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How To Land Great Media Attention For Your Thought Leadership – Forbes
Part of Kathy Caprino’s series “Thought Leadership and Impact”
Landing great media attention that will help you build more success and engagement for your thought … [+]
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As a writer and a Forbes contributor for over 9 years, I’ve received hundreds of questions from new and emerging thought leaders and writers who wish for more media attention—for their work, books and services. Given the meteoric rise of social media, I’ve seen too that people are hungrier than ever for attention, seeking validation for who they are and what they’re doing. And an obsession with “vanity metrics” (rankings, ratings and viewership, for instance) is on the rise as well. But as anyone who believes they have something important to share with the world knows, it’s a compelling dream and goal to spread that message to a wider audience.
Over the years, there are numerous questions I’ve received repeatedly from strangers, all around how to get more great media attention. The most common questions I’ve heard are:
1) How can I become a Forbes contributor or get the chance to contribute on other reputable sites?
2) Will you please cover my work or business in your blogs?
3) May I contribute a piece in your blog?
4) How do I get the media interested in my new book or podcast?
5) How do I get more followers who are truly engaged in my work?
6) How did you build a large following on LinkedIn and other social platforms?
7) I’m wondering why my posts aren’t going viral or getting engagement, where other people’s are, when I’m writing on the same topics as they are.
Enticing the media to cover your books and thought leadership is an intricate process that requires more than hope and desire, or a “good idea.” There are numerous key elements and factors that members of the media are looking for in what they cover. And there are certain criteria that your content needs to meet successfully in order to elicit interest from the media.
To learn more about how to land great media attention for your work, I caught up this week with Norbert Beatty, Associate Director of Fortier PR. For over thirteen years, Fortier PR has represented Pulitzer Prize winners, seventeen #1 bestsellers, and over 100 bestsellers by authors ranging from Scott Galloway to Kim Scott, and books by 33 of the Thinkers50 list of the world’s leading business thinkers including Jim Collins, Clayton Christensen, Seth Godin, Marcus Buckingham, and Amy Edmondson. They supported journalists like Maria Bartiromo, virtually every publishing house, and the CEOs, presidents and/or founders of Starbucks, Facebook, Alphabet, Google, GM, JetBlue, BP, Southwest Airlines, Procter & Gamble, AT&T, Citigroup, Deloitte, and many more.
Beatty is an award-winning PR professional who has worked at Fortier PR for over eleven years on the books of such bestselling authors as Stephen Covey, Martin Lindstrom, Tony Hsieh, Harvey Mackay, Chris Brogan, Jerry Colonna, David Meerman Scott, Chester Elton, John Gerzema, John Jantsch, Carmine Gallo, Isaac Lidsky, the CEOs or founders of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, Zappos and more.
Fortier PR is the firm I chose to help me spread the word about my new book out this summer, The Most Powerful You: 7 Bravery-Boosting Paths to Career Bliss.
I asked Beatty to share his take on what it takes to get great media attention for one’s book or podcast, and what emerging thought leaders need to understand about best PR practices. Here’s what he shared:
Kathy Caprino: From your view as a PR expert in the world of business books, what makes a media-worthy idea, book or podcast?
Norbert Beatty: Like the media, we search for fresh voices or perspectives; new ideas or concepts that address challenges in business, our careers or companies, the economy or the ways we live today. As PR strategists, we craft pitch ideas and qualify them using a kind of litmus test to ensure they are compelling, timely, actionable and concise.
Today’s media have limited time, and like their audiences, they look for new concepts presented in a bold, fresh and counterintuitive way. They want current examples, emerging data, and research or evidence that support these concepts. Whether it’s an idea, book or podcast interview, must-have qualities include a fresh, new perspective; evidence that supports it, and new or unexpected examples or cases that enable us to better understand how it affects audiences today, or will in the near future. And as many of today’s business challenges are not entirely “new,” we need to ensure that the ideas and sources we pitch offer new value, adding fresh aspects or applications.
Caprino: What is the media looking for that helps them say “yes” to covering one project and “no” to thousands of others?
