232 | PR, Social Entrepreneurship and Positive ROI with Candice Smith
Our guest this week on the pod is Candice Smith. Candice is the Founder & CEO of French Press Public Relations and a Harvard educated serial entrepreneur, publicist and storyteller passionate about helping visionary founders refine their brand story, build their PR strategy and get visible.
Resources mentioned in this episode are:
PR for Social Entrepreneurs: An Interview with French Press Public Relations Founder Candice Smith
NOTE: While it’s not perfect, we offer this transcription by Otter.ai for those who are hearing impaired or who don’t find listening to a podcast enjoyable or possible.
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, Candice Smith
Paul Zelizer 00:02
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of the Awarepreneurs podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practice. Each episode, I do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this intersection. Someone who has market tested experience, and is already transforming many lives. Before I introduce you to our guest and our topic today, I have one request. If you could go over to Apple Podcasts or whatever app you're listening to this show on, hit the subscribe button, do review. It helps tremendously. Thank you so much. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Candace Smith. And our topic today is PR, Social Entrepreneurship and Positive ROI. Candace is the founder and CEO of French press, public relations, and a Harvard educated serial entrepreneur, publicist, and storyteller, passionate about helping visionary founders, refine their brand, build their PR strategy, and get Candace, welcome to the show.
Candice Smith 00:50
Oh, thank you so much for having me, Paul. I'm really excited to be here.
Paul Zelizer 01:00
And I'll tell a little story. Recently, I had a visionary founder approach me who listens to the podcast and Paul, just curious, I'm thinking of hiring somebody for PR, get me on podcasts. And who would you say has gotten the most people placed on the AWARE printers podcasts in the past six months? And I thought about and I was like Candace Smith, Brent. Gary are like, literally, when we're talking about somebody who knows this phase, you pitch me and more successfully in the past six or eight months than anybody. So listeners, if you wondering whether Candice knows what she's talking about, I think she knows what she's doing.
Candice Smith 01:40
I appreciate it.
Paul Zelizer 01:48
Candice, we're called to Awarepreneurs. And one of the ways we like to get to know somebody is to ask you about a wellness or resiliency practice that you personally use to help resource yourself for this really important work.
Candice Smith 02:15
Yeah, I love that. I love that you asked that question. And, you know, obviously, I've listened to some of the other interviews that you've done with a few of my clients. And every time I love hearing the answers to this question, because I really do believe that, you know, we have to have a balance as entrepreneurs. And I would say one of the wellness practices that I've implemented most consistently in my life, is something that I do in the evening to turn my brain off, because I have such trouble disconnecting from work at the end of the day. And I really need something that's a firm boundary. For me to be able to step away from the screens step away from the different emails that I'm writing in my head, or narratives that I'm trying to compose. And it is this, I pull up a meditation. Sometimes it's just sounds,
Candice Smith 03:01
I actually like to have the sounds of either somebody's voice, or just nature sounds, oceans and rain are two of my favorites. And I just sit and listen to those sounds. And focusing on that whether I'm in bed already or just about to disconnect for a date night with my partner. That really helps me set a very clear boundary that I'm going to shut off the the voice in my head.
