Are you an expert? You may be, even if you’ve never thought of it. A lot of business owners never think of themselves as experts in their field.
The media is always looking for an expert opinion when they are working on stories. Do you want to get free exposure, position yourself as an expert and grow your business? Then you need to become a “PR Expert”.
How do you bridge the gap between your skill set and being seen as an expert? If you want to do this effectively you need to be watching for any potential breaking stories in the media. Obviously you want to follow ones that are related to your field. For example, if you have a landscaping company and a story breaks out a massive heat wave happening, contact a local reporter and offer advice on how to care for plants in a heat wave. Or talk about the types of plants that may be best suited for a scorching summer.
The key to the success of this is to not talk about your business, but offer useful information with possible solutions to the problems and the best ways to accomplish it. If they like the information enough, the newspaper or TV station might air your information. You can now start being seen as an expert, and if it was good enough information the next time something in your field happens, you will be one of their go to sources.
Media outlets are starved for good stories. They are always looking for fresh content and new ideas. Another way to get in as an expert is to write articles. This is a technique I have used in the past and have had a lot of success with it. I wrote real estate articles for a couple of magazines and online publications. They were more than happy to publish my information. Again, the key is to never blatantly promote your business, but be sure to offer great information to the reader. Just remember, the media outlets hate self-promotion, so make sure you don’t cross that line.
When I submit them the only thing about my business is at the end of each article that says my name, email address and website. If they post it online, the link to your site will give you great exposure and can be seen all over the world.
When I first started writing, I struggled with creating a catchy headline. The secret is testing out different styles and see what works. There are a lot of ways to write it (Which I can cover in another post) But just know that the headline can make or break an article.
Just as you are reading this article, it further proves that creating good content works. Who knows, maybe I will get some of these articles published in the near future. Be on the lookout for more of Ryan Smith and The Business Principles articles offline!
So what are you waiting for? Get writing and get published! You won’t regret it.
To you and your success,
Ryan Smith – Chief Content Creator