the show. Connect With Me: Twitter: Follow Facebook Group: - This is where I'm connecting with you after the podcast. Lots of fun convos here too! Facebook: Like the Pinterest: Instagram: Google+: Email: Use the OR interview [at] convome [dot] com For more help growing your Etsy-based business, check out these resources:

Peter Shankman, Help A Reporter Out Peter Shankman is a well-known American entrepreneur and author. He was creator of Help A Reporter Out, and author of several business books. He got his start in technology with an Atari 2600 and an Apple ][. This interview took place on March 20, 2017. Teaser quote: "What would you change, if you could go back and talk to your 10-year-old self? I wouldn't change a thing. Because the hell that I went through there has led to, pretty much, the majority of the success I've had today, and I'm very very lucky with that. I can trace that back to the Atari, to the 2600, to those games..." Peter's web site Peter on Twiiter Wikipedia on Peter Faster than Normal podcast Video version of this interview: https://youtu.be/a2DZoTU9Cw4 

Peter Shankman, author, corporate keynote speaker and founder of Shankminds, joins Host Deirdre Breakenridge on Women Worldwide. Peter is recognized as the perfect example of what happens when you merge the power of pure creativity with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), then add in a dose of adventure, and make it work to your advantage. Peter is regarded as a "worldwide connector” and also known for his radical new ways of thinking about ADHD. On the show, Peter shares his journey, which he describes as “always a fast state of motion" and some of the difficulties he had when he was growing up. Fast forward to today and he is helping people with ADHD to recognize it's a gift and not a curse. Peter shares recent initiatives including the launch of his podcast, Faster Than Normal (FTN), and his new book which will be published in 2017. Peter offers advice on how to stay focused, make the right choices and why you need to spread your energy in all of the right places. For Peter, every day is busy, but the time you carve out for your activities shows their importance. He also shares his thoughts on relationships and what it means to be a true friend. A little more about Peter Shankman … Peter is best known for founding Help A Reporter Out, (HARO) in 2008, which in under a year became the number one website for thousands of journalists on deadline to connect with experts and sources for their stories around the globe. In June of 2010, less than three years after Peter started HARO, it was acquired by Vocus, Inc. You can connect with Peter on LinkedIn, Twitter @PeterShankman and Facebook

In this podcast episode, I share my experiences with a marketing strategy that I've used before. The website is called Help A Reporter Out and it's a great way to build SEO and backlinks for your website. http://beyondthegrowth.com https://www.yesinsights.com @wilsonpeng8 on Twitter , Snapchat, Instagram

Links are an invaluable part of any SEO plan. Today Sandro talks about a great opportunity to find new links for your small business: Through the use of H.A.R.O. or Help A Reporter Out. You can find them and sign up for their 3x daily email at https://www.helpareporter.com/

Brandon Loures on SEO: Self Implementation vs. Hiring an Expert Have you ever tried implementing SEO strategies on your own? Or maybe this is the first time hearing about this? Wherever you might be, and whatever your business might be, you have to know about SEO and why hiring an SEO specialist is the best decision you will ever make when it comes to attracting more customers into your website. In this Episode of Enlightened Entrepreneur Podcast, SEO expert Brandon Loures talks about his struggles and triumphs with SEO and what business owners should do if they want to get started with implementing this strategy.   Key Questions Asked: How did Brandon get started with SEO? How did he get his very first client? What is the most challenging thing he’s had to face earlier on and how did he deal with it? How did Brandon deal with doubt in those early days? What is the first skill every business owner needs when it comes to implementing SEO strategies? What is the secret to success with SEO? What tools do Brandon use to help him with SEO? What is the role of Social Media when it comes to SEO? Why hire an SEO consultant? Knowing what he knows now, what would Brandon do differently given the chance to start all over again?   Highlights of Lessons Learned:  Starting Out When you’re starting a business, you need to have both the relational capital and financial capital. Relational capital may be even more powerful than financial capital. Brandon got his first clients through capitalizing on his network. Brandon found it challenging to transition from working with a team in an agency to working by himself and having to manage his time a lot more efficiently. To get around that, he had to look into his organization and started using tools such as CRMs. First thing business owner needs to understand is the search landscape. Because SEO is all about what people are searching, Brandon recommends that business owners should read books that talk about the beginner’s guide to SEO.   SEO Tools and Secrets The secret to SEO is having a foundation of good content that covers the main topics of your services on your actual website. One of the tools that Brandon likes to use is HARO or Help A Reporter Out. SEO is not only about what your website says but also what other people say and HARO is a tool that you can use to get media queries. When you’re creating a content for your website, keep the social aspect in mind.   Must-know About SEO If you don’t have a good understanding of SEO and your goal in your business is to get more visibility, you should go ahead and hire an experienced SEO consultant. Going back to the beginning, Brandon wishes he would have known how important search engine partners are. Given that chance to start again, business to business relationships is something that he would’ve started earlier. Another thing he wished he has done more was read business books that talk about his specific industry. Good SEO consultant would be able to look at your analytics and can help you make decisions like whether or not you should offer a certain service in your area. SEO involves a lot of research that can be valuable for decision making in business.

The New York Times has called him "a public relations all-star who knows everything about new media and then some", while Investor's Business Daily has labeled him "crazy, but effective".  Peter Shankman is a spectacular example of what happens when you merge the power of pure creativity with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and a dose of adventure, and make it work to your advantage. A bestselling author, entrepreneur, speaker, and worldwide connector, Peter is recognized worldwide for radically new ways of thinking about Customer Service, Entrepreneurship, Social Media, PR, marketing and advertising. Peter is best known for founding Help A Reporter Out, (HARO) which in under a year became the de-facto standard for thousands of journalists looking for sources on deadline, offering them more than 200,000 sources around the world looking to be quoted in the media. HARO is currently the largest free source repository in the world, sending out over 1,500 queries from worldwide media each week. HARO's tagline, “Everyone is an Expert at Something”, proves over and over again to be true, as thousands of new members join at helpareporter.com each week. In June of 2010, less than two years after Peter started HARO in his apartment, it was acquired by Cision, Inc. Peter is the founder of ShankMinds: Breakthrough, a private online entrepreneurial community, with members in more-than ten countries. Peter also hosts the award-winning podcast on ADD and ADHD, Faster Than Normal, which is helping to turn the conversation around ADHD from curse to gift, by interviewing successful people who have made ADHD their secret superpower.  Peter's Customer Service and Social Media clients have included American Express, Sprint, The US Department of Defense, Royal Bank of Canada, Snapple Beverage Group, Saudi Aramco, Foley Hoag, LLP, NASA, Haworth, Walt Disney World, Abercrombie and Kent, The Ad Council, Discovery Networks, New Frontier Media, Napster, Juno, Dream Catcher Destinations Club, Harrah's Hotels, and many, many others. Peter is the author of four books: Zombie Loyalists: Using Great Service to Create Rabid Fans (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2015); Nice Companies Finish First: Why Cutthroat Management is Over, and Collaboration Is In (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2013,); Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World (Que Biz-Tech 2010,); and Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work--And Why Your Company Needs Them (Wiley and Sons, 2006,).  He's a frequent keynote speaker and workshop presenter at conferences and tradeshows worldwide, including:  South by Southwest, Affiliate Summit, BlogWorld, TBEX, The Public Relations Society of America, CTIA, CTAM, CES, PMA, OMMA, Mobile Marketing Asia, and the Direct Marketing Association. Peter is an angel investor in early stage startup companies, sits on multiple advisory boards, and is honored to sit on the NASA Civilian Advisory Council, appointed to his position by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. A marketing pundit for several national and international news channels, including Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, Peter is frequently quoted in major media and trade publications, including:  The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, The Associated Press, Reuters and USA Today. A proud Boston University graduate, Peter started his career at America Online as a Senior News Editor, helping found the AOL Newsroom and spearheading coverage of the Democratic and Republican 1996 conventions, which marked the first time an online news service covered any major political event. Born and raised in New York City, Peter still resides there with his beautiful wife and daughter, and two cats. In the few hours of spare time Peter has per month he's completed 13 marathons, seven Olympic distance triathlons, two half-Ironman triathlons, and one full Ironman Triathlon. He's also a “B” licensed skydiver with over 400 jumps. In 2011, Peter authored a tweet that was voted as one of the Top Ten Tweets of the year by Twitter, out of more than 160,000,000,000 tweets sent. Peter is one of the extraordinary guests featured on The One Way Ticket Show. In the podcast, Host Steven Shalowitz explores with his guests where they'd go if given a one way ticket, no coming back!  Destinations may be in the past, present, future, real, imaginary or a state of mind. Several of Steven's guests have included:  Legendary Talk Show Host, Dick Cavett; CNN's Richard Quest & Bill Weir; Journalist-Humorist-Actor Mo Rocca (of CBS Sunday Morning & The Cooking Channel's "My Grandmother's Ravioli" fame); Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr.; as well as leading photographers, artists, writers and more.

