Table of Contents
In this episode, I spoke with Hana Montgomery, the founder and managing director of the digital PR agency Shout Bravo.
I met Hana at Brighton SEO, and she gave a great talk about running global digital PR campaigns and earning links internationally. Later, we also got to speak on a link-building panel together.
Since not many agencies do pitching and content ideation for international clients, I thought I could learn a lot from speaking with her—and I was not disappointed.
She shares insights and tactical advice from years of experience (and success) from pitching internationally.
Takeaways
Here are some condensed takeaways if you are just looking for a TL:DR.
1. Look Beyond Industry Content for Inspiration
Hana highlights the importance of looking outside your immediate industry for content inspiration, as unconventional sources can offer new creative ideas.
2. Helpful Content & Problem Solving Are Essential in Content Ideation
Today, campaigns should address a problem or evoke emotions, helping readers and providing the answers they seek, aligning with Google’s guidelines.
3. Relevance is Key in International Outreach
It’s essential to have a clear objective when targeting international markets, ensuring the content is relevant to the audience in that specific country.
4. Outreach Personalization Is Necessary Across Borders
Tailoring your outreach content to specific niches and creating strategies for different markets is crucial. One-size-fits-all content won’t work across borders.
5. Translation Goes Beyond Text
Translating press releases or content isn’t enough—remember to translate each email, follow-ups, link chasers, etc. Each need to be in the local language too, with the help of native speakers to ensure cultural relevance.
6. Understand the Culture
Working with native speakers or experts who understand the nuances of a market ensures that the tone, language, and messaging are culturally appropriate.
7. Manual Prospecting is Key
Although helpful, media databases may not always provide up-to-date contacts for international markets. Manual research is critical to finding relevant journalists.
8. Fact-Based Campaigns Work Best in European Countries
Data-driven campaigns, backed by statistics and analysis, tend to perform better in markets like Germany, France, and Italy, where factual content is highly valued.
9. Positivity is a Powerful Hook
Offering content highlighting a country’s achievements or successes can spark broad interest, as demonstrated in Hana’s success with campaigns that crowned Greece for specific rankings.
Transcript
Here is the transcript from the talk!
Vince: Before we start, icebreaker question, which I like to do: have you seen any cool content around the web that you’d like to share with people?
Hana: Have I seen any cool content? What I really like when it comes to content and, especially, I think, in the digital PR industry, you look at something that is within your industry and what’s the cool content that you’ve seen. But I think what I really like doing is looking a bit further and that’s where I take the most inspiration, what is out there and what’s going on.
I think as cool content, I don’t know. It’s more funny content, but it’s an election happening, elections happening in the UK, which obviously is a big conversation. One of the parties—I’m not saying it, whether that’s party to vote for and nothing like that—is so funny on social media because they’re doing things so wrong, and they get it right.
They get it wrong. They’re trying to do TikTok rating dogs and then crush other parties, interviews behind it. It’s just so funny. And I think that’s the content I like looking at. It’s just completely outside of our industry, as much as social media is a big part of digital pay and marketing in general, but it’s just looking at things that just make you laugh.
Yeah, so recently I think their content is just. Questionable, but then also so funny if you have time to look at, I don’t say, not support or follow anything like that, but just have a look. It’s quite funny. It’s how to do it and how to not do it. It’s just funny to, to see.
Vince: Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. You can take inspiration for how to not do things as well.
Hana: Yeah, absolutely.
Vince: That’s great. I’ll definitely check that out. Hana, you’ve been in this industry for a while, and we’re talking about a week or so after some pretty major stuff is happening.
The helpful content update, the big helpful content update happened a few months ago. AI overviews were just released in the SERPs, although they were also then rolled back a bit. And now about a week and a half ago, this massive Google leak happened. Feel like every guest I have after these things, I have to get a sense of what you’re feeling from these things.
Is it changing the way that you do things? Is it changing digital PR? What’s your take on the kind of confusion and influx nature of SEO right now?
Hana: I think as if everything is to, of course, look into what’s going on and see. What, how is it affecting us? And what’s the core message there?
What if we think we’re doing things wrong or doing things right? And of course we always You would hope that everyone’s trying to do things right and follow Google’s guidelines and, and really make sure that’s the right thing to do. So I think with the, Google, the leak and helpful content update is really to study what’s going on and see how you can implement that in your strategy.
Or if if you’re already doing that. Great. That’s to carry on. But I think, AI, you mentioned is, as with everyone, when it happened, you look and I go, God, is it going to, what is it going to happen? What is going to, what’s going to happen? What’s it going to do with our work?
