Table of Contents
Britt Klontz and Jaclyn Lambert were on my guest wish list before I started the BuzzStream podcast.
Both have agency and in-house experience and work as freelance digital PRs. However, they join forces for their very successful PR podcast, We Earn Media.
Britt also runs the Digital PR Explained podcast.
(Fun fact: After I appeared on their podcast as a guest, they helped push me to get ours going.)
Britt and Jaclyn interview journalists and PRs from across the media landscape, amassing many insights into the pitch process.
So, I thought picking their brains on what they’ve learned so far would be great.
Britt and Jaclyn provided invaluable tactical advice and inside feedback that every digital PR should know.
Connect with Britt or Jaclyn
Transcription
Vince: Hello everyone and welcome to the BuzzStream Podcast. My name is Vince Nero and today I’m thrilled to invite Britt Klontz and Jaclyn Lambert. Hello to you both. This is our first like two person interview. I’m loving it.
If people listening don’t know, uh, they both run a fantastic podcast called We Earn Media Podcast. I have to say, I am not as caught up. I feel like I was on your podcast like six months ago or something, and I was telling you how, you know, I’ve listened to every episode and since then, you know.
This job has, I’ve got a new kid and I’ve fallen behind. So, uh, don’t, don’t quiz me on anything, but I highly recommend checking it out. Uh, you’ve interviewed people from all over the media landscape, Refinery29, The Street, Adweek, TechCrunch, people from both sides, the journalists, people doing digital PR, national news, local news.
So, I thought it would be awesome to really, you know, Dig into what you have learned because we are in media podcast has been around for a while and both of you have been around In the space for a long time as well. You’re both digital PR consultants on your own So yeah I just wanted to use this as an opportunity to really pick your brain and just dig into different aspects of the digital PR Landscape
Vince: Yeah, so let’s start with some kind of basic like baseline sense of where the industry is.
The kind of story I feel like that has been unfolding as the beginning of the year I guess and through kind of this crazy tumultuous like Google time that we’re living through here is more people are gravitating towards digital PR and away from kind of more of the traditional link building side of things.
So there’s people coming into it who don’t really know about digital PR.
They know what people are doing PR is, but kind of bridging that gap is a little tough.
And then the other side, it seems like there’s a lot of journalists who are getting laid off.
I’ve heard, you know, even through your podcast, there are a lot of people who, uh, journalists that work at publications who aren’t necessarily writing as much as they’d like about stories that are getting pitched, or they’re splitting some of their time for, with more of the SEO driven articles and things that are going to make the publications money.
So it feels like there’s this divergence, you know, with. All these new people into digital PR. Journalists are getting slammed with More and probably worse pitches, right? And there’s fewer journalists to go around or fewer like Slots for stories maybe I should say to go around.
What’s the current state of digital PR?
Jaclyn: Oh, yeah I mean literally Britt and I were literally having this conversation just yesterday when we were talking about the state of things Yeah, I would say I would say that I’ve seen many changes that I think, if I’m going to be honest, I’m still trying to piece together what all those changes mean and how it all works together.
But what I’m noticing with my own work is, and I think this is a byproduct of people being laid off, is that newsrooms are running leaner than ever before. So yes, there are fewer people to pitch. And then what we’re seeing with media acquisitions.
So, um, a lot of local newspaper and TV, they’re owned by a few corporations and we’re seeing a lot of the growth of syndication networks, a good example that I could share really quick.
I collaborated recently with Fox Business, and, um, not only did it take—which I know we’re going to get to follow-ups—but it took more follow-ups than I was comfortable sending, but I really needed to get a win. It ended up getting passed on to someone else within the team because my contact was too busy.
And then on top of that, once they shared it through Fox Business, they ended up utilizing the story two more times with Fox News Digital. And then they syndicated it out to their entire local affiliates to which, if you go to like any Fox, Um, news affiliate, they’ve repurposed the story for all their local things.
So it’s one of those things where I think the wins are getting fewer and further between, but if you do get one, it’s almost like this big snowball effect.
And then the second thing I’m noticing, which I talked about with Britt, is that it seems like these mid-sized publishers are definitely being affected by Google and these changes.
Um, I think we are all familiar with that House Fresh article that came out saying that their website was basically hidden by Google recently.
And they’ve had to, um, they basically don’t exist on Google anymore.
I’m finding on my own work that there used to be these midsize publishers that I could send them anything and they would be so hungry for content and publish. Now it’s almost like crickets to where I think they’re being a little more cautious about what they’re willing to share and write about.
