In this video, I am going to talk about PR and Press Releases for your Ecommerce Store. Why use PR? Well, because it is “free” publicity. You can get your business into newspapers, magazines, blogs, and things like that. It is pretty much free. I mean, it is free publicity for your business which is pretty awesome. On top of that, blogs, newspapers, magazines, all that kind of stuff – they want a new story. They want something interesting that they can tell their readers. If you give it to them, they will love you for it. So, in this video, I am going to give you a few tips on how you accomplish that.

How to Get a Story

Well, here are some tips on how to get a story. You need to realize that online blogs and online newspapers (pretty much every newspaper has an online portion) have infinite space for making money and infinite space for advertisements. They way that it works for them is they make money per 1,000 impressions.  For every 1,000 impressions they make roughly about $1.00. So, if they release 1,000 articles and each one gets 1,000 impressions, they make $1,000. If they release 10,000 articles and each one gets 1,000 impressions, they make $10,000. So, there is not really much downside for them releasing your article as long as they think it is going to do decently well. In the past, magazines only had so much space and only had so many pages they could fill and a newspaper could only be so big. That is not the case anymore. There is literally infinite space available so they want to write about you and they always want a new story.

One quick tip is that you can use fake email accounts to try and get the newspapers talking about you. What I mean about this is to send a fake email and ask, “Hey, have you heard about this website,” whatever your website is, or “Have you heard about this ecommerce store?” Try and get the ball rolling. This is just one of our great techniques.

Another tip is to try and get the journalist on the phone. A lot of people want to just sit behind their computer and just do everything by email. Well, if you were to contact the journalist on the phone, you have a much higher chance of actually being able to get them to write an article about you. Another thing is when you try to pitch your story, you want to make it very specific and time constrained. I know I am going fast with all of this, but this is the beauty of YouTube. You can watch it over and over again. So, what I mean by make it specific and time constrained, is that if you have a news story, maybe it is “Next week we are releasing a new this, that and whatever,” that is good because it is very specific and it is time constrained. Obviously, you would not pitch that to The New York Times. You would probably pitch that to a relative magazine within your niche. I will leave that up to you as far as that goes because that is something you need to decide for yourself.

Let’s get more into how you can pitch your story. One method you can use to pitch the story is the “3 Act Structure.” Now, the 3 Act Structure is what Shakespeare used that made everybody love his plays. You can use that same structure when you are pitching your story to news reporters. So what is the 3 Act Structure? Well, it is three acts. The first act is the beginning. In the beginning, you talk about how the world was before your company came along. So, I am going to use my company as an example. “Before B Dancewear came around, people were limited to getting dance clothing in boring colors.” In the middle, you talk about what you are doing to change things. “So, when B Dancewear came around, we started offering dance clothing in 200+ colors.” Then the end, the third act, is about the utopia you are trying to create. I might say, “B Dancewear is trying to create a perfect world where girls can get dance clothing in whatever color they want and that will match their dance perfectly.” Obviously, this call is not perfect but this is the general structure you would use when trying to pitch your idea to a reporter.

Another step to get a story published is to tell the journalist that you are going to share the story. When you have a story that a journalist is potentially going to write, you can tell them, “Hey, by the way, I have a 10,000 person email list and a big following on social media, and this, that and the other.” If you convince the journalist that you are going to be giving them at least 1,000 views, then they may feel this article would be worth their time. Tell this journalist that you are going to share the article as much as possible and help them get new viewers to their website.

Next, what is newsworthy about what you are doing? Well, the truth is most of us are not doing anything newsworthy.  Actually, I take that back. We are probably always doing something newsworthy but when we are pitching our story, we are not talking about what is newsworthy. We are talking about what we find interesting. So, think about what makes what you are doing newsworthy.  A perfect example is that clothing from B Dancewear, my company, is all handmade in the U.S.A. So, I could say, “Hey, I noticed that there is a trend,” maybe there is, maybe there isn’t, “of American companies bringing manufacturing back to the United States.” And, maybe I pitch it – “You know you should do an article about all of those companies that are bringing manufacturing back to the United States, especially clothing manufacturers, which is rare. That might be newsworthy. That might be something that would create a fire under the journalist.

