Insider Press Release Tactics Part 2 – Finding Media Ops

Insider Press Release Tactics – Part 2
Copyright – 2009 by Willie Crawford (All Rights Reserved )

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The second document you want to have available is what is
referred to as a Q&A sheet. And Q&A does stand for
Question and Answer. This is a page with roughly 10 to 15
suggested questions that the interviewer could ask you. A
typical one hour radio show, for example, would probably
let you go through about a dozen questions, depending upon
how in-depth the interviewee is in answering the questions.
So what you want to have available is a sheet with roughly
10 to 15 questions that the interviewer could ask you. You
see, you are the expert in your topic and the media contact
really doesn’t have the time to do a lot of research on
your topic. They don’t have the time to become the expert
to learn how to ask intelligent questions, and so, rather
than let them appear ignorant about the topic you point out
to them that you can make it very easy for them to
interview you. So you suggest intelligent questions to
them and you save them a lot of time and effort.

During these interviews, you’ll often be surprised when the
media personality or the interviewer just runs down your
list of questions. This means that since you suggested the
questions, you really actually control the interview.
You’re not surprised by any questions that they ask and you
are prepared for it.

Now one tactic I was taught fairly early on when I first
started doing interviews was that to avoid making the media
personality appear to just be a pushover or someone just
promoting you. You want to throw in one or two questions
that sound like they are a challenge or sound sort of
tough. If I were doing an interview on ecommerce or making
money in Internet marketing, I might throw out a question
like, “Can you really make money in Internet marketing?” or
“Aren’t all these Internet marketing programs a scam?” or
something like that. A question that sounds challenging
but because you know your topic very well you have the
answer prepared.

You want to do that just because it makes the interview
more interesting, more credible. So you do want to have
your Q&A sheet ready for that media personality. Often
they will be running way behind schedule when they first
contact you and they want to get something done very
quickly. They often want to be able to publicize the fact
that they are doing the show with you and the sooner that
they can get that bio and that Q&A from you the sooner they
can post notes on their websites and document that you are
on their show – as soon as they can get that up there the
sooner the audience members can find out about it.

Now just as with the bio, you want a Q&A sheet handy for
each topic or area of expertise that you are trying to get
free media coverage on. You basically have this press
release that says what you are an expert on and you want to
have a Q&A sheet that covers the same topic. Now the
reason that you want your press releases all over the
Internet is that increasingly when the media is looking for
an expert on a topic, they begin by searching the Internet.

In fact, I have followers on Twitter, which is one of those
social networking sites for those of you that don’t know,
who are actually CNN personalities. For example, Rick
Sanchez from CNN is one of my followers. This is very,
very powerful.

They often, when they want to find experts on a topic, they
have databases that they turn to on the Internet, but they
also will often just search for certain keywords on the
Internet to find those experts. So, again, this is very,
very important.

In fact, one of my other followers on Twitter is an
individual who can actually help you to get media coverage;
his name is Peter Shankman and he has a business called
“Help a Reporter Out”. Several times a day Peter publishes
a HARO report. He publishes an ezine that lists media
contacts that are working on stories. It could be radio
people, it could television or magazine writers but it’s
just individuals who are working on stories and they submit
to Peter what they are looking for as far as guests, as far
as experts. Now to find Peter, he’s on Twitter, at
http://www.Twitter.com/skydiver. If you follow him there,
what you will actually get is every now and then he gets
media people contacting him with very, very urgent
requests. So what he does is he throws those out there on
Twitter, just “I’m looking for an expert right now or the
media is looking for an expert right now on this topic.”

It does pay to follow him on Twitter. He also has a
website, which is http://www.HelpAReporter.com. If you can
go there you can sign up for his newsletter, and then two
to three times a day he will publish a list of media
personalities out looking for experts that they can
interview. Maybe the person is working on a story on the
energy crisis, or the war in Iraq, or maybe there is some
event that happened in the news and they want to find an
expert that can comment on it from that perspective and
they want to do that story really quick.

So two to three times a day he puts out this list that may
have 20 people looking for sources. What you want to do is
you want to scan this newsletter and see if you are an
expert or if you know somebody who might fit the bill
because what you can do then is send your friend a note
saying, “Hey, you’re an expert on child development or
psychology or pets or whatever and there is a magazine
reporter doing a story on this. So why don’t you contact
them and get your name and your URL and other information
in front of them. It’s very powerful, very quick, but
these people, when they are looking for these sources, they
are looking for usually to get something quick. The faster
you get your name in the hat the more likely you are to get
some free media coverage. If it is a topic you are really
an expert on, you may get an entire article written up just
about you. So this is very powerful.

When a media person is working on a story they are often
under tremendous deadline pressure and so being ready
really, really does pay off. That, again, goes back to
having that bio and that Q&A sheet available so that you
could even tell them intelligent questions to ask you in
interviewing you or intelligent angles to approach a topic
from. Maybe they are a newspaper writer who was just told
by their boss to “do a story on this” after seeing some
other story in the news; some current event. So they don’t
even really know necessarily what questions to ask you and
by you having that Q&A sheet handy you become a very
valuable resource for them. You do want to, over time,
make friends with as many media contacts as you can and
become friends with them because they will go back to you
over and over and over again and they will give you a lot
of free coverage.