#86 - Insider PR Tips with Communications Expert, Jonathan Lovitz [Podcast] Jenn T Grace:              You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode 86.   Introduction:              Welcome to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast; the podcast dedicated to helping LGBTQ professionals and business owners grow their business and careers through the power of leveraging their LGBTQ identities in their personal brand. You'll learn how to market your products and services both broadly, and within the LGBTQ community. You'll hear from incredible guests who are leveraging the power of their identity for good, as well as those who haven't yet started, and everyone in between. And now your host. She teaches straight people how to market to gay people, and gay people how to market themselves. Your professional lesbian, Jenn - with two N's - T Grace.   Jenn T Grace:              Well hello and welcome to episode 86 of the podcast. I am your host, Jenn (with two N's) T. Grace, and today I have another interview for you. So fortunately in the last episode, episode 85, we had a phenomenal interview with Jacob Tobia who taught us about all things genderqueer, nonbinary, non gender conforming, all kinds of just great information. So that was an awesome interview, but today I have an equally as awesome interview with Jonathan Lovitz who is the VP of External Affairs for the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. If you are a long time listener of this podcast you will know that there's certainly a theme with having a lot of folks from the NGLCC on this show. Today's interview is just fantastic because Jonathan's background is in communications and he has a ton of knowledge around personal branding. So for those of you who are listening to try to figure out how to improve, or start, or amplify your personal brand, the content that we talk about in this episode is just straight up tactical, as well as just really informative to be honest. So I'm so excited to bring today's interview with Jonathan Lovitz, and he has a lot of different ways to get in touch with him, but if you go to www.JonathanDLovitz.com, that's his personal page. And yeah I'm so excited about this interview so if you have any questions for me as a result of listening to this episode, or if you have any for him feel free to hit us up on pretty much any of the social media outlets. If you are interested in hearing more about what we talked, or looking for the links from today's episode, if you go to www.JennTGrace.com/86 for episode 86, that will give you a page with the transcript of the interview, as well as links mentioned in today's show. So without further ado, please enjoy this interview with Jonathan Lovitz.                                     So let's start off with having you just tell the audience and the listeners a little bit about yourself, and your background, and how you became to be doing what you're doing right now.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Sure, well hi Jenn, and to all your listeners. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm a big fan of your work, and of your podcast, and the incredible energy you put out in the community, and really exciting to be here with you.   Jenn T Grace:              Thank you.   Jonathan Lovitz:         So I'm Jonathan Lovitz and my official title is Vice President of External Affairs of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, which is based in Washington, but I live in New York City where I'm also the Director of our NGLCC NY affiliate because I'm a masochist. This organization is fantastic as you know, we reach every corner of the country and work with every conceivable type of LGBT and allied business, and I've known them for years. I now- actually next week celebrating one year with the organization after being a friend of NGLCC for at least the last five. My career got started in New York in a sort of bizarre twist. In my undergraduate I did what all the cool gay kids were doing and I majored in musical theatre, and also because I was a big nerd I got a dual degree in communications focusing on politics. And I'm also one of those really rare people that managed to get the job and feeder first. I graduated college and immediately booked a Broadway show that went on tour, and I went around the country for two years, and then settled in New York, and did some more theatre here, and eventually some TV work. And during that time I got picked up by LOGO, you might remember is an MTV network, it's for the LGBT community, and once upon a time it had gay news on Sundays, and I used to help anchor and do some reporting on the gay news, and then some other man on the street interview programs about LGBT issues, and that sort of thrust me into being a sort of professional homosexual in a really positive way. I would asked to come be a spokesperson at a fundraiser for great people like GLAAD, and Human Rights Campaign, and the Trevor Project, and what started off as a one month contract became a three month contract, then a nine month contract, and before I knew it, I was doing far more LGBT community engagement policy work than I was performing, and yet I never would have been able to do any of it if I hadn't been a performer first. The amount of times they threw me up in front of a teleprompter in front of a thousand people and said, "Go, raise us some money," I never would have been able to do it had I not been trained as a performer for almost a decade. And then they found out, "Oh you've also got this background in policy, and you love to write, and you want to talk about these issues to a much broader policy based audience," that's how things really get to flip into this full time professional work in advocacy, and communications, and awareness raising for LGBT issues, particularly around economics. I found it really fascinating when I would attend some of these conferences out on the street, and the NGLCC conference which I went to originally as a guest because at the time, LOGO I was hosting a dinner, and doing a live auction, sort of using the public persona to get my foot in the door. And I was really floored by the work that LGBT businesses and all the corporations were doing around the world to create equity for a community that was doing just fine building equality for themselves, and I thought that that notion was really powerful. So I was really, really thrilled when the first time I was asked to join StartOut, another LGBT organization that helps bring funding, and advice, and mentorship to brand new LGBT companies. I started off as their Communications Director, and shortly thereafter became their interim Executive Director and helped run the ship for a while. And that set me up well with all the skills that I needed to quickly learn about management, and organizational structure, and policy work that set me up well when the NGLCC came to me and said, "We'd like to build a position for you." They'd never really had a VP of External Affairs, and I think what I love most about my job is something that would probably kill most other people, that there are really no bullets underneath my title. It's a really big net that includes everything from public policy, to PR and communications, to affiliate affairs, and to engagement with the community of doing great public work like this, talking to you and your listeners about all the great ways to get involved in the community both personally and professionally. So it has been a wonderful, incredible, organic, and sometimes mind blown journey that's gotten me to where I am today, and I still can't believe I'm here this young, and it's incredible, I love every second of it. I'm really excited for everything that seems to be coming up next.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, and it's so awesome to be so young in so many ways, and to have made such a mark already because you still have your entire career ahead of you. So I feel like that's so exciting just to see what is on the horizon, especially given our political landscape these days, and all the things that are changing so rapidly, and sometimes for the positive, other times not so much, as we're experiencing right now, but I think that it seriously feels like the sky's the limit. I don't know if that's your impression these days.   Jonathan Lovitz:         It certainly does, and I'm actually floored, and it seems like every month something is happening where I'll speak to my mother and I'll just drop in, "Oh by the way I'm going to this meeting with so-and-so." "Wait, do you realize what you just said? You're my son that used to sing and dance, and now you're going to meetings at the White House, and making plans at the UN?" I don't entirely understand how it's all happening, but it is very much a powerful gesture and point of pride in my life that I've ended up here. I look at what I've gotten to do, and all the things that seem to be coming when people are asked to be a public servant. The work chose me, I never really sought out this career path, but when the opportunities came to speak for the community, and get involved, and raise awareness for all these issues, and still fulfill everything that I had always wanted to do about being in the public eye for things that I care about; it's really incredible that these opportunities have come my way. I'm so thankful for them, and now I'm really fortunate to be in the position to help others grow their own opportunities, and that's even more special.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah it's interesting that you say that the work chose you. I find that that seems to be the case for a lot of people, myself included, where I remember when I first got involved which was back in 2006 - 2007, I didn't even know what a chamber of commerce was at that time. So and then fast forward, we all know the history. It's just insane sometimes when you're like, 'Okay I would never have predicted that this is where my life would end up,' but you know that you're there for a reason, and sometimes you have to shake yourself at the fact that, 'Oh yeah I have been in the White House.' Like it's not something that everybody gets to experience, and yet you're there on a pretty regular basis.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Absolutely. And a great Mark Twain quote; there are two days that stand out in your life, the day you're born and the day you realize why. And it's nice to know that it doesn't have to just be limited to one day of realization. I feel like every day helps us understand why, and a lot of it is the people, getting to know you, Jenn, and the people I get to know through this incredible network reminds me every day that we're all doing something bigger than ourselves, and that's really powerful, and it's something very exciting to know that everything we do has an impact on others, even when we don't realize it.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, absolutely. And so the podcast here is around personal branding, and I truly feel like you've done such an awesome job at personal branding from just kind of a big picture level, whether you were intentionally doing that or not. But we just saw each other in- I want to say it was the end of March, I don't even know, in Boston. And we- if you remember when we were sitting around I think having dinner, and you had said- you made some statement about pitching to the media, and just basically writing what you want to be written. Can you talk about that a little bit? Because I feel like that is such- and I don't know why, that was not my plan to discuss with you today, but it just popped in my head. Because when you said it I was like, that is so genius, why don't more people do that? Could you just kind of share a little bit about that conversation we were having and then maybe give some tips for folks who are just kind of starting out on this journey?   Jonathan Lovitz:         Sure. It's all about authenticity, right? It's all about knowing who you are, what you bring to the table, and what you want your legacy- whether it's a message, or whether it's your personal statement, or whatever it may be, what you want that to be, and giving people no excuses and no choice but to take that at its worth. So I think step one is really understanding who you are, what you stand for, what you care about, and what you want to do with your voice. And you don't have to be a celebrity to realize you have a voice that matters. I think that's one of the great things about something like Twitter; it's the great equalizer. A tweet from me, and a tweet from the White House, and a tweet from a Kardashian all show up with the same- the same time and the same place on your feed, it's what you choose to resonate with and amplify that helps decide whether or not that message continues out in the world. So when you and I were having that conversation about just putting out there exactly what you want, I think we were talking a little bit about press strategy and I think it's all related to knowing your voice and the value of your voice. If you're a business owner, you're a representative of an organization, you're either pitching the press, or pitching the PR company, and you want them to know what you care about. Leave as little wiggle room for interpretation as possible, give them what I always call show in a box. Which is the story, here's the headline, here's the quote I'd love you to use, here's the photo to go with it, here's the link to the video, here's all the citations of the research that go with it. I'm trying to make your life- the reporter, the PR company, whatever it may be, as easy as possible because I want you to return the favor sometime if I'm in a jam and I really need the help. It's all about relationships, and it's all about helping each other out. But reporters are busy. They're getting pitched hundreds of stories a day, and maybe only half of one percent are worth anything. And I can tell you from all the blind pitching in the world that you can do, it's the reporter that you've gotten to know by taking them out to coffee and talking to them as a human being, getting to know what matters to them as a person, that will help you when it comes time to extending sort of your personal brand to them, and saying, "I want to work with you as a partner, and help tell an important story. And sure there's a benefit to my employer, or the movement I'm working for, or whatever it may be, but it's about people helping people and telling a good story."   Jenn T Grace:              I feel like that applies to sales even.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Oh absolutely.   Jenn T Grace:              Just it's really- and I feel like it's becoming more and more obvious, at least in 2016, that is really is human to human interaction. One person to one person.   Jonathan Lovitz:         You couldn't be more right. I mean think when you're working with someone who's calling you on a sales call. They have an objective, and you in your own business, you have an objective to close that deal and meet that benchmark. You could provide all the fact sheets, and all the ROI in the world, but until you really hit a chord with someone on a truly personal level, you'll never really close that deal because it will just be transactional versus a human interaction. And if you want that sale to come back year after year, you want that relationship to continue growing, you have to have a validation that's based on human interaction, that's based on empathy, and sharing and understanding. And it may just be business development, but it's about how you as people are going to grow your respective sides of that business together.   Jenn T Grace:              So would you say that maybe for yourself, you have any type of- I don't know, weeding out mechanism or some way for you to understand that when you're building a relationship, whether it's with a prospective chamber member, or whether it's with a prospective reporter; do you have a way to- for lack of a better phrase, sniff out who would be the person that you should be focusing on building that relationship with? Because I think that a lot of people could spend each and every single day building relationships with the wrong people, and you want to make sure that there's a dual win to that scenario where both parties are getting something from it.   Jonathan Lovitz:         You know I'm a huge political nerd, so if any chance I can quote the West Wing, I will do it. And there's a great line in an episode about exactly this question. 