As entrepreneurs, our businesses must be visible to the right audiences to actually make sales. While there are infinite ways to accomplish that, timing is always key. So when is the right time to run a press release and how should it work? Mickie Kennedy has been doing it for over 20 years and shares a ton of valuable insights to help you on your decision-making journey in this episode.
More About Mickie Kennedy
Mickie Kennedy is the Founder and President of eReleases, the small business leader for press release distribution, now celebrating 22 years in business. He is an expert at helping small businesses increase their visibility and credibility and he’s here today to share some valuable insights.
Mickie Kennedy is an expert at helping small businesses, authors, and startups increase their visibility and credibility. 22 years ago, Mickie founded eReleases after realizing that small businesses desperately need a press release service they can afford. While working in PR.
Mickie came face to face with customers that wanted to use press releases due to their effectiveness at bringing in business, but could not afford to pay the extremely high startup fees that most agencies charged. Mickie saw an opportunity to help — and eReleases was born. Mickie created eReleases to give small businesses access to the media and to a national newswire – all with a personal touch.
eReleases has grown since then and even works with big names now, but the spirit of Mickie’s original intent has not changed. eReleases delivers personal service and exceptional value to every customer, with every press release, at every price point.
You can learn more about eReleases at their website here
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Transcription of Interview
Adam G. Force 0:03
Welcome to the Change Creator podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn how to live their truth, get rich and make a massive difference in the world. I’m your host, Adam forest co founder, Change Creator and co creator of the captivate method. Each week we talk to experts about leadership, digital marketing and sales strategies that you can implement in your business and like to go big, visit us at Change Creator comm forward slash go big to grab awesome resources that will help drive your business forward. Hey, what’s up, everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast, this is your host, Adam force. So we have a really great conversation today. And you know, we usually don’t talk about this topic much. So I’m excited to bring on Mickey Kennedy. He’s been doing, you know, stuff in the space of public relations. So press releases and things like that, for over 20 years. He found it he releases 22 years ago, after realizing that a lot of the small businesses who need more visibility, you know, they couldn’t afford it. So he has a service that’s more affordable. And we’re going to talk about how it works and why it works. And when’s the right time to lean into something like this, because remember, timing is important. We don’t just do things randomly. So this could be a really great conversation. And there could be good opportunity here, depending on where you are in your business. For press release work for visibility. So we’ll talk about the ins and outs, the ups and downs and all that good stuff with Mickey. If you missed the last interview, it was with Rita sever, I think I’m pronouncing that last name, right. Um, you know, she is in the HR and culture development space, and we really dug into a conversation around culture. And the interesting thing is that one, like Peter Drucker said, culture eats strategy for breakfast, it’s so important to the business. And it’s a big part of the branding process that we go through with our clients when we work with people to really start identifying key aspects of what that culture looks like. So you know, typically, it traditionally it was in the office, what’s the culture? How do we, how do we operate as a team and all that kind of stuff. But now more entrepreneurs are virtual, they’re working with virtual assistants and not hiring people like full time and stuff like that. So how does culture play a role behind your brand in that new dynamic, and we get into that conversation there as well. So if you missed it, definitely a very important and worthy conversation to go back and check out when you get a chance. So we actually just had some really exciting news. We’re doing work with one Ashoka fellow. She’s an award winning Ashoka fellow I’m excited about her project called mini chess, it’s, it’s this new innovative of like, educational services that they provide. And this is been really doing a lot of great work in South Africa, supporting children with life skills they need beyond school, and we’re going to be helping her break into the US market. So just a really cool project I’m excited about and we have one spot left, we just brought on to other people and we only work with three and four people max per month just because of bandwidth and things like that. And it’s a very specialized and, and you know, personalized service, right? You know, so when we work with you on your branding and developing you know, what I call webs web