Paul Zelizer 03:35
Yeah, by have busy brain trying to go to sleep ocean sounds and nice stream sounds those both like help me decompress. Great. Yeah. So Candace, this space of like, social entrepreneurship and impact in business and PR, give us you've had a couple of different ventures, you've been a serial entrepreneur, give us a little like the short version of how'd you get into this work? Oh, yeah. Um, well, I think, especially with with the various entrepreneurs that I talked to, I have a lot of conversations with different entrepreneurs, whether they're my clients or or folks that I teach. But I actually did not start out my career thinking that I was going to be an entrepreneur, I went to Harvard didn't know what I was going for. I ended up going into Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, because I was fascinated by you know, power dynamics of the perceived majority and minorities in in cultures, and focused on that. And through that, those studies, I realized that if we want to make a positive change in the world, we're going to need to do so through education. So my first
Candice Smith 05:00
job out of college was through Teach for America, I went into the classroom taught for a couple of years and ended up starting my first venture in education technology to provide distance learning before it became, you know, the big phenomenon that we know it to be now and since 2020, connecting teachers from around the country to underserved classrooms were the or districts where they did not have enough teachers to adequately address the needs of every student. So I started there, worked in the EdTech sphere for about four years. And then when my connections in Arizona because that was where I had my I had my my teaching there, they were having some issues in Arizona, with oh, gosh, budget cuts everywhere, I ended up pivoting into a subscription box business, which was completely not expected, but ended up focusing on personal and relationship wellness. Going a little bit back to my my roots in sexuality studies and focusing on a subscription box that use games to help couples have better communication. And from there, that was where I realized, in working in the sex tech industry, there was a lot of censorship. And it was very difficult for me to get the word out about this new business that I was trying to grow with my partner. And I ended up looking into PR, because I realized that there were plenty of folks out there that needed to hear about our message. But going through the traditional channels of Instagram, and Facebook, and even Google Ads censored us a few times, it was too difficult for us to try to fight that big media giant algorithm. And so instead, we decided to tell our stories in a different way to the media. And that was how I discovered PR. And I loved it so much. I ended up putting more of my time into that than I did into the business. And was was very successful actually in, in getting, you know, into well over 100 features in the first year. And various speaking speaking engagements, what have you. And so that was when folks started coming to me, as I built up this Network of Entrepreneurs over the years and asked me if I would give them some advice. And that was when I started thinking about helping other founders share their stories.
Paul Zelizer 07:55
And when was this that you pivoted into PR, like give us a timeframe?
Candice Smith 07:59
Yeah, so it really wasn't that long ago, I did PR for myself for two years. And starting at the very beginning of 2020 was actually when I decided to make the full time pivot into PR.
Paul Zelizer 08:15
And I know a lot of our listeners have run into those just structural inequalities, that when we're doing messaging that looks at things around impact and bias and just structural inequalities, a lot of our community and people in my network have run into some of those really unfortunate biases, a big tech or people who, you know, historically haven't had the easiest access to mainstream, you know, channels get screened against, there's more bias against the people who've had more bias historically. So I really appreciate you bringing that up. And I just want to highlight that for our listeners. Some of you know what I'm talking about whether it's somebody who gets put in Facebook Jail, or like you said, even Google ads, just innovative, impact oriented messaging, oftentimes hit these walls. And I'm so glad you're here to help us figure out what we do about that. So let's let's talk a little bit about as you started thinking about PR, and having a product and a company that might run into some of these, like, what were some of the things you started to learn about how PR could help people who are visionary leaders or have a social venture to get their message out?
Candice Smith 09:37
Yeah, absolutely. What a great question. I think it's multi layered. Right. But if we go back to the very beginning, we need to think about what PR really is. And I think that there's a lot of misinformation out there about what public relations is. And, frankly, I believe in I believe this even more strongly, now that I have my own agency, and I'm working with dozens of entrepreneurs and their startups, that we've been given someone else's playbook, you know, especially smaller startup entrepreneurs, we hear these stories of unicorns and people who went viral overnight. And I think these are toxic ideas to hold on to and to grasp on to the the idea of the overnight success, right? That's not, that's not real. When you peel back the layers of the story, you start to realize that there's actually quite a lot behind the the narrative of someone who may seem like an overnight success, but maybe they spent years actually working to build up the skills before they pivoted into something new. Maybe it's privileged, maybe they happen to get lucky, because they their parents gave them a trust fund, or perhaps they met the right person at the right time. Right. So I just I wanted to set that up first, because public relations is very much about relationships. Right. And it's, it seems simple when you say that, but it's, it's not marketing, in the way that that folks look at marketing and say, ads, right, where you know that you put in a certain amount of money, and you expect to see some sort of success, right, you have input, you get output, there's a clear correlation. PR doesn't work in quite the same way. So when we're thinking about relationships, and building relationships with folks that don't know you, but may want to know you, and you're thinking about the visibility, and legacy of your company, and your company's story, it is about storytelling. And so when you start to think about PR, whether you're doing it for yourself, or you're considering hiring someone to help you with your own public relations image, think about the stories that you want to tell to attract the right people to build relationships with. And I would say that's the that's the very core of how I started to think about PR. It's not telling everybody, here's my product, here's my service, listen to me, right? I've built the next best thing since sliced bread, right? Because everybody's saying that, no, it's about telling a story that is going to resonate with the right people.