Um, so that’s what I’m seeing on my end, but yeah, interesting times.
Vince: Yeah, big time. Brit, anything else to add to that? I know you, you were both, we’re talking about this.
Britt: Yeah. Um, what, what else to add? I think digital PR with all of the factors that you mentioned, Vince, I think there’s a greater emphasis on data driven insights, personalization, Multimedia content, commentary.
It’s a big one that I’m working with a lot recently on behalf of clients, I think just to provide some positive outlook here, I think despite those challenges, the demand for quality content and expert commentary does persist.
I think what Jaclyn said about. The lead time is so true right now, like, wins are taking longer, we’re in a time right now, it’s July 17th, not sure when this is going to publish, but it’s, you know, the election season is upon us.
There’s tons of news in the news cycle though outside of that, and I say within the last year especially, so many journalists have let me know that like another story has come up that they need to jump on. And what I’m pitching is not as time sensitive, so it’s going to be a couple more weeks. Um, and that’s even if they let me know.
But yeah, just to echo what Jaclyn said. The lead time is, um, very long. Jaclyn, my interviewer brain is on right now, and I’m so sorry, Vince, but I have a question for Jaclyn, actually, if that’s okay, too, about what you
Vince: said. Of course.
Britt: Jaclyn, you mentioned following up with somebody at Fox News more than you were comfortable with.
I know that’s a good question. I believe Vince you had on your list as well.
But like how many times do you follow up with that person out of curiosity?
Jaclyn: Yeah, I love I love this question. Um, I’m, I’m a conservative follow upper, because as our podcast guests have, uh, many times told us, we only really need one follow up.
If you don’t hear from us, we’re really not interested.
But Britt and I have also talked about how there are exceptions to every rule. And so, my contact at Fox News—he’s a producer—had tipped off Miranda, my expert who was doing a video with him, that he’s hungry for migration studies, which is exactly what I had.
So I knew there was a good fit.
So I followed up twice, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but that is a lot for me.
The, the response to the second follow up was, please follow up with me again on Monday because I’m just way too slumped, but I do want to revisit this.
So really, even if you want to count that, then I did follow up three times, I guess. Um, but yeah, it was worth it, right? So, it’s always good to take a chance sometimes.
Vince: Yeah, well, let’s, let’s dig into that a little bit because, I like you brought up the point. There’s always an exception to the rule So I heard you mention this contact was a producer, right?
So is it different?
Do you use different tactics for different people at a news outlet, like an editor versus a producer or whoever?
Jaclyn: Yeah, I was just thinking about this. Uh, I was working on a story, um, yesterday, uh, about, you know, I’m, I like to use examples. So working on a moving scams study, many angles could be pitched around this study.
One angle that was identified as a Consumer Finance segment about the money lost from moving scans and how to avoid that.
And so, from that, I sent a specific pitch only to producers at TV-based news outlets. I was sending the pitch out to online media. So think like CNBC, make it or Fox, uh, business. They’re more interested in the stats-heavy approach.
In one pitch, the one to producers, I really stressed, to Britt’s point, this idea that we had an expert who could provide commentary and speak on camera. I even included example clips so they could see that we’re ready to go for camera, which would meet their goals for a story if they wanted to pursue that.
Uh, meanwhile, with the CNBC, I stressed that we had an expert, but really it was the key stats that were more important. So, um, yeah, it does matter. I think how you format the email, um, depending on who you’re reaching out to.
Britt: Yeah, I would, I would agree. Jaclyn pretty much covered everything that I would say.
Vince: No, I mean, I think that’s all part of it, right? That was kind of what kicked this off like the different strategies. So yeah, I think follow-ups definitely fit within that because there are probably people at a news desk who are busier than others, right?
A producer might be pulled on to different things than a typical editor, but have you found that this is the case?
Britt: Uh, yeah, definitely. I tend to try to follow up only once unless I notice someone opening my email quite a few times.
But when I do follow up, you always have something of value to offer up, and always avoid just following up for no reason, if that makes sense.
So it’s less about the job title and more about that standard rule that I approach it.
Vince: Yeah, that makes That makes sense. And you, well, you mentioned, one of the things I used to think about is, like you said, if the person’s opened an email a million times, obviously, email open, you know, that’s something that BuzzStream does like to track, but email opens are so misleading.
It can be very misleading, but there are times when if you see one of these emails got opened, you know, 40 times or something. Uh, I feel like there’s some like happy medium of like this noisy open data where it’s like, if it’s like a hundred times, then it’s probably an error.
