Jules Brooke is the founder of Handle Your Own PR. She is an expert at helping business owners access the media, pitch their story and generate thousands of dollars worth of media coverage for free. Jules has helped people in product and service based businesses, in B2B and B2C based companies learn how to unlock one of the most potent marketing tools available to any business owner. And this episode she lays out a step by step plan to help you start winning free media for your business. If you want to know how to get your brand in front of thousands of prospective customers at no cost, this podcast is for you.

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Paul: How would you like to have your business regularly promoted on TV to have your expertise featured on the radio and have your talent and knowhow showcased in major newspapers and in the leading magazines. How would you like to have access to a constant stream of media coverage for your business. Showcasing your abilities and talents to thousands tens of thousands even hundreds of thousands of prospective buyers. And how would you like to be able to get it all without spending a cent.

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Paul: Well the good news is you can. My special guest today Jules Brooke from handle your own PR. Will share that once you understand how to pitch your story. You can unlock the door to potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free media coverage for your business. The fact is the media is hungry for stories and that journalists are desperately looking for good content to fill their publications and programs. So in this episode Jules shares with you a host of simple practical and proven strategies to help you unlock the door to accessing free media coverage for your business and shows you had tap into one of the most powerful yet underutilized marketing strategies available to any business owner today. So this is gonna be a full on episode with lots of great information to help you take your business to the next level. So before we introduce you to Jules let's cue the intro.

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Warwick: Welcome to the marketers club podcast. The show all about helping you work smarter earn more and accelerate your success. And now here's your host Paul McCarthy.

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So welcome to Episode 12 of the marketers club podcast. I am your host Paul McCarthy and I'm here to help you market your talent so you can earn what you're worth and ultimately make more of a difference in the world. Now many business owners have dismissed the idea of getting media coverage thinking that they don't have a story to tell but the reality is we all have a story and the ability to tap into the media is a really effective and powerful way for you to showcase your business out to the world to get exposure at a level that most people could never afford to do if they had to pay for it.

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Paul: So Jules is going to share with you a whole host of really powerful ways that you can start to tell your story as well as examples of companies and individuals that have taken advantage of the ability to promote what they do through the media and have rapid business growth as a result. So let's join Jules and share with you some ideas to help you start winning some free media publicity for your business. So hey Jules thanks for being on the show I appreciate you making the time.

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Jules: No problem at all I love being here I love working with people so no problem.

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Paul: We've known each other for a while now and in fact you did some work in one of our programs and and you've certainly shared the platform and educated our clients I was really keen when I was putting the podcast together to make sure that I reached out to you and did an episode with you because I know the value of the conversation we're going to have and the impact that it can have on on small business owners. But before we kind of dive into all the content why don't we just let people know a little bit about you and how you've arrived at running this is empire that you're building and teaching people how to win with media. But just tell us a little bit of the jewels Brooke story.

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Jules: Okay so I taught myself how to do PR. I fell into it a few years ago and had an agency specializing in small businesses and startups and then had sort of a light bulb moment around the time of the great financial crisis and decided that I would teach people and then really it's been a big journey for me ever since. So in 2017 in fact I launched it at your event. I launched a PR platform which has got thousands of media contacts on it people can build their media list and send their media release out and run their whole campaigns through the platform. And then since then I guess I've just been focusing on teaching people and doing lots of talks having done your speak your way to success course doing lots of talks to let people know about it. And now I run training courses I've got a virtual sort of downloadable video course that people can do at their own pace and I've also got a PR accelerator that is got a 95 percent success rate and I bring journalists in and people spend two days every three months with journalists and managed to get loads and loads of publicity for their businesses.

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Paul: Sounds fantastic. Well let's let's talk about this this whole area of publicity and kind of walk through the idea I guess the first question that I know many small business owners may have or thought they'll have is you know do I even have anything to say you know like have I got to a store is anything relevant that I could say that would get me in the media. So when people first approach you and they're confused I'm not sure whether they've got something. What's your advice to people in terms of whether their business is going to be newsworthy.

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Jules: Okay so I guess there's sort of there's two different kinds of PR you can do local PR which is if you've got a hairdressing business or something that's very locally oriented then you can do PR but you're limited by the PR that you can go to if you say you're talking local papers and sort of community radio. What I tend to focus on more is people that are trying to build a name maybe nationally or at least statewide in terms of does anyone have a story. Every single person out there has a story. Everyone. So there is nobody that can do PR because it's about learning. It's kind of about just learning what the media are looking for and what they're looking for is information that will help their readers.