Paul Zelizer 12:50
And one of the things when we spoke before we hit record and helping to understand like, how do you work, one of the things you talked about is, at the beginning, when a new client comes you do what you call a deep dive, really helping a client like understand their message in the context of what's happening right now, what's happening in the business, what's happening in the culture, what media outlets are looking for. Give us a sense, like what's happening in that? Let's find an interesting way to tell this story of your impact venture, like what happens in that magical deep?
Candice Smith 13:29
Yeah, absolutely. So I think there's, there's a number of, of skills that you need to access when you're getting ready to tell your story because it's not just about sitting down and just having the perfect story at your fingertips, it actually has to be very carefully cultivated. And so what we do when we sit down with our clients at the very beginning of a new engagement, we call it our discovery process is really we're onboarding ourselves into the clients industry, so that we not only understand what the client does, but we understand what is the landscape that they operate in? What's actually happening in the bigger picture, right? Because there are other folks in the space, you may have competitors, you may be a new emerging technology, providing a new solution to a pain point that no one else has landed on. Right? A lot of folks in the social impact space are very mission and values driven. And there are real problems in the world that they're attempting to solve. So we look at what those things are. And then we go out and look at the media to see what the media is saying about these. These particular issues. pain points, the industry. And so we call that our media landscape analysis. So for anybody who's going doing PR and starting on their own start there. Take a look at what everybody else is saying about your industry, about your pain points, and your competitors. The second thing that we do is we look at the, what we like to call the SWOT analysis. Now SWOT S W O T is an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. But we do it in a slightly different way than your typical SWOT analysis, which just looks at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of your competitors. But rather what we're doing is we're looking at the media version of the SWOT analysis. So what are competitors doing that will help them boost their visibility? Right? Are they pursuing thought leadership? Are they on podcasts? are they writing op eds? Are they only focusing on getting into gift guides? Let's say, right, so we take a look at what kind of story angles they're talking about, and what the media is focusing on what keywords are being searched, or what search terms. We think that their clients, our clients, clients, or clients, customers, or stakeholders might be searching for when they type in a search term into into Google. And then we take a look at Part Three now that you've done this analysis of what is there? The question becomes what isn't there? Right? What and we like to call these the white spaces? So where are the opportunities, the blank spots, where our clients stories can fit a niche that isn't currently being addressed? Right. So that's where we take everything that we've learned and we synthesize and pull out those whitespaces. And then part four. So this is the last section is we identify using the SWOT analysis, what the what is the strategy that we're going to use in order to test various angles of this new story. So a lot of what we look to build out are what I like to call your intellectual real estate, right? We looked at the media landscape. And now we want to take a flag and stick it into the ground somewhere and say, This is your intellectual real estate. This is your value proposition that nobody else is talking about. Let's make sure that you have your own terminology that people know how to find you because you've created the you know, the Paul Zelizer method, right. So those would be the four steps that we use to prepare ourselves to start telling and testing story angles to the press.
Paul Zelizer 17:55
Such great tips there, Candace and I never thought about it this way. But I very simple thing I do to kind of do that in an ongoing way is I set up Google alert, specifically, like I set up Google alerts for social entrepreneurship. And for podcasting, for obvious reasons. This is a podcast about social October, I want to know what's going on in the space. And I'm listening for stories. I'm on the media and a podcast is what sometimes called new medium will talk about difference between old media and new media not termed by like, but they're tossed around. We'll get there in a second. But I'd like to have a sense of like, what's going on in the spaces I operate, and Google will send me, hey, here's what's happening. Here's the top 10 stories in social entrepreneurship. Sometimes they're like ridiculous and not useful at all. So there's like, all my gosh, I had no idea this new company existed, or here's a trend or here's a new technology in podcasting, or here's a great, you know, conference that is going on, it's gathering, you know, people of color, and podcasting, I just sent a message to a colleague of mine about a podcast gathering for black podcasters. And I didn't know about it except for this alert. So certain things that you can do to kind of get a lay of the land before we go out with our story to have a sense of what's happening in the space. I love that. And I love that you're thinking about in terms of the SWOT analysis in a more nuanced way than I've heard before. That's, that's really, really helpful. Thank you.