real estate, these are pages, I hate the idea of traditional websites because there’s kind of this stigma, I don’t care if you’re on clickfunnels that’s rented property versus if you’re on your own website, which is property that you own it’s all very valuable real estate and creates visibility in the marketplace for you so it’s up to you to use it wisely to get sales conversions, build trust relationships, all those things and that’s what we do. We have one spot left in the brand studio okay. So we have one spot left we just brought on another life coach and actually another e commerce shop which I’m excited about because it’s out in India and we’re gonna be doing some really cool stuff there as well. So if you’re interested and you feel the timing is right if you’re not sure if the timing is right we have some articles I wrote on Change Creator calm you could check out about when’s the right time to invest in these types of things. You know, I turned down people all the time because if the timings not right or they’re not a good fit, I’m gonna let you know right because this is not I’m not into just doing it for the sake of doing it we want to get results and I’m going to be straightforward about is this the right time for you to even be taking these steps. So if you are interested Just go to Change Creator comm you’ll find our services and you can just book a strategy call you will talk directly with me and we will diagnose your business situation and see if it makes sense right to work together. Alright. Alright guys. I think that’s it for now. We had a lot a lot of good stuff going out. We did the rebrand on Change Creator. So
Adam G. Force 4:58
if you haven’t just refund to Go check it out, see what the latest stuff is. We also have our story mastery workshop where I did 330 minute videos. And there’s tons of cool bonuses in there that will help you like our 10 commandments of storytelling. Really good stuff to help you on your journey. Alright, let’s dive into this conversation with Mickey and see what he has to say. Okay, show me the heat. On Hey, Mickey, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show how you doing today, buddy? I’m doing great. How are you? I’m doing well. I’m doing well. I’m excited to talk about this aspect of business that you specialize in. So how did you get involved in this type of work?
Mickie Kennedy 5:42
From 20, some years ago, I was working for a telecom startup. And we were doing press releases via fax. And we started to get allied journalist calling us and saying could we just email the release over because we worked with a lot of traffic numbers and statistics and things like that. So that’s when the light bulb went off and just said, you know, emailing press releases is a very, you know, much more effective way than faxing. And so I mentioned it to my boss. And he said, that’s a great business idea, you should work on it. So I spent about a year reaching out to journalists before I launched. And when I did launch, I had about 10,000 journalists who are receiving press releases from us via email. That’s pretty sweet.
Adam G. Force 6:21
Nice. Nice. And I’m curious. So when you started your business? I just heard it did you sounds like you already had a roster of people to reach out to and how did you start getting clients?
Mickie Kennedy 6:35
I just started with reaching out to journalist just doing research on the internet, which was very new, and all the information was there. So I just networks that way. When it came to getting clients, that was the hard part. There wasn’t, there wasn’t advertising at the point, you know, not traditional, you know, pay per click advertising or search engine, advertising or anything like that. And so I just was on forums and participating. And people got to know me that way. But it wasn’t a lot of clients. And then at one point, Overture, or goto.com, launched with the pay per click model. And that was really a game changer because I could actually direct people who were in the buying mode directly to my website. And you know, the rest is history.
Adam G. Force 7:24
Yeah, I mean, those initial days of figuring out like, how to get consistent clients is it’s never easy for anybody. I think that’s a growth pain that everybody kind of goes through. And it’s and you use what you have right back then, when you started. It’s it’s forums, and where are people hanging out? Where do we go? Today? It could be Facebook groups, or LinkedIn and all that different stuff. But I’m curious, because did it help you? As you were learning, like, Okay, I’m getting some clients, maybe it took some time, you said people had to get to know you a little bit and stuff like that. We’re able to build the business up to an extent with those types of organic efforts, and then, you know, get into more paid marketing.
Mickie Kennedy 8:07
Yeah, definitely, I definitely was able to, you know, make a living off of organic. And, you know, what I fostered through forums and things like that, which were really popular at the time. But, you know, the pay the pay traffic definitely was a game changer, because it was sort of like just opening up the fire hydrant, and, and being able to really, you know, direct customers.