'I need information but I'm getting the run around from all the secretaries, the agencies.' I said yeah, secretaries have agendas, policy wants to have information, and I look at that in the same way with a sales funnel or anything else. If you're dealing with a most senior person, they're accountable for a certain deliverable and a certain report. But they're not as active in the growth department and the actual interaction with other people, as likely a rowing account executive, or someone who's responsible for the day-to-day operation, because it's their job to make that person look good and that's when they help their own career. So the more we can be building relationships with people one or two rungs down the ladder to help bolster the goals and ideas of the person at the top, that's how we really build those in roads with someone who's going to be there and help us out for a long time. It's helping that junior assistant shine by helping to bring in some phenomenal new business that ultimately helps you, but helps them look like they're bringing so much value to the company. You've now got a friend for life on the inside, and that's entirely a human interaction. You've identified what it is you can do to make each other's lives better, both personally and in business. So do your research, it's incumbent upon you, do a little Googling, who's the Internet machine? Pull up the LinkedIn and find the connections of the senior people you want to be working with, and then look at their orbit, look at their Zeitgeist, odds are you're going to find someone, one or two steps removed who you share another mutual friend with, or a common interest, or a group you're both in, and use that as your point of entry. I get calls all the time from reporters saying, "We've got to get to Tim Cook, we want to talk to Tim Cook, he's the top gay CEO in the world, you've got to be able to know him." I said, "You know contrary to popular belief the gays don't all meet once a week for coffee and a handshake, we don't actually have a secret club." I guess that's what the NGLCC tries to be.   Jenn T Grace:              Yes.   Jonathan Lovitz:         What I do say is work your way up, talk to the people who have influence and pull, and get into the conversation not because you need something, but because this conversation means something to you, and that's how you have leverage to make an ask when the time is right.   Jenn T Grace:              It's about building internal champions. I find that the most successful client projects I work on, especially within corporations, it's always the person that's a couple of rungs down from maybe the VP who's signing off on the check. But your ultimate goal is to make that contact of yours look amazing. And the more you make them look amazing, the higher chance that that business is going to continue coming to you. Obviously if you're doing the job well to begin with, but understanding that that's an assumption that you're doing the job well. As long as you're making sure that your contact on the inside who put their neck on the line to say, 'Hey this person knows what they're doing, and they're going to do a good job,' then there's no way- at least in my opinion, that that could fail. It seems completely fool proof.   Jonathan Lovitz:         I think you're absolutely right. Looking at it from with my press hat on, which it's been a bulk of my day, there's a great website that a lot of us use to find out what reporters are looking for, what stories are they trying to find a lead on, and how can I help. It's called HARO, Help A Reporter Out. And I taught that to my team in DC, and I said, "As you're reading the paper, you're looking at the blog, and you're seeing a reporter talking about a really awesome issue, and even if it's not quite a fit for us, it's a fit for someone we know, and when we do a solid for somebody, that gets remembered. And we want to help the community out. There's no prize in being the most selfish in your industry. There is a big prize for being the most collaborative.   Jenn T Grace:              Absolutely. So going back to that particular tool- so that's definitely a tool that I've used myself, and helped clients of mine use. What would you say to somebody listening who's never heard of it for starters, what is it, www.HARO.com? It's really simple, right?   Jonathan Lovitz:         Yeah.   Jenn T Grace:              Okay so if somebody has no idea, they've never heard of this before, what would you say maybe a top one or top two tips might be for making that actually a usable or a viable tool for somebody who really just is just getting started?   Jonathan Lovitz:         Sure. Think of it as an eavesdropping tool. I know this may be a strange way to think of it, but think about sitting on the bus or the subway, or sitting at a restaurant and you overhear a conversation, and you know it's killing you that you could answer the question that you just heard someone at the next booth ask. 'Oh my God, I know the person that they're looking for, but I know an expert that could help them out,' and it's just killing you that you can't help. Well here's an opportunity to do that. You go to HARO, or you go to MuckRack or some of the other great places where you can connect with reporters, and they say, 'I'm looking for a personal branding expert to help me reach minority communities.' Sure I could do that. You know who could really do that is Jenn Grace. And now I recommended a friend, and they see not only am I willing to help this reporter out, I'm willing to help out colleagues of mine. And that matters, and that's something that resonates with people.   Jenn T Grace:              So using that example, how narrow niche do you feel somebody should try to define their brand around- their personal brand? So if we're thinking about all of the things- because I feel like there are more opportunities for me personally to take advantage of than I have time in the day. Like there's just so much opportunity these days. And I know that that's the case probably for even yourself because there are so many things that you hands down could completely and beautifully articulate some response or answer to, but it may not be directly in alignment with what you're doing. You might say, "You know what? Let me throw that to Jenn, or let me throw that to Sam, or let me throw that to somebody else." How have you been able to kind of I guess define the lane in which you like to travel in, and where those opportunities make sense to help a colleague out, so that way it does end up coming back at some point.   Jonathan Lovitz:         That's a great question. I think it's a matter again knowing exactly what you bring to the table, and doing your due diligence to know also what you can't bring, and what you can outsource to others. I mean it's the whole point of a supply chain, right? Is I may not be able to do it, but I know someone who can, and we can work together and build a team, and collaborate, and/or just pass off a great lead in the expectation that that's going to pay it forward the next time around. And that really starts with identifying your skillset, and in some cases being super explicit about it either on your website, or your capabilities deck, or whatever it may be and saying, "I do X, Y, Z." And you don't want to say that you are the next iteration- like Judy Garland said, "I don't need to be the second rate imitation of myself, there already is one." It's too early in the morning for a Judy Garland reference, I'm sorry, but it happens. But you don't need to say you're the Uber of community service, or I'm the seamless web of PR, whatever the comparative may be. Say, "I am the next thing. I am here to provide a unique service that you can only get from me, and if I can't do it I am connected to this massive network of-" and then list out all of the organizations you're a part of, or all the certifications you have, all of the awards you've won and say, "If I can't do it, trust me I'm a phone call away from someone who can and will get the job done."   Jenn T Grace:              You know what actually? An interesting thing happened to me a little bit along these lines. A couple of months ago, it was back actually in January so it was longer than I thought, I was on a sales call with a Fortune company that I won't mention their name, but we were talking about their Employee Resource Group, and how they just need to help figure out how to make their Employee Resource Group members better kind of sales advocates within the community- so within the LGBT community specifically. And she had reached out to me and I was like, "You know, I don't feel that I'm the qualified person to be having this conversation with. Employee Resource Groups are not my bailiwick but I know a couple of companies that would be perfectly suited to do this for you, but as the conversation kept going on, we were talking about exactly what they were looking for, and it ended up being exactly what I do, but I just have not specifically done it for an Employee Resource Group, but I've done it for a corporation, for a nonprofit, whatever it happens to be. But it was interesting that I started off that conversation saying, "You know what? This is totally not my thing, let me refer you to someone," and then I ended up getting the business anyway, and I think it really had to do with being very clear on what I was good at, and what I really thought my strength was, and it ended up being that it was in alignment anyway. But I feel like if I had gone into it being like, "Oh yeah I'm totally the expert on this particular subject," that I probably wouldn't have gotten the business. It was a really interesting kind of dynamic of what you were a little bit of just talking about.   Jonathan Lovitz:         I mean that's a great example and there's opportunity everywhere, right? And it may not be apparent in that first interaction, and that's what's the beauty of getting to know someone on a personal level first is all about. If you're constantly looking at someone with the 'what can you do for me' goggle, you'll never actually get to know them as a human being, and you'll never know what they care about, and what their broader network is, and what it is that make them tick. And then you've lost a huge opportunity to find layers of opportunity within. So start with the people, and then build the business on top of it.   Jenn T Grace:              Absolutely. Are you familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk to any degree?   Jonathan Lovitz:         No but I want you to educate me.   Jenn T Grace:              So he has a very confronting style I will call it, like he's just really brash, he's loud, he's in your face, straight up what you would imagine a New Yorker to be stereotyped as.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Hey.   Jenn T Grace:              You're so rough. And he has a huge online following and has for years, like millions and millions of people. And he has a book that he wrote, I think it's a couple of years old now, called 'Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.' And his whole philosophy is you have to give, give, give, and then ask, and then keep on giving. So there has to be a far more likelihood of you giving before you're asking. Because if you just go into any scenario and you just start asking for the business, and you haven't built the relationship, people are going to be completely turned off or ignore you. But if you've been giving, and giving, and giving, when the right time to make that ask comes along they're going to be far more likely to want to do business with you because you've given them so much so far.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Right, absolutely right. And again, it's not that you're giving for that guaranteed return. It's that you're giving because that's in your nature and you want people to recognize that about you.   Jenn T Grace:              Yes and if you are coming off as like 'I'm only giving because I'm going to ask you for something in three days,' then I think anyone would see right through that.   Jonathan Lovitz:         We sure hope so.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah, right? Okay you were talking about strengths a little bit ago. And for some reason Sally Hogshead popped in my mind in terms of really understanding your strengths. And I've been a Sally fan since 2011, and I only remember that because it's when one of her books came out, and having her at the NGLCC conference last year was legit like one of the highlights of my year because she was so amazing in person, on the stage, in the breakout, and then one-on-one. From a personal branding standpoint, I personally think that she’s truly amazing in terms of the framework that she provides to help people understand where their strengths naturally lie. What has your experience been, since I know you were at the conference obviously, what was your experience with that kind of new framework to really just understand what your brand as a person means and feels like?   Jonathan Lovitz:         For anyone who hasn't taken it, I highly recommend they go to her website and take the personality matrix test that she has, because it's really eye opening. And if you can, if you're a part of a team, I recommend doing it as a group. We recently did it at the NGLCC office and we now know who has what traits, and some were really shocking. There were a lot of people who possess these stealth characteristics that make them a great program manager, or even a great leader, and are sometimes so unspoken but it's nice to see it articulated in this really visual way, in a color coded way, that helps you understand where everyone fits. For me personally I was really impressed by the real clarity of the questions. It was not a super broad Myers Briggs conversation. It was really about what makes you tick, and what qualities about you make you a strong human being, whether it's for your persona life or your professional life. And the elements about who I was, as a leaders, as someone who likes to take charge, as someone who likes to be- they cleared me out, "You're a talker, you like to be the public face of what you're doing." It was nice because it's also backed up with an understanding of why; it doesn't just drop the bomb and say 'this is who you are.' It says 'because you got these five strengths behind you, that will help you succeed.' And it also outlines some of the pitfalls which is also I think a sign of a great leader and a great business person, is knowing where your shortcomings are and what you can do to actively work around them. I know I can sometimes miss the woods for the trees when I'm really down in a project I'm working on. I'm so mired in the details I forget this can be a little rough around the edges, the big picture is what matters here. And it's nice to be able to be reminded of that. And a trait of mine, and I should most importantly surround myself with great people who are my opposite so that they catch those mistakes, or that they help me execute correctly. I recently had been given some great help and some staff at the NGLCC to work on some projects, and we worked in completely opposite fashions, and it has made us stronger and more effective than we've ever been because we challenge each other. You're your own best yes man, no one needs another one. I can look in the mirror and tell myself what a great job I'm doing, I need the product to speak for it, and I need my relationships to reveal that. So as much as it's about discovering your own brand and your own skillset, allowing yourself to be self-aware enough of what you need to get the job done, the people you need to surround yourself with is just as or more so important.   Jenn T Grace:              Do you remember what your archetype was?   Jonathan Lovitz:         I knew you were going to ask. If you give me one second I can pull that up and tell you. Because I think it's such a great thing for everyone to know. Let's see, I do have that here.   Jenn T Grace:              I think the key is looking as she calls it the Double Trouble. So when your characteristics are doubled up on each other where you're actually acting at your worst. So something that should be making you your best, when you go to an extreme, it just makes it harder for people around you to either work with you, or take your direction, or operate. I feel like that was a really kind of eye-opening thing. Because when I was looking at mine, mine is the Maestro which is power and prestige, and it's kind of the ringleader in a lot of ways of like organizing things, and to me it's all about getting shit done. So it doesn't matter how, I will get it done. And I can see now how overbearing that could be to people on my team when they don't necessarily know what place I'm operating from. So it's a matter of being really cognisant of where your strength can actually become something that's hurtful to you.   Jonathan Lovitz:         I love that. So mine was the Avant Garde, and it's the person who likes to work quickly and come up with solutions, and be a leader, and if I don't like how the game is played, turn the table over and start a new game, that kind of thing. And I really do love that, but again one of my favorite parts was how it helped me identify what the opposites of that highest and best value may be, which are if I'm not perpetually challenged, I'm going to get bored and I'm going to want to walk away from a project. So being sure that everything I'm doing is new, and innovative, and that certainly served me well, and it's helped me develop unexpectedly I think in my career an entrepreneurial spirit that I didn't know I had. If you had told me ten years ago when I was first starting out as fortunately a solid working actor in New York in Broadway and television that that foundation I was laying, by building a social media platform, and building my own website, and all of those things that I thought were just helping me get a few more roles; that laid a foundation for the rest of my career because now I've converted everyone who ever knew me as a performer into someone who can help me amplify my policy work, and the LGBT stances that we take, and everything begets everything else. And so as it relates to your personal brand, making sure it's positive and flexible, it's all about you and what you want to put out there. And I think it's important for everyone to remember, and I try to teach this when I speak at a lot of universities and I try to remind young people these days you are what you tweet, far more than it used to be when it was your academic record, and your body of work. Now it's how the Internet sees you because people are going to Google you before they meet you, and you want that digital trail of breadcrumbs to lead to something positive that you're proud of, and it's never too late to course correct. So if you want to make that pivot and change your personal brand to be an expert on a certain subject, or a champion for a cause, start right now and get moving, and get help. There are lots of people who know how to do this and you can be that change you want to be.