But if it’s like, you know, 20 or 30, like maybe they are actually are interested in it and keep coming back to it.
So there’s probably some types of trigger or, or, uh, you know, factors in there that you can lean on.
I want to kind of step back because I know you both have done all kinds of different campaigns. Um, you’ve already brought up a few different ones, Jaclyn. So like, let’s talk a little bit about content ideation, especially these days when we know that people are very busy.
There’s fewer people, you know, fewer ideas to go around.
Do you start campaigns with an idea or with a journalist and publication in mind?
Britt: Ooh, that’s a really good question. It’s like that phrase, uh, Did the chicken come before the egg or vice versa? Right? Isn’t that a thing?
I’m just constantly reading about the different areas or industries that my clients are related to.
So, I think in the back of my mind that I’m kind of doing a mix of both at all times. I will say that understanding what journalists want is the most important job of a PR.
So, I’m always following their published articles. If you’re not on social media, I’m on social media, looking to see what they’re sharing.
I’m not saying you need to post on social media. Still, I think what’s helped me in the last couple of years is following journalists who are active on social media, especially linked in, um, and especially those who have sub stacks, uh, that are.
Our newsletters, where they share what stories they’re working on, are like an inside look into a journalist’s brain.
I try to take as much time as I can every day. Sometimes, it’s only 30 minutes; sometimes, it’s an hour, and I’m reading the stories they’re publishing, trying to figure out how to tie my clients into those stories.
I’m also just checking out Google Trends. I use BuzzSumo to keep on top of other topics related to the clients I have to see what’s trending. I’m not going to be on top of everything—I’m a human being—but those tools, in particular, help me. Um, and yes, I am given ideas from my clients, and I do have to sometimes work with those ideas only.
Um, but I find that clients who are more create, like, give me the creative freedom to come up with my own ideas first, uh, show the best results. So I hope that answers your question.
Vince: Yeah, it’s, it seems to me that there’s probably like this divergent approach and it’s maybe like a mindset thing when you’re coming at.
The digital PR or regular PR, where it’s kind of this emphasis on quantity of coverage versus quality of coverage and the workflow. You just outlined to me. Britt seems to be that you’re spending a lot more time coming up with. Quality pitches, quality ideas, and not as concerned about, you know, I’m going to send out a thousand emails to a thousand different people and I’m going to, this thing’s going to go viral.
It’s more about like, really thoughtful approach to this. Jaclyn, do you have any response to that? Like, I see you nodding your head. I mean, is that your thought?
Jaclyn: Yeah, I think, I think so. The only thing I would add is, um, if you did want to incorporate quantity to your quality, you can think about subtopics within the content that you’re creating in order to come up with more angles to pitch.
And so I think that’s why something like a geographical, um, focused study is so popular because if you do have data for all 50 states, then, you know, that’s your way of still having quality stories without blasting thousands of emails. Um, in my opinion, right. It takes a long time to do outreach to all of those 50 states, but I think a good, solid approach would be.
I have to think about all those angles and then have quality stories around each of them. But yeah, I mean, what Brit says is exactly how I approach.
The only thing I would add is that it depends on your goals. So, if you’re focusing on data-driven content, perhaps you’re consuming the content that the people you want to work with are producing and seeing what other people are producing and how you can recreate it for your industry.
And then the other approach that I’m thinking about is with, I think what a lot of people call newsjacking to me. That’s just what good publicists do. It’s just keeping track of what actually is newsworthy and can my client speak to that. So it’s not always about content. It could be, as Brit said, um, commentary.
It can be interviews because that’s, to me, just as valuable and it could be a great use of your time as an outreacher.
Vince: Yeah, let’s dig into that a little bit more, and Brit, I’d like to hear from you too, but it sounds like within the toolkit, the digital PR toolkit, let’s, let’s say, there’s like the content driven, you know, you do a data study, um, there’s maybe, you know, some interactive piece, uh, you mentioned commentary where you’re finding something that’s going on and pitching commentary, newsjacking or whatever you want to call it, reactive PR. What, what else am I missing?
What is all part of your digital PR toolkit?
Britt: Hmm. Um, well, there’s also like just exploring other channels. So podcasts, pitching people to be a podcast guest comes to mind. Um, sometimes there’s PR for different events. Gosh, we could go in so many different directions.
I’ve seen a lot of folks doing more influencer driven PR, which is just fascinating to me. I don’t get to do that much, but that’s something else that I know a lot of digital PRs are doing right now.
