TCC Podcast #413: Free PR strategies for copywriters with Gloria Chou

Standing out and getting noticed is hard in a world with more than a million people calling themselves copywriters and content writers. Posting on social media, writing for LinkedIn, or even creating content for Google or Pinterest—all of those things work. But who wouldn’t love to be featured in the Wall Street Journal or Business Insider? You get positive press and a high-value link to your site for SEO. Sign us up. But hold on… it’s not as easy as you might think. My guest for the 413th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Gloria Chou, a self-made PR specialist. And in this interview she spells out how you can attract those high value press placements to help grow your business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

 

Stuff to check out:

Gloria’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground

 

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  As you think about your copywriting or content writing business and all the things you need to do to get yourself out there and in front of your ideal clients… there are a lot of options. There’s social media with its various options from TikTok and Instagram to LinkedIn and Twitter and more. You can create a YouTube channel or a podcast. You can show up at events or in groups in places like Facebook. You can start your own groups using tools like Telegram, Skool, Circle, and of course Facebook. You can ask your existing clients to introduce you to their network and build a business on referrals. I even know one writer who had his car wrapped with a vinyl cover that advertised his work and contact information. 

And honestly, those are just the most popular options—except maybe that car wrap. That might be a little more rare.

One of the most effective ways to get yourself out there is to be featured in a major publication or possibly on TV using PR. That kind of exposure comes with instant credibility and potentially, a massive audience of potential clients. What would an article in The Wall Street Journal or Business Insider do for your clients attraction efforts? I’m guessing it wouldn’t hurt. And if you’re like a couple of copywriters I know, it could instantly double or triple your business almost overnight.

Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I interviewed former television producer and diplomat and current PR guru expert and unofficial hype woman for dozens of small businesses, Gloria Chou. Gloria’s approach to getting PR is a bit different from other experts who talk about it and definitely worth learning about. What she shares in this interview could be just the thing you need to land the publicity you need to take the next step in your business. So stay tuned to hear what she had to share.

Before we jump in with Gloria…

You only have a couple of days until the next guest expert workshop happening in The Copywriter Underground. I’ve shared a lot of details about what The Underground includes on past episodes, so let me just say this. Unlike a lot of other memberships and groups, the underground is designed to make things easy. There aren’t dozens of modules to watch or complicated hoops to jump through. Just the focused insights and ideas you need to grow your business from wherever you are today to that goal you want to reach. We make building a copywriting business do-able. 

So I mentioned the training coming this week. It’s with Pinterest Marketing expert Heather Farris. She’s going to  show you how to use Pinterest to drive leads to your business. And how just one or two posts, can send new clients your way for years after you post on that platform. It’s a workshop that could add a bunch of new clients and thousands of dollars in new revenue to your existing business. And you can do it in about 30 minutes a week. To get access to Heather’s Pinterest secrets, you’ve got to be a member of The Copywriter Underground, which you can do at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.

And now, let’s go to our interview with Gloria…

Gloria, welcome to the Copyrighted Club podcast. Tell us, please, how did you become a PR guru and I guess the unofficial hype woman for dozens of small businesses?

Gloria Chou: Thank you so much for having me, Rob. Yeah, so I always say like my alter ego, if I wasn’t doing this, I’m like that person like at a concert, let’s say a hip hop concert, that’s like hyping the crowd up before the main guy comes on. I just love to see people win. And, you know, I was always a person that was like connecting my friends to different opportunities. But funny thing is, is that I’ve actually never worked a day in my life in PR, never worked in an agency, whether it’s marketing or PR, I actually used to be a US diplomat. So I had a very non-traditional path to becoming what I am today. And I just started picking up the phone and cold calling after I got my first PR gig. Because again, I never worked in PR, so I didn’t have contacts. And from just literally, I kid you not, cold calling the operator at the New York Times, starting from the operator, and perfecting that pitch so many times after being rejected, of course, even more times, I picked up on patterns of like, okay, this is what an editor wants or this is how I can write an email to a journalist who doesn’t know me, who actually will respond and say, tell me more. And so I’ve kind of been able to kind of hack it and I come up with my proprietary pitching method that now I teach everybody called the CPR method. So that’s kind of the long and short of it is crazy career transition, cold calling, and kind of always been an industry outsider. And so now I teach other people how to hack their own PR.