Beatty: It’s the elusive “secret sauce” of a winning pitch. In addition to the foundational qualities I noted (compelling, timely, actionable and concise), the media seek new data, trends, and research; solutions to current problems and challenges facing our businesses, careers, or society. And of course, colorful, well-told stories from passionate, credible sources.
As publicists, we craft these “irresistible” pitches in a variety of ways. First, we help determine the elements in a book or project that are most likely to impact target audiences such as business readers, leaders, managers, investors, entrepreneurs, consumers, and others. Then we ask questions like “What makes this concept particularly compelling today?” and “Is the perspective authentic, unique and supported by credible sources?” And finally, “What findings or research best illustrates the central issue or argument you present?” Answers to these questions and others help us to craft a pitch that attracts media attention, and inspires influencers and tastemakers to shape public opinion—ultimately driving sales and success for a project or campaign.
Caprino: What role does a great PR team play? How do they make the difference for an author, writer or podcaster?
Beatty: In my experience, an effective PR partnership begins with clear communication and collaboration. Working closely with a client and their organization, we establish their goals, strategies, messaging and definition of success. With this understanding, strategic planning, positioning and execution, we partner with clients to reach important goals and target audiences.
Through carefully selected target outlets, outreach and opportunities, you can achieve measurable results, in terms of publicity, heightened awareness, and sales growth. Plus you can achieve inroads to strategic partnerships with professional associations and corporate events, offering greater credibility to help you access your next level.
Caprino: What do thought leaders (or emerging ones) need to understand about getting great media attention that so many don’t right now?
Beatty: Getting media attention involves a careful process of building relationships, and maintaining them over time. And good publicity can be equal parts art and science. While the best campaigns offer clear-cut messages and timely opportunities, there is no single turn-key campaign or one-size-fits-all solution.
Customization is critical, and results rely upon strong relationships and attention to detail, thoughtful messaging, sourcing media opportunities and such basics as strong, concise language, and meeting deadlines. And it is important to remember that publicity can be a long-term investment, as its impact takes many shapes and forms over time.
If an author prioritizes both solid reviews and winning bestseller status, they may find that even with abundant positive reviews, interviews and publicity features, sales results can take time. And while we’ve had great success in guiding authors to reach bestseller lists, success is defined in many ways. It is often helpful to adopt a long-tail view of building public opinion, and understand the value of sustained sales results that keep delivering.
Caprino: If you were standing up in front of 1,000 writers or podcasters today, teaching about this topic, what would you tell them are the five biggest mistakes people make in trying to get great, positive media attention. How are they missing the mark in what they’re doing now?
Beatty: They need to avoid these common mistakes:
Not Positioning Yourself—by failing to carefully define your unique selling proposition (USP) upfront vis-a-vis competitors or others in your space, you face enormous missed opportunities. Nailing this first step is critical.
Oversimplifying—while your messages must be clear and concise, avoid underplaying their nuanced points of difference.
Hype—hyperbole, overpromising and over-stating claims. You simply can’t be all things to all people. Nor would you want to be. So avoid the overstated language and build credibility over doubt.
Spamming/hyper-frequency—repetitive sales pitches: we’ve all fallen victim to them, taking an otherwise effective message and destroying any chance of acceptance. Avoid this at all cost (“do unto others”) and keep track of messaging and outreach carefully.
Follow-Through—failing to follow up (or follow through). It’s the #1 issue behind lackluster results. Delivery and attention to detail are top priorities that make the winning difference.
Caprino: What’s the difference between true engagement from others vs. “views” and “followers” (vanity metrics)?
Beatty: True engagement is personal; your message needs to resonate deeply with an audience to elicit a personal response, conversation or true call to action. Simply “following” someone won’t often result in true “engagement.” While your number of followers can reflect a level of audience acceptance or receptiveness, it is no indication of true engagement.
Caprino: And what are 5 key strategies emerging thought leaders can employ to create more buzz, attention and engagement in their work?
Beatty: Here are five key strategies:
- Prioritize Messages — as a thought leader, you need to identify the key messages that will distinguish your cause and call-to-action. Invest the time and thinking upfront, and map out effective, bullet-proof messaging. And remember to use clear, concise language that avoids too much jargon and industry-speak.