How it’s going to affect anything that we do. And I think what I really like looking into whatever happens, whether that’s AI, whether that’s Google is how can I use that to my benefit? If it’s AI, what can I do to get that to help me with my work? What can I do to make my life easier, not more difficult?
What can I do, I think, With AI especially it should be your friend, no, your assistant, so it shouldn’t do things for you. It should do things with you. I think with helpful helpful content as well, while really looking into of course the what’s happened then and Google’s guidelines and reasoning for the core update as well.
Content that we create, especially campaigns we always look into how that’s helping the reader, how that’s solving a problem. How that is creating an emotion because generalists do so when you, things, you’re like, yeah, that kind of, absolutely. That makes sense. But especially when doing offsite content like campaigns.
So of course you’ve got onsite copy hosted on your client’s website or your brand’s website, but then core, deal there is to bring customers to your website. So to get anything published, do you have to. And do these kind of steps and answer the questions and make sure it’s it’s problem solving a problem that customers may have answering questions that customer may have or readers may have.
So you get, get those links and relevant publications. driving the traffic. So I think a lot of things have happened. A lot of things have changed and we can have a conversation for hours about the latest, surprises from Google. But I think all in all it’s always to see, what, how is it, of course, how is it affecting you?
How is it affecting your work and what can you do to make the best out of it?
Vince: Yeah. You said something that really resonated with me. I feel like the message that Google has been pushing back with is just this idea of you gotta, But keep creating great content. People ask for very prescriptive, what do I do?
I got hit by a helpful content update. What, what are AI reviews? And they keep coming back with this idea of just creating great content and promoting it.
And to your point, you said the end goal is to get users to your site.
But how do you do that? You need to get great content out there and put it in front of the people who can be vehicles to promote this for you.
So, it’s not just creating content for link sake; it should be creating really great, memorable, helpful content that answers a question. That’s what it really seems like Google wants and is going to be effective.
Hana: Yeah, absolutely.
Vince: And I think this is maybe a good transition into just this idea of pitching content, right?
Like obviously the analogy I use is if the tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear it, if you create great content and no one’s there to see it, is it worth the time, right? Like you have to be pitching your stuff. So when you get into international pitching and that’s what I want to talk about today, how can people think about international strategy?
Is this something where, you know, that you should be creating content to then pitch internationally, or is it you really just need international clients?
Hana: I think as with everything that is the relevance. So what’s the objective really? Why are you creating this content and why are you perhaps targeting international markets?
So is it, that your brand and the client or the client that you work with, do you have global audience? Yeah. Then yes, absolutely. You want all the relevant audience back to the clients or your brand’s website. So you know, that’s it’s relevance. On the other hand, if you have, for example, a UK brand that their target audience is purely UK residents and no one else can even buy the product unless you live in the UK, a link in, Hungary or anywhere else will not perhaps be the core goal than the one that, you know so that when it comes to this strategy.
It really is what’s the objectives and what’s the goal, where you want to be seen, when you want to have your client to be seen. And that’s where you start creating the strategy around the content that you create for specific markets.
Now, an idea or a strategy that you have perhaps in the UK or the US will not fit every single market globally. So absolutely, you need different strategies. And, it’s not completely everything different. It’s just understanding the market understanding who you are approaching when it comes to the press and having that goal of, yes, that completely makes sense because if you send something internationally and it doesn’t even make sense for them to look at it because it doesn’t even, it’s mentioning them because you’ve done a lovely ranking piece and they are the 20th out of 50 what’s the point for them to see that?
So it really is the. The core goal there, who am I targeting? Why am I targeting them? Does it all make sense? And then creating the strategies for different markets to make sure that not only your strategy is relevant, but whatever you’re creating is relevant to them.
Vince: Yeah. And I think we’ll get into kind of the specific strategies in different countries because I think you had some takeaways there.
But before I do, It sounds like what you’re saying is you want to use this strategically and not just Hey, we can get some extra links. If we translate this content into Spanish and pitch to Spanish markets, it shouldn’t be just an add on it, it should provide value to the client as possible.
Hana: I think, the relevance and the value needs to be there, but there’s nothing wrong if, if you have a campaign that goes viral or if you have a content that you go, you know what, I think that really would be interested for people to see.
Spanish press and we can translate in Spanish and have that as an add on. There’s nothing wrong with that because that’s not your core goal. It’s the additional value and it’s amazing. And you’ve got your results already go, we can really, we can tweak something, we can send it out, we can get something extra.