Vince: Yeah. Jaclyn, anything else to add to that?
Jaclyn: No, I think that’s a pretty wide net. I like the, that you mentioned the podcasting, Brit, because I know that you’ve talked about it a bit, um, on LinkedIn as well, and it’s, I think It’s a good use of time.
I keep saying that because I think with outreach, um, it’s no secret that you get a lot of, you get ignored a lot, a lot of rejections. So I love a, I love a good tactic that actually results and, um, more responses per email per batch of emails. Does that make sense?
Vince: Right. It makes you feel like you’re moving the needle.
Britt: Yeah, exactly. There’s also just more traditional PR things too, like setting up a contributor column at very niche, trade publications.
Uh, that’s another thing that I think, I mean, some people might refer to that as “guest posting.”
Britt: Yeah. I mean, that’s another way, gosh, there’s so many avenues of digital PR. And that’s why I think I like it. It’s never a dull moment.
Vince: Yeah, I think, um, let’s talk about this a little bit more too. Because it’s tough in an agency sense, I know to do something like this versus maybe as a consultant, you maybe feel a little more free to kind of use all the tactics at your disposal.
Whereas with an agency, it’s often, you know, we have our set, you know, we’re going to give you 2 pieces of content or we’re going to, you know, over the course of the next quarter, we’re going to get you however much coverage. And maybe that’s just a very myopic view from, you know, my own experience, but digital PR for you both.
And I’ll ask each of you, is it more opportunistic or are you building out kike, I know this strategy is going to work for this person. I know this person is going to be, you know, he’s an expert. So he’s going to be, I want to pitch guest contributors, get them on podcasts. Or is it like, let’s just throw everything out of the wall and, and see what sticks.
Like we, we want to get as much coverage as we can. Britt, I’ll let you go first for this one.
Are you building out full strategies, or is digital PR more opportunistic?
Britt: Well, it’s so funny. You’re reminding me that when I was at Distilled, I was, yeah, set in those boxes. Here is a piece of content. I’ll never forget when this happened.
It was like a light bulb moment went off where I was. Barbie in the Barbie movie. Yes. I’m obsessed with this movie and I’ll use any instance I can to relate it or tie it into something that I’m talking about.
But when she just realizes there’s more to life.
I’m promoting this content piece for a sporting goods company.
I’m pitching it to, I think it was travelandleisure.com, and I wanted this person who was a travel writer to talk about this piece of content where we mapped out when is the best time to visit some place.
She was like, “I can’t, I, I’m not going to write about this right now, but you reached me at the right time because I’m looking for an expert who can talk about hiking boots.”
I was like, Oh my gosh, this sounds so easy, but then I had to go to my manager and, you know, throw this crazy idea.
It wasn’t crazy at all. It’s traditional. It’s PR.
They needed somebody from that sporting goods company to share some commentary on how they think you should find the right hiking boots for whatever hike. Luckily, the stars aligned, and I made it happen. The journalist featured that person’s commentary.
Um, And that was kind of like, yeah, a lightbulb moment. Like, oh my gosh, there’s so much more to PR than promoting contents. And Vince, remind me of your question, because now I’m just back in my head about agency stuff. What was your original question again?
How do you think about that strategically?
Britt: So that’s how, yeah, I think I would think about it strategically even today. Um, if a client from a sporting goods company or a lead from a sporting goods company came to me and they wanted to get coverage, we could create content. We could use an expert. It all depends on the availability of that expert.
Sometimes I might be able to draft commentary on behalf of that expert.
I mean, if it’s about something like healthcare or I have my limitations, you know, um, sometimes I can draft some commentary, quickly have the review it and it speeds the process up a bit.
Now I’m getting totally in the weeds. Um, but yeah, it’s a more holistic way of looking at things now that I’m on my own, Jaclyn. Would you agree?
Jaclyn: yeah, definitely. I had to answer the question that you asked since I also had a lightbulb moment as well.
So my, my training was in traditional PR, so that’s what I went to college for. Um, but my first job after, uh, all the fun internship stuff was at, um, an SEO firm where I met Britt actually.
So my career Blossomed into this content based way of doing things. Um, I went freelance, and I had a client, Student Loan Hero, who hired me because they wanted links. They didn’t know how to do it. I’m like, well, I know how to do it.
So I get on and then there’s just like nothing going on.