Adam G. Force 8:33
I’m curious, though, because I’m always, you know, thinking kind of picking people’s brains who just run businesses in general, on their strategies, because, you know, we coach entrepreneurs, and I see a lot of similarities in what’s going on in their worlds. And I’m curious, though, the organic efforts, meaning you had to say certain things to get people on board, you had to let them know about what you do and how it works. And all these things like so these are your messages and like what your your marketing messages in a sense? Do you think that, getting good at that and getting the organic clientele in the beginning to kind of prove out what you’re doing make a living, that it helps the success of your paid marketing?
Mickie Kennedy 9:15
I think it did. I think it sort of got into the minds of customers so that you could better speak to them on your landing pages on your website. That was important. And you really wouldn’t know what’s important to someone until you had conversations with several and figure out where they are in the Bryant buying process. And how to speak to them at those different levels.
Adam G. Force 9:35
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think that makes sense. I always tell people, my community to make at least like five, I like to say 10 grand a month organically if you can, and then get into the paid ads. I see. What I’ve seen a lot of times is people jump into paid ads, like, Oh, that’s my fast track. But then they’re trying to figure out the messaging and marketing and they’re paying for it. And if they don’t do it, they’re gonna have a big budget. They just burn their cash. Right?
Mickie Kennedy 9:57
Right. I mean, you have to look at your funnel. And your conversion rates? And can you tweak it for organic traffic? And then we have it in a sweet spot, it’s so much easier to do the pay per click.
Adam G. Force 10:09
Yeah, that makes sense. Cool. Cool. Now tell me, what kind of clients are you working with these days,
Mickie Kennedy 10:16
we work with a lot of startups and small businesses. A lot of the people that appear on Shark Tank use us, the producers recommend us the to do issue or their segment airs. And we also work with authors and, you know, larger companies, but most of them are small businesses, Mom and Pop solopreneurs. You know, it sort of runs the gamut. I like startups, because they seem to have a really strong expectation of, you know, what PR can do. And that, you know, it generally may not happen with one press release, but you’re going to do a PR campaign of four to six releases, and get a feel for what works and what doesn’t work. So, you know, they’re more grounded about that. And also, I like startups, because many of them, because they’re a startup have really addressed what what they’re doing that’s unique. And, you know, that translates to a higher caliber of newsworthiness when you’re issuing a press release.
Adam G. Force 11:15
Well, the keyword news worthiness. Let’s Let’s level set for people’s mindsets right now, what is the right time because you say you’re working with startups, so I’m a startup, I have a new product, maybe I got proof of concept. I’m helping people out. I’ve been in business while making money. When’s the right time to do a press release? And, and what makes it newsworthy? It’s not just Hey, we have this new product, like, how do we wrap up the idea to make money you can join? Right.
Mickie Kennedy 11:52
So I would say the right time is when you have something newsworthy to share. It could be the launch of your company, it could be a new product. You know, it rarely is a new hire. It rarely is a tweak to your product offering, like version 2.7 or things like that. But you know, there’s also other opportunities to be a little more strategic. We work with clients who aren’t doing anything newsworthy. And they’re in a business that really nothing much is happening. We got a local auto repair shop in Pennsylvania that was looking to get auto trade publications to link to its new website. And we did a survey of other auto repair shops. We had them reach out to an independent association of auto repair centers to send the survey to their members and got the CO brand that in the press release with that organization. And, you know, the real magic of it was they asked the right questions, they asked a couple of oddball questions which I always recommend. And in their case, it was what’s the strangest thing a customer’s left in their car for repair. And it was just the open field. And we they just listed the strangest things that people have left in a car. And it went viral. Like 10 Auto trade publications picked it up, several newspapers picked it up, including their local newspaper. And it did very well. And you know, that’s someone who I think the newsworthiness of them as a auto repair shop is low. But by manufacturing content, and, you know, authoring a survey or study, were was able to get them to be newsworthy, and those are the types of types of strategic things that I recommend people look at. And, you know, what is it that you could be doing that would be newsworthy and worth sharing?