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah and you have to start putting out content that reflects that, and I recently read- it was on LinkedIn and it was some ridiculous number like four out of five hiring managers, the first thing they do is Google your name or go to Facebook and look up your name. And if your profile picture is you with a beer can, chances are you're not getting the job. So it's that severe that I don't think people recognize it, and I actually was looking to hire somebody a couple of months ago, and a colleague of mine said, "My daughter is 22, she's graduating college, what you're working on I think would be in alignment with what she's interested in," and I go to her social media page and everything is her smoking pot with bongs. And it's like I'm not going to be a prude and say, "That's wrong, you can't do that," but for crying out loud, like your social image has to be more professional than that. You really can't be putting that out there, and once you put it out there, even though you think it's deleted or gone, it's still floating somewhere in the interwebs which is dangerous, especially when people are looking for- either looking for a job or just looking to grow their brand and grow their following of people.   Jonathan Lovitz:         I think that's absolutely right. And making yourself approachable for the things that you care about also matters. It's one thing to just drop the bomb and walk away. It's another thing to say, "I want to have a conversation." So if you're using Twitter, for example, to grow your brand, and you want to start a conversation, be prepared for there to be all sides of that conversation, and be prepared to have a- if you want people to reach you, use a Google voice number so it's anonymous. Or start a Google Hangout where you can keep yourself at an aesthetic distance. But be approachable and don't just throw a bunch of words out either and hope that it sticks. You've got to be able to back it up with passion, conviction, data when you've got it, whatever it may be, because that's also how you validate your brand. The world needs one more YouTube sensation flash in the pan like it needs a hole in the head. But what it does need is someone who's using their voice along with their fame to do something really great.   Jenn T Grace:              Absolutely, and I think it's important to be paying attention to sometimes maybe the more subtle cues of where your direction should be headed, because you might start off your personal brand and have- think that you have a really clear idea of what people are looking for, but once you start talking with the people you realize that, 'Oh wow, what I thought they were looking for isn't actually what they're looking for, they're actually looking for this,' and be able to make those short pivots, and not marry yourself to that original concept, of being open to different ideas and different directions.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Absolutely, and don't let others define your brand for you. It's your brand for a reason, and I certainly remember this well from back in my acting days. Something I don't miss is being told, "You're too this, you're too that," you're at the whim of every director and every casting person saying, "Grow your hair out, be thinner, work out more, do whatever it takes to be the next up and coming star and you're going to take over for this guy when he gets too old." I don't want to take over for him, I want to have my own path, I want to do my own thing, I don't need to replace anybody else, I want to just be Jonathan Lovitz out there. And finally I was able to find that by ironically enough just being myself. It's when I was given that opportunity to be on camera, and do the news, and interview celebrities and such as myself, and speak in my own voice, and talk about my own issues the way I cared about them, that's when I finally began to shine in the way that I didn't know I was destined to.   Jenn T Grace:              Yes I feel like that is probably the biggest piece of advice is to just be yourself, because when you're trying to fit the mold of what someone else is expecting of you, I feel like that's where you kind of go off the rails. And I can think back to probably 2011 maybe, and this was when I was actually running the Connecticut LGBT Chamber. For some reason I feel like I completely lost my way, and I felt like I had to be what was expected of me to be, and I completely went away from who I was. And if I look at pictures of me from 2010 and 2011, it shows how far from my original core I really was, and then in 2012 I just kind of had this epiphany one day of like, 'Screw this. I cannot continue to try to be something that I naturally don't feel like I am.' And then all throughout 2012 and 2013 I went on this whole weight loss kick, I got healthier again, and I completely re-changed everything that I was doing to just be very much in alignment with me because it's so much easier to just be you than try to be somebody that you're not.   Jonathan Lovitz:         I could not agree more; the best advice we could put out there in the world for people.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah and especially with personal branding. So one of Sally's quotes, I'm trying to think- it's something of not trying to be others, just be more of who you are. So don't- I'm going to totally butcher it, it's like one of her best quotes. But yeah just be more of who you already are naturally rather than trying to add these characteristics or traits that are very unnatural to you.   Jonathan Lovitz:         I think that's absolutely right. And when you are most in tune with yourself, you're an instrument that's been primed, and ready, and destined for the spotlight. And that's when your message takes off. When you get given that microphone metaphorically or literally, and you're speaking from a place of groundedness and authenticity, that's when your message takes hold. That's definitely something Sally Hogshead before- it's messages that fail to fascinate become irrelevant, and I think that's right because what's fascinating about someone is their authenticity, not the facade.   Jenn T Grace:              Totally. And I feel like you are probably a living example of this as I feel like I am too. Is that I really pride myself on being the same Jenn. So whether you catch me when we're having dinner with a couple of people, whether it's at a conference, or whether we're having a one-on-one conversation or a conversation that thousands of people are listening to, I feel like I really pride myself on always being that same person, so there's never that jarring disconnect. And I feel like you are always the same person regardless of what interaction I have with you, and I would imagine that probably carries out through other people as well.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Well I really appreciate that, and I'll be the first to admit it wasn't always that way, and that was a major life lesson and journey for me was figuring out that's who I'm supposed to be, is myself all the time. And I definitely see this among a lot of young people, and people starting out in their careers, is trying too hard to please everybody by pivoting. That when you're in the office you're trying to please the boss, so you've got one persona versus who you are with your friends, or who you are with your family versus who you might be when you're networking with your eye on the next job, and that doesn't work.   Jenn T Grace:              It's exhausting.   Jonathan Lovitz:         It's just too exhausting, and for anyone who's ever been through the coming out experience in their professional life, they know about when you can bring your best self to your work by being who you are. Your work has never been better, in fact your whole life gets better because that lead vest comes off. So do yourself the favor and take off a couple extra layers of lead vest and just carry yourself around.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah just being the same person. I just had an introduction from a colleague to a Fortune company, and it was a CMO and it's not typically a recommendation that I'd prefer written an email, but the introduction was, 'You need to meet Jenn, she's whip smart and she gets shit done.' Like that was exactly the line. And I'm like okay, this was to the CMO of a really large company, I'm not sure that that would be the natural way I would like to be introduced, but it actually is who I am, and when I had that first initial call with this particular company, it set the tone so beautifully because I- and I really even with sales calls and high people in larger companies, I'm still genuinely the same person, but it really kind of was very freeing to be like, 'You know what? This is how I was introduced, they still wanted a call with me, so I can really just kind of be who I am,' and it was just such a natural flowing conversation because of that. Even though I wouldn't necessarily want that to be the way I'm referred frequently, but it worked out so beautifully. So I think that it really kind of comes down to that authenticity, and for me having the moniker of the Professional Lesbian, that immediately weeds out people that would not even want to give me the time of day. And to me that's a great thing because I don't have to waste my time or someone else's for them to see if they even want to build a relationship with me.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Oh I think you're so, so right. We don't have time anymore to have to chip away and figure out what's behind the facade. Leading with yourself is the easiest way to make sure people get what they pay for, literally and figuratively. And I can't tell you the number of times in my career I thought I've gotten to know someone under a totally false pretense, and when the mask came off and I was so disappointed with the person that was really underneath, I wish I had known that from the beginning.   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Because it's wasted a lot of time and energy and frustration, and I came out on the other side more aware of what I don't want in my life, which is potentially a great lesson, but again speaks to the value of your own brand and self-awareness. Be aware of what you're putting out in the world because that's what people are buying. And in a world where we all look to our Yelp reviews before we buy anything, word of mouth is your living Yelp review, and we want it to be a good one for you.   Jenn T Grace:              Absolutely. So I feel like we're getting already to almost 45 minutes, we've already been talking that long, and I feel like we could be talking for days because there's so much information to be had, and we both have communications degrees which is why I think it's kind of morphed into what we're talking about. But I want to ask you what is the best piece of advice that you've been given? And not even necessarily related to branding or anything like that, but just kind of in business or in life. What is it and who gave it to you?   Jonathan Lovitz:         Well you'll indulge me I'll have to say it's two.   Jenn T Grace:              Okay.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Because in my personal life it came from my parents when I was a teenager and really struggling with who I was personally, what I cared about versus what was expected of me as a teenage boy in the suburbs, and all the things that I was into when I was far more interested in being involved in theatre and school than I was sports and friends and all of that. And all my- and after all the time talking to school counselors, and all the stress of all of that in your teenage years; sitting down and having a good cry with my parents and them saying, "Yeah but do you like you? Good. Stick with that and that's all that matters."   Jenn T Grace:              That's beautiful.   Jonathan Lovitz:         And that has served me well in my personal life ever since. It's just thinking, 'If I'm unhappy with something, all I have to do is change it. I could sit here and rock back and forth and worry about it, or I could make it better.'   Jenn T Grace:              Yeah.   Jonathan Lovitz:         So that certainly served me in my personal life, and then in my professional life which I am so grateful as I said at the beginning of all this, very bizarrely and organically led me to such incredible experiences, it's all been because I never let a door that was closed dissuade me from a path. And anytime that there was a door, I have been told by so many friends, and colleagues and mentors, 'Build your own,' and that has always served me well. Between the idea of never letting a lack of an opportunity mean that there isn't one, just should inspire you to come up with a creative solution, and that usually leads you to lesson number two which is it's usually better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.   Jenn T Grace:              That's my favorite quote.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Yeah, get it done, wow people, and someone will help you get out of any kind if icky situation that arises with it. But it's better to have done it. Another great Sally Hogshead quote was something to the effect of the world was never changed by people who just kind of cared.   Jenn T Grace:              So true, especially in this work, right?   Jonathan Lovitz:         Yeah, exactly. And whether it's your personal business, or community service, or whatever it may be, care with all you have because you're only going to get one shot to make a difference.   Jenn T Grace:              I love that. I love that. I feel like we should end on that because it's so beautifully articulated. But before we actually end, how do people find you? So tell us all the different ways in which they can get a little bit of loving from you.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Well if they ever want to know about our professional work, and the great things we're doing to make the world a better place for LGBT people to live, and work, and thrive, get involved in www.NGLCC.org. But for me personally I have a website, www.JonathanDLovitz.com. It's a little bit under construction right now, so anyone out there with some great web skills, do feel free to get in touch. But there's my links to all my social media are there, I'm really active on Twitter, it's my favorite. @JDLovitz. I will always write back and get in touch with people if they use the email link on my website. There's no such thing as a relationship without value, so I hope to hear from everybody listening. I hope to always be a good friend and connection with you, Jenn, I think your work and energy you put out into the world is so inspiring and we need a lot more of you out there, but I'm pretty glad that there's just one Jenn Grace.   Jenn T Grace:              Thank you, I appreciate that. We should just start cloning ourselves and just have a little army. Wouldn't that be great?   Jonathan Lovitz:         Absolutely. I don't know the world needs another one of me, I think I'm- certainly my partner wouldn't want more.   Jenn T Grace:              I would say the same thing about my wife. Yeah I don't think she wants another one of me either.   Jonathan Lovitz:         Yeah.   Jenn T Grace:              They get the best of us, don't they?   Jonathan Lovitz:         They sure do, even at the worst.   Jenn T Grace:              For real. Alright this has been great, thank you so much for being a guest, I really appreciate it.   Jonathan Lovitz:         It was a real pleasure and an honor, and I hope to do it again. Thanks for all you do.   Jenn T Grace:              Thank you for listening to today's podcast. If there are any links from today's show that you are interested in finding, save yourself a step and head on over to www.JennTGrace.com/thepodcast. And there you will find a backlog of all of the past podcast episodes including transcripts, links to articles, reviews, books, you name it. It is all there on the website for your convenience. Additionally if you would like to get in touch with me for any reason, you can head on over to the website and click the contact form, send me a message, you can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all at JennTGrace. And as always I really appreciate you as a listener, and I highly encourage you to reach out to me whenever you can. Have a great one, and I will talk to you in the next episode.