And they’re not creating content yet for link building. They were kind of, we were in a startup phase. And so, they’re like, well, what do you want to do? I’m like, well, we got to create some content. So, but that took time. Right. We didn’t do that on day one.
So we kind of experimented with some things, did more of what people would consider more traditional links, and built a building where I had a resource page and was trying to do outreach around that full disclosure. It’s not my cup of tea. I don’t think I did very well with that, but I think I probably started answering HARO requests.
So Help a Reporter Out which is not as popular anymore In fact, they’re gone, but there’s Qwoted is the new tool that people are loving right now.
Um, but we started answering media queries and started finding Andy, our CEO, he had an interesting story, right?
And so for it to zoom out, it’s really about good storytelling is what we’re trying to provide these reporters and producers, regardless of what their actual goal is.
And so it really opened my eyes to the possibilities. Um, so yeah, I really love in-house teams that we were able to do a lot because I had access to, when we started growing, I had access to a full content team.
I had access to our marketing director, I had access to business development, and we could all work together for the same goal, which I found that being in an agency, it felt more like I was in a silo.
Like I was there to reach this one goal, but I was unclear about how that fit into the larger strategy. So then as a freelancer, um, that’s the way I like to work.
Um, just like Britt said, holistically, um, I’m on the Slack channels of a couple of my clients.
We interact and we talk and I get to have access to those people that allowed me to do my job better. And yeah, it really is, you know, you show up, you talk to a client and you find out what their business goals are and what they’re trying to get out of outreach. And that can be very telling about then what you can do in order to, um, create a strategy for digital PR that makes sense.
It might be content-based, but I have some clients who are more interested in TV appearances.
What they want is very different from what an SEO-focused client wants, and we just kind of go from there.
Vince: Yeah, great answer, both of you, and it sparks something here that I’m curious if somebody comes to you both, you know, as you’re both, you know, Consultants, PR consultants.
Um, when people come to you with PR in mind, are they less concerned about the number of links and like that, those types of metrics and organic traffic and, and, and more concerned about the brand and getting their brand out and building their brand. What, talk, talk a little bit about that difference.
Cause I know now both of you, uh, Jack and I don’t really know that, uh, background with you. So it sounds like both of you have kind of similar background as me and like, so coming at this with that SEO background and having those aha moments,
Do you find that there is a big difference between the way that clients approach digital PR ?
Britt: So, I think the goal with the clients that I take on, the goal is to get coverage, to get their brand out there, whether it’s a thought leader in the company, whether it’s a product, uh, whether it’s a content piece, um, depends on the client. And yeah, it depends on the goals as well.
I’d say when I first started doing consulting, I had put myself in a bit of a box.
And niched down and was strictly doing content-led PR.
And when that was the case, my success was tied to a number of coverage placements.
Now, four years on almost five, I am happy and relieved and proud to say that those are no longer the goals I take on clients for, the long term we are Working on various aspects of their marketing, similarly to what Jaclyn said, like looped in on all types of content that they’re creating and thinking about how we can leverage that content, but also what kind of PR or marketing or content, whatever it might be, I can do on my end to also lend itself nicely to the content that they’re creating for various aspects of the business.
So it’s changed a lot.
Vince: Right. Right. Jaclyn, how about you?
Jaclyn: Oh, good question. It really depends on the client. One client who is not so SEO focused is really on brand exposure. And so she would rather get on national news than a lot of little.
She still wants the link juice, if that makes sense. So when we do get a placement, she wants to be linked back. But it is definitely more of a quality over quantity. And, um, the reason why is she gets referrals directly from some of the placements that we produce, which is really cool. Her line of work, she’s a lawyer.
So a podcast appearance for her is worth a lot because if the podcast has a lot of good listeners, she will report back to me that she’s had listeners reach out to her about her services.
So for her, that’s like a direct tie to the value.
Now, the other client I keep talking about the SEO-focused one, I have other clients, but these are the two that I work with the most.
So this is why I keep talking about, and it’s cool. Cause they’re so opposite.
The one that was focused more on SEO used to be more about the numbers, but as things have been changing and evolving, they’re starting to look more at the quality. And so I’ve been encouraged to focus more on TLD. So total linking domains, more so the number of placements.
So they’re kind of curious about variability.
Now, um, the other thing that they’ve tipped off to me is they noticed they’re starting to notify me of when we’re getting more referral traffic, and then we’re kind of digging into where that referral traffic is coming from.