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Jules: So nobody is interested that you've launched your new business but they're very interested in how your new business might be able to help them. So I guess the bit that I just work with people and I mean I've done it for everyone from a window washer and I was like we could be talking about the best ways to clean your window as the best times of year to clean your windows. You know why you should use a window cleaner if you've got X number of windows or whatever right. You know in accountancy you can be talking about how to choose an account and three things you didn't know about accountants for things you need to prepare before you choose an accountant. Whatever. So there is always expertise that people can offer other people and that's really what PR is about.

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Paul: Well I mean it's really great entree into marketing in general that we've got to be focusing on how we're educating and sharing and giving something of value rather than simply you know telling our own story saying you know look at me look at me. If we're going to get the attention. So if we understand that we've all got a story. And we could all access the media. Why would I want to do this. What's the benefit to me as a business. Spending some time and energy in getting my message across to the media.

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Jules: Oh I love you asking me that question. Okay. So the first one is that if you get talked about in the media. So if you advertise you're kind of talking about yourself. You have to everyone knows you've paid for the space. They know that you've written the words. There's no kind of filter for anyone to know whether it really is good or not. But if you are featured in the media and a magazine features you or somebody interviews you on radio or talks about you on TV or if you get into industry magazines people immediately if they read about you trust that you must be a good business. So the first thing that it does it builds trust and awareness really really quickly. The other thing that it does is it's fantastic for positioning you as a leader in your field so regardless of whether you're a a bed shop or you're a business coach it really doesn't matter it's still positions you as the leader in your area because we all believe whether it's true or not and it's actually not true. But we all believe that journalists are out there looking for the best companies to feature and therefore if you've been featured in a magazine or a newspaper particularly one that somebody really trusts then they have put you there for a reason because you are really good at what you do. And then the last thing.

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Jules: Well it's not the last thing but another great thing about PR that most people don't realize is that you don't pay for editorial. So if you can come up with a story that's really useful for that media outlet or for their readers viewers they will run it and you do not pay them. So it's a process that if you can learn how to do it it's a free way of marketing which of course is very attractive when you're a small business and you don't necessarily have a whole lot of bucks to throw out there at your marketing and your advertising.

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Paul: Absolutely. So look I mean there's no doubt Jules that you know every small business wants to be able to activate marketing strategies that are powerful they work and when they are low cost or no cost as media can be. Clearly that's a massive advantage to us. So let's walk through I guess the steps if I'm a novice at producing media releases. I've never done it before. I want to attack this opportunity and get out there and and start spreading the word and of course I Why wouldn't I want to position my expertise and help to accelerate the trust building process with my prospective buyers and get that information out into the marketplace. So where do I start. What's the what's the first thing that I need to do to produce a successful media release.

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Jules: All right. So there's two things that you need to do before you get started. The first is that you definitely need to have a website that's up and running because the journalist is goint to want to have a look at it. Once you send them a media release and so they readers when it gets published. So you do need to have a digital presence and you need to have a decent website not one that's. There was one woman who had had done something in Wordpress and she hadn't actually finished the website. And so it was selling sunglasses even though she was selling nothing. It was a type of knitting needles and she hadn't finished it properly so the first thing is which is which is a basic kind of need for all businesses.

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Jules: Now you need to have a website that is up and running where people can contact you or buy from you. And the other thing that you need to do is have some really good photography because the more I am working with journalists now and I'm talking to them all the time the more I realize that they absolutely hate having to go and find an image to go with the story. So if they're looking at two stories and one's got a great image and the other one hasn't they will always run with the one that's got an image. Because if you think about it there isn't that there are no articles that you ever read in the media that don't have an image around it as well so. So once you've got those two things going then you're already there. The next thing to do is to start thinking about who your target market are and the types of media that they consume. So are they listening to the radio because they're a small business owner or a tradie and they've got the radio on in the background are they reading the Saturday newspapers are they reading the women's magazines or you know if you're trying to get to say corporate land is it CEOs that you want to get to see you just need to first identify who you want to get to and then start thinking about the sorts of information that you could offer that will engage that audience.