It’ll make the client or make my manager really happy. Why not? Absolutely. That’s a great add on. But then if the core goal is we need to get only Spanish links, that’s where you go, right? Okay. So what am I doing and where am I going with this?
Vince: Is there technically speaking does it matter where you get the links from like a technical SEO?
If, does a Spanish link mean more for a U. S. site or mean the same as a U. S. link to a U. S. site and vice versa?
Hana: It does matter where you get the link because any international, any link It’s not a good link. It’s the right link. It’s the good link, right? So you know it’s, and again, it’s the, is it relevant to the site?
There is, there’s always a value, but maybe not the value when it comes to, when it comes to the link. So again The relevance is so important and we can see that with everything.
Vince: Yeah. And I do recall there being something in this new Google leak that mentioned something like that about the links from the same country, whether or not that’s actually being used or just in documentation.
So interesting to see there. So it sounds like you’ve done a ton of international pitching, and I think it might be fun to start from the mistakes that you’ve made. That you’ve made and go on from there, like what we can learn from these mistakes, because that’s always, where people probably get the most value.
So let’s, yeah, let’s talk about some of those mistakes and what we can learn from them or how to avoid them.
Hana: Yeah, of course. I think first thing is, and you mentioned that as well, translating, just translate and translate. But I think it’s not just the of course, if you can translate it on site copy, hosting, hopefully, hosting on the right, perhaps if your brand or your client have got separate domains to target different languages, then obviously translating for that domain and then translating a press release if you have it, but then you go that’s my translation done, right?
I’ve got my on-site copy, and I’ve got a press release. And then you go. Oh, and the follow up email and the thank you email and the chaser email, so just any communication that you have in any other outreach, perhaps in English, that’s like just ticking off the boxes and I think that, not forgetting thank you email.
Where you just thank for publishing the content and linking back, link, chase the email because you want them to link if they, if it’s just a brand mention, you want that. So it’s, you doing all the content and you’re working on it and you’re creating specific content for the site and you create your press release and different versions.
And then you go Oh, yeah. God, where’s all my emails? So it’s it’s just not forget to have all your communication translated, and also we really like, and I think it’s important to work with, of course, native speakers and best, someone who lives in the country because it’s the culture, it’s the, little things like different phrases, for example, and just to really get the best when it comes to the translation, you can because that makes so much difference as well.
It’s definitely, the success there is much, much higher. When you have someone living in the country that you work with because they, that they know everything inside, that perhaps knowledge that you’ll never have, or you don’t have. Because you don’t live in that country.
And you’re not from there. You’re not born there. So it’s just, Math, it must have helped to have the right translator as well. I think also study just speaking with the native speakers is ask questions and encourage them to maybe critique your content.
If you can get a feedback from someone, living in the country and from the country and they go, we would never say that, or that’s a bit harsh, or, it’s encouraging. Can you not only translate back, maybe critique it and give us a bit of feedback and give us guidance on what you would change and why you would change that.
And it just opens up such a beautiful conversation. And it gives you so many pointers perhaps with, feedback that you wouldn’t think of that because again you are away from the, from, the country and it’s so nice to get feedback from someone and get the, let them creating your content.
Vince: Yeah. You touched on a bunch of things there. I made some notes. So start the first one, I guess I want to let listeners understand how you actually pitch because I know there’s. People do it in slightly different ways, so it sounds like you’re pitching press releases. to people like you get on like a PR newswire.
Is that how you mainly do your pitching? No. So via email.
Hana: Yeah. So we don’t use PR newswires and I’m not, I don’t know the kind of quality you get from PR newswires at the moment to just distribute press release. So not distribution is direct emails or. Perhaps, some journalists like using social media, so contacting from social media where relevant and why they want to so not, bombarding on LinkedIn or X.
So yeah, so direct outreach through email. And it’s not like you always need a press release. I think I like press release because it of course. It does its job. It summarizes your content or whatever you are outreaching. But if it doesn’t need presleys because it’s perhaps more visual, a nice pitch email.
Visuals, in there, of what you’re outreaching, short text to explain what’s going on, directing them to your website of where the full content is hosted. There’s not right or wrong, but you don’t have to have a long press release. You don’t have to have just short pitch. It’s I think from everyone’s experience, you see what works, what doesn’t, and sometimes content absolutely needs a press release because especially like analysis or, a big report, big study.
Yeah, you want to summarize of what’s going on in, in the big report that you are. Trying to them to link to. But if it’s a nice slider of visuals that, you design for whatever content piece, whatever topic that probably doesn’t need to be, what are you going to write, it’s sometimes nice and punchy and short and direct and right to the point.