And so now they’re looking at this from my more holistic standpoint, which is music to my ears. I think it should have always been like this, but I’m glad that it’s going so kind of a mix of both. I think quality over quantity, but both are nice when it works it works, you know
Vince: Yeah, I mean do you this is Probably a loaded question and I’ll ask each of you, but Jack, let’s start with you.
Do you think digital PR should serve the brand, or should it serve SEO or both?
Jaclyn: Both my, my background is as much as I try to just distinguish myself from SEO.
I. I like being productive with my time. I keep talking about that. If I know that my work is going to impact SEO positively, then I’m going to keep that in mind.
And so that informs a lot of, um, I know we talked about ideation already, um, but like relevancy, for instance, is a very important to me because I know that if we’re getting placements that are relevant to what this client is, um, you know, helps fund this client to keep existing, you know, makes the business run, then of course I’m going to focus on that.
Um, and I, I mean, the student loan, I know it’s been years, Student Loan Hero got acquired in 20, I think it was 2018. Um, but, If you ask Andy, the CEO who made millions of dollars off of this, what were some of the key aspects to getting acquired, he would point to the fact that we had a really robust digital PR team.
Um, so when, when we all got acquired, um, It’s sad to say, but half of the team got let go. However, one of the teams that stayed was the entire digital PR team. And I think that’s telling a lot of things.
And so one last thing, and I’ll let all of us go.
One of the nice things about being in-house is I was able to work with our analytics person, and he ran a correlation analysis.
And we looked at backlinks.
And we looked at it under, on two levels:Number one was on the URL level. So, or URL level.
The secondary was on the overall website level. We wanted to answer the question of whether building a direct link to the money page creates better rankings and more traffic for the money page or whether links have an overall impact.
The website overall, I don’t know. It’s kind of a heady question.
What we’re trying to get at is, do I need to build links to the page that makes money or do I just need to build links for the actual website?
We found these, we did not find a strong correlation with specific money pages when looking at how many links were built to that money page.
But we did find a strong correlation to the links pointing back overall.
So what we found is that the stronger our backlink portfolio became, the more we were able to build rankings, and they found a strong correlation to it.
Now, obviously, it’s all a big black hole, and I’m sure many SEO people would be like, that’s not the right way to even analyze that.
But I think there’s a reason why digital PR is such a sought-after skill that people in the SEO industry want.
So it would be silly to discount it and say that we don’t have an impact. Um, and that, but the branding aspect is interesting to me, and I know Brit knows much more about that side.
And it’s something that I would like to explore as the internet is changing everything, right?
Because I think now more than ever, us people like Brit and I, we really need to understand what other value we bring to the table outside of that.
Can you talk more about branding?
Britt: Well, so this question, um, or I guess I have a story to share that will help answer this question too. So. I had a client who was in the mortgage space and got them featured in Fortune magazine. They even had a. com in their name, but Fortune magazine didn’t link back.
It crushed me because I know the value of a link. And I knew that this client would understand that feeling as well.
However, I, there is so much value in that placement, right? There, there’s so much value. And I was, I have a template like in my Google docs, uh, where it’s just all, it’s just paragraphs of why it’s still valuable.
I love that it’s something I constantly refer to because clients are like, Oh, this is great, but there’s no link. And it crushes me. It kills me because there’s so much that goes into that. And you should look at it for its value beyond the link.
There’s tons of value. I can go into the value now.
But I will say I’m going to throw it a really slimy promotion plug here: I wrote or recorded an episode for this podcast that I do called Digital PR Explained, where I mentioned the value of a media placement beyond backlinks. And it goes into branding the value of branding.
It goes into value behind, like, if you are a company, or a startup who’s trying to raise money, you know, trying to get funding or you’re trying, maybe you’re at the point where you’re trying to get acquired all of these placements.
If there’s not a link, the investors, they’re not going to care. Uh, they’re going to look at where you’re getting mentioned.
And if it’s in Fortune magazine, That’s huge.
In those instances, you’re going to want to, so I always encourage my clients to put that on their website, shout about it from the rooftops, write a newsletter about it, or post it on their social media channels. There’s so much value in getting a placement, even if there’s not a link.
And I’m going to hop off of my stoop now because I can just go on and on and rants about this and. Uh, bore you to death. But, yeah. There’s a whole episode where I talk about the value. It’s like eight minutes long.
And yeah, Jaclyn, you’re so right. We just have to start thinking more about the value that we bring as digital PRs beyond the value of a backlink.
I think from an SEO perspective, of course, even if there’s not a backlink, there’s still value. Search engines are going to recognize your brands, like the mention itself.