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Jules: So if you're going out to CEOs you obviously don't go out talking about chocolate bars or about you know a new type of caravan park unless you can give it a spin that makes it relevant to them. So you think about where you want to go in the media and then you start thinking about. I often say to people if you want to think of an angle to get started straight away. Think about if you go out socially and you tell people what it is that you do so say around at a barbecue or a party and someone says What do you do. And Paul I'm sure if you say I teach people how to do marketing there is always those same four or five questions that people ask you are really how much or what does it do or how do you know that there was a woman that I worked with with you that had a garlic farm now and she was saying what can I talk about.

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Jules: Well I mean I don't know how to store garlic I don't know what different types of garlic there are out there. I don't know how to know whether it's right or not et cetera et cetera. So all of those other kinds of things that you could turn that question into your headline and you can answer it underneath in a media release and actually write the article as if you are the journalist writing for their readers. So that's the other trick these days I'm being told that journalists are having to write between 7 to 10 articles a day which is virtually impossible. So what they need is eight of those articles to be sent to them as something that they can just cut and paste and put into the magazine or the newspaper and then they'll work on two. And I know we would all love to be the article that they're writing about. But if you think about it the chances are much slimmer of getting that kind of article then writing your own offering it to them so that they can just cut and paste it and put it into their media outlet. And then if they like the way that you write and their readers engage. They could well come back and do a bigger story or ask you to be a regular contributor but what you need to have is information that you know is going to be useful for people.

00:15:08:29 - 00:16:58:14

Jules: Try not to be too clever as in journalists are taught to write as if they're reading it as if they're writing for nine year olds. So I know that that sounds sort of really ridiculously simple but the more simple you can make it the more easy it is for people to digest the more likely it is it'll get picked up and be what happens then is that the people who read it kind of go oh I want to know more. And always at the bottom of the article they'll say something like, for more information go to www dot whatever and people will find out more information from your website or contact you that way so you don't need to be super clever. You don't need to be very complex but you do need to be very generous in the information that you can offer people and then after that you need to send it out to the media outlets. Now Now there are most journalists these days have got an online presence so you can find them via LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter or whatever. Or you can sign up for a database like my own and that will give you immediate access so you need to get the journalists that you want to send something to and get their details and then you literally just send them an email or phone. So if it's radio or TV I would always suggest that you phone first have three or four bullet points handy of what you want to cover. Get to the point very quickly and just tell them what it is that you think you would be able to offer them and then they'll ask for more information and that's when you send out the media release. Alternatively if you're going to magazines or newspapers to an extent or podcast things like that you would always email them first and you just email them and say here's my article.

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Jules: Here are some other topics I could talk about maybe and I'd love it if you would consider it and you always follow up is the other thing. So I'm now working with lots and lots of small business owners who are getting very very successful results in the media but one of the interesting things they're saying is that a lot of journalists don't pick up the article the first time around. You do need to do that follow up and in fact they have. I've had a couple of people who've had huge success telling me that they have only been picked up when they've done that follow up email so you send out your email to the journalists and if they don't respond then you need to at least send them an email asking them if they saw it because a lot of us are missing emails these days when I don't know. I moved from outlook on to g drive and I have twenty thousand unread emails now so it happens really really easily and you can get lost emails lost in amongst the junk mail. So you do some follow up and then of course the final step is what you can do with the PR and we call it milking it but basically you can put it out through social media and your post will go much much further because you know Facebook and LinkedIn and all those platforms really love a link that comes from a media outlet you can put it on your website you can put it in your bricks and mortar store. If you have one you can send it out in a newsletter and it hangs around forever and does great things for the SEO of your website so hopefully that gives people a basic overview.

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Paul: It's a great overview but then let's let's let's talk a little bit about some of the specifics and get some examples so people understand the sort of thing. So mean you've been helping people and it certainly helped many people inside the marketers club Lisa who you mentioned with the garlic farm and lots of other members of the program that have benefited hugely by positioning their expertise in the media and getting lots of great coverage which has resulted in bringing clients into their world and connecting them to prospective buyers. So when we know that the strategy works but give us some examples of the types of businesses. Just a few clients that have done some media on the type of business the sort of approach that they took and what sort of results did it produce for them in terms of their business what sort of impact could you generate from from an article or from some media coverage.