Adam G. Force 13:45
Okay. And, and I like that it sounds like you coach people a little bit on the process to get the most out of like, their efforts, right? We do the oddball question, what’s that?
Mickie Kennedy 13:58
We do? I mean, I love working with businesses and trying to figure out what will work and what won’t work. You know, we had a carpet company in New Jersey that wanted to do PR, and I tried to talk them out of it saying, I don’t think I don’t think a carpet company. You know, just a local carpet company is going to get any PR you don’t manufacture anything, you don’t do anything unique. And they said, Well, we have a PR budget this year. We’d love to spend it with you. Yeah, I took their money. And five months in, we had another call where we were trying to figure out what we could talk about because what we were doing wasn’t working. And what I asked them was, you know, what’s their biggest hang up? What is their biggest enemy, and he immediately said, the big box home improvement stores and they just went down a litany of why they’re so bad for the carpet industry, and how local carpet companies have to market against them. And so I said that’s the press release. So we did a press release. We sent it out. It talks about their marketing problems and how they have to market against the Home Depot and Lowe’s of the world. And it got picked up in almost every floor trade publication, there were more than I realized that were even out there. And they loved it because nobody was talking about marketing. And it was a huge blind spot. But when the trade publications saw it, they immediately said, this is something our audience would be receptive to when they were right. We continue to do marketing press releases after that. And we didn’t get as much as that first one. But you know, all together, I think we ended up getting like over 20, to 30 clips from these trade publications. And what that company did that was very smart is they put them in a big binder, a book, they call it the brag book. And whenever they went to a person’s house, to give them a quote, they would go through it with them. And they started converting 20% more of those calls, they said that, you know, you’re going to get quotes from other people. But you know, I’m just letting you know that we give a superior pad, our laborers are salaried, they’ve worked with us, they know how to install a carpet, so you’re not going to have to come back in six months to re stretch it or things like that, that you would often encounter with some of the cheaper services. And, you know, they said they’d always said that, but when they said that, following showing them, you know, dozens of clips, that there was a credibility thing that in some implied endorsement that happened, that people believe them more, and they just converted more sales.
Adam G. Force 16:31
I love that. Yeah, I mean, it kind of warms them up gets them feeling a little more confident in the company. So there’s definitely looks like you had a payoff. And in the end for the efforts that went out there. And I do, I can see that now to saying, making the argument how the big stores are kind of, you know, putting the little guys in the, in the shadows a bit, I could see why that would get picked up as like a conversational piece, right? So do you feel like you have a pretty good sense, like when you’re working with somebody like that, that’s going to be something that that’s going to be interesting or not? And it sounds like you’re a straight shooter, like, you’re going to tell someone like we don’t, this isn’t going to be good. Right?
Mickie Kennedy 17:10
Yeah, I, you know, we don’t have any sales people, we have no commissions, if we feel we’re a good fit. We’d love to work with people. But sometimes, you know, you know, right off the bat, that it’s not a good press release, or it’s not going to work very well. But that being said, we still continue to get a lot of what I call, you know, mediocre or mid tier type press releases that aren’t just shout outs, right? Yeah, they’re not being very strategic. I put together a course last year for my customers to try and teach them how to be more strategic and out of like 2500 customers, and numerous emails, I’ve gotten only gotten like 400 of them to watch this one hour video training. That’s completely free. But I know it’d be a game changer for him. And it’s just one of those things that it’s going to be my Achilles heel to get my customers to actually watch that and learn from it and start doing more strategic press releases.
Adam G. Force 18:04
How long have you had that course now?
Unknown Speaker 18:06
I launched it in January of this year.