And this is my personal belief. Like you said, Jaclyn, there’s a black hole. Um, I believe there’s something Rand Fishkin also talks about this too.
How search engines, um, still notice that mention and the relevancy, especially if it’s a site like Fortune magazine, but even if it’s a trade publication, that’s very relevant to your business. It goes a long way in the eyes of Google and rankings. In my opinion. Yeah,
Jaclyn: I agree. Um, one of the clients that I work with that is more SEO based, um, their, um, their analyst in the SEO, um, team that they have, um, has started to include, um, mentions as a, as part of their metrics.
So now we’re not defining it by backlink anymore, we’re defining it by placement.
And so you can think of media placement as anywhere that you were mentioned or linked to and or right? Um, and yeah, I agree. There’s a lot of I know there’s some argument on both sides But there’s definitely literature to suggest that mentions do count in seo terms as well as branding
Vince: Yeah, I think the recent Google leak shed some light on that.
And, and I think maybe that’s what you’re referring to. It brought up a lot of those instances in the documentation that do talk about relevancy and how, yeah, it might be that unlinked mentions, um, do serve as some type of signal for Google.
But yeah, I mean, the things that people don’t talk about, I think it’s like Direct traffic, right?
Every SEO is so caught up in organic traffic, obviously, because search engine—you know, it’s in the name—but I think if you’re discounting all of those external metrics outside of this organic traffic, then you’re missing a lot of value there. So I totally agree.
And the other thing I would say, too, that I’m thinking, as you were both talking about, this is, you know, with AI Overviews.
We don’t know what will actually come of this. You know, Google rolled them out, rolled them back out here, and pulled them back. You know, what we’re seeing, I think, early on is mentions of brands that aren’t in the top 10.
They are; they just have something unique to say, right?
So, the more you can kind of get your brand out there for all different reasons, in all different, you know, tactics, be it guest posting, podcasting, um, whatever, you know, extra commentary, linked or unlinked, I think, feeding that large language model, feeding the corpus of information that Google has like that, to me, sounds like digital PR branding, you know, a perfect goal there.
Jaclyn: Nicely said. Yeah.
Vince: Yeah. So I know we’re kind of running short on time here, but I want to take a little bit of the time to talk a little bit about kind of tactical advice that you both have for, I feel like a lot of my podcasts, I’m going to step back here. A lot of my podcasts, I talk about agencies, right.
And people doing, you know, in house people working. But, uh, my mindset has always been like, A bigger brand, right? Like someone working for a site in a bigger brand. And a lot of the times I get emails from people who are very small brands. It’s one or two people working. It’s the person that owns it, who’s writing, you know, writes back to my newsletter and says like, Hey, I like you, you wrote about guest posting, but I don’t even know where to start.
And so there’s, there’s certain aspects of this that I’m realizing are way far over people’s heads just because the way that we think about it.
So that’s why I’m trying to drill down to some of the tactical advice that we can give to anybody. So let’s get into some little stuff. We’ll try to hit these like quick, quick pitches.
So Britt, let’s start with subject lines.
What is your main advice for catching a journalist’s eye when you’re pitching?
Britt: These days, I really like to craft headlines, and I like to look at the headlines that the journalists are writing themselves to help inspire the subject line that I sent to that particular journalist.
That’s one tactic that I’ve found a lot of success in recently, and I’m noticing myself doing it more often than I used to.
Vince: Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Jaclyn, let’s go to, so personalization is a big thing.
I just wrote a big article about it. I think there’s a big dichotomy or whatever you want to say, divergence between the thinking and this, and it’s, you know, if you’re writing to a journalist, do they even care?
You know, if you’ve read their article, their recent articles, if you like it, if you have something unique to say, do they care about that?
Or are they just so time poor that they just don’t care? You know, they’re seeing your pitch that it might even just be the subject line that they’re, that they’re looking for because they’re getting so many articles a day pitched to them.
How much personalization do you do? Do you recommend it?
Jaclyn: I do recommend some form of personalization, but I am time-poor in the sense that if I did it to every single email, I wouldn’t get it.
So I think you should look at the deeper reason why you personalize, and it’s to demonstrate that you did research on them and that you’re helping them reach their coverage goal.
Right? And so I think you can do that through the angles and content that you pitch and being very forward about why it’s a good fit for them. Um, that said if I see that there’s somebody who’s really valuable that I really want to work with, I don’t; I might not have something for them that I’m pitching, but I want to make the connection; I definitely will go the route of sending an email and letting them know I liked their article or their segment and here’s why.