Candice Smith 19:27
Yeah, absolutely. And if I can add a little bit more to that, just in terms of why it's so important to, to do this as a business owner, and just to keep a finger on the pulse of what's happening in your industry, is it? It gives you a sense of where not only where your ideal media contacts are, but where your ideal audience might be, right because sometimes these stories aren't necessarily going to come up on the cover of Forbes or online. Entrepreneur Magazine, sometimes they're in smaller industry niche publications. And that might be where you need to connect with your audience. Right? So I hear this, this idea of the golden standard is we have to get into all of these top names. But the question that that I always ask my clients is, do you know how that's going to convert for you? Right? We don't even necessarily know if Forbes getting into Forbes or getting a mansion, or a backlink is necessarily going to drive that traffic and those conversions that you're looking for, right? So just something to think about, it's, it's beneficial to keep a finger on the pulse of the media trends in your industry for more than one reason.
Paul Zelizer 20:47
So help us understand this changing media landscape canvas where there's so many options that people could approach in terms of media outlets, and how do you help people find the ones that are a good fit for their particular venture?
Candice Smith 21:03
Absolutely, so we like to think of, of a, we like to think of your digital footprint, right? So everybody has a digital presence these days. And if you don't, and you're listening to this podcast, please start. Create a website, get your social media handles up, start start creating content and and letting people know that you're there, right? Because especially if you're going to be approaching the media, they're going to want to know who you are, right? They're going to do at the very least a basic Google search to see where you come from, what is your presence online, and we like to call that your digital footprint. And so we can get really granular with this thinking about, you know, your domain authority, for example, which I can explain that, that metric, if you would, like, starting to think about SEO and things like that, but either way, the point is, the media landscape is becoming increasingly fragmented. And even more so in 2020, as folks are leaving traditional publications and starting to go freelance, they're writing their own blogs, their own newsletter, sub stacks, what have you, creating podcasts. And the great thing is there is a very varied and diverse listenership that is excited audience that is excited to learn, and read and consume this information. And so we don't tell our clients, especially those who don't have a very large digital footprint to start at the highest echelon, right, we're not going to start a PR engagement going straight for Forbes or straight for the TechCrunch. We're going to start by establishing a foundation. And so we established this foundation. Once we take a look at the media landscape that I talked about and the SWOT analysis, we look at all of the different story angles that are possible, right from the founders backstory to the problem that they're solving for the world to the industry that they're in, and current trends that are happening right now in the news, and all of those different angles that we're looking at reveal stories, and those stories we look to tell to varying audiences. So absolutely, we can look at local media or local TV, or we can, you know, go for a national parenting blog or a parenting magazine, right. So we can focus on a particular industry, or niche of interest across various verticals, right, you can go local or national, you can look at TV, podcast, you can even go to medium there are several medium, newsletters and blogs, there are interest groups, like create and cultivate, for example, that except op eds from from founders, and we look to test and see what story angles are resonating, so that we can start to establish more of a digital footprint for our clients while we're working on establishing these larger relationships with some of the top tier publications, which tends to take a few months.
Paul Zelizer 24:43
Nice. Thanks for that. So in a minute, I want to ask you about ROI part of our title that we haven't talked about and where people can get started. Before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Do you have a business It's about making a positive impact in the world. And you want it to grow both in terms of having more positive impact helping more people and your income. If so, I'd like to talk to you about some research about what scientist tells us actually moves the needle in terms of growing these kinds of businesses. Scientists call it social support. And whether we're trying to get in shape or quit smoking, or grow a business. It is the single biggest predictor about whether the changes we're wanting in our life actually happen. Social support is just a fancy way to say, having a community of people who understand what you're going through and can share the ups and downs any human growth journey, like growing an impact focus business has some uptimes oh my gosh, I just landed that thing. And some downtimes Oh, that thing I thought it was gonna land it fell through. When you have people who understand and are giving you tips and emotional support are much more likely to succeed. That's what we do at the AWARE printers community. It's a community of hundreds of impact oriented, founders and entrepreneurs that share you can post Hey, I've got this new sales page for my product. Can we type pricings somebody in the group recently was asking for help about her guest podcast, her podcast guesting strategy, etc, etc. It's affordable starting at $25 a month. If you think it might be something you're interested in, go check it out at aware printers.com forward slash community can thank you to everybody in the AWARE printers community to help sponsor this podcast. So Candace, let's talk a little bit about that positive ROI, right, I could imagine PR is like, wow, that all sounds like, you know, really helpful. do an analysis a SWOT analysis help get a sense of the landscape of where this story fits, finding that whitespace. All that sounds great. But like, this takes time, energy and money, some combination. There's resources involved for doing this. And how do I know if I'm a busy founder who's got a lot of things on my plate? Is the ROI they're not?