- Build Community – Building alliances pays great dividends. Your community is vital, and your message allows you to keep expanding it. Focus on connecting with customers, clients, media, and other influencers to keep growing that community and creative ways of reaching them.
- Contribute or Giving Back – Support like-minded audiences, groups and organizations, as they support the many causes that are meaningful to you and your audiences. Contributing valuable time, content, wisdom and resources to these groups will advance your mission and messages (and reflect well on you). Explore opportunities to contribute to media and social channels, from Forbes to LinkedIn, and other outlets that attract the mass and niche audiences most important to you.
- Speak – You’ve done the interviews, and see powerful engagement with the media and their audiences. Now it’s time to take your message on the road. Speaking events like keynote addresses and panels (including many virtual opportunities in our Covid-19 age) deliver great impact and buzz-building for your book or platform (and of course, generate sales including valuable bulk orders).
- Choose Partners – When it comes to effective PR, you can’t do it all alone. Teamwork will multiply your results. A solid partner (PR firm or publicist) can advance both the quality and quantity of your exposure, and help leverage your existing relationships. Talk to colleagues, clients and competitors, and consult with those who can offer battle-tested thinking and results.
In the end, the key is to make your message memorable; you have a uniquely singular voice, so be sure it resonates and makes its mark in the world.
For more information, visit Fortier PR.
To develop your thought leadership, check out Kathy Caprino’s free resources on Building Your Authentic Thought Leadership and read her new book The Most Powerful You: 7 Bravery-Boosting Paths to Career Bliss.
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Bayo Onanuga battles yet another media Punch Newspapers
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Sometimes, you just have to return to the classics.
That’s especially true as Halloween approaches. While you queue up your spooky movie marathon, here are 10 iconic horror movies from the past 70 years for inspiration, and what AP writers had to say about them when they were first released.
We resurrected excerpts from these reviews, edited for clarity, from the dead — did they stand the test of time?
“Rear Window” (1954)
“Rear Window” is a wonderful trick pulled off by Alfred Hitchcock. He breaks his hero’s leg, sets him up at an apartment window where he can observe, among other things, a murder across the court. The panorama of other people’s lives is laid out before you, as seen through the eyes of a Peeping Tom.
James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter and others make it good fun.
— Bob Thomas
“Halloween” (1978)
At 19, Jamie Lee Curtis is starring in a creepy little thriller film called “Halloween.”
Until now, Jamie’s main achievement has been as a regular on the “Operation Petticoat” TV series. Jamie is much prouder of “Halloween,” though it is obviously an exploitation picture aimed at the thrill market.
The idea for “Halloween” sprang from independent producer-distributor Irwin Yablans, who wanted a terror-tale involving a babysitter. John Carpenter and Debra Hill fashioned a script about a madman who kills his sister, escapes from an asylum and returns to his hometown intending to murder his sister’s friends.
— Bob Thomas
“The Silence of the Lambs” (1991)
“The Silence of the Lambs” moves from one nail-biting sequence to another. Jonathan Demme spares the audience nothing, including closeups of skinned corpses. The squeamish had best stay home and watch “The Cosby Show.”
Ted Tally adapted the Thomas Harris novel with great skill, and Demme twists the suspense almost to the breaking point. The climactic confrontation between Clarice Starling and Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) is carried a tad too far, though it is undeniably exciting with well-edited sequences.
Such a tale as “The Silence of the Lambs” requires accomplished actors to pull it off. Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins are highly qualified. She provides steely intelligence, with enough vulnerability to sustain the suspense. He delivers a classic portrayal of pure, brilliant evil.
— Bob Thomas
“Scream” (1996)
In this smart, witty homage to the genre, students at a suburban California high school are being killed in the same gruesome fashion as the victims in the slasher films they know by heart.
If it sounds like the script of every other horror movie to come and go at the local movie theater, it’s not.
By turns terrifying and funny, “Scream” — written by newcomer David Williamson — is as taut as a thriller, intelligent without being self-congratulatory, and generous in its references to Wes Craven’s competitors in gore.
— Ned Kilkelly
“The Blair Witch Project” (1999)
Imaginative, intense and stunning are a few words that come to mind with “The Blair Witch Project.”
“Blair Witch” is the supposed footage found after three student filmmakers disappear in the woods of western Maryland while shooting a documentary about a legendary witch.
