How To Get Local PR Coverage For Your Business-with Mickie Kennedy- EP 176

On today's episode of the Lab Coat Agents Podcast, Jeff talks to Mickie Kennedy, Founder & President of eReleases. He is currently based on the East Coast. Mickie created eReleases 22 years ago to give small businesses access to the media and to a national newswire. Mickie talks about his journey, how he got into press releases, and how they started emailing press releases. Tune in. Episode Highlights: Mickie is a trained poet, and he pursued Master of Fine Arts and Creative Writing with the emphasis of poetry.  Mickie narrates how PR Newswire approached them and started doing business with them. Mickie works with a lot of different entrepreneurs and startups. They work with about a third of the people who appear in Shark Tank; the producers of the show recommend that they do a press release before their episode airs.  Mickie has been pleasantly surprised that they have had some real estate people come through and use press releases and give them favorable feedback. Some of the ones that have worked, have been people selling famous properties, whether they have been promoted in film or TV or whether they were owned by a celebrity. Those generally do get some media pickup but also people are getting picked up for local developments.  If you read your newspaper, if you are lucky enough to live in an area with a business magazine or business newspaper as well, just to sort of get a feel for who writes about real estate projects or the types of articles that you feel your view would stand a chance of getting picked up, get their e-mail address. You can just call and ask for it. Sometimes it's just online. Sometimes you'll also find that with the media they might have a Twitter presence, so contacting them through Twitter could work really well, says Mickie. In most cases for local media, there are probably less than ten people that you would ever contact and if you just build your Rolodex locally and you send them story ideas as they naturally occur, says Jeff. If you can figure out a way to tap into, find the people, the resources and reach out to them, offer them something of value. If you do that consistently overtime, eventually they are going to grab and they are probably looking for content.  Mickie suggests making an introduction and what it is that you are pitching. You don't need a press release for local media. You really just have to have the idea synthesized in the cup. Two or three sentences and they may ask you to expand on it.  Mickie knows some real estate professionals that reach out to their local media, and they end up getting mentioned in a lot of remodeling articles, and it is not really the context of selling a home or a development or something like that, but they talk about trends like colors on walls, types of finishes, what a kitchen looks like and what a bathroom looks like.  As per Jeff when a lot of us think of PR, especially in real estate, they get targeted by PR agencies and firms and salespeople who are selling be featured in Forbes or top magazines. And the reality is you are not actually being featured, you are basically paying for advertising.  For finding journalists, it's just a matter of doing the research. Familiarize yourself with what are the local media opportunities around you. They can include TV and radio as well because they are perhaps programs that will spotlight local real estate and if they are, just ask around, do research, see if you can find any places for TV and radio.  If you don't have a USP, you're not doing something that really stands out unique for you, says Mickie. Find what you are passionate about or build something that you can be passionate about and be authentic to it and then lead with that.  The development of a UVP or in USP, is trying to find what you feel you would be good at and what you are passionate about and that you feel there's growth and opportunity.  There are real estate brokers that have passionate projects that they do with the community, and they often get in the media when they are doing those types of things and getting their name out there because they are volunteering. At the end of the day, a journalist is really just looking for a story that would be of interest to their audience, and if you can sort of put the pieces together for a story, they will do the writing and building of it and making it a really compelling story and you can help them do that and create that win situation.  Mickie offers a free master class that he puts together for his customers that he will make available to anyone. It's less than an hour long video master class and it basically just goes through lots of strategic ideas for types of press releases. They generally get media attention almost every time when they are sent out. Everybody generally has the leads list, and they have a client list that they e-mail too.  3 Key Points: Mickie suggests when sending PR releases, just send an introduction to who you are and what it is that you're promoting and why they should care, why their audience should care. Mickie teaches and coaches social media in the real estate space and they always talk about coming from contribution and as per him the biggest mistake that agents make in marketing strategies is they immediately go in and they just sell, sell, sell, sell, sell.  Mickie shares tips on how to approach journalists and how to get their e-mail address and what to mention in an e-mail.    Resources Mentioned:  Lab Coat Agents | Website | Facebook | Facebook Group | Twitter | Instagram  Jeff Pfitzer   | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter Follow Up Boss (Sponsor) Chime (Sponsor) Z buyer (sponsor) Street Text (sponsor) Mickie Kennedy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/publicity/ https://www.ereleases.com/plan/ https://www.ereleases.com/contact/ https://twitter.com/ereleases