Adam G. Force 18:10
Oh, so that’s, I mean, that’s not so bad. I mean, it sounds like 400 people through it, right? It’s only been since January. Sorry. This is what happens with guys when you work out of the house and you got a sick kid. So because that, you know, we’ve run courses and and sounds like yours is free, which makes it a little easier. But still getting people through it gives you a lot of data, which is pretty valuable. And so right now you have so for people listening, you have a course and it’s free for them to go through and get acclimated with your process, basically.
Mickie Kennedy 18:44
Right. Yeah, it’s that he releases comm forward slash plan PL en and it’s free video training is less than an hour. And I think anybody who watches that will get lots of strategic ideas that anybody can implement, whether you’re a solo company or an author or a startup, it’s it’s really stuff that’s very elemental, like a, you know, doing a survey or study. But it’s something that you know, anybody with a little bit of forethought and creativity can put together for for themselves and get out there and do more strategic press releases.
Adam G. Force 19:22
Yeah, I mean, and I mean, if you’re working with startups and things like that, it sounds like you must be accessible price wise for people. You know, because I know like, we’ve done press releases before when we had like, famous people on our magazine, and we want to make a big deal like Tony Robbins and stuff like that. And it gets expensive. Right? Yeah. 1000s It costs, you know,
Mickie Kennedy 19:42
yeah. Several years ago PR Newswire reached out to me and said, Hey, you should also send your press releases through us for your customers. And I was like, well, we charge two to $400 and I know that a national release through you is $1,000. Yeah. We we went back and forth. And one of the things that I discovered is they have an editorial team that works overnight, but they’re not very busy, they have to be there because there might be breaking news or reach Asia, you know, global markets and stuff like that. And so what we ended up doing was taking our releases and start by default, scheduling them for next business day, so that they can work on them overnight. And it doesn’t cost the labor, that we were able to work it out with them, so that all of our releases do go out nationally over PR Newswire, and you’re not paying $1,000 for a release is closer to the two to four hours.
Adam G. Force 20:38
That’s pretty sweet. I mean, that’s a pretty big deal. I feel like
Mickie Kennedy 20:41
it’s a good value. And if you have a newsworthy, or strategic press release, being on the wire can really open things up. We had a company, an organization last year, that was helping to address restaurants that were closed during the pandemic and helped to provide aid to them by selling gift certificates online dining bond initiative. And, you know, there was a lot of negative news out there. So here was something positive, it did phenomenally well. Over 150 publications picked it up the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, you know, law, all your food, trade publications, picked it up and link to it. And you know, just one press release generate millions of dollars in revenue for for restaurants. And that’s what leverage a PR can potentially do. That might be an extreme example. But I always challenge someone to say, hey, create a really great Google Ads campaign that will turn $400 into several million dollars. You can’t do it.
Adam G. Force 21:42
Yeah, right. But you can with PR. Yeah. Let’s pause for a minute here. Sorry, Nikki. That’s right, buddy. I can’t do this now. We’re almost there.
Mickie Kennedy 21:57
All right. I mean, when I first started my business, I had two kids, and two young toddlers at the time. And it was just part of, you know, the entrepreneur experience. And I made myself so accessible to customers, I would answer the phone in the middle of the night, and it’d be somebody in the UK. And I just, every dollar mattered so much to the business. And it was just the nature of being an entrepreneur, that you have to roll with it. And your customers are either gonna roll with it, or they’re not the right fit for you.