If you do interview or conversation style podcast episodes, you know the pain and trouble that can come from trying to wrangle up a new guest every single episode.Andrew Allemen felt that same pain and decided to do something about it. In the spirit of http://www.helpareporter.com/ (Help A Reporter Out), Andrew has put together http://www.PodcastGuests.com (www.PodcastGuests.com) (affiliate link) - a simple and easy way for you to submit your podcast and yourself to an online directory to receive offers for podcast appearances and to make your podcasting guest opportunities known to people who may be interested in sharing their expertise. I think Andrew's come up with a brilliant idea here that's pretty easy to pull off - but most of all it will be very helpful to the podcasting community. Listen to the episode to get all the details. LINKS MENTIONED: http://www.PodcastGuests.com (www.PodcastGuests.com (affiliate)) http://www.DomainNameWire.com (www.DomainNameWire.com) http://www.IOTPodcast.com (www.IOTPodcast.com)

If you do interview or conversation style podcast episodes, you know the pain and trouble that can come from trying to wrangle up a new guest every single episode. Andrew Allement felt that same pain and decided to do something about it. In the spirit of Help A Reporter Out, Andrew has put together www.PodcastGuests.com […]

Hello hello everyone!   Glad to be back for another episode of The Inner Changeamaker.   If this is your first time checking us out, My name is Jay Wong, I will be your host.   This is THE place dedicated to purpose-driven individuals and passionate creators. We are all about learning how to create impact and interviewing people that are choosing legacy over currency.   Last week, we had an Olympian by the name of Daniel Hayes giving us the behind the scenes of the Olympic scenes and what goes through his mind as he enters the RIO 2016 games.   The mindset of an Olympian.   If you missed it, please go check out that episode.   As you heard in the teaser, Today, we have THE peter Shankman on the show. But before we get there.   This episode is sponsored by Podcast Your Brand Mastermind.   Podcast your brand is a 2-month accelerator program meant to help you launch a top-rated podcast, put your personal brand on steroids ( the good kind) and get your message out to the world in a bigger way.   If you have been following my journey the last 6-8 months or listened to the last episode, you know that podcasting literally changed my life.   I went from no email, no real brand, no business model to speaking internationally on my podcasting story, interviewing my mega-influences such as Yanik Silver, Bob Proctor, and an Olympian haha.   I finally created a real online business that allows me to travel and if you follow my vlogs, then you know I am hustling and trying to balance everything in my life.   I have been working with a very selective group of messengers and creators the last few months to help them do the same in their lives, create the top-rated show they deserve, get their message out to the world in a bigger way and ultimately change their lives.   Right now, I am gearing up for a mega-launch come end of month for a NEW group starting in May, so if you are a messenger, an entrepreneur or creator ready to share your story with the world by launching a top-rated podcast as well as actually figuring out how to make $$$ from this, then I invite you to jump on the waiting list.   You can go to www.theinnerchangemaker.com/waitlist   You can fill in your name there and be sure to write in the message that you heard this from the podcast. I want to include a bonus for you guys.   So once again, its www.theinnerchangemaker.com/waitlist   --  Now let's get to today's episode with Peter Shankman.   The New York Times has called him "a public relations all-star who knows everything about new media and then some,", while Investor's Business Daily has labeled him "crazy, but effective."    I love his twitter, where it list out like 15 things, Including @NASA advisor, Ironman. Skydiver. Dad.   Peter Shankman is a spectacular example of what happens when you merge the power of pure creativity with  Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and a dose of adventure, and make it work to your advantage.   He is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, speaker, and worldwide connector, Peter is recognized worldwide for radically new ways of thinking about Customer Service, Entrepreneurship, Social Media, PR, marketing and advertising.   Peter is best known for founding Help A Reporter Out, (HARO) which in under a year became the de-facto standard for thousands of journalists looking for sources on deadline, offering them more than 200,000 sources around the world looking to be quoted in the media.   HARO is currently the largest free source repository in the world, sending out over 1,500 queries from worldwide media each week. HARO's tagline, “Everyone is an Expert at Something”, proves over and over again to be true, as thousands of new members join at helpareporter.com each week.   In June of 2010, less than two years after Peter started HARO in his apartment, it was acquired