Rob Marsh: So I’m really curious how somebody goes from the idea of being a diplomat, which I know it’s probably not as sexy as what it seems like, you know, the James Bond movies or the Netflix specials or whatever, but diplomat PR is a pretty different career change. So what sparked that?

Gloria Chou: So I grew up bilingual, bicultural, I’m Chinese-American, and I studied abroad in South Africa. And so I’ve always been interested in just having a very international life. And so I thought, OK, well, maybe my niche is in diplomacy or something to do with international relations, which is what I studied in school. I ended up getting a scholarship. I ended up, you know being fast-tracked to the Foreign Service and I quickly realized that there are two types of people in the world people who like to stay in the boundaries and kind of just do what they’re told and people who are More creative and visionaries and like to kind of just learn by getting into the fire. 

So I’m the latter type I am NOT the type that’s just like okay let’s just do this because this is the way it’s always been done and so I realized that even though the career was incredible, right? I got to travel, I had the most amazing benefits, still do miss those benefits, that ultimately was not aligned for my personality. And there was also a part of me that wanted to just work with women of color, you know, which is like people like me. And so with all of that, I decided to leave that career and kind of have a midlife crisis, I guess, if you will, give up this very, you know, prestigious quote unquote career and kind of restart my life. And so that’s kind of what I did. And slowly and slowly I started to get tiny little PR gigs. 

I remember the first PR gig I got was my friend who was taking a sabbatical from diplomacy. And he’s like, yeah, I’m working for this FinTech startup. We haven’t really raised money. We don’t have any budget. But sure, like if you can get them on CNBC and Wall Street Journal and New York Times, like they’ll pay you like 250 bucks per feature, which is like not a lot, right? And no one really does No PR agency will do that. They don’t give you any guarantees. 

I had to start from the bottom, so I was like, sure. And so I had no idea what AI, fintech, anything was. And I just started looking at Excel spreadsheets and sitting with their engineers and figuring out, what is the story here and how can I pitch it to the press? And I think just from doing that over and over and over again, I have this skill of finding out what is the storyline that’s really relevant from something that maybe is very complex or maybe not as interesting, and how do we make it interesting to the media? And then I didn’t have any contacts. So what did I do? I had to literally Google the operator and start cold calling. And so I think it’s the combination of getting rejected, cold calling and doing it over and over that now has built my business to what it is, which is a really untraditional way of doing PR and giving that power back to the people, which is me saying, you don’t need to hire an agency. You own your own story. You’re the best advocate for your business. Now, how can you just pitch in a way that is proven to get that person on the other side to respond? So that’s really kind of what I’ve built with my PR community.

Rob Marsh: That makes sense. I think a lot of small business people are thinking, okay, well, I’m putting stuff on Instagram or I’ve posted on my blog. That’s PR. Tell us why that’s not actually PR and what we should maybe be doing, some of the things we should be doing differently.

Gloria Chou: Well, you know this better than anyone, as CEOs, it’s all about how can we work smarter and not harder? How can we move from the $10 an hour tasks, which we can delegate and automate, social media, customer service, making reels, writing captions, how can we move from those $10 an hour tasks to the $10,000 an hour things that actually builds an asset for your business. 

So when I think about social media, it is not an SEO asset. It’s not SEO friendly. It doesn’t build your SEO. You don’t own your social media. It can be hacked, banned, restricted at any point. So for me, it’s not an asset, right? What is an asset is building SEO, and what builds SEO are backlinks. So when you get featured in the New York Times or Forbes, those backlinks have very high rankings, which will really boost your SEO. Not only that, unlike social media and ads, Having a piece, whether it’s on a podcast that you trust, whether it’s on Forbes, it’s credible. So you’re also not only getting traffic, but you’re gaining the trust of your audience, really positioning yourself as an authority and standing out from the competition. No other marketing activity gets you all those buckets, but PR does.

Rob Marsh: Okay, so how do we do it then? You know, because it sounds great. I would love to have a feature in the Wall Street Journal with a stipple drawing or whatever, but that feels like a really big reach from where a lot of copywriter businesses are. Sometimes we haven’t even really defined who we’re working with yet or exactly what we’re really good at. So where do we start?