Pitch email with with visual straight away. This is what’s good. That’s the attraction, right? That’s what you want them to look at. Yeah, so that, there is absolutely options of what is and the content actually leads you to what’s best, whether that’s a short pitch email or press release, perhaps.
Vince: Yeah, and do you ever personalize these emails? Do you try to add in, little personal touches based off of whatever social media post they have or a previous post they’ve written or something?
Hana: So I think there is a way to personalize. I think I’m not going to lie, it’s impossible to probably personalise every single email you send.
But there is ways. So what we like doing first personalisation is the the niche. So are there lifestyle, are there family, are there legal? So you straight away know that I need to change my headline, I need to change my subject line, I need to change my intro. I need to change probably what information I’m sharing first, depending on the niche, on the industry, to say.
So that’s the first kind of personalization. Then of course, studying, always looking at what they’ve written before, what are they focusing on, maybe what they’re sharing on social media. And that’s where you can use the little. Bits and pieces, I understand you focusing on this or you’ve actually covered that.
So this is like additional information perhaps that you may like. It’s not your old fashion. I really enjoyed the post that you wrote last week. It’s more kind of showcasing that you’ve done your homework and that you’re looking to, again, you probably cannot do that with, if you have, hundreds of people in it would be possible, but I think if you do your top tier.
And you really dive in and you really study who you are contacting and you use that to your advantage. I think that really helps, of course. And, and it comes across that you know what you’re doing. You’ve done that homework, you had look into what they’re working on. And they really appreciate that as you would as well.
If someone does their homework, when you, when they’re contacting you, you can go, yep, that person really went into detail and they, they are right. Yeah.
Vince: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Reframing this as If you received this email, would you be receptive to it? I that to me, it’s just like the easiest way to check your own work.
So the reason I wanted to lay that out and like how you do it is because now I want to get into kind of like the translation aspect. That was another thing you talked about. Cause I do feel like the translation and kind of targeting international. Journalists where you don’t spend a lot of time, like that to me seems like it’s very, it could be very challenging.
So one of the things you said was translating the pitches, press releases. What do you do use to do that? Is that just Google translate, chat GPT?
Hana: So we work with, we’ve got a network of translators in each country. So they are native speakers living in the country. And that’s who we work with, that we really worked really hard on building this network.
And again, those are, like, as I mentioned, these people also look at the work before they’re translating, critique the work, look at our content, give us pointers if needed. And that’s working with A real person does have the benefit. I did for fun, because I’m from Czech Republic originally, I did for fun, taking one of our piece of content, put it in right in a chat GPT, got it translated.
And it’s still not there. It’s still, it would not pass. At least a Czech language is quite difficult. And there were bits when you would be, you would know immediately that. Hey, it doesn’t
Vince: pass the English language.
Hana: I think Google translate is awesome. I think it’s gone very far.
But again, I think that you can’t beat a native speaker translating your content. I think that’s just yeah.
Vince: As you get clients that you know you’re going to pit, you’re going to be pitching and creating for in a different language. You go to Upwork, you go to like, where do you find, where do you recommend people find content advisors or whatever you want to call them?
Yeah. I really like that concept.
Hana: I think you can absolutely use the Upwork especially if you have no other contacts, you getting started posting a job that absolutely because we, In this for some time now we had the chance to go into perhaps Facebook pages and look at groups in internationally in different country of freelancers, for example, and really speak to those that are focusing on translating and then you get that network.
So when you have one person you go, Oh, by the way, do you know anyone in this country? Yeah, sure. I know I met them up here or speak to them because I work with them different place. So you build that network and recommendation as well, which is absolutely amazing. People’s recommending other people.
You just don’t recommend someone you don’t know. So you got that kind of first, brilliant recommendation. That’s fantastic. So we really spend time on, on building this network, but absolutely you can start with Upwork. You can start with simply, Google, just search for translators.
There are of course, lots of agencies great agencies that cover some languages. I’m not going to lie. If you look at working directly with a person for Upwork to work with an agency, there will be a big cost difference. But then also, that, I’m not saying on Upwork that isn’t quality, that absolutely is quality.
But maybe it’s more test and error than with an agency. But again, getting started and having a go and trying to find people and speak to them and absolutely asking for examples of work and how they work and testing maybe with a shorter piece that you can then, have someone else as an editor to look at and give you feedback on someone else’s work.
You can absolutely get into that and see and start building your own network.
Vince: Yeah, we’re going to talk about the pitching process. I’m going to, also address kind of the ideation process. Cause that to me is also a big piece of this, right? Just coming up with ideas in different countries.
