BBF096: How to Generate Publicity for Your Business with Sue Papadoulis

Although Sue has made a career out of her own PR agency, she was kind enough to give us a whole load of tips about how you can get yourself great publicity without having to pay anyone else to do it. Sue spent her early career as a journalist, so she has a great understanding of what a business needs to do in order to persuade the media to cover their stories. What’s more, she managed to get her own business featured on the Australian TV show ‘A Current Affair’ which gave her 40,000 AUD of business within a week. Sue pulled this off long before she was a PR professional, so it is well worth listening to her story of how a small business became national news after just half-an-hour of work.

Sue’s top tips:

** Don’t worry about not being ‘ready’. Publicise your company as much as you can, wherever you are in your evolution.

** Identify what’s interesting to the media and lead with that in your PR efforts. This is not the same thing as just telling the media about what you do.

** Forget about gimmicks and freebies. Remember that most journalists value their integrity, so the best way to butter them up is by fully understanding what their audience wants to read, see or hear.

** When writing a press release, think of the problems that you solve for your customers, and emphasise this in your output.

** Journalists and their audience tend to be interested in what you know about, not necessarily what you do.

** Don’t be offended if the media isn’t interested in what you send them. In as polite and constructive a way as possible, try and find out why they weren’t interested. From that you may well be able to find a better angle.

  In this episode of Business Brain Food you will learn:

** When to time the release

** How to get inside the heads of journalists

** How to set a release plan

** How to find the contacts

** The amount of contacts you need

** The merits of using social media V personal email messages

** How to write a press release

  Resources mentioned in this episode:

** Sue’s “How To” publicity seminars: http://www.publicityforprofit.com.au

** ActionCOACH Business Diplomas: email [e-mail]

** Sponsor the show: [e-mail], put in subject line “interested in sponsoring BBF”

** Ben’s Daily Business Tips podcast: http://www.dbtpodcast.com

** Facebook: facebook.com/businessbrainfood

** Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/businessbrainfood

** Twitter: https://twitter.com/bfewtrell

** ActionCOACH: http://actioncoachanz.com/itunes

** ActionCOACH: http://actioncoachanz.com/stitcher

  The message from this is “get over your fear”. It’s highly likely that any business is doing something that is newsworthy, so don’t be shy about shouting about it. The key is to understand who to shout about it to. Also, if you are enjoying these Business Brain Food podcasts, then make sure to share them via social media sites or email the links to family and friends. A lot of time and effort goes into producing each of these podcasts with the goal in mind of the more people we can inspire about business the better. You can help us do just that! Until next time, have a profitable day. Cheers, Ben Fewtrell [phone]