Candice Smith 27:11
Yeah, absolutely. And it's a great question to start with. And it's something that I always recommend my founders think about first is, you know, we're telling these stories and PR is, it's not advertising, right. And it's not a guarantee that even if you get a feature somewhere, it's not necessarily going to lead to sales or conversions. And so the question becomes, you know, how do we really evaluate the ROI of PR, if evaluating PR by sales is actually one of the least reliable ways to think about PR when you're looking at return for your business? So I say, start with your Google Analytics, right? Take a look at your numbers and your metrics. I'm no data scientist. And I was actually able to learn everything I know now, from looking, looking on Google, looking up YouTube tutorials, the information is out there for any entrepreneur who wants to do it themselves first. But you have to start by tracking and seeing exactly where your leads are coming from. I'll give you an example. So I've spoken with a number of entrepreneurs, I give virtual coffee, and office hours, and I answer questions, and I teach on the side. And a lot of the questions I get are around, what do you think I should be doing? Right? What should I be going after podcasts? Or gift guides? Or should I go into local or national media? What should I be focusing my time on? And my answer is always start by tracking and seeing exactly what you want your goals to be. Right. So if you know what your goals are, you've got a number of different. Let's say you've got some services, you have a newsletter, you have a product to sell, you have a book that you're selling. Or maybe you've got a meditation that needs to be downloaded, let's say, right, so you've got all these different ways that folks can engage and interact with your website and set goals in Google Analytics to track and see what your conversion rates are. From there. You can actually see where your leads are coming from. track their customer journey throughout your website and be Getting to see things like if I do podcasts, and I realized that my podcasts actually have a higher conversion rate for me, when it comes to downloading my audio book, then when I spent weeks writing an op ed, for this column that I committed myself to, then you're going to want to start putting your time and your effort and energy towards doing more podcasts, because you find that it has a higher return on the investment that you put into it. So I like to liken it to filling up a bunch of balloons, right. So if you have balloons, you're going to want to attach strings to them, if you don't, you're going to have a really hard time holding on to all of these balloons, the more balloons that you that you fill up with air, eventually, you're going to reach a breaking point, and they're all just gonna float away into the air, and you're never going to be able to get them down. Right. And PR is the same way. Right? It's not good to. Or rather, it's, it's a waste of your time, ultimately, to be putting yourself out there without knowing how you're going to be tracking the return. And so I say always attach a string to the balloons that you put out into the world so that you know exactly what they're doing out there. And you can always check, check them out, see how they're performing? Do they need a little more air Do you got to post about it a couple more times on social media. So that they don't they don't float away.
Paul Zelizer 31:36
Great tip. And for anybody who doesn't know, Google Analytics is free. It's pretty easy to install on your site. That's incredibly powerful. And a story of kind of what not to do. Please don't do this. I've done it. But please try not to do this going forward. Somebody I know was on one of the biggest entrepreneur podcast on the planet, hundreds of 1000s of downloads, I don't even remember how many hundreds of 1000s for every episode. And it was like, Oh my gosh, this is going to change the course of it. They got not one sale. It's a good interview. But there was no strategy. It was like, if I'm on this bid podcast, then like it's gonna change the course of my life forever. But they hadn't thought about like, what were they doing? What was the follow up? What was the call to action, no analytics in place. It was an you know, it was a great experience to kind of be on a podcast of that space. And occasionally now like, they can refer back to it now that they have some other things in place. But at the moment of being on that podcast, the biggest moment, PR wise in their business, they got zero ROI because they didn't have anything that you're talking about in place. So yeah, let's not do that.
Candice Smith 32:52
And it happens more than you would think,
Paul Zelizer 32:53
Oh, I've done it. I resemble that remark in the past totally, totally. Yeah.