In this episode, we bring in Peter Shankman. Peter is an incredibly successful entrepreneur as well as an angel investor, speaker, author and so much more. In this quick, straight to thepoint episode we cover a wide variety of topics such as using PR to grow your business, coping with and using ADD to your advantage, having an entrepreneurial mindset, living life on your own terms and so much more. Enjoy! Resources Mentioned * http://www.geekfactory.com/ Want To Work With Me? Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com or email me at Jeremy@JeremyReeves.com Enjoy! Transcript Hey guys and girls welcome back to another episode of the sales funnel mastery podcast. Today we have on line Peter Shankman and I have been following Peter for it is probably good 6 or 7 years something like that back when he sold the company called Help A Reporter Out about 5 or 6 years ago. So I have been following him since back then. He has a really, really cool story. A really quick intro, he can get into more detail on all this but basically he is best known for founding Help A Reporter Out and as the founder and CEO of The Geek Factory which is a boutique social media and marketing and customer service strategy firm in New York City. A couple kind of cool things about him that you might want to talk about or you might want to learn, we will actually go into it. So he spends a lot of time on the road. He is doing all kinds of keynoting corporate events, big clients, American Express, Sheraton, Cisco, Sprint, U.S. Department of Defense, Walt Disney World, and a whole bunch else like that. And in his spare time, these are -- I like this. He is a NASA adviser board member which I think is awesome because I am into space and NASA and all that kind of stuff. He is an angel investor in multiple start ups, a sub for marathon runner which is kind of cool that something that I cannot really do that, Ironman, and a B licensed skydiver which is awesome. He also has a couple of books, best-selling book, Zombie Loyalists, using great service to create rabid fans which we will get into too. So Peter, How are you? Welcome to the show. Peter Shankman: I am doing well, thanks for having me, good to be here. Jeremy Reeves: Sure, sure, yeah. I was excited when you came on you know, like I said, you have a very kind of interesting story. So you know, do you mind dive in a little bit deeper into you know, into your story kind of where you came from, what are you doing now that kind of thing. Peter Shankman: Yeah, I -- I do not even know what the hell I was doing. My basic logic was I started my career in America Online, I work for AOL back in the 90s when AOL was the internet, it was pretty awesome. My goal was to stay there forever 2-1/2 years into my career they laid off 300 of us in an hour, moved back to New York, I was kind of like -- you know, remember that great scene in Family Guy were Quagmire winds up getting into a fight and he does not know what the hell is going on, he gets out of the fight and he was like (inaudible 4:14) what is happening there you know. It kind of how I felt you know, in the 9 a.m. we had jobs, 10:30 a.m. we are all in the parking lot like what the hell, so you know. But it was great because I moved back to New York sort of consulting (inaudible 4:28) you know, I could do better and start a PR firm and do better than the big agencies because it was a dot com boom and I built a PR firm and the way I started that was, I had no money but it was a summer of 98, there was an independent film coming out on video that did not (inaudible 4:46) you might have not heard off called Titanic and I had 500 T-shirts printed out, the T-shirt read “It sank. Get over it” and I went to Time Square figured that we could sell 180 shirts that break even. I wind up selling 500 in 6 hours. Made $5k (inaudible 5:06) the story to USA Today. It ran on the front page. Sold 10,000 shirts on the web, cleared a $100k, the rest is history. Jeremy Reeves: Nice. I like it. Peter Shankman: Pretty insane. Anyway, that started my PR firm and after a few years, sold the PR firm and then eventually started consulting until such time when I launched HARO. HARO was sort of the game changer for me and now here we are. I give speeches, I go on TV, I ran an awesome mastermind group of about 130 entrepreneurs, (inaudible 5:38) Shankman is totally virtual and we are having fun. I am very lucky. Jeremy Reeves: Nice, yeah, that is awesome. Congrats on all that too. Peter Shankman: I am having a good time. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah. So what is your -- you know what, one of the things I am interested in is -- since you kind of you know, you used to like you know as you just mentioned, you kind of started a couple of businesses, sold a couple of businesses. Now you do things like angel investing, you are an adviser board and all that. So what is the typical day look like for you, you know, you see, you wake up at whatever time you know, it is kind of scattered, do you have a certain routine that you go through. What is that look like? Peter Shankman: Well, my day starts ridiculously early. I am usually up by 4 a.m. because I -- because the only time I can really go to the gym is early because my, you know, I have a kid and I have wife and I have a career. So if I want to go to the gym it has to be or if I want to work out it has to be sometime between 4 a.m. and around 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning. So I am at the gym, the gym opens at 5:30, I am usually there by 5:30 there is a bunch of us called the door club we are all standing by the door at 5:30 waiting to be let in or I am in Central Park running that early. I actually got arrested for exercising in such a park before it opened. Jeremy Reeves: I did not even know that they had an opening -- Peter Shankman: Right, and then apparently -- I did get arrested for running into the park before it open. I apparently got arrested for telling the cop how do you close nature and when he said, what are you doing here. I said, you know, I am wearing running pants and running shirt and sneakers, I am like what am I doing, seriously, look at me you know, I am giving hand jobs for crack. What do you think I do. It is probably not the best answer but, yes. I am out super early and I am working out super early because if I do not work out I do not have a good day. My brain functions very different with normal people brain. I have ADD. I have ADHD and how I managed it is to exercise and doing things that naturally increased my dopamine and serotonin. One of those things is of course exercise. So I am up super early, and then I am in the office usually by 7:45 -- well, when I am in New York, I am in the office by 7:30 or 7:45. When I am not in New York, I am on the road, it varies like I could be speaking in the conference, I could be flying overnight to Singapore you know, next week I am in Dallas and Austin the following week I am in Cebu, Philippines, so it really, it varies. So for me it is really about using the time I have the best way I have to use it. Jeremy Reeves: Got you. That make sense, nice. So how about some of the things you know, doing like being an angel investor and that kind of thing. How does that -- are you allowed, I do not know if you are allowed to say the (inaudible 8:14) for or not. Peter Shankman: I can say some of them. I am an angel investor in company called Namely they are doing incredibly well. They are online HR, an HR management in the cloud. They are doing unbelievably well. I am so fortunate to invest in them. I am an angel investor in a company called DailyWorth. DailyWorthis (inaudible 8:32) they are an online portal for financial information for women and I am on the board of several companies including SCOTTeVEST technology-enabled clothing and (inaudible 8:45) 9 or 10 different ones and of course, they are all (inaudible 8:51). They teach, they work with companies who improved Youtube. So a lot of companies. Jeremy Reeves: Okay, nice. So what are your thoughts on you know, when you are -- when you are kind of looking at companies and you have a lot of experience with all kinds of different companies you know, what are some of the big things that people kind of do wrong, you know, and I kind of have a feeling of you know, what you are going to say, but you know, just kind of in general, you know, do people you know, are they too boring you know, is there something -- you have a lot of experience in different kinds of areas you know. What are some of the things that you see that when you are looking at the company and they are doing that you think like it is kind of like a, Yes, I want to be involved with that, and on the other side, you know, if they are not doing certain things you are like, no I am going to skip that. Peter Shankman: Well, the first thing I can say is that if company is very -- they need to be very aware of who I am in sort of what my story is, like, you know, my favorite example I had a company who was a -- they made stuff for the GoPro. They made like a really cool attachment for the GoPro camera and the guy comes in and he was like, Yeah, I want to talk to you about GoPro. I am like, great, (inaudible 10:01) and I met with him for a coffee and he brings the GoPro and he was like, you know, I brought this GoPro just in case you do not know what it was, in case you did not know what it was, and okay, so one of the first thing you see about me when you Google me is that I am a skydiver, alright. I am actually the first skydiver who jump with a GoPro. Jeremy Reeves: Oh really. Peter Shankman: Yeah, because I met Nicholas Woodman, the founder at CES in 2005 and he gave me one to play with and I jumped. So I am the first person to jump with a GoPro and it is like, really you could not Google for 5 God damn seconds, how could I possibly trust whatever it is you are trying to pitch me on. So that just kills me. Do your homework for God’s sake. Then also be smart, you know, be intelligent (inaudible 10:40) on time. I spent my life working on being 15 minutes early, everywhere. How hard is that. Oh, the train, bullshit trains were late all the time. Prepare for that. That tells me so much about you even before I meet you. Having a cellphone does not give you the right to be late. So that is just a huge thing for me. Jeremy Reeves: Me too, I got that one (inaudible 11:04) he was the same way and now I am. I literally cannot, I mean countless times I have gotten on the phone with potential clients and you know, it hits 1:00, I call 1:00 you know, and then they are like, Oh, wow you know, you are punctual, you called right on 1, I am like, really, do other people not you know what I mean. Peter Shankman: That something tells me also is you know like people email me, Hey, (inaudible 11:27) talk to you about (inaudible 11:29) and if I happened to be in my office that will be great, I will call them right back and then they are like, Oh, we did not -- Oh, you have just emailed me, you did not expect to call back, and then they are like, No, not really. We thought may be in the few days. Well, Hi, how can I help you, you know. Jeremy Reeves: So tell me little about the book you know, great service to create rabid fans. And also, how did you come up with Zombie Loyalists. Peter Shankman: Basic (inaudible 11:57) Zombie Loyalists is simple. If you are a you know, everyone has that 1 friend who is like in love with the other friend or whatever right. Where do we go for lunch, Oh my God, (inaudible 12:07) you know, he has had a great experience in some point of his life (inaudible 12:10) he wants to drag you there because he loves it so much. That is a zombie look, he wanted to be someone who has had that great experience, right, but here is the thing, we expect to be treated like crap. In the customer experience we expect to be treated like (inaudible 12:23) think about your last flight. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, I am going on 1 tomorrow. Peter Shankman: All they have to do to be perfect, to make you thrilled is simply to take you there, get there on time on the seat you requested at the time you requested, if they do that you are going to be over the moon but that is what they promised you, they do. You are thrilled about that, it tells you how bad service is if you are thrilled about the fact that your flight was normal, right. So what is that say, you know, I do not need you to be (inaudible 12:56) couple levels above crap and you win the game. That is the zombie loyalist, you know, treat the zombie loyal as well, they will become your biggest fans. Jeremy Reeves: And do you have any -- is there anything specific to kind of look out for with that like you know, do you tell people to like kind of go out and research your competitors you know, go and buy their stuff, go work with them and see what their service is and then figure out ways to kind of beat that or you know. Peter Shankman: I think that for me it is just how would you like to be treated. How would you like your mom to be treated, right. Ritz-Carlton does not hire people who can fold bed sheets, they hire people who like people. So that is why I tell people can you treat your employees or your customers the way you wanted to be treated, the way you want your mom to be treated. If you can do that then you are going to win. Again, it is not rocket science and it kills me (inaudible 13:51) all these people, Oh, we are doing this for training. Just treat them nice, just be a good person. This is not, you know, look I love it because at the end of the day, the worse you are, the easier my job is. My longest relationship before my wife was a woman who told she was not going to out on a second date with me until I stood up when she went to the bathroom and then I press her so much that we did it for 4 years. Jeremy Reeves: Really? Peter Shankman: Yeah. So, how hard is that for God’s sake, you know. Jeremy Reeves: Nice, I like it. When you are on the adviser board of different companies and you start your own whatever, is that some of the stuff that you look at you know. Do you go out and research competitors and then figure out, like is that one of your main strategies for going to business or is it kind of you know. Peter Shankman: It is, I mean they charge you for (inaudible 14:41) the main strategy for figuring out what you know, what they are doing or what they could be doing better you know. I subscribe to all my competitors new letters. I subscribe to all my investments competitor’s newsletters, I want to see what they are doing. And I want to know how I can do it and make it even better. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah and that is one of the things that people do not understand this. People oh you know, there is competition and everybody wants to go into this like you know, the new niche with no competition. Peter Shankman: I love competition. Competition gets me up on my toes. If you go into (inaudible 15:12) you become complacent. Complacent will kill you. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, exactly. That is exactly how I feel about it and so many people are just afraid of competition and I always think well how mediocre are you, you know, that you are worried about you know, a new competitor on the block. I mean you should look at that and say okay here is the new guy that looks like he is you know or girl whatever you know, that looks like they are beating what we are doing. How do we then up our game you know to blow them out of the water. Peter Shankman: And again, people do not bother to think that way, Oh my God, it is not that major thing, just be a little bit better than what people expect. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, same thing with flying you know. I just got back from San Diego and then I am going on National tomorrow and actually this time, tomorrow we are taking -- it is me and my wife and both of our you know, our 2 little boys and it is their first time flying so that -- we will see how that goes (inaudible 16:05) But yeah, I mean I am going there expecting that something is going to -- something bad is going to happen, you know what I mean. Peter Shankman: No questions about it and that is what so crazy. That is what so crazy. Jeremy Reeves: Okay. So I was just going to question completely -- speaking of action, you know what, let us actually use that to talk about ADD. So I mean a lot of entrepreneurs suffer from that you know. It is the whole not only just like you know, a shiny object syndrome which might be a part of the whole ADD thing, but you know, I think a lot of entrepreneurs are very you know, they either have diagnosed ADD or they you know, could be diagnosed with ADD. So talk a little about that you know, what is your experienced with it you know, how long have you been you know, how long is it affected you, how bad is it affected you and kind of like you know, tell us a story about that you know, how you kind of figure out that you needed, you needed to get (inaudible 17:06) and then what you did and kind of some of the ways that you cope with it and -- Peter Shankman: Well actually for me, my -- what I realized is actually the benefit. Having ADD is actually a benefit for me. It allows me to get my work done at a much faster pace. It allows me to be much more creative as long as I have the tools needed to manage it because if I do things that negatively affect me then I am in trouble. So you know, for instance, I have 2 types of clothing when I am on TV or giving a speech, I have button down shirt, jeans, and shoes. When I am not giving a speech and on TV, I have a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers and that is all that is in my closet. I have 2 suits that sit in the corner for when I need them but other than that nothing because if I have to sit every morning and thinking about what to wear that is going to be 45 minutes, right. So for me I would rather not have to think about that. I would rather be able to spend time focusing on things that are important to me. So I called it removal of choice. So I removed certain choices from my life to make it easier for me to get things done. Another example, I -- whenever I give speeches, my contract basically says, I will speak for you, you will pay me except in Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, it says, that I am writer (inaudible 18:15) on the ground from wheels down to wheels that is from 1 to 8 hours because Vegas is not a good place for me. Jeremy Reeves: I can imagine why. Peter Shankman: And as long as I know that I am able to work my life in such a way that it works for me and again that is what has to happen because I you know, doing that, it allows me to be beneficial to myself and elimination of choice allows me to avoid doing stupid shit. That is it, that is the best (inaudible 18:45). So you know these things that work for you and things that do not and you focus on them and that is how you live your life. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. I think a lot of people are really you know, a little I do not know afraid maybe, like to really understand themselves. It is very, it is very rare that I meet someone who really understands how they work and then actually build their life around that you know. Peter Shankman: I do not think I have a choice. I really do not believe I have a choice because I think if I do try to do something without fully understanding the consequences, bad shit will happen. I joke all the time that on any given day I am 3, I am only 3 bad decisions in a row away from being a junk in the streets. So I have to make sure that I do not make those 3 bad decisions and the best way for me to do this is to understand myself you know, end of story. Jeremy Reeves: Okay, nice, I like it. So when you are talking about Las Vegas, I come across a lot of people who have very limited mindsets and they think that -- so for example, they deal with you know, whatever certain ways of working or on a certain industries or whatever it is and they are afraid to tell their clients that, Hey, look this is how it work, if we work together, this is how it is going to be you know, that kind of thing rather than the client kind of demanding it from them you know. So talk to us a little bit about you know, were you always like that, were you always just to say like look, this is who I am, if you do not like it you know, screw you. Peter Shankman: I understand why people are afraid of that sometimes, but you should know you do not want to lose the business or not gain the business whatever, but you know, on the flip side, not doing that usually winds up being worse because then what winds up happening is that you do not have the ability to do what you want or the way you want it and you are not working at your best. The best example I can give you is you know, if you are married or you are with someone, you are in a relationship you know, wouldn’t you at some point say, Hey, here is what I like bed. If you do not do that, how miserable are you today. So why wouldn’t you tell that. It makes everything better. You have to be able to do that. No question about it. Jeremy Reeves: And you know what most people, most people appreciate that I think you know, I do that like when I am working a new client they get a PDF document of basically how I work because I have some weird, I have some weird quirks and stuff like that too. Mostly everybody does and I mean pretty much everybody is. It is just being able to just say, Hey, look that is who I am you know, if you do not like it that sucks, do not work with me, work with somebody else. Peter Shankman: We are on the exact same page. I agree. Jason Swenk: And even marriage too. Me and my wife actually just had -- actually a very similar conversation the other day because we do that really regularly you know. We always look at each other and say okay you know. What is good with the marriage, what is you know, what do we need to work on let’s you know, all that kind of thing and -- and it is -- I am one of those guys that I like to bring up things the second there is even like 1 little down tip in it you know, versus if it is you know, if you are starting in 10 and let us just say 3 is like kind of disaster zone, most people wait until it hits 3. I figured if it hits 9.5 you start talking about it. Peter Shankman: Well, (inaudible 22:00) because then you can get out of your system and you are fine. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, exactly. Peter Shankman: And that is you know, (inaudible 22:04) they also does it all the time. I want to get it out and done and finish. Okay, let us fix this answer and then you know, you want to be able to -- so that is my problem. I (inaudible 22:21) sometimes I scream, right. I yell because that is how I get my -- if you listen to me I can yell and get out of my system, I am done, but you know, if you have someone in your life who shuts down, who does not like when people yell and she winds up not listening to you. You wind up being feeling like no one is listening to you. P.S. nothing gets accomplished. So I have learned to change how I do that from time to time because it makes it, it makes it you know, the other thing that is massive for me that I learned is I cannot change anyone else. All I can do is improve myself and if the other person wants to change me (inaudible 22:55) half way awesome, but I cannot ask them to do that you know and you are not going to be able to change anyone else. So the best thing you can do is focus on changing yourself. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah. Just for 1 example of that I mean you might have just for your wife for example, you know, you might have 1 trait about her that you do not like but she loves you know, so instead of asking her to change that and having her get rid of something that she loves about herself is better for you to just come to understanding and like try to also love it you know or if you cannot love it then just be able to let it go. Peter Shankman: Exactly. Jeremy Reeves: Alright, I know you have to get off here quick. So I only have 1 more question, this is more of something, I do not know if you do this or not but so you are, you know, you are big with the whole PR thing and you do a lot of stuff like the t-shirts you know, you are a very good at basic commanding attention you know, have you ever, have you ever taken that because I am more of a direct response kind of guy. So I kind of do that same thing but do it with like direct mail. So for example, you know, send like a coconut with a little, with a little like chisel on the hammer and they like have to hammer to open the coconut to get the message out from the inside stuff. Have you ever, have you ever kind of play in it, it is called wamp email or 3d mail, there is a couple different names for it. Have you ever played around stuff like that. Peter Shankman: I love the concept. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, it is kind of you know, it is kind of the same thing as doing you know, there is big like media grabbing like PR stunts but you are doing it instead of on a mass scale, you are basically doing it to, you know, individual businesses you know, and I usually used it, it is more for like you know, high-profile clients that kind of stuff because you are trying to you know, get their attention because those guys are getting you know, thousands of emails everyday and all that kind of stuff, so it is hard getting to them, but I am actually, I am actually going to start doing -- doing it in a kind of secret project we are about to start, but yeah, that is -- I just want to see because I figured that, that would be kind of something your zone, you know, because you are good with kind of commanding attention you know (inaudible 24:59) to look into. Peter Shankman: Definitely. I love it. I mean for me, you know, I, (inaudible 25:04) called the PT agency because we showed up every month randomly but one of our clients should bring pizza and sit down, talk to them. We get some great ideas from them because they did not feel that they are being build, they did not feel like they were doing anything like that and they love (inaudible 25:16) that became sort of famous words. Jeremy Reeves: I like that. Peter Shankman: And it helped a lot. Jeremy Reeves: I think I might steal that concept. I might. I like that a lot. Alright, well hey, I know you have to jump off here soon. I just want to thank you for coming on. Before we get off, you know, do you want to tell our audience where to go to you know, find out more about you, get on your list, you know -- Peter Shankman: Yeah, my entire life is at Shankman.com and on the mastermind they were on the shankminds.com it is a virtual mastermind with a 130 brilliant entrepreneurs from around the world. It is about the cost of 8 lattes a month and we do some really incredible things. Jeremy Reeves: Nice, I like it. It is cheap too. I was expecting it would be a lot more than that. Actually, I am going to look into it. Peter Shankman: Please do, yeah, (inaudible 25:57) we love to have you. Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, nice, sounds good. Everybody check out Shankman.com. The website will be in the show notes and all that kind of stuff so just click on the link in there, yeah. Peter, I appreciate you coming on and we will talk to you soon. Peter Shankman: Glad to do it Take care. Jeremy Reeves: Thanks.  