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Jules: Okay. Love to do all of this I've got loads now. Which one will I start with. Okay the first one I can think of is a woman called Laura Bacardi I've been working with who is an author and a stress management coach. She started sending out articles about stress management for women to the Women's Media and they loved it. And so then she decided that she would she's managed to pick up a bit of radio she got herself in women's agenda and in the Sydney Morning, and The Herald with thought leadership articles around stress management and then choosing the right media to go to so she specializes in women. So she went to women's agenda with an article it was a women's agenda is a magazine that sort of for business women. So with a sort of you know how to avoid stress in business kind of article then she tweaked it slightly and got something in body and soul which is the insert in the weekend newspapers and in body and soul her angle was around the physical aspects of stress management and how exercise and health is important. Then she managed to get herself onto the Today show on the weekend around again managing stress for women and that a lot of women have a coping with a lot of things have a lot of things on their plate.

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Jules: They've got her on for an interview with another specialist. I think it was around women's health. What she has said it's done for her is she said after she was on TV she got 60 new business inquiries on her website overnight and she said that was 60 more than she had had in the previous three years. So did huge things for her website her website traffic increased 400 percent and it sort of did it in spikes. Each time she got some coverage and she picked up two new clients. She ended up having the Coles group read one of her articles and contacted her and she's now running workshops for them. So that's just one example. There's another woman who was a business coach that I worked with and she said she only did one article and got it into an industry magazine she was targeting older men. So she wrote an article about if you are about to be made redundant or you've retired and you want to keep doing something then why not become a coach and share your expertise with small business owners on the back of that she said you've got 16 new business inquiries in one month. And the only difference was doing the PR so she knows that that was attributed to the PR. I've got a story that I'm sure almost all of your people have heard because I've done it most of my talks about the Melbourne headache clinic and he put out one media release that got picked up by the Herald Sun. Then from that it got picked up by 3AW and then all of the evening news and he got seven months worth of business in two days. And the moment that the news finished he started getting a hit on his website every minute for the next three hours with people wanting him to help them with their headaches.

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Paul: So what was the what was the nature of the sort of article that was originally created. If we take that one example of the headache clinic what sort of thing was it trying to achieve what was what was the essence of that that release that article.

00:22:47:30 - 00:24:02:13

Jules: So what he did. So what the media are looking for is kind of the human side of stories particularly if it's going to go into newspapers. So what he had was a special technique that he uses where he could manipulate people's necks and very very hard to explain in an ad. And so he definitely knew that he wanted to do the PR. What we did was found a case study of one of his customers who had he had managed to cure them I think they'd been getting headaches every week and they hadn't had one for two years. So he asked her permission to feature her story that is really important if you're going to do a case study and the media loved it and then they interviewed his case study person as well as him. So him about the technique and the case study woman about what it felt like to be free of migraines after all this time. So the only thing I would say is if you are going to use a case study which is a really powerful way of doing it because you're not talking about yourself again it's that third party endorsement make sure that you get their permission first not only to feature their story but make sure that they are going to be happy talking to the media if the media wants. Because I was working with another woman recently and she came up with a story which was a fantastic story.

00:24:02:15 - 00:24:49:01

Jules: She runs Melbourne the Melbourne social netball and she wanted a story about how a couple had met via a netball for Valentine's Day and nine honey picked it up and they loved it but they wanted to speak to the couple. And unfortunately the couple didn't want to get any media profile at all. And so the whole story fell in a heap because she couldn't find anyone for the journalists to actually interview and take photos of. So it is really really important that you do ask that permission first but if you can get something in a metro newspaper it often will get picked up by radio and TV. So it is sort of the Holy Grail in terms of what people can do and case studies is a very powerful way of being able to tell your through someone else's eyes

00:24:49:23 - 00:25:54:18

Paul: Well I mean that the principles of success in the media from what you're explaining is that the same principles that we used to do our marketing really well which is one that we've got to get really clear about a problem that we can solve for a particular market. So we're we're being of value and being of service and we're helping them to learn or overcome something. So whether we're doing that directly in terms of communication or information or whether we're doing it as a result of our case study and sharing a third party where a client's talking about their breakthrough at the end of the day we're sharing an insight about how you can overcome something and and it's being targeted to a particular group. So obviously some people like. I mean obviously the things like migraines are things that affect you know the whole population people who suffer with those sort of things so it can go out into a general media and they would want to pick it up because they know their audience will be interested in that but others that you've given us get temples of are people who are targeting very specific groups so you know women's groups or.