Gloria Chou: Well, I will say that the reason why you think that is very normal is because the industry has told us for decades that you have to pay someone who knows someone, and it’s really about this kind of gatekeeping, and it’s about privilege. And what I’ve discovered is that journalists don’t want to talk to agents. They don’t want to talk to PR reps. They want to talk to you, the founder. So how can we just remove that middle layer, but learn how to talk to journalists in a way that they want? Because here’s the thing, the news cycle is 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They need information, right? You’re actually doing the journalist a job and helping them by giving them content, and they want to interview fresh voices. If journalists only interviewed the top people, right, the people from Fortune 500 companies, they would lose their credibility very quickly. So put your name in the hat, first of all. Know that journalists want to hear from you. Now, that’s the first thing. Second thing is a lot of people just aren’t taught how to pitch to the media because it’s not something that we’re taught. We’re taught how to market. We’re taught how to sell our features and benefits. But here’s the thing. The journalist is not your customer. They’re never going to buy from you. So you can’t be too direct in how you’re selling. So if you pitch the journalist like you’re pitching to a customer, Then the journalist will say, well, we have an entire ads department, happy to take your money, why don’t you buy an ad? And if you don’t want to buy an ad, you have to position yourself as an expert. What does that mean? It means that you need to have a point of view on a specific topic or an issue and you want to lead with that instead of what you’re doing. Does that make sense? Yeah. I have someone who’s a speaking coach and she helps introverts really, you know, get their copy and messaging out there in a world full of noisy extroverts is what she calls. And so her pitch was not about like, hey, this is what I do, this is what I serve. She started her pitch using a third party data point from a research institute that said that introverts were actually better suited for certain C-level positions than extroverts. And then she went on to say why and kind of the speaking tips and different words that introverts should use and not use. And she ended up being featured in over four different magazines. So you see how that’s leading with the issue or the trend and not leading with what you sell? And I think that’s really the key of it all is you really need to position yourself in that way and translate your marketing pitch into something that the journalists can actually use. How can you provide tips, solutions, steps, framework? How can you pitch it in a way that’s relevant to what people are talking about?

Rob Marsh: I want to come back to the pitch and get really specific on this. But first, you mentioned we have to get on the list. We have to be the go-to person. So I’m going to speak for whoever I think is listening. Maybe I don’t have a lot of contacts or I have zero contacts. Maybe I read a local paper. I’m like, oh, I know the name of the business editor at my local paper. How do I get myself on the list? Are we talking about signing up for things like HARO or is there a better approach?

Gloria Chou: There’s a couple of ways to do it, like grassroots, right? To me, when you boil it down, PR is two things. It’s writing a pitch and knowing who to send it to. So we talked a little bit about the pitch. Now let’s talk about who to send it to. You’re not sending it to the generic inbox at New York Times. You’re not sending it to the editor-in-chief. They’re busy doing their own book tour. And so for us, it’s really about finding the staff reporter that covers that beat or that issue. It could be the person that covers entrepreneurship. It could be the small business reporter. It could be fashion, finance, whatever that is. But make sure you are targeting it to the specific journalist and not a general inbox that just goes into an internet black hole. So that’s number one. Number two, obviously, you can set up a Google News Alert, where Google gives you all the articles that are digital articles, online articles that are being written about your keyword. So if you’re a copywriter for fitness, right, you’ll be able to see all the different news articles. And you can start to create your own media list by copy and pasting the journalist name and email. This is public information. Obviously, in our program, we have a database of 100,000 journalists to save you that time. But you can start off doing very grassroots thing like Google News Alert, sign up for Haro, and also follow different hashtags on Twitter and LinkedIn. Because guess what? Journalists are writers and they are publishing on those platforms. And so what better way to connect and break the ice and say, hey, I love this article that you wrote. Have you thought about this other topic or are you doing a follow up? So those are very kind of organic ways. There’s a couple of hashtags you can follow on Twitter and LinkedIn. One of them is a journal request. And so that just means that the journalist has a request for interviewing a certain type of person for their story. And if you fit the bill, then you should answer that.

Rob Marsh: And if you see that, how quickly do you have to respond? You know, if I see something from a week ago, I’m guessing it’s too late, right?

