What do you do when your competitor is featured in a story on the front page of the local morning paper? Or her face shows up repeatedly on the nightly news, commenting on an issue that you know more about?
Do you retreat to the closet and silently lick your wounds? Or complain to your co-workers? Or, heaven forbid, grouse to the media? That kind of behavior is for wimps and weenies.
Do what savvy Publicity Hounds do:
–Call the reporter who wrote the story, introduce yourself and say, “If
you’re doing a follow-up to today’s story, I hope you’ll call on me. Here’s an aspect of the story you didn’t cover.” When I worked as a reporter, I’d sometimes get phone calls like this one. And if I found the information compelling enough, I’d often write another story for the next day’s paper.
–Write a letter to the editor commenting on the story. I suggested this to one of my clients, who ended up getting more space for his letter than each of his four competitors got in the original article.
–Invite the reporter to lunch, explain your areas of expertise and ask the reporter, “How can I help you?”
–Give the reporter a news tip, or a story idea that ties into your expertise. If the reporter ends up covering the story, guess who will probably be quoted in it?
The people in my mentoring program know all these tricks, and hundreds more, delivered in my twice-a-month phone conferences, personal emails and private one-on-one sessions with me to map out their publicity campaigns. Most of them also use me as their personal writing coach. I read their pitch letters, bios, media kit materials, letters to the editor and how-to articles, and show them how to add sizzle to their writing. Read more about the program