How to use PR to grow your business with Dina Behrman

Your Dream Business

English - August 23, 2021 00:00 - 51 minutes - 47 MB - ★★★★★ - 34 ratings
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Previous Episode: Why you can’t do it all on your own and what help you need

Next Episode: Why having an abundant mindset is good for business

Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Dina Behrman who is a PR (Public Relations) strategist, helping entrepreneurs who struggle to take their business to the next level. We talked all about what holds us back, why we get nervous to put ourselves out there, and how to actually go about getting featured and getting some publicity for your business.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

When you start doing PR for your business, you will have more content to share on social media – it works hand in hand with your marketing.When you are pitching to places, you can talk about your social media presence.You CAN do PR as a solopreneur and small business owner.You can either use an agency, or do your own PR.You are helping a journalist out when you get in touch with them and share your tips for their readers.You are going to help the people who read or listen to your piece too.PR is very powerful for expert positioning because when you get featured, you have the association with recognisable and credible names – they are endorsing you.PR is long-lasting, ever-green content – when you have an online article feature, it is there for people to find years later!PR is amazing for getting in front of a new audience – make sure you are choosing places that your ideal clients will be.PR is also great for connecting with your existing network when you share your excitement! Opportunities could follow.Think about quick wins – where could you be featured that is quick and easy? This then helps when you are applying to bigger places as you already have some features.Journalists don’t need you to be a perfect or professional writer – they just need the content from you! They have editors that will review your piece.Twitter can be a really good place to connect with and engage with journalists.You can cold pitch journalists, you don’t have to have relationships with them or lots of contacts.You can find journalists by looking online or in magazines – do a bit of research.Think about what you can give in terms of value to the journalists – look at the types of things they have previously published, what will be a good fit/popular for their audience?Put together a media kit to sum up your highlights to apply for podcasts and digital publications.Stretch your comfort zone slightly – you never know what opportunities could come up when you put yourself out there.The worst thing that can happen is they say no or not reply.Just because they said no once, doesn’t mean it’s a no forever – try again another time.If you keep pitching, you will get featured! Make sure you are tailoring your pitches.Once you start getting featured, you may find other journalists will then reach out to you.Keep an eye on the hashtag #JournoRequest on Twitter to look out for opportunities alongside the proactive stuff – see if there is something that is relevant.Leverage every feature/opportunity you get – it is a big deal – be proud!!

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

You don’t need to be really well-known or have a huge following to do PR in your business.

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

An introduction to Dina 03:54PR and Marketing 05:29Why you should consider PR 11:55Potential barriers 18:04Do you need to build relationships 23:48How to pitch to journalists and stand out 25:32What if they say no? 35:20#JournoRequest 45:08

CHECK DINA OUT

Website

RESOURCES...

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

You don’t need to be really well-known or have a huge following to do PR in your business.

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

CHECK DINA OUT

Website

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Free PR & Content Calendar

Transcript

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? I'm getting into the swing of things. May I'm batching, and this is like the fourth one I've done. So I seem to be doing it a bit quicker and easier.

You need a bit, the always stumbles me is the beginning. I hate the beginning. I hate just like saying the same things every week and just like, Hey, how you doing? It really drives me crazy anyway, life as a broadcaster. So. We have a really good interview for you on a slightly different subject, which is cool.

But before I start talking about that, let me just remind you that if you caught last week's episode about bringing on a team, Jen, who I talked about in her course is available, but it closes this week. I think. So we'll put a link back in on the show notes, obviously, hopefully by the time you click it, it'll still be open, but it does close this week, I think.

Okay. So this week I'm interviewing the lovely Dean of Berman and Dina is a PR specialist. So. This is really interesting, cause we don't talk about PR very much and it kind of got me a bit excited in terms of like, actually, what if, what if I could get some PR what if I could get involved? And we had a really good conversation about it, about the stuff that kind of holds us back, why we wouldn't do it, why we get nervous?

Why, you know what, if we think we're terrible writers, how do we even go about it? And demon talks us all through that process in terms of. Just trying to get yourself out there, trying to get some quick wins, getting in like places and getting some publicity for your business. So Dina is a journalist turned PR strategist who works with entrepreneurs who struggled to take their business to the next level.

She helps them do their own PR. So she doesn't do PR for people anymore, but she helps them do their own PR. Leverage their media so they can share their story and help more people while gaining more followers, raising their prices and making more sales. You know, the thing about PR is like when you CPR and you see someone being featured, you can't help, but think.

They're really credible. So obviously depending on where they're being featured is a big thing. But for me, if I see someone being featured in Forbes, I'm like, why is this big deal? Like that is that's huge. So she worked as a publicist for. Many seven figure businesses and has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs learn how to do their own PR through her PA no too many PS PR power costs and PR masterminds.