Gloria Chou: You know, it depends. If it’s someone who is writing for a top tier outlet, they’re probably going to have a lot of responses already. And so time is of the essence, but it takes two seconds to go every day to just do your Google News alerts, you know, check the hashtags. And before you know it, you will start to populate your own media list of whatever, you know, journalists that are covering your keyword. Social media is amazing. We live in such an amazing time where people are not really at their desks anymore, right? And so it’s not like you can’t reach someone on LinkedIn or on Twitter by just complimenting them on their article or even in the DMs. So use that to your advantage, the fact that we do have such an accessible way to contact people through social media.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I really like that idea. I mean, obviously, we’re already following people, maybe not necessarily in our niches, you know, maybe I’m following news resources so having those conversations almost feels like that’s been happening anyway. And you’re suggesting just make it work for your business and point it in a slightly different direction.

Gloria Chou: It’s a different mindset because I think as founders, we’re all about that sales and marketing message, which we’re so good at, but we just have to put on a different hat in order to talk to the journalist. I always say, and I teach this too, I always say pitching to the media is like peeling away the layer of an onion. And it works for whether you’re pitching for a podcast or anyone else. It’s really, are you pitching to someone who’s not a customer, right? So think about the first layer of an Añon as a very general pitch. The ones that I get in my inbox all the time because I host a podcast and it would be like, you know, why women need to focus on wellness and mental health. Like, okay, that’s not really flavorful in terms of the onion. I want to peel away to get to the core of it. And so that requires two things, which is specificity and relevance. So let’s workshop that a little bit. Okay. Why in 2024 women over 50 are facing a mental health crisis. Do you see how that’s more specific?

Rob Marsh: Yeah.

Gloria Chou: And how can we make it even better? Why after COVID, suicide rates for midlife women are exponentially increasing, right? So you see how with every time you pitch, you get a little bit better, you get a little bit more specific. And that’s how I want you to think of your pitch, whether it’s for a podcast or an outlet, you just got to peel away the layers of the onion.

Rob Marsh: And this is where a lot of our listeners who have copywriting skills and persuasion skills, this is where some of that, how do you create a good hook or how do you create that curiosity and get attention and hold it starts to come in. So the audience that we’re talking to right now ought to have a leg up on the typical business owner who doesn’t actually know how to do all of that stuff.

Gloria Chou: Yeah, and I will say like, yes, you know, copywriters are great with subject lines. But what you don’t want to do is when you pitch to the journalist, you don’t want your subject lines to be weird or clickbaity, because it’s just going to go in the trash. And so I have a whole training on subject lines, but the subject line cannot be like, You know, like those fun ones that the copywriters have, like this email only has nine words in it. Don’t do that. Your subject line needs to be specific about what the story could be. It almost reads like the title of an article, right? It could be something like, you know, as a copywriter for top level executives, these are five words that they never use. You see how that is very specific. So I would do something like that. I would not put your name or your company or what you’re offering because there’s no context or relevance to the journalist.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, you’re definitely not selling a product here. You’re really just trying to show up as an authority.

Gloria Chou: And offering something of value, being a solution for somebody.

Rob Marsh: Got it. So coming back to the pitch then, are you suggesting that we should actually be pitching ideas, article ideas, and that kind of stuff? Or are we just trying to create these connections so we’re there as a go-to when they need us, maybe both? What does that look like?

Gloria Chou: It’s all about connection, but how do you get them to actually connect with you, right? You have to position yourself as an authority. Let’s talk about my CPR method. The CPR method is the culmination of years of cold pitching, thousands of cold calls, and throwing spaghetti on the wall and lots of ugly cries because, again, I had a lot of failures because I didn’t know anybody in the media. It was just cold calling. I found that when people responded to me or when I got my clients on CNBC or New York The structure of the pitch had these three elements. C for credibility, P for point of view, R for relevance. And I usually like to structure my pitch starting with the relevance. Why? Because you’re competing for their attention every single line. You know that as a copywriter. And what is news if it’s not relevant? So I want to talk about what’s going on right now. It could be something about elections. It could be something about AI. 

What is trending right now? It could be seasonal. It could be something that’s topical. It could be something that is already making headlines. It could be a contrarian point of view. Start with the relevance, and then go into your point of view, which is P in CPR. I usually like bullet points, so it could be three tips, three things, three whatever that is, and then conclude with your credibility. Again, your credibility is the least important part. It could just be like, I am a copywriter that’s worked with 20 different people in this niche, and here’s what I found. You don’t need all these accolades. You don’t need to be featured. So that’s really my PR masterclass in a very short window, but it’s basically CPR, credibility, point of view, relevance. 