Candice Smith 32:58
Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to call back. What you were saying just before, making sure that you have a call to action, whenever you engage with someone in the media, or you have somebody on your behalf, engaging for you. Make sure that you know what link you're going to be sharing. And that you know exactly what where you want folks to Lee to land on your page. You know, there's there's nothing worse than just giving a generic link. Let's say you have a product or a book or a service. And you just give your your general website link instead of actually giving a specific link and study show that the more click throughs that people have to do to get to a final point of sale, they will drop off, right? If it's if it's at all difficult for them to find where you're trying to lead them to. So you know, make sure that you've got these really, really clear call to actions. That you're you're letting media know exactly what you need from them, besides just sharing your story, and it will increase your conversions. Exactly.
Paul Zelizer 34:15
And also maybe thinking about give two examples from my business thinking about like, where are you showing up? So for instance, I'm really blessed to get asked to be a podcast guests find some pretty cool podcasts, some of them with quite significant audiences. And one of the reasons one of the things I do there is like, hey, go listen to the AWARE printers, podcast, podcast listeners like podcasts and it's a great way to grow. The audience of the aware printers podcast, it's it fits. It's kind of like medium to medium. Like if they liked me as a guest on this podcast. They might come on here, right? There's all sorts of goals I have for the where printers, podcasts, and how that fits as a venture. I also have my coaching website, which is Paul Zelizer Dunn. Common if I go ask if I get asked to, for instance, teach a master class, the people in a master class, a good portion of them probably don't care for podcasts that much. And what I might do there is I have a free guide my free ebook, and that gets somebody onto my email list. So you know, thinking about, Oh, if you're talking on a podcast, where it's a topic that's somewhat related, and you have a podcast, okay, that's a fit. If you're like trying to grow your podcast, but you're doing a master class, and it's a more general audience, and maybe only 25% or 30% of the people there even, you know, listen to podcasts in any regular way, that might not be the best call to action to have them listen to your podcast. So so that's another just real world like thinking of what's the context? And how do you sync up? How can you have a couple of call to actions and sync up where you're pointing people to where you met them?
Candice Smith 35:54
Exactly, exactly. And if if I may, you know, it's, what you're saying is, is so it's so great to remember that PR is not a silo, and it shouldn't exist in its own silo, it is a tool, a strategy that you can use to bring your audience to you. Right? I always say that PR, is, it's not a sales generator, right? If you can make sales from getting in front of your right audience, right. But it's not a sales generator, it's not a replacement for a broken sales funnel, it amplifies what is already working, right, which means that PR, in order for PR to work for you, to have a positive ROI, you have to already have things working with your marketing with your internal customer journey, and you have to have a good website layout and making sure that your product is actually selling, right. So PR is is like a horse that you're bringing to the the pond. And it's up to you to make sure that the horse actually drinks it once they get there.
Paul Zelizer 37:12
So if somebody is listening, and they're saying, okay, that makes sense. And I get that there are some things I want to do in terms of how I'm thinking about my story, what kind of media outlets I'm telling that story in, I want to have some infrastructure in place in terms of thinking about customer journey. Okay, I got that. Maybe there's some work I want to do after listening this podcast. But you're right, I get it. How do we get started? Like, alright, but tell me about the PR part. Candace, you rock PR you, Paul, just give you big props is helping to get more people on this podcast than any other PR person? How do I how do I get started? If I really do want to lean into PR more than I have in the past?