She's also been featured as a PR expert. Here we go. In Forbes, entrepreneur Huffington post the guardian BBC radio amongst others. So she talks today about looking at doing. PR for your business, how it can work, even if you are a solo preneur, how you can get started. So I think this is going to be a great one for everyone.

Just to kind of like open your mind to like, Hmm. Maybe I might try that. So without further ado, here's one. I'm really excited today to welcome to the podcast. Dina, Berman, Dina, how are you?

Dina: I'm doing well. Thanks. I'm excited to be

Teresa: here. Good. I'm glad I'm excited to have you here and talk about the subject.

But before we get started with what we're going to talk about, I started the podcast into the same way as I always do, which I'm sure is does anything for my listeners, but how does who you are and how you got to do what you're doing today?

Dina: Yeah. So I'm Dana and I'm a PR strategist. I work with entrepreneurs to teach them how to do that PR so that they can get beaches in the press and how to leverage that media coverage to really grow their business.

So my background is in journalism. I started out as a journalist and I did that for about 10 years and I was working as a commissioning editor at a national newspaper supplement. And then I was freelance. Writing for lots of different publications and nice for most of their kind of, um, National UK newspapers, lots of magazines.

And I started my business. Initially. It was a side hustle I wanted to, uh, diversify. So I started doing PR and copywriting. Um, and then it was around 2015 and I'd had my oldest child and I kind of came back to work and I just. Kind of renewed sense of purpose. And I decided that where my passion really lay was actually teaching others how to do their own PR.

And so I have worked as a publicist myself as well. I've worked with a lot of, kind of, um, seven, um, emotive seven figure business owners to do their PR for them. But my passion is really in helping entrepreneurs learn how to do their own PR and to do it in a way that really positively impacts them and their business. Yeah,

Teresa: love it. Love it. So I was just saying before we got on that, I don't think we've had anybody talking about PR, which is interesting. Like obviously I come from old school marketing degree, worked in marketing all my life. Uh, marketing and PR were two very separate parts of a business weren't they just because they are two very different things and I found I'd be interested in see what you think that.

The world has moved on and marketing has changed and social media came and digital marketing that PR and marketing seem to become a lot closer in terms of where they're sat in a business.

Dina: Yes, definitely. I think like PR and marketing works so well together. So if you're someone who's like posting a lot on social media, then once you start doing PR it gives you content to share.

And like you, you have like this extra content that you can share on social media. But equally when you're pitching to different places, if you can say, you know, you've got an Instagram following or something like that, then that's really helpful when you're pitching. So I think they both feed into each other really well. Yeah.

Teresa: Yeah. I'm on, I'm really excited about this conversation because I, I do think that business owners. And solo business owners, think for one second that they can do PR I think that they think, and possibly I do as well, but either that you've got to have a PR agency helping you, or if you're not big and have a big story, then people aren't interested.

Dina: Yeah. Yeah. It's literally like, those are that sort of objections that I hear, like so often. Um, so, so many people will be like, I just want to outsource it all to a PR agency. And I get that because we're all so busy, like doing a million things, but honestly like a decent PR agency is usually going to be about five to 10K per month.

And if you're signing up for like a year long retainer, like that's a big expense, but not only that, when you get to the end of that year, you don't have any knowledge of how to do it yourself. So you either have to like sign up for another retainer or you're kind of left floundering. And so I have clients where even if they know that ultimately at a certain point, they want to outsource it.

It just makes it. So much sense for them to learn how to do it fast, just so they have that understanding of how it works and, you know, to be able to, uh, get started with PR yourself, you don't need to be super well-known or have a big following. And you honestly don't. You know, I've worked with entrepreneurs who are generally sole traders and, you know, across a whole different range of industries and you can get PR in so many different ways.

There are so many different major opportunities out there and you don't have to be, you know, you can get featured as an expert. You don't need to be. The leading expert, the topics like, cause people think, but you know, there's someone else doing what I do and they're more experienced, but actually like a journalist, this is the thing.

Journalists need experts to quote, journalists, need people to share their stories. They need case studies. They need content. And especially I think, because I've come from that, Dennis, but I know what it's like, like when you're on a tight deadline and yeah. Oh, my God. I need to speak to a relationship expert.

If only I had the relationship, I mean, I had like a marketing expert. You could like give me these clothes. You are actually helping a journalist out when you get in touch with them. And you're like, I can share tips with your readers on this, or I can share my story about this. Um, it's, it's helpful to them.

They, they need, you know, business owners that can, that can genuinely help. And I think. I don't know about you, but like so many people I speak to, they feel kind of funny about calling themselves an expert. I think that's something for female entrepreneurs. It's like a bit of imposter syndrome and actually like we're experts.