Adam G. Force 22:30
That’s pretty much what I’m learning because, you know, he’s only 14 months, and I’ve, we bought a new house, we had him and I’m running a business and I’m just like, oh my god, it’s like changed my whole world. Like how I have to function. The hours I can work like when I can work like, it’s it’s been a little bit wild. And then when he gets sick, it’s you know, I’m the guy that’s home now. So it’s like up the whole day, I gotta get babysitters that I can call. It makes it really hard. But all right, he’s calmed down so we can continue to talk. But I feel like, you know, because I’ve I’ve done press releases in the past, and I love hearing the success stories. And my, I always got so sensitive about like, is this going to get picked up? Is this like strategic enough? Is it newsworthy enough? And what I’m thinking about now, just as it lets us, really, I’ll use something recent that we’re doing, so I’ve kind of started doing a rebrand for us. And as we do that, we have a lot that’s been going on and some of the things that we’re changing. I mean, so when you work with a startup, and they’re doing some thing, interesting. I mean, how do you define newsworthy? Like, how do you like, what are the things you look forward to making news, right? Because to me, Hey, we got to rebrand we got these really cool services, okay, no one cares. You know, like, or if you’re partnering, maybe there’s a big acquisition or partnership. Okay, that gets more interesting. I could see why big box store kind of, oh, going after the little guy like, that’s the story. So I kind of want to get a feel for that. And then my second part to that thought is, if I was doing something, I would want to coordinate it. So when I’m running a Facebook campaign, I also have the press release going out. So if people see that, then they’re on Facebook, and it starts giving this Omni presence, if you will. Sure.
Mickie Kennedy 24:25
Yeah, so I always say the biggest game changer is to not think of what you want to market or announce, but sort of think about the reader and the journalist who gets your press releases acting as a gatekeeper. And he’s deciding what his readers wants to hear about and what they will find fascinating. So if you design your announcement in a way that would be interesting and fascinating for readers, your chance of getting Media pickup is much more successful of so many people approach it in what’s in it for me, and you know, we want to announce this and get it out there. But they don’t think about what’s in it for the reader, and why this would be better suited as content as opposed to just being advertising.
Adam G. Force 25:18
Yeah, that makes sense. So if I was the journalists who like I like the word gatekeeper, because they definitely are. They’re like, well, I’m gonna put this out to all these people. My job is to create engaging content for this publication. So Do people really do something where it’s almost like if you had a holiday sale? Or hey, where you have this new service and the first 100 people 50% off? Like, do those types of things work?
Mickie Kennedy 25:44
They don’t? Those are kids. And so this is almost like an advertisement when you were talking about them. And so the things that are more transparently advertising generally don’t do very well. What does well is? Like, you have to Kickstarters the indie go Go’s, those type of things do really well. Because often, the journalist by exposing it seems like they’re curating. Here’s a discovery that I found. Journalists love small businesses, micro businesses, they love little promotions, you know, the type of things that are that are, that are just, you know, little things that could be curated. Because it gives this the readers a sense of all this is something that not a lot of people know about. And now I’m being exposed to it, and it seems really cool.
Adam G. Force 26:36
Oh, I like that. So they like the feeling of being like, Hey, I found this little diamond in the rough cuz they’re not blowing up yet. But they do some really great stuff. And you should check it out, or, yeah, that’s an interesting angle. That’s interesting. So I’m thinking of all the clients that we’ve had and the things that they’re doing. And you know, because I’m always my, my hesitation is always well, when is the right time? What makes it newsworthy? It’s, it’s those two things. And I’m a big believer in timing. I think all throughout, you know, just the history, just in nature, there’s things happen based on the right time. Right, right. And so it’s really no different in our business. And like, before we started this, I said, you can do the right things at the wrong time, which I’ve done plenty of that. So finding out well, what is the right time, and it sounds like if they reach out one, you have the course they could check out, which will get them acclimated to some of these concepts, but to if they decide to move forward, you will kind of provide some guidance and strategic input to get the most because obviously, you want happy customers,
Mickie Kennedy 27:38
right? Yeah, all my staff are editors. And if whether you call in or chat online, you’re just speaking to an editor who can walk you through the process, explain things to you, they’re willing to review your press release, I do say allow us a full business day to get back to you with comments and things like that. But we’re a resource. We want small businesses to succeed and take advantage of the fact that, you know, you get a lot of potential by going through a service like ours, because you get both the email distribution, and the PR Newswire distribution, which is phenomenal. But we don’t want you to squander that opportunity with something that’s probably not going to get picked up.