00:25:54:21 - 00:26:52:24

Paul: And the challenge there and so it has know significance and relevance to them. So that's a big part of success is this targeting component is what I'm hearing you say in terms of our media release because obviously otherwise we can be sending there a good message but to the wrong place and it's not going to get any traction if we pick it up. But in terms of the the art I guess of creating the story and building it. So just to be clear so we need to write as if we're the journalists we've got to write in that in that third person. So we talk about our selves so are there any tips and tricks to the way that you construct that so that you you're basically then you know if you're writing like the journalist then you're quoting and so you know if I was doing it for me you know the media release would say you know that you know McCarthy says blah blah blah. Or yes that's right. You're gonna be doing those types of things within the media release.

00:26:53:07 - 00:28:08:17

Jules: Yes that's right. I think probably the most important thing to do in terms of constructing your media release is make sure that your first two sentences or three sentences max tell exactly what the article is going to be about because like all of us if we are going to read a magazine or a newspaper or if we're online and we're looking at websites with articles we always scan the headline and then scan the first couple of lines to see whether we want to read on and your journalist is going to do that and their readers is going to I'm going to do that. So it's incredibly important that people get to the point really quickly so for instance Paul if you were going to write an article about let's say three common mistakes people make with their small business marketing or three common mistakes small business owners make with their marketing what you would do which was you would start with that. There are three common mistakes that people make that that constantly hold them back when it comes to getting their message across. And then you might say having worked with small business owners over the last five years or ten years and and helped them do their marketing these same mistakes keep coming up.

00:28:08:25 - 00:29:11:24

Jules: So I'd really like to be able to help people you know avoid making those mistakes. So here are my tips. So it would be something like that now and obviously you could probably craft that a little bit better than I had done it. But it is all about getting to the point really quickly so the journalist and the readers can see how you're going to help them. So you don't waffle on in the first paragraph and just kind of set the scene and be all loose and fluffy. You really need to get to the nitty gritty very very quickly. And the same with your headline needs to be short and sweet. You know maybe I've heard 70 characters or I would normally say to people no more than sort of six to eight words. And again it needs to explain something very quickly as I said you know three mistakes small business owners make with their marketing or so you wouldn't do anything that's sort of light and fluffy that might be you know why marketing is good for your business might be great but you would need again as a headline that might work but you would need very very quickly to get to the point about the article in that first couple of lines.

00:29:12:18 - 00:29:54:06

Paul: And it's a good idea Jules to then try and where you can reinforce ideas or information so if I if we were writing that article about you know three common mistakes if I if I can grab some statistics maybe from the Bureau statistics that say things like you know you know 44 small businesses close their doors every day about these closures premature and could be avoided if people knew had to eliminate these three big business killers. So I can use a stat information which only helps to enhance and increases the journalist's comfort that this is a legitimate story.

00:29:54:17 - 00:31:07:25

Jules: Absolutely. So two things with that one is that that research would need to be no older than six months. And secondly. So they like that. And secondly you'd have to put a link in underneath your media release so that the journalists can go and check that that actually is true. One of the other things that people can do particularly if they've got a bit of a community around their business or they've got access to a community is to run their own survey. So as long as they can get you can get 300 responses you can kind of create a survey that'll give you the answers that you want. So you might Paul say to people you might do a survey or a little poll through Facebook or something that says you know that lists the three mistakes that you think that people make. Saying you know. Have you ever experienced this in your marketing and then you might list three problems get your poll. If you can get 300 responses you could actually go out to a newspaper and say new research recently conducted shows that 98 percent of business owners think x. So that's another way around it. But you do need to make sure that that research is really fresh. The media don't really like quoting anything that's much older than six months old.

00:31:08:19 - 00:32:01:27

Paul: Yeah well it's great advice I mean and that's something that if we have a big enough network or list that we could do that piece of work and again create a real expert positioning around us and get that out. So is there any in terms of the sending me information and times. I mean obviously we need to be you know step into the shoes of the journalist the question they're obviously asking themselves when you send in the releases. Is the audience that I serve going be interested in this conversation. So as fascinating as the story might be they're asking themselves is the who we serve going to be interested in they still don't serve our audience. So. But what about when we send it all and when to follow up on these sort of things these are paying attention to when we do that days of the week, times is there is there any science behind that.