I remember we had Will Hobson on one of our episodes here, and he talked about creating content in the UK or the U S as a native UK resident. He has since moved to the U S, but He said it was always really helpful to get into the U. S. and walk around and, see billboards and be around people.
See what’s on TV. And that was really where he got his, the most ideas and the most inspiration. But obviously, that’s not possible for everyone to be in every country and goes to spend a week or whatever. So how do you recommend people actually stay on top of trends and ideate in a different country?
Hana: Yeah, I think it’s definitely right that you know that would be wouldn’t that be great if you could travel through The world and spend a week In every country and that’s absolutely right. I think that’s you know, yeah, I completely agree there, but I think when you can’t do that It’s studying, study the country, and it comes with trying to watch some TV channels, listen to the radio, as much as, of course, it’s different language, there are also English radio stations and channels and newspaper in every single, country.
country because of course there are experts there, there are communities that speak English in each of the countries. So you can really try and find these publications. So of course you can study them because you understand the language. I really like looking at local influencers on TikTok as well, finding them and seeing what they’re talking about, what they’re covering what’s going on there.
Again social media groups, so I mentioned Facebook, again, there will be certain groups of people living in that country, again, that speak English, that you can join perhaps the group and start looking at what’s being discussed there. Forums, Reddit, amazing. To study each country, posting a questions.
Oh, would you, what would you do then? What do you do then? And people in Reddit absolutely love getting involved conversations. So using that few advantages, advantage as well. And and trying to connect with people and, and reading and reading, really just looking at, of course you can go on any website in any language and you get that immediately translated by Google.
That’s obviously giving an advantage of actually reading the major news sites in each country to see what’s going on, what’s happening. There’s so much news that doesn’t get anywhere near us because it’s not US or UK relevant. So going on the major publications in that country and reading.
having a look in the morning, it just gives you that whole sense of, all right that’s what’s happening in there. And read the comments, it’s again, you’re getting the real, sometimes it’s, something, but you get again, the real reactions that what people say and how they look into what’s happening in the world.
So really trying to get into reading the news. Finding if there’s, for example, someone running a podcast who lives there, who’s who, if, if English, what we need is who speaks English running a podcast there, joining forums and just trying to get as much into the local communities as possible.
Vince: Yeah. All good advice. I feel like it’s something that is Probably overlooked. I think even in some agencies, it’s like some people, you have a lot of clients and sometimes it can be tough to pay attention to them. But sounds like if you have a dedicated country, like you, you need dedicated eyeballs on that at all times.
If you really want to be effective.
Hana: Yeah. And you know what we do is we get and. A country focusing on our dedicated international, digital PR team really studies the country and to put it into, you just don’t read it and close the window. We then have to almost do a bit of a presentation, each of them.
So like looking at this is what I studied and this is my findings. And they then present that to the team. So it sticks because you not only read it, but you write about it and then you present it. A bit of homework there, it’s, it, again, it helps because you. You have to think about how I’ll take all this information and kind of put that in a nice presentation and present it so everyone else understands that, which is quite nice.
Yeah,
Vince: so you have your knowledge leaders or whatever you want to call it, the experts in the language.
Hana: Yeah, exactly. And then, it’s not case every time, but if your client does cover that country and they perhaps have a team in that country, Connect with the team, speak to the team.
Have a little session where you ask lots of questions. Share your ideas. Again, get them to give you feedback. And it doesn’t need to be a marketing team. It could be a customer service team. Any team that is based in that country to give you real feedback on your ideas or your direction that you’re taking with your content.
Vince: Yeah, that’s something I wish I would have done more. I feel like when I was an agency, I was always hesitant to ask the client for feedback and not feedback, but like help and ideation, right? Because you want to be the, you’re the person they’ve hired, right? So you don’t want to necessarily say, Hey, is this, what do you think of this idea with this work in your country?
You want to present them as the expert, but I feel like that’s. Probably dumb of me. I should have reached out more for some real time feedback. Cause it seems especially in those cases, I didn’t really have a lot of international clients, but you can get some invaluable feedback and advice in that case,
Hana: I think I absolutely love having conversations with other clients because sometimes it’s conversation about, you, start a call and it’s a bit of small talk and he immediately getting little nuggets of information that.
You had no idea about it and you’d never would have known if you didn’t have. So yeah, maybe we, we can have face to face meeting with everyone, especially if it’s location or, everyone’s, the client might be very busy, so you do a quick call. But I think taking that time and if you can meet the client, meeting the client, but if you can jump on a call and just go okay, so can I just, can we just have a conversation about this and this, that, and this is what I’m thinking and this is, and I think.