Adam G. Force 28:17
Right. Right. Yeah, that’s the key. That’s the key. I love it. So and I guess, how do people usually do one offs? Or is it better to do like a strategic series of press releases,
Mickie Kennedy 28:29
right. So it’s just like advertising, you would never tell anybody to, you know, cut an ad on and get one click. And then based on the outcome of the that campaign, and based on one click, but a lot of people will do one, press release and assume that press releases just won’t work for them, or he releases didn’t work for them, or something like that. And that’s frustrating, because you know, as a PR person, I know that you really have to do a PR campaign of four to six releases to see if PR really will work for you. And so many people approach it with the lottery ticket approach of just one press release. Right. And often, those are the types of releases that are very strategic to begin with. So the likelihood of that happening is poor. But you know, the people that remain committed to it, who do a series of releases, learn from each experience, what worked, what didn’t work. Sometimes when stuff works, you can replicate it, like we did with this carpet company, we just continued to do marketing, related press releases and talking about marketing as a local carpet company that worked very well on an ongoing basis. Sometimes we’ll do a press release that works. And then we try to recapture the lightning in a bottle and we just can’t, but it’s always great when you can. And I think that you know, in the case of detecting an industry blind spot and seizing it, you can you can get some more mileage out of that because it’s still a topic that is being ignored or has traditionally been ignored. And now you’re able to get it out there.
Adam G. Force 29:59
But I guess that My question is if you’re doing a series and let’s say you’re testing four or five releases, is it the same message? Are you trying different,
Mickie Kennedy 30:07
never, never use the same message. In the case of my course, I go through like eight strategies, I would always advise someone to do a different strategy for each press release, and get a feel for Did you get responses from some, sometimes you’ll get responses from journalists who ask questions, but they never write the article. But that is intelligence, you can use that there was something about this message that did resonate with a few journalists, it didn’t push them over the fence, but you know, it got them intrigued. And maybe we could, you know, do a related release, that would be a little bit more strategic or a little more interesting. And, you know, take what you can learn through the process and just continue to work it. And what I find is that most people who are open to trying strategic press releases do have success. And by success, we’re talking about original articles that were written about them, whether it’s a newspapers, trade publications, magazines, you know, blogs, you know, lots of different ways to get media attention out there. We have success with fashion, press releases, where people get tagged, and Instagram. And to me, I’m like, I don’t see the value in that preferred clients. They’re like, Oh, my God, this, this, this influencer, you know, tweeted after the announcement, and we got like, so much interest on this product and service. So, you know, the, the, you know, what a media outlet is, is evolving and changing. I saw it years ago with blogs, I’m seeing it now with social media. And the, you know, the news wires are very receptive to including these new spokes of influence out there and making sure that releases get to a really wide audience. And so, you know, the nature of how people consume contents changing and NPR and press releases are going right along with that interest
Adam G. Force 31:59
thing. Yeah. I mean, it seems like a really great addition to a visibility and marketing strategy. But I’m curious, you know, there’s a lot of different businesses today. It’s not just the traditional brick and mortars, it’s not just companies and things like that. It is a course creators, coaches, you know, different brands of that kind today. And is there relevancy for them in this space, and maybe the work that they’re doing? Like, I’m trying to get a sense of what that might look like, for them, I could see for e commerce, like different things that could be powerful for press release. But when I’m seeing more and more people are creating courses with their intellectual property and being coaches. Have you seen those types of businesses do this stuff
Mickie Kennedy 32:45
I have, and I’ve seen courses work really well, where someone sort of discusses the industry or the, you know, what, what their course solves, and pointing out numbers and statistics, journalists love numbers. So you don’t have to do a survey in this case, but you can take publicly available numbers, and compile it and put it together and talk about how, for example, you know, there’s, you know, 1000s of software engineer jobs that are just going unfilled in the US. I, I’d seen that statistic recently. And it said, and yet, there’s so many ways where you can get software education, that is free, or even at no cost, there’s, you know, and yet, people are spending 30,000 a year to go to college. And there are employers who don’t care if you have a degree, if you can code, and you can show that you can code and you can both perform. And so if you were to develop a course, or something for software engineers, and you mentioned some of those numbers and statistics, you know, behind it and pointing it out, I think that a journalist would say, hey, there’s a story here. And you would, you know, also would be plugging that that available course for people as one of the many solutions that are out there.