Peter is an author, entrepreneur, investor and speaker, Peter is best known for founding Help A Reporter Out, which is currently the largest free source repository in the world and in June of 2010, less than two years after Peter started HARO in his apartment, it was acquired by Vocus, Inc. Additionally, Peter is also the founder and CEO of The Geek Factory, Inc., a boutique Social Media, Marketing and PR Strategy firm located in New York City, with clients worldwide. If that wasn’t enough Peter is the author of 4 books. Finally, how can we forget what we are all here for. Peter is a phenomenal angel investor with investments in the likes of Namely, DailyWorth, Pixability and Simplist. If you love the show and would like to show your support for Angel Insights and Harry click on this link to tweet: http://bit.ly/petershankmanclicktotweet

Welcome to episode #442 of Six Pixels Of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast. Peter Shankman believes that, in the end, customer service is everything. While he is a veteran of the public relations space (we actually met when I was working as an account guy in a PR agency, long before I joined Twist Image), a passionate entrepreneur (he launched Help A Reporter Out), and a multiple-times bestselling author (Customer Service, Can We Do That?! and Nice Companies Finish First), he really loves how technology enables brands to better service their consumers. And, with that, he loves the idea that these customers can not only become loyal to a brand, but how they become willing brand influencers, publishers and word of mouth advocates... for free. But, it's not really free. The price of admission is for brands to be better (and often great), in a world where most brands still miss the mark. Recently, he published his latest business book, Zombie Loyalists. Enjoy the conversation... Here it is: Six Pixels Of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast - Episode #442 - Host: Mitch Joel. Running time: 56:55. Please send in questions, comments, suggestions - mitch@twistimage.com. Hello from Beautiful Montreal. Subscribe over at iTunes. Please visit and leave comments on the blog - Six Pixels of Separation. Feel free to connect to me directly on Facebook here: Mitch Joel on Facebook. or you can connect on LinkedIn. ...or on twitter.  Six Pixels of Separation the book is now available. CTRL ALT Delete is now available too! Here is my conversation with Peter Shankman. Zombie Loyalists. Nice Companies Finish First. Can We Do That?! Customer Service. Help A Reporter Out. Follow Peter on Twitter. This week's music: David Usher 'St. Lawrence River'. Get David's song for free here: Artists For Amnesty. Download the Podcast here: Six Pixels Of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast - Episode #442 - Host: Mitch Joel. Tags: advertising podcast audio blog blogging brand business book business podcast can we do that customer service david usher digital marketing Facebook google help a reporter out iTunes marketing blog marketing podcast nice companies finish first peter shankman twitter zombie loyalists