Like you say, you’re absolutely right. There’s that thing. I am the expert, right? I should be just go right. This is what we’re doing. This is going to be great. Done. But I think giving that whole this is what I’m doing. And what do you think? I think it also adds you some points with the client because you are keen to have their feedback early on.
And you came to they go yeah, that person really tries to work with us and involve us and, get us get us sorted. Of course you want to limit the people, the number of people on that call because the second you get, everyone excited is 30 people on a call. You go, this is going to go, terribly.
But I think having that Option to speak to a client and that goes whether that’s international outreach or not, national local. It’s, it really is, it’s such a big value when it comes to have being able to have that conversation with client where you can get lots of different pieces of information that.
They wouldn’t have put in an email.
Vince: Yeah, even you and I, we spoke the beginning of this call before the podcast we were talking about, we both have new children, infants and talking about parental leave, in the UK versus Czech Republic, I believe, and then, versus us and they’re wildly different.
And That’s a content idea right there,
Hana: yeah. I think, you know what, I’ve seen it somewhere. Best maternity leave. But I think it would be, yeah, it would be the time, but then versus also The payment that new parents receive because I think that’s another conversation, but I think, there’s definitely a massive difference in different countries and what new parents receive as a payment with staying at home with the baby.
Vince: Yeah. Free content there for everyone who wants to take it up.
Hana: Yeah.
Vince: Make sure you tag us. Give me a shout how it, how that went. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So I want to get into a little bit of. The, the different countries that you’ve worked in and maybe some universal themes that you’ve maybe come across in the different countries.
Because I know in your talk, you gave a few specific ones that I thought they were great. So if you could talk through some of those, I think, it was like Germany, Italy. So yeah, I’ll let you go. I’ll let you loose here. If you want to.
Hana: Oh, here we go. I think what’s so for example, Europe overall, I think what’s really interesting is seeing the importance of every single
campaign created that was successful and that’s not just our campaigns, but companies, for example, that we track from competitors and other brands is as, as long as you present facts, it usually does very well. So analysis, data statistics information that the journalists can use to justify the the article that they’re writing or the what’s happening.
And, and really give the real value to their readers of. This is what’s happening and here is proof with this analysis or survey or what’s you know What to have when it comes to the facts and we’ve seen that like you mentioned Germany, France, Italy and that does really well because of the value that you are giving to the journalists or the publications to, to share that with their readers and to present that with, as the facts of what’s going on.
Over, for example, very design led pieces, the same more design led lifestyle. It’s still absolutely, they’re great and they do well, but I think it’s more for fun lifestyle publications and perhaps you’re the, the potential outcome that you can have again. I’m not saying they’re not doing well.
They absolutely are doing well. When everything does well and does right, when you do it right, it will do well. But I think what we’ve seen is, the kind of likelihood of the succession of campaigns that we’ve seen that way, whether that facts and data presented really nice and really well.
It’s, of course, easy to read, easy to navigate, easy to understand. It, we have that, those nice results. And, by numbers, I don’t, they don’t need to be serious campaigns, there’s lots of lovely campaigns, again, mentioning ranking pieces, the most sustainable camp, the most sustainable city in the world.
You, you have to have the data there to, to say why they’re more sustainable. You’ve got a bit more. Perhaps, important past, yet still lifestyle, perhaps travel story. But you have got the facts and data to proving your statement of what countries or cities are the most sustainable, most, the friendliest people in the world.
Again, you have to have some data. It’s fun, a nice campaign, but there has to be data to prove your statement, who’s the friendliest. People in the world. And who are the miserable ones, it’s because I’m unmeasurable, you have to have the data to prove it. So it’s it’s, I always say, that’s, that speaking of data, I think it immediately go, Oh God, analysis on something very serious, that’s not true, they can be very lifestyle, but if they’re, if the data’s there to prove your statement, that’s what the journalists like, they go, yeah, that’s really cool story and I’ve got all this data to
Vince: use.
Hana: I think what’s really nice, the trendy, what works at the moment, because there’s been so much negativity in the world and, all the things that have happened. It’s celebrating the country’s a bit more positive spin.
So giving them the whole you are number one for this and you are, again, it can be ranking piece, but, that usually tends to do well, but just letting them celebrate. We’ve seen that recently we were targeting Greece. For our client, the Greek publications, the second we told them that they are crowned so and so or top in so and he just went everywhere in Greece because they absolutely loved it.
They were so proud and it was so beautiful as well to get, I think we had a mayor to, talk about that in the meetings and, and publishing their own press releases and say, and by the way, we were told you know, we are so and so the pride of the, of them kind of receiving this piece where they were best at something.