The filmmakers want us to believe the footage is real, the story is real, that three young people died and we are witnessing the final days of their lives. It isn’t. It’s all fiction.
But Eduardo Sanchez and Dan Myrick, who co-wrote and co-directed the film, take us to the edge of belief, squirming in our seats the whole way. It’s an ambitious and well-executed concept.
— Christy Lemire
“Saw” (2004)
The fright flick “Saw” is consistent, if nothing else.
This serial-killer tale is inanely plotted, badly written, poorly acted, coarsely directed, hideously photographed and clumsily edited, all these ingredients leading to a yawner of a surprise ending. To top it off, the music’s bad, too.
You could forgive all (well, not all, or even, fractionally, much) of the movie’s flaws if there were any chills or scares to this sordid little horror affair.
But “Saw” director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell, who developed the story together, have come up with nothing more than an exercise in unpleasantry and ugliness.
— David Germain
Germain gave “Saw” one star out of four.
“Paranormal Activity” (2009)
The no-budget ghost story “Paranormal Activity” arrives 10 years after “The Blair Witch Project,” and the two horror movies share more than a clever construct and shaky, handheld camerawork.
The entire film takes place at the couple’s cookie-cutter dwelling, its layout and furnishings indistinguishable from just about any other readymade home constructed in the past 20 years. Its ordinariness makes the eerie, nocturnal activities all the more terrifying, as does the anonymity of the actors adequately playing the leads.
The thinness of the premise is laid bare toward the end, but not enough to erase the horror of those silent, nighttime images seen through Micah’s bedroom camera. “Paranormal Activity” owns a raw, primal potency, proving again that, to the mind, suggestion has as much power as a sledgehammer to the skull.
— Glenn Whipp
Whipp gave “Paranormal Activity” three stars out of four.
“The Conjuring” (2013)
As sympathetic, methodical ghostbusters Lorraine and Ed Warren, Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson make the old-fashioned haunted-house horror film “The Conjuring” something more than your average fright fest.
“The Conjuring,” which boasts incredulously of being their most fearsome, previously unknown case, is built very in the ’70s-style mold of “Amityville” and, if one is kind, “The Exorcist.” The film opens with a majestic, foreboding title card that announces its aspirations to such a lineage.
But as effectively crafted as “The Conjuring” is, it’s lacking the raw, haunting power of the models it falls shy of. “The Exorcist” is a high standard, though; “The Conjuring” is an unusually sturdy piece of haunted-house genre filmmaking.
— Jake Coyle
Coyle gave “The Conjuring” two and half stars out of four.
“Get Out” (2017)
Fifty years after Sidney Poitier upended the latent racial prejudices of his white date’s liberal family in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” writer-director Jordan Peele has crafted a similar confrontation with altogether more combustible results in “Get Out.”
In Peele’s directorial debut, the former “Key and Peele” star has — as he often did on that satirical sketch series — turned inside out even supposedly progressive assumptions about race. But Peele has largely left comedy behind in a more chilling portrait of the racism that lurks beneath smiling white faces and defensive, paper-thin protestations like, “But I voted for Obama!” and “Isn’t Tiger Woods amazing?”
It’s long been a lamentable joke that in horror films — never the most inclusive of genres — the Black dude is always the first to go. In this way, “Get Out” is radical and refreshing in its perspective.
— Jake Coyle
Coyle gave “Get Out” three stars out of four.
“Hereditary” (2018)
In Ari Aster’s intensely nightmarish feature-film debut “Hereditary,” when Annie (Toni Collette), an artist and mother of two teenagers, sneaks out to a grief-support group following the death of her mother, she lies to her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) that she’s “going to the movies.”
A night out with “Hereditary” is many things, but you won’t confuse it for an evening of healing and therapy. It’s more like the opposite.
Aster’s film, relentlessly unsettling and pitilessly gripping, has carried with it an ominous air of danger and dread: a movie so horrifying and good that you have to see it, even if you shouldn’t want to, even if you might never sleep peacefully again.
The hype is mostly justified.
— Jake Coyle
Coyle gave “Hereditary” three stars out of four.
Read the full review here. ___
Researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed from New York.
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