We know our staff, um, most of us have spent like, you know, we, we might have trained or we've spent years doing what we're doing. And like what, what experts, especially for journalists that don't know our subjects. And I

Teresa: think you're right. You said it before and I've read it in a book. Uh, did he still feel Thomas said it in one of her books?

We're not, we're not professing to be the only, and most expert voice. All we're doing is putting our, take our thoughts, our experience and knowledge into the group of conversation. We're not stating that we are right, and everyone else is wrong or because someone else has said something similar, it means we can't say it, but you're right.

And also you said something else that was really important there that we would often look at contacting anybody about us as a, uh, we're bothering them without necessarily thinking no, we're actually helping them actually providing a service and making that job in their life a little bit easier. And in my limited experience of PR, so obviously when I started my agency and having worked in lots of other models, Places where we did PR the truth of the matter was when we did PR we were helping the Mac because it was like, great.

Is that a great story we can use? I can just fill that space done. Brilliant. Yeah. Are you a, and for me, obviously, we worked with, we had a PR guy in the team who had really good relationships and they knew him and trusted him and knew that when he put a story in that it was worth doing and the same way he would say, I'm not gonna put it a story forward because it's not strong enough.

And if we start putting terrible stuff forward, then never going to post my stuff. So. So, yeah, I think thinking as it, as it from a, a helping point of view and you assisting them is so much nicer. And if that gives you the confidence, then that's the way you need to think about.

Dina: Wow. Yeah. I think it is literally, it's like a mindset shift of thinking, like going from thinking, oh my God, I'm going to be like bugging this Plaza and it's going to feel so awkward and I'm going to be like, Hey, write about me.

And if you literally come at it from it. Yeah. How can I help the Geminis out and also like thinking about the audience, like what's going to be really valuable for them. Like you could share like a really inspiring personal story and people are literally going to read that and feel motivated, inspired, or you're going to share like some really great tips and advice, and it's genuinely going to help the people that are reading or listening, whatever it is.

So I think it's, it starts with that kind of mindset shift. Yeah.

Teresa: Let's get back to basics a little bit. Let's talk about why first off, like I don't, I'm fairly sure I know the answer to this, but let's, let's have a chat about why would they even consider PR in the first place?

Dina: So I think that are so many benefits to PR and I.

Obviously I'm like evangelical, but PR I think all business owners should be doing. Yeah. But I think that you get something from PR that you don't necessarily get from other types of marketing. So I think it is really, really powerful for expert positioning. Um, and one of the reasons for that is when you get featured in a publication it's third party movement.

So you are having that association. Say you get featured in Forbes. So many of my clients like adjust. They just love to be featured in blogs and I've had lots of clients speak to them. Bob's, it's one of those places that comes up and it's such a recognizable brand. And so just by being associated with someone like Forbes or entrepreneur or business insider, Big recognizable names.

That's the party endorsement. It's like these publications are endorsing you and that's really, really powerful. So even just, you know, we talk about having like the, as seen in logos and it's literally the, the strip of logo is kind of on your website. It says as CNN, but that in itself is really, really powerful.

Expert positioning for you. It's a credibility boost because these publications are very credible. They're well-known they're well-recognized they're well-respected. Being associated with some of these publications can be really powerful for your expert positioning for positioning you as an authority in your field for boosting your credibility.

So that's one thing that you, you don't necessarily get like from other types of marketing. The other thing I love about PR is that it sticks around. So when you have an art school that comes out, that's online. It's there for people to find months, even years later. And I've had people get in touch with me where they found like something I wrote on like Huffington posts, like years ago, because they were searching for a particular topic and it came up and you get that kind of evergreen aspect to PR again that you don't necessarily get with.

Say, I dunno, like Twitter, where. So quick, I feel like electricity, just music quickly, or a lot of social media, it kind of hangs around for a couple of days. And then, you know, it's onto the next thing. And with PR is that for a long time for people to find, I think the other thing about PR the way that it works in terms of.

You know, being able to kind of grow your business, you can use it obviously to get in front of a new audience. So you have places like any of the sort of, you know, national newspapers, like I think the daily mail. That's circulation, something like a million readers per day. And then online is just crazy.

It's I need to check what the most recent figures it's in the mid, like tens of millions. I think it was like 52 million unique visitors a day because it's global as well. It's like big in America. It's big in Austria. So when you're looking at the numbers of people that you're guessing in front of, or somewhere like business insider, they have, I think it's 60 million unique visitors.

It's just like crazy numbers. So it's amazing for getting in front of a new audience and obviously like you, you want to be aligned. So you want to think what are the...