00:32:02:15 - 00:33:13:07

Jules: Okay. So as a rule of thumb I try to send things out between Tuesday and Thursday to any magazines. If you're going to newspapers you need to go a couple of days beforehand and give them enough time to sort of slot it in and makes it so you wouldn't go to a newspaper two weeks beforehand and say I'm going to send you this story in a couple of weeks. You would go a couple of days beforehand because the news cycle is very very fast and they're looking for things that are really really fresh all the time. But having said that so I would always ring first if you're going to go to radio or TV. I think I mentioned that earlier do not do it when they are on air. And ideally what what every journalist would love you to do would be to do a little bit of research about them and a little bit of research about their media outlet so that when you go to them you can say you know hi Mary I love woman's day and I thought that this article would work particularly well in your pets corner section or you might go to the Fin Review and say you know I know that this that you have that marketing page that you run every week on a Thursday.

00:33:13:09 - 00:34:49:01

Jules: I thought that your readers might be interested in this way to avoid three common problems that they could avoid. So you do need to think of who the media outlet is. Ideally do a little bit of research and work out where you think it might fit in their media outlet that really works well always call if it's radio or TV always email if it's magazines or blogs and weekends are pretty weekends are something that I just want to flag for people because newspapers do have staff that work on weekends. They're getting ready for the Mondays paper and I've heard from a few journalists now that if you go to them on a newspaper on like a Thursday after a Friday afternoon sorry you may well get the story up on the Monday because they're looking the weekend staff are looking for stories that they can put together pretty easily. So if you've given them an article with a great image they may well run it. The only other there is another type of PR that people can do if they want to get into a newspaper which is that if they're if you're having an event or if you can get together some models or a situation where you think it'll make a great photograph of the newspaper you can call and ask to speak to the picture desk. So this is for the like. Herald Sun or The Sydney Morning Herald The Courier Mail. I don't think the Western Australian as well and you call the picture desk and you you say look I've got this great business idea or I've got this great event I'm going to have three young children and a mum.

00:34:49:07 - 00:36:31:10

Jules: They're all wearing purple on the day. Would you like to come down and take a photo so if you can sort of paint a picture for them of a shot that would work really well in their magazine and let's say it's National Purple Day just to make give them some sort of context. You can. You can go to them and tell them that you will provide a situation that they will be able to photograph really easily but otherwise I would just always go to the editorial department. That's the other thing that is really important. People will sometimes sidetrack you towards the advertising department and you do not want to talk to the advertising people even if they say I'll get you a story up if you take an ad if you go directly to the editor. You shouldn't have to take out that ad because there is a code of ethics that journalists work under. That says that there will be no commercial influence on their journalistic stories. So therefore they really shouldn't have any. There shouldn't be a relationship between advertising and marketing. I guess the other thing you asked about a year was follow up and you'd need to do your follow up between three to five business days after you have sent your media release out. So give them a day or two just in case they have seen it and they haven't had time to get back to it and then send out another one. Just send them the media release again and the pitch again just saying you know just checking whether you saw this and you send that to anyone that hasn't responded. So if they have responded and said they're not interested then obviously do not send again. And if they've responded and said sounds pretty good I'll get back to you then definitely send them another little follow up as well. But if you haven't heard from them you just need to check that they've seen it and they haven't missed it.

00:36:32:19 - 00:37:08:12

Paul: Well I think I mean that's an important part again of of businesses the ability to follow up and follow through on things we often shoot off an idea or or an email and then just let it go into the ether and never think about it again. So we do need to stay on these things if we want to get the results from it. So in terms of you know as we're coming to kind of the end of our time Jules but in terms of the volume of media releases and creating the material how frequently are you seeing people produce and be able to get into the media.

00:37:09:09 - 00:37:30:21

Jules: Okay so at my events my accelerator events people often send out on the Tuesday afternoon and get coverage within 15 minutes. So it can be very very fast. But what I would oh I'm sorry I've completely gone off track now. What was it you just asked me. I started looking out the window I didn't pay attention.

00:37:31:26 - 00:37:40:07

Paul: So in terms of how frequently we should be you know creating media releases what are you are you seeing how often

00:37:41:12 - 00:38:42:05

Jules: The minimum should be one a month which would and then you do the follow up on the second week and then you just sort of sit tight for a couple of weeks and then do another one so one a month is the minimum. I have a lot of people that are doing it once a fortnight and they are getting coverage every single week. These are people who are getting maybe five articles a month published every month and it's working incredibly well for their businesses. So there's a branding agency up in Sydney who have been doing basically a media release a fortnight. I would say for six months now. And she said her all of her social channels have increased by about 30 percent. Her new business enquiries has gone from being spikes to being a steady stream. She's getting invited to do talks overseas. She's a regular contributor now to about three or four magazines and all of that has come on the back of sending regular media releases out once a month is the minimum but once every two weeks and you'll really start to build some very quick traction I think.