Candice Smith 37:54
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's go back for a second to that media landscape analysis that I was talking about. And it's very easy to do, I recommend, you can do it. As soon as you hop off this podcast, or maybe while you're listening, you can follow along. But if you open up any web browser, and go to news.google.com, and start typing in some search terms about your industry, right, identify what are some of the industry trends, or things that you think your ideal customer might be typing into a search bar, to learn a little bit more about how to solve their pain point, right, you can also type in search terms around time, timely things or your location, right. So for example, I'm in Raleigh, North Carolina, and it's holiday season. So perhaps somebody who has a product might say, Raleigh local shop, local gift guides for holidays, right. And perhaps you may want to look up your competitors, but take take five to 10 minutes, and brain dump all of these different ideas into a list and start searching them to see what's actually coming up in the media right now. And when you find those articles, take a look at who's writing them. Those are the people you want to start talking to. Those are the people you want to start telling your story to. Right. So identify some of those articles, some of the authors of those articles, and you can reach out to them in a number of ways, right? It's easy to find people's emails on on the internet these days. Sometimes people will have their their emails on their Twitter accounts or in LinkedIn. But if they're not available, then you can reach out to them directly through Twitter or LinkedIn. I actually love using LinkedIn to reach out to Media. And, you know, I do get a lot of questions, you know, isn't that bothering them? And as long as you're, you're polite, and you're humble, and you're not stalkerish, then generally, no, I mean, if you if you've done your research, and you very clearly can explain why you think that you would like to connect with this person, and letting them know what relevant information and stories you have to share with them that they think their audience would care about, then you're doing them a favor, ultimately. And it's the beginning. It's the potential beginning of a new relationship. Right. And so, think about that. I mean, journalists podcasters we're all just people. Right. And I think that there's, and I felt this way, too. When I first got started. I was so nervous, right. They felt like these big monoliths of like, you know, the gatekeepers to the gatekeepers to the media. And yeah, I mean, absolutely, they're telling the story. They're sharing the narrative, but, but they're human beings, and treat them like human beings, and let them know that they're more than just another name on a checklist. And you're more likely to, to get a Hello.
Paul Zelizer 41:29
He said, Candace, you're doing them a favor. And I can say, as somebody who again, has a new media outlet called the podcast, it's such a gift when somebody either they themselves or somebody that represents them or to colleagues, as Paul, I think this might be a really great guest for our printer, my, my passion is to bring the most inspiring, impactful and great to learn from stories in the social entrepreneur space that I could possibly find. So it's not a how now I even go to the extent I look for PR people, I get pitched about 300 stories a week, because I've signed up a whole bunch of PR lists and a good portion of them are not relevant. But then I don't have to work very hard to go find interesting stories, because in 300 pitches a week, one of them's going to be really interesting, right. And if it comes via an LinkedIn message, or an Instagram private message, or being on a PR list, or somebody emails me or go through the AWARE printers Contact page, I honestly don't care. I'm looking for the best stories that I could possibly find for you as senators. So I just want to highlight what you're saying, Candice, it's not a hassle. If somebody is doing their job as a media person, their job is to find, it's like the currency of being a media person is telling fabulous stories in that space. And when somebody reaches out, and it's a great story, even if it's not quite the perfect fit. And you say, not right now. And thank you very much. But it's not a perfect fit, you're still doing a huge favor. Not only is it not a bother, it is a huge favor to give them another possibility. At least that's how I think about it as a media channel founder. So I don't know if other founders think about it that way. But it's not a hassle at all I love when people show up and say, what about this story? Right? Great, great gift to kind of put your name in the hat. As long as you're being mindful of that that's a person that cares about those kinds of stories, it's less fun to receive one when it's like completely irrelevant to the topic of this podcast.
Candice Smith 43:40
Exactly, exactly. So it's just you have to make sure that when you are reaching out that you're doing so mindfully, and I think that's one of my favorite parts of doing outreach and doing my job is finding, finding those elements, those special moments of connection that I think will will be exciting for that media contact to learn about and read about because I saw that they wrote about something else that was relevant, or is tangential to what work my client is doing. And I say, you know, I think because you wrote about this, or because you spoke about this with somebody else that you might enjoy learning about this story instead.
Paul Zelizer 44:31
Any tips for the pitch itself? So if I'm a listener, I'd be like, Okay, that makes sense. And maybe I can rethink like, Oh, I'm such a bother or like it's this terrible, spammy thing to do to reach out to a complete stranger. Hopefully, we've maybe opened another possibility. Another way to think about it for listeners. And I say, Okay, here's somebody that seems to be interested in this kind of space, their journalist or their podcast or blogger. I think they like these kinds of stories and I want to reach out to them any tips or what actually goes into pitch yourself?