And, they really use that to attract, tourists, for example. So tourists both used it. So it’s really giving them, so of course you can go with negative story. let’s face it, negative cells, that’s that’s definitely what works. But I think with any negative story, and again, whether that’s your national outreach or international outreach, just really have your data, right?
And your methodology approved, because people will go at you and go, how dare you say we are worse at this? That’s not true. And you can go back. I’m not saying that. The data is, and it’s bulletproof methodology. And here you go. And, prove me wrong. Tell me that it’s wrong. I’m happy to, edit if you have different data from different sources.
Or different data from the same source, but just make sure that you’ve got really everything right because you don’t want to get into pickle with
Sending on something negative with not strong methodology.
Vince: Yeah, there’s nothing worse than having to defend it and you have that, yeah, that instant stress when a reporter comes back to you and is can you send me the data, or like, how did Yeah, how did
Hana: you, yeah, what’s the calculation about?
You go, huh?
Vince: Yeah.
Hana: And to be fair, you do that even when you know everything’s right, you go, huh, send? Oh,
Vince: yeah. Oh, yeah.
Hana: Yeah.
Vince: Yeah, what I was going to say is that it’s funny because it, I hear a lot of, you I guess between pitching internationally, you talk about like Greece, giving them positive things to talk about.
I feel like a lot of similarities can be drawn to pitching in the U S in individual cities. There are, there is a full strategy to finding like small cities who don’t get a lot of love, who don’t get, their place in the news. And like that’s the same strategy there is just give them some.
Credibility, some social currency to be able to
Hana: absolutely,
Vince: Ego, ego bait, I guess is the word for that.
Hana: Yeah. Yeah. And, you’re absolutely right. US, I think when, and again, that, that’s a whole nother hour to talk about US outreach isn’t there? But the thing is that you can’t, you should really, again, look at state by state.
And treat them as almost country by country, right? Because there are differences and you should be aware of what’s going on again in each state. And really go into, like you say, cities that perhaps are not mentioned that much. Or you can really use that benefit of I’m focusing on this state and all these cities.
And there’s so many new sites, that you can target. Because it’s almost like. It is, it should be treated absolutely state by state. Not yeah, I’ve got U. S. campaign and I’ll send to everyone the same subject line, same press release because it’s U. S. It’s really about separating and acknowledging state by state.
I believe.
Vince: Yeah. Great advice there. Before we end this call. And I, I also we didn’t talk much about kind of the tools and specifically do you use media databases to find people? I think you hinted at this, but like the prospecting methods internationally. I feel like if you don’t have a media database, this feels like it’s.
A lot more work, obviously. You’re having to translate every page and figure out what journalists is actually talking about and make sure they’re the right fit. Do you find that the media database is really the shortcut in that regard?
Hana: Unfortunately, no. I think that’s it. So U. S. and U. K.,
your traditional, just purely journalist databases where, the only goal you go for that software or thing is the database. We noticed that U. K. and U. S. absolutely covered. Brilliant. You get everything there. But the second you start looking into perhaps more Whether that’s Australia, still English speaking, but then you go, again, we mentioned Greece, we mentioned Italy, France.
That’s where we noticed perhaps a bit outdated contacts or, where it’s just, it just didn’t work. We absolutely use BuzzStream. And We, I think you can, yeah, there you go promotion, but we absolutely, we do for stream for distribution, like we love the, like we talked about targeting different niches.
You can do sequences for each niche and industry and it’s. Fabulous. And you can get great contacts as well, but I think that the kind of the purely databases we’ve seen that being outdated. We do, we did have to start where you go, just manually and search and, and go and research the publications.
Now that said, there are. Such amazing lists you can find online with all publications in each country, that’s there. It’s easy to be found. And then you have to go in and then get it either, Google Translate or you get the, just what, what where to find the contacts.
Who’s the travel journalist,
Vince: who’s the Exactly,
Hana: yeah. And you do go manually. So it’s absolutely like work, it really is. But the thing is that once you do it and you do spend those hours, the benefit, the success rate, the benefit there is awesome because you got the right person. You have looked at what they’re writing at while looking at them.
You found their contact details. You find found their social media platforms, if they use any. You know inside out about the publication and then yes, maybe you don’t have thousand journalists, but you don’t need thousand journalists because you need the right journalists. So yes, the media list is perhaps shorter, but you’ve got, let’s say, 100 absolutely correct publications, journalists, contacts, you know them because you’ve done the like work, you know them, you’ve read their pieces because you had to because the way you found them was probably through an article, so you already know that thing over there.