Something else to consider is making it about the news, not about you. So, using my last example, you could say something like, “You know I have noticed this trend. By the way, I happen to be an expert on this because I own a company that is bringing manufacturing back to the United States.” So, think of using this in your industry

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Lastly, keep trying. You are going to get a lot of nos. Keep spinning it different ways. Talk to a lot of different reporters on different magazines, blogs and newspapers. Just keep trying.

Email PR Tips

Here are some tips on using emails as a way to contact potential reporters to cover your story. These are some top tips for that. Good subject lines are very important. One of my tips on using good subject lines is asking good questions. Many times when you look at your emails, the only thing you look at to determine whether you should open it or not is that subject line.  One thing you can do is ask a question that makes someone curious enough to want to open it. So, maybe, it might be something as simple as, “Have you heard about B Dancewear?” That might be enough to peak someone’s curiosity. I will let your imagination deal with it. But that is one tip I have – ask questions in the subject line.

Another thing you can do in the actual email itself is include a video. On top of that, when you are writing an email, make sure to keep it short. Let’s say one to two paragraphs. What you can do, though, is you can actually write one or two paragraphs and then say if you want more information about this, our company, this topic, whatever it is, here is a link to a video about this. Then include the video, obviously. So, those are a few ways to hook reporters into reading your email and actually wanting to write a story about you.

After the Story

You are not done after the story is published. This is crucial. A lot of people think that once their story is published, they are done. It is over with. Not true. After the story is published, you can actually make fake comments to win “Most Commented.” Several news sites and blogs have a section off to the right hand side that says, “Stories with the most comments” or “Articles with the most comments.”  You could easily get to the top of that article list by leaving fake comments on your own article which will actually create a snowball effect. On top of that, keep the winners close. What I mean by that is keep a good relationship with the people who write about your website, about your blog, about whatever you are doing, because they will probably want to write about you again in the future. Especially if you follow these tips and your articles do really well.

Something else to keep in mind is that you want to share your email list. Share it everywhere. On top of that, here is another tip. I know I have a hundred different tips. But, I am trying to make this as content packed with as much information as possible.

Another thing you can do is set up a small site to post a story and then build up from there. So, maybe you set up a local niche blog to write about your company. Then you get your local newspaper to write about it. Then you get the city, the larger city paper to do it. Before you know it, you have built the story up so even a national paper is talking about it. One way you can do this, is let’s say I have a local niche blog write about me. I can go to the local paper and say, “Hey! This blog wrote this article about me. I think this is pretty interesting and I think your readers would really love to hear about it. What do you think?” And they might see that this blog wrote about him and think “he must be pretty important” and it can work its way up the ranks.

Also, like I said, send them traffic once the article has been published. Don’t just tell them you are going to send traffic, actually do it. Send out an email to your audience and say, “Hey, I just had this article published. You should go check it out. Read it.  It is absolutely amazing.” That will get traffic to their blog, to their website, and to that article. They will be happy. They will be very thankful and they will want to do business with you again in the future.

More PR Tips

So, here are some more PR tips I am going to tell you about. The next one is HARO. It is set up to help reporters out. Basically, it is a free email service where you get an email every day saying there are a bunch of different reporters who are looking for experts on these topics.  Chances are you are going to find people who are looking for your special talents. For instance, my business is selling dance clothing. I might see that there is someone looking for apparel mini-manufacturers or small business owners, things like that. And they want to interview people like me. So, I am able to offer my services to this reporter to help him out. And, in turn, they will often write an article about me or my company or include a link from that article back to my website helping out my SEO and giving me more links to my website.

You can also send out press releases. There are a lot of big websites, magazines and newspapers they will look at the press releases and they try to find articles. So, maybe I do a press release on “B Dancewear just released a new item – the Convertible Bra and why it is so special.” Or, I could do a press release on “B Dancewear just released its 116 page DIY Guide and it is blowing up.” You need to keep your mind open when it comes to that but these are just some ideas. Send out the press releases and it will help you get articles.

Find magazines that will work for you. There are a lot of different magazines out there. I know in my niche, the dance niche, there are a lot of dance magazines. I only recently found out about them. So, go out and do some research and try to find out which magazines are interested in writing about you and your business.

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Thank you very much for watching this video.