And introducing myself. I don’t think that happens enough in this world. Um, I think it’s almost too much ideas in one email if you go through all that and then try to pitch some content.
Why not do the intro early on and get your name out there first? And then when you’re down to like pitching the actual content, they already might recognize your name.
And you’re showing that you’re, you’ve thought about them, you know, their coverage and this is what you’re offering. So that’s my take.
Vince: Yeah. Love that. Uh, Britt, let’s get your take on this too. Cause I know this is something that a lot of people talk about.
Britt: Yeah. I, so similarly, I don’t typically personalize an email to a journalist.
I think the key part of pitching is to, like Jaclyn said, tie the right story to the right journalist.
As long as you’re doing that, you’re going to be less likely to go into their spam folder and be ignored. They might not run with your story, but I think after the experience we’ve had talking to journalists, we are in the media nine times out of ten.
They’re going to recognize your name the next time you pitch them because, potentially, the first time you pitch them with a story that is directly relatable to the beat or what they might be covering, you’re increasing your chances of getting a response and potentially getting them to cover your story the next time you reach out to them.
So, um, I do agree with Jaclyn.
If you can go out of your way and build that relationship in a personal, um, way or a more friendly way and show that you’re reading your work, you can do that on social media, too. It doesn’t have to be an email. Like, you could just go out of your way to share their stories. Journalists love that.
Journalists take note of that. Like, I think that’s the biggest compliment you could do, uh, give to a journalist.
So that’s another thing to build upon what Jaclyn said, but I do know some PRs who like the relationship aspect is their bread and butter.
Like they will go out of their way to take note of when that person’s birthday is and that is super personal.
They will remember what that person talked about, like when it comes to their kids, their kid’s birthdays, what recitals or activities, their sports, or their kids do like, that’s a whole nother; I applaud PRs like that.
There are so many PRs who take that route, and unfortunately, I think, like, this is me going down a rabbit hole here, but I think link building, link builders, gave that aspect of PR a bad rep for a little bit.
And I’m here to say I think we should take it back. I think their relationship building is important!
And if you do it the right way and not a spammy way, then it would, it’s does leaps and bounds for your career.
Jaclyn: Can I mention something really quickly related to that?
I learned about that in PR school, specifically. We had this class, PR writing, and we spent a day practicing pretend pitches.
And that was one of the things that they told us is that when you’re in school, they’d say, well, you’d get to know a journalist, and you would ask them like how they’re doing, how their kids are, how they’re, you know, like, and so it really, it’s funny.
I think the thing that peeves me off about the SEO industry is… maybe you should put this on LinkedIn.
I don’t know if this will be offensive, but I think some people in the SEO industry think this stuff is novel, but it’s existed for years.
We’re utilizing traditional tactics for maybe more modern goals, but it’s always been like this.
I think what sucks is when it gets, turned into this like sneaky tactic.
And, um, you know, if a journalist is smart. If you learn about a fun new tactic that’s being blogged about on an SEO blog guarantee, there’s like 50 to a hundred people trying the exact same thing on the exact same day at the same time.
Um, and yeah, you’re gonna, you’re gonna get caught out or you might get called out even if it’s not in front of you, like people know.
So just keep that in mind.
Vince: Yeah, that is, I think, a great message and, and we should probably end on that. It’s, you know, there’s other people on the other side of these emails is kind of the message I try to give people.
And it’s like, you know, if you’re treating them with respect and doing the work to understand who they are and what they write about. Like that, I think is kind of your point is that that’s, that’s important. That’s the personalization that you need, right?
Jaclyn: yeah,
Vince: The more we can build these relationships and stop thinking about it as how do we scale this?
How do we scale this?
The, the more we’re going to get some of that back, some of that, um, good faith back from journalists. Cause I, I do feel that way as, you know, coming from the more of a link builder perspective
I get pitched all the time and they’re unrelevant pitches. And yeah, I, I understand now the plight of the journalist.
Well, Britt, Jaclyn, thank you so, so much. This has been awesome. I feel like we have to have like a round two of this and I can, we can dig deeper into some of those rabbit holes.
Brit’s website is vadacommunications. com and I’ll put all this in the show notes. Jaclyn is JaclynLambert. com.
They both have the podcast, We Earn Media, which is awesome. I highly recommend checking it out.
And Brit, you mentioned your one off series, Digital PR Explained.
Check out the BuzzStream Podcast