In this session of The Smart Agency Masterclass, I chat with Don Beehler who tells us about how to get more press, what free tools are available to get agency promotion in the press and some of the biggest mistakes agencies make. "Use PR to gain credibility and level the playing field." ~ Don Beehler It's all about helping your agency or business tell its story to the audience you want. Unfortunately, a lot of smaller companies just don't recognize the power of PR and how it can help them gain credibility through agency promotion. Or, if they do understand PR's power, they're too busy. With good PR, you don't need teams of people and tons of money to get yourself noticed. Third parties - like news and influential bloggers - can essentially endorse you as an expert in your niche. After all, they wouldn't be talking about you if you didn't know what you were talking about, right? Don't just sporadically spout on social media. Okay, you don't exactly know what you're doing, so you just post here and there about what your company does. Don agrees that some social media activity is better than none, but he has tips for taking it to the next level. Become knowledgeable about the news media, how it works, and what they're looking for. Find the right person, at the right outlet, at the right time (hint: you can find all this by being knowledgeable!) Be consistent and strategic. You may even want to develop a press persona. By knowing what reporters and bloggers want, you can make it easy for them to use you as a resource. Develop relationships with them! Follow their social media profiles, read their blogs, and make comments! Tools to create opportunities. There are lots of tools out there which can aid you in helping reports or bloggers, and this is a great opportunity to create conversations. Publicity services like Help A Reporter Out are a great way to link yourself up with a reporter looking for a source. You can also use Blogger LinkUp, which gives you the chance to catch the attention of influential bloggers in your field. But don't just offer yourself as a resource without being able to back up your knowledge. Blog about your niche, offer insights on social media. Remember - it's easier to get in front of the media if you're a specialist rather than a generalist. Once the article is out there, don't be afraid to promote yourself! Post it on your own blog, retweet it, and link to it on your website. Tell everyone! Also, Don says don't just limit yourself to articles or blog posts. A lot of times, we have great stories right under our noses and don't even recognize them. Talk about sponsorships, volunteer work, and awards you've received. It may not be the most earth shattering PR stuff, but it is still opportunity. The two things you can do right now to get agency promotion in the news. Develop a written PR plan. It will help you target your coverage, stay focused, and remain consistent. Become a source for your niche in the news media. Being well-spoken, responsive, and friendly go a long way in helping you build relationships with the right people. Building a Better Agency Now that you know how to achieve the agency promotion you need to take it to the next level, there may be other business struggles you need to focus on. Don't worry, I have all you need to get through these obstacles. No matter what you need advice on, I have more than likely covered it. From topics such as handling a recession to ways of using your social media community to expand your brand awareness. Or maybe you want to know the four phases of growth within your agency and want extra help in easing through agency growing pains? I have all the information you need to help you through it. You can learn more about my life and my experience as well as lots of tips, tricks and insights by reading my blogs that cover a wide variety of topics. If videos are more your thing, don't worry, i've got you covered! You can check out more from my Ask Swenk series and more of my videos on my Youtube channel. There you will find advice from myself and other agency experts.

We're all about being nice on this show, so we couldn't resist finishing off our business series by interviewing Peter Shankman – the author of “Nice Companies Finish First”. Peter started in business by selling funny t-shirts in Times Square, indirectly leading him to founding Help A Reporter Out – which he later sold for […] The post TPP055: Talking Business with Peter Shankman appeared first on The Property Hub. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to episode #363 of Six Pixels Of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast. A natural born storyteller. That is one of the best ways to describe PR celebrity, Peter Shankman. He has led an interesting life... and it continues to roll on. He wrote three business books, Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work and Why Your Company Needs Them (in 2006), Customer Service: New Rules for a Social-Enabled World (in 2010) and most recently, Nice Companies Finish First: Why Cutthroat Management Is Over and Collaboration Is In. Beyond that he well-known for launching Help A Reporter Out and he still practices the art of networking and communications through his boutique PR and social media shop, The Geek Factory. Shankman is full of stories... enjoy the conversation... Here it is: Six Pixels Of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast - Episode #363 - Host: Mitch Joel. Running time: 43:17. Please send in questions, comments, suggestions - mitch@twistimage.com. Hello from Beautiful Montreal. Subscribe over at iTunes. Please visit and leave comments on the Blog - Six Pixels of Separation. Feel free to connect to me directly on Facebook here: Mitch Joel on Facebook. or you can connect on LinkedIn. ...or on twitter.  Six Pixels of Separation the book is now available. CTRL ALT Delete is now available too! In conversation with Peter Shankman. Nice Companies Finish First. Help A Reporter Out. Can We Do That?! Customer Service. The Geek Factory. Follow Peter on Twitter. This week's music: David Usher 'St. Lawrence River'. Get David's song for free here: Artists For Amnesty. Download the Podcast here: Six Pixels Of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast - Episode #363 - Host: Mitch Joel. Tags: advertising podcast blog blogging brand business book business podcast can we do that customer service david usher digital marketing facebook haro help a reporter out itunes marketing podcast nice companies finish first peter shankman podcast podcasting pr pr stunt public relations the geek factory twitter

Peter Shankman is a man on the go. The founder of Help A Reporter Out is a frequent commentator on TV, popular blogger, PR professional, angel investor, and author of numerous books. Oh, and did we mention he and his wife are expecting their first child? Peter’s latest book is “Nice Companies Finish First” (affiliate […] The post 018: Peter Shankman of Help a Reporter Out (HARO) | Why Nice Companies Prosper + Book Giveaway appeared first on Smart Business Revolution.

[Thihs show was broadcast live during Hurricane Sandy, with Peter living in Times Square, on the borderline of the power outage.  A true man of his word, he did the show.] Tonight I chat with the amazing PR and social media maven Peter Shankman (@petershankman), who simply has the Midas touch: a little Facebook group he started called "Help A Reporter Out" - better known as HARO -- in barely a year became a huge company that he sold for a substantial sum, and then became named Vice President. When Peter tweets, people pay attention, as Morton Steaks did when Peter jokingly tweeted a wish for Morton's to greet him at the airport with a steak... and they did!  A little bio: Peter Shankman blames ADHD for most of his success. A serial entrepreneur, Peter is best known for founding Help A Reporter Out (HARO), the social media website that redefined how journalism and PR works by connecting millions of sources with hundreds of thousands of journalists around the world each day, for free. HARO was acquired by Vocus in 2010. Peter sits on the advisory board of NASA, is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Dell, and is a successful angel investor with multiple start-up companies in his portfolio. 2011 marked his entry into Hollywood, when he became Executive Producer on Right Next Door, a new film premiering soon. When he's not spending 90% of his time running through airports to catch a connecting flight, Peter is based in Times Square, New York. Learn more about Peter at www.petershankman.com and follow him on Twitter @petershankman. Buy Peter's new book, "Nice Companies Finish First: Why Cutthroat Management Is Over--and Collaboration Is In" on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Nice-Companies-Finish-First-Over/dp/0230341896

On the premiere episode, Emily and Lauren speak with Oleg Voss, one of the owners of Schnitzel and Things, one of the owners of Schnitzel and Things, voted New York Citys number one mobile street vendor. Oleg describes the fascination surrounding their concept and how social media has added to their marketing buzz. They also speak with Peter Shankman, Founder of Help A Reporter Out.

Join us to talk to Peter Shankman about anything and everything PR. Peter is the author of "Can we do that?", so come armed with your questions.PR Week Magazine has described Peter as “redefining the art of networking,” and Investor’s Business Daily has called him “crazy, but effective.” Peter Shankman is a spectacular example of what happens when you harness the power of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and make it work to your advantage.An entrepreneur, author, speaker, and worldwide connector, Peter is recognized worldwide for radically new ways of thinking about Social Media, PR, marketing, advertising, creativity, and customer service. Peter is perhaps best known for founding Help A Reporter Out, (HARO) which in under a year has become the de-facto standard for thousands of journalists looking for sources on deadline, offering them more than 100,000 sources around the world looking to be quoted in the media. HARO is currently the largest free source repository in the world, sending out over 1,200 queries from worldwide media each week. HARO’s tagline, “Everyone is an Expert at Something,” proves over and over again to be true, as thousands of new members join at helpareporter.com each week. In addition to HARO, Peter is the founder and CEO of The Geek Factory, Inc., a boutique Marketing and PR Strategy firm located in New York City, with clients worldwide. His blog, which he launched as a website in 1995, (www.shankman.com) both comments on and generates news and conversation.

Join us to talk to Peter Shankman about anything and everything PR. Peter is the author of "Can we do that?", so come armed with your questions.PR Week Magazine has described Peter as “redefining the art of networking,” and Investor’s Business Daily has called him “crazy, but effective.” Peter Shankman is a spectacular example of what happens when you harness the power of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and make it work to your advantage.An entrepreneur, author, speaker, and worldwide connector, Peter is recognized worldwide for radically new ways of thinking about Social Media, PR, marketing, advertising, creativity, and customer service. Peter is perhaps best known for founding Help A Reporter Out, (HARO) which in under a year has become the de-facto standard for thousands of journalists looking for sources on deadline, offering them more than 100,000 sources around the world looking to be quoted in the media. HARO is currently the largest free source repository in the world, sending out over 1,200 queries from worldwide media each week. HARO’s tagline, “Everyone is an Expert at Something,” proves over and over again to be true, as thousands of new members join at helpareporter.com each week. In addition to HARO, Peter is the founder and CEO of The Geek Factory, Inc., a boutique Marketing and PR Strategy firm located in New York City, with clients worldwide. His blog, which he launched as a website in 1995, (www.shankman.com) both comments on and generates news and conversation.