Adam G. Force 33:58
Yeah, I mean, it gives it a little wow factor, like look at all these people are finding jobs, but they’re paying for this education, yet you have this accessible resources that are free or little costs. And you’re kind of pointing out this, like, discovery almost, which makes it like, I guess, powerful for press releases. Like, whoa, that’s an interesting, you’re really connecting the dots for somebody, so then they can be the journalist. That’s like uncovering it. Right,
Mickie Kennedy 34:21
right. Absolutely. Yeah. To make journalists look like they’re really smart and great at identifying little hidden gems in the world. Yeah, I
Adam G. Force 34:31
mean, it’s, you’re, you’re really kind of leaning into what you should have, which is like a marketing narrative. That is the reason for what you’re doing anyway. Right? So if that’s powerful enough, then it’s, it’s, it’s worth talking about. So it’s, it’s basically kind of identifying the problem you’re solving and supporting it with statistics, right? Hmm, interesting. Awesome. We’ll make you I want to be respectful of your time and stuff like that. So this is great. Like I love this conversation. It’s I think it’s a part of the marketing chatter. That is commonly overlooked. So I’m excited to talk about it. And like I said, we’ve run some press releases and stuff like that with our magazine and things like, and I, you know, I forget which one we went to, I think it was market wire or something like that. Oh, my god, that was like a few $1,000 to do.
Mickie Kennedy 35:16
They’re now part of globe Newswire. There’s been a big consolidation in the industry over the past, I would say seven years or so. So there’s a lot fewer providers out there. It’s basically PR Newswire the oldest and largest news wire, business wire, and then globe Newswire and they absorbed market wire.
Adam G. Force 35:36
Interesting, okay. And let’s give people where they can find you and take your course again. And just like that, that information, if you can share that, okay,
Mickie Kennedy 35:44
so my website is he releases calm all my social medias there. And like I said, feel free to call or chat and speak to one of the editors there, the course that I have, it’s at EA releases comm forward slash plan PLN. And for now, it’s completely free. I’m trying to get my customers through it, feel free to walk through it is less than an hour. And I swear, you will have more strategic thoughts about PR and be able to come up with stuff that would run circles around many PR firms, because many of the releases that we get that are so mediocre and not deep thought and creative and strategic come from PR firms. It’s unsettling how many of these safe releases come out of people who should know better?
Adam G. Force 36:33
Yeah, yeah. Oh, and one last thing I kept forgetting to ask you is does your team let’s say I, here I am. Hey, Mickey Ellison, I want to do this press release, you’re gonna help me come up with a great idea. Do you have people that will also write it?
Mickie Kennedy 36:46
We do. We do have freelance writers that we put together depending on your industry and what segments you’re in. Okay, who can help craft a message that would hopefully resonate with the media?
Adam G. Force 36:58
Yeah, cuz I think it gives you a lot of people a lot of comfort one, they don’t have to go find their own writer who has to be press release, knowledgeable. And if that’s your thing, and you’re saying this writer knows how to do it according to what your standards that would make me feel more confident to feel good. I can get them to do that. Obviously, there would be a cost there and stuff but in the end, keeping it all together would be nice. Awesome. Mickey, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it and appreciate the work you’ve done. Thank you. It’s great to be here. Thanks for tuning into the Change Creator podcast. Visit us at Change creator.com forward slash go big to get access to free downloads and other great resources that will drive your business forward.