00:38:43:01 - 00:38:52:03

Paul: And roughly how long would you say somebody needs to spend producing the release. How how long does it take somebody to create a good media release.

00:38:52:08 - 00:40:00:01

Jules: Well look I believe that you should be able to write a media release in a couple of hours. It really depends if you know what you're doing. There is a guy who came to one of my first PR accelerators and told me he spent two days writing a blog post it would take him approximately 10 hours by the time he finished our accelerator and understood so media release. One of the things I didn't mention was the length should only be about 500 - 600 words. You should be able to churn one of those out every I would say it would take no more. I mean I can turn one out in about half an hour but I would say roughly two to three hours. And then if you use something like my PR platform it should only take you about no more than an hour to send it out and then your follow up should take no more than sort of 15 minutes. If you're doing it all on the hoof you know and you're trying to do it without any access to media contact databases and stuff. Firstly you need to read up to just understand how to write your media releases. But I would set aside maybe a day a month to write maybe a couple of releases and send them out every two weeks.

00:40:00:28 - 00:40:17:20

Paul: Well it sounds like a really worth while investment of time and energy for the impact that it can have on a business and certainly something worth exploring. So Jules if people want to learn more and find out about the work you do and how to get involved in your courses your programs or where's the best place for them to go.

00:40:18:13 - 00:40:47:28

Jules: Okay so the best place is probably to go to my website which is www.handleyourownpr.com.au or you're welcome to send me an email. It's [email protected]. But those are probably the best ways to contact me. I am very active on LinkedIn under Jules Brooke as well and on Facebook on the handle your own PR page.

00:40:49:02 - 00:41:59:11

Paul: Well and and you very generously have offered to provide listeners with access to some of your master classes where you teach people some of the key components and so one of those is you know how to raise your profile in the media. So what we gonna do is we're going to put a link in the show notes so that people can get over there and then you can join into Jule's free master classes where you will get taught a whole bunch of the strategies that she's touched on today and really go deep with that with those and really learn how to nail your your own media PR. But clearly something that small business owners can do they can do it with very little cost at all. You can tap into the knowledge bank of someone like Jules to really start to accelerate how quickly you can do that and really target your efforts and start to as Jules has explained. Win really big side. Jules thank you so much for making the time to join me and sharing your wisdom as you so generously always do and and helping all of our listeners to know how to win some free PR and really promote their business positively in the marketplace.

00:41:59:29 - 00:42:15:21

Jules: Thank you so much for inviting me. Paul it's a pleasure and I'm always happy to help anyone get PR. I just think that it's a it's one it's one of those mystical things that people don't realize that it's free and how powerful it is until they kind of learn a little bit about it and then I hope everyone will give it a go.

00:42:16:06 - 00:42:18:08

Paul: Yeah absolutely. Good on you thanks again Jules.

00:42:18:21 - 00:42:20:01

Jules: Thanks Paul

00:42:20:03 - 00:43:14:27

Paul: Hope you enjoyed that conversation with Jules Brooks and got lots of valuable ideas about how you can begin to promote your business via the media. I mean we're always looking for effective, powerful, and low cost no cost ways to promote our business and I don't think you can find a better one than using the media to help you to amplify your message to showcase your expertise to the world. The key is obviously to make sure that you're not doing a veiled sales pitch but that you are packaging up valuable information telling a story then helping the viewers the listeners the readers of these various publications and programs to learn to grow and to get benefits and value when you do that you can get a lot of exposure for your business that can not just be a positioning tool or a branding tool but a real opportunity to win new clients for your business.

00:43:15:09 - 00:44:20:20

Paul: So I hope that you'll get busy working on building some stories and contacting the media and getting your business in to the media. And I'd love to hear about any success stories that you have. Jules has got a great program so make sure that you check out hair of your own PR. If you want some help to access the media and start to tap into some of the great resources that she has to help you make that whole process even easier again. So I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Next week I have another fantastic guest. It's a great story that I know you're going to love it's going to not only be great business information but it's gonna touch your heart. It's a remarkable story of a remarkable man. And I'm looking forward to sharing that with you. It really was a joy to record and I look forward to catching up with you on our next episode and helping to serve you to keep growing your business until we speak again. I wish you nothing but the best of luck with your business. But of course more importantly with your lives. Until then take care. Bye for now.