Candice Smith 45:04
Absolutely. So I always say let's start with the subject line. I always say that journalists are like a study a masterclass study in how to write clickable headlines, right, because they want you to click on them they they get when they get traffic, they get the opportunity to write more articles and more content. So take a look at some of these articles and article titles that you have pulled up during your media landscape research. And you'll start to get some ideas of how to formulate a clickable headline because remember, a lot of media get a ton of pitches all the time. So you're going to want to make sure that whatever you're pitching is not only in an industry that they care about, but that you're framing it in a way that shows that you understand how they like to share news, right? And so think about that, take a look at at some of the the headlines, you know, are they more mysterious? Or are they super straightforward? Are they playful? Right? So look at the tone and the structure and use that as a guide to help you figure out how you're going to share the subject, because that gets you to the open. And once you get to the open, the content of the pitch inside will vary. You sometimes you've got a longer story to tell, sometimes you're sharing your thought leadership piece, you're responding to something that's happening right now in the news, or you're sharing about your let's say, a an angle about your product, or book or what have you that is relevant in the media today. But no matter what that pitch contains, you're going to want to include some part of your secret sauce. Why? What do you have to share? That is new that is innovative, that is interesting that can provide value for their audience. And why do you think it's something new that they haven't already heard 1000 times before? Right? Reporters don't want to publish the same things over and over again, they want to hear maybe a slightly different take on a story that they've covered, or a nuance or another related related topic, right? So give them a sense, I like to think of it as for anyone who's taken AP English out there, ethos, logos, and pathos, right? That's your authority, logic and emotion. If you can connect on those three pieces, ethos, logos, pathos, that helps you build a strong foundation for a story that will spark interest because that first pitch email isn't going to be a, you know, 500 word essay, right, it's not going to be that you're giving just enough to let that person know that you have a story of interest for them that it is a value that you can give some logos, you can give some statistics, let's say or facts to back up your knowledge that you have the authority, the ethos, because you're an expert in your field in some way, shape, or form. And maybe there's some pathos to it as well, it's not entirely necessary. But if you have some sort of emotional connection, or you know, maybe you're solving a pain point, or you have an element of your story that incites emotion, that those are the three key pieces of the pitch that you're going to want to include. I also say include your call to action, you always want to have that call to action wherever you go. And for anyone who's getting stuck on exactly, you know, what is my ethos, logos, path, those I like to call it your lightbulb moment. Think about any time that you've spoken to somebody who is a stakeholder, a customer, potential customer, a stranger on the street. Think about what you were telling them about what you do. And the moment that their eyes light up. Right the moment they're like, Ah, wow, that is so cool. I love what you're doing. Right? I call that the lightbulb moment you see their face and their eyes light up. Whatever you were telling them at that moment. That's part of what should be in your pitch.
Paul Zelizer 49:53
Great suggestion. Well, Candace, I could hang out with you all day, but I wouldn't do that to you and I won't do that. Her listeners, if there was something you were hoping we'd get to, and we haven't gotten to yet, or there's something you want to leave our listeners with to help them get started and leveraging PR in their impact focused business, what would that be?
Candice Smith 50:14
Yeah, absolutely, I would say, remember that PR is not just about getting the feature. And that's it. Right? Remember that once you have it, once you have the feature, it is it's a part of your digital footprint now, nurture it, help it grow, amplify it. So don't forget to share out anytime you get a new feature, and make your features work for you. Right, it's only going to help you to post about it on all of your platforms to play tag, right tag everybody who was involved, thank them, I think the publication thank the the person who was responsible for releasing the content, thank the editor. If there is one, make sure your team posts and add any vanity logos. You know, the larger publications if if you happen to have any add those to your site, right, that builds that ethos, that authority that we were talking about before, so that anybody who comes to you in the future, to learn a little bit more about what you've got going on, learns to trust you a little faster.
Paul Zelizer 51:28
In this, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Candice Smith 51:31
Absolute Absolutely. Thank you again for having me.
Paul Zelizer 51:34
So put links of the French press PR site and go consider doing a copy chat with Candace about your situation, Google Analytics, the news.google.com all that'll be in the show notes. So go leverage those and go get into some awesome media outlets telling your stories, folks, before we go, I have one request. We love listener suggested topics and guests. If you have an idea for a show, please go to the AWARE printers website, go to our contact page. And right there on the page, we have the three criteria we use to that stories. So if you take a look at that, and it feels like a fit. Please tell us your ideas. So for now, I want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care and these intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.