Yes it’s longer time spent on manual research and perhaps fewer journalists, but they are so right, that maybe you don’t, out of, you can get. Have 1000 journalists send it out and get 10 links, or you can have 100 really correct journalists send it out and get 20 links.
So you know, it’s again, relevancy, but yeah, we absolutely have to go with the manual search and start there. And obviously then you start building your almost own. Media database because you creating those contacts for each country, but it was better. Contacts of course, relevant contacts, current contacts, not expired, or, we since doing things manually, I don’t think we got one error message or, anything like that.
Vince: Yeah. Yeah.
Hana: Yeah.
Vince: Yeah. That’s great. I almost want to leave it there. Because that kind of sums up the whole thesis of reaching out to relevant journalists and, it seems like it’s something you could do even internationally. It holds true, throughout all digital PR, but one thing that I am very passionate about talking about it is like work life balance as a new parent.
I, Kind of similar time when my kid was first going into daycare I had a lot of stressful situations and like whether or not he was going to go back to work full time and, sending my kid away from daycare. And so I always think it’s really important to talk about this kind of stuff.
And if you have any advice for new parents and maintaining that work life balance, keeping the stress away as you’re working in this industry, which can be stressful sometimes. Yeah.
Hana: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It’s just what I think. So I’ve I’ve been in touch with work pretty soon after, after having my baby, which it was our decision, to do that.
And I think in a nice way, I absolutely love spending time with my baby and, seeing every milestone and of course missing some, you do, you turn around and you go on call and you come back and they’re turning on their belly, it’s but. I think I liked having the work life balance right from the beginning of having my baby because I felt.
It’s a massive change to go from every day being at work and having quite a lot of responsibility and doing things, every day, certain when, and suddenly you like there, sat there with a baby and go what’s going on like this is just completely suddenly, you’ve got completely different priorities and responsibilities.
So I like being in touch with work because it kept me. And it kept me thinking okay, that’s, I’m not I still know what’s going on. I can people, I can have, opinion then, share my thoughts and it really is nice, especially for new parents, you go Oh, don’t worry.
You enjoy your baby, go, that’s not the right thing. You go yep. Please join. And tell us what you think and what’s your opinion. I think that’s the best thing, you can do just, we’re still.
And I think, I really learned around my baby’s schedule. So when he’s sleeping, I know that I can, focus and give everything I can to work. And when he’s awake, I’ve got the rule that’s his time. He doesn’t see me with laptop. He doesn’t see me with a phone.
I don’t like that. So I like this. It’s his time and we’re playing together. And when he’s asleep, that’s that’s where I go to my laptop and catch up with things. And people know that at work, that’s that’s the flexible hours that, that are there because I’m a new parent.
But he is, I don’t know how, but he’s already eight months and he’s going to nursery next month. So I’ll obviously that’s going to give me a lot of time. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, but, so I’m back back full time next month with him at school or school nursery.
So I feel like, it is about you should do your schedule and you should manage your time and you should do what you feel that is right for you. And I think that’s very important during, as a new parent, it’s just so many, it’s, no one prepares you for that, honestly, it’s happens and you’re like, what am I doing, I’ve, you can read all their books and everything, but no one’s prepared you for that. It’s beautiful, but you go, what the hell, yeah.
Vince: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And I’m sure there’s plenty of people that can relate and hopefully can help some people out here who are in the same position.
Hana, this has been great. This has been eye opening. Especially in the international markets where I haven’t spent a ton of time and I’m sure a lot of our listeners will get a ton from this. So I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us and you can find all of Hana’s work on Shop Bravo website.
She’s also very busy on LinkedIn and are you on Twitter as well?
Hana: I am. Yeah. Yeah. Still there.
Vince: Yeah. Nice. Yeah. I’m trying to get back on. I feel like it’s got to do it.
Hana: Yeah. Great.
Vince: I’ll link to all that in the show notes and anything else? Any parting wisdom?
Hana: I was going to mention, like I say, please do you find, if you have any questions don’t be a stranger do reach out.
I’m very happy. We can chat ask questions, like I said, I’m on LinkedIn, Twitter. Please reach out and yeah, I think it’s been amazing. Thank you so much for having me. Really enjoyed that and I hope that people will find little nuggets of information that will be helpful to them.
Vince: Yeah. Alright. Thanks so much, Hana, and thanks everyone for listening. Remember, please subscribe and if you’re listening on YouTube, also give us a and hit us up in the comments and pass it along to Hana, too. Thanks again, everyone.
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