Always start with the relevance. Go into the three bullet points for point of view. Conclude with a little bit about yourself. Don’t go into your unpublished autobiography. hyperlink to your About Me section so that they can discover more. Do not attach long PDFs. You’re not going to go through it. And then the closing should be like, I’m happy to chat about these trends. I’m happy to offer insight. Here’s how it can be reached. Put your phone number and tell them they can call or text you.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I like all of that. So I actually kind of want to take a step back here because like talking through the process, talking about, OK, these are the things you should be doing. But maybe we need to start with this question, what should my goal even be as a sole proprietor running my own business? Is it even possible for me to be in The New York Times if I start this week? Can I be in there next month? Or, you know, like, where do I start and what is that bill to fill? What does that look like?

Gloria Chou: I mean, we’ve had people pitch and then get a response from a journalist within 24 hours and get featured. So it can be quick. It can be quick, especially now with digital, they need content like all the time. So here’s another thing if you have a limiting belief. I had someone who is a Pilates teacher and she is also, you know, service-based and she got featured in the same magazine twice, like US News and World News. So there’s no limit to how many times. And I’ll give you another example. She got featured in an article called What is Pilates in 2023. So just when you think everything’s been talked about, it’s not about newness. It’s just about positioning your pitch in a way that is digestible to the journalist. So if she can get featured in an article called What is Pilates in 2023, there’s your limiting belief right there about like, you know, I need something new. So no, it’s not about positioning something new because there’s readers at every level. It’s just about positioning in a way that’s not about selling your products or services and me, me, me, me, and just giving them an idea of how they can maybe frame a story because again, they need to pump out stories. They need those eyeballs.

Rob Marsh: And it sounds like you’re not saying start small. You’re not saying start with the local newspaper and level up from there. I mean, is it go big?

Gloria Chou: There are other publicity coaches who do teach like, you know, like, so there are different tiers, right? And some people will teach you how to be a contributor, which is basically you writing free content. But I always say, let’s just go for it. Let’s just go for the highest thing. At least if we don’t, then at least we can get to a mid tier one. So I really think there’s a lot of buckets in PR and you want to get as much as possible so that you’re consistently planting the seeds and getting the SEO. You have your podcast, which is more long-form storytelling. That’s probably something that your people like a lot. And so if I’m pitching for a podcast, and I have a training for this too, instead of the three bullet points, it’s like, here are five questions I can answer on your podcast. So that’s much easier for them. But again, don’t pitch something that’s super general. Make sure that you are shaving away the layer of an onion. And then you have your seasonal stories. So end of year, beginning of year, these are important themes. End of year is all about self-care and family dynamics. Beginning of the year is about planning and regimen. So think about how you can pitch for that, too. And then there are evergreen stories where it’s copy hacks and tricks that can work for anyone. So there’s tens of different buckets, and they all do their job, which is get you noticed, get you that traffic, get you that SEO. So I wouldn’t say one is better than the other. I think you should be aiming for all of them. The local store, the local one is good. The local one, you can talk a little bit more about yourself because obviously it’s a hometown story. So especially if you have a partnership with an organization, if you give back to charity, then I would definitely highlight that. Are you bringing jobs to your community? Are you hiring? Those are all the good things that would be perfect for a local news.

Rob Marsh: When we’re talking about these seasonal kinds of opportunities, obviously there’s some timeline here. My approach would be, oh, I just wrapped up Thanksgiving dinner. Somebody is going to be writing about Black Friday. Maybe I should pitch a journalist and it’s Thanksgiving evening, right? Too late, I’m guessing, in most cases. What should those timelines look like? If I’m thinking, OK, I have something that I might be able to contribute for, say, like the Super Bowl or Black Friday. How long in advance should we be looking at?

Gloria Chou: So everyone’s editorial calendar is different, right? So, you know, we have journalists that come into our program to coach our people. So we had someone from Forbes and she writes like gift and travel guides. And she says usually four to six weeks is good. Now, if you want to get into print, like Oprah’s favorite things, and we’ve had people get in there, print is like six months in advance. But for most of what we’re talking about, it’s going to be digital because then there’s SEO backlinks. Feel like very few people are doing print these days. So it’s four to six weeks and so obviously the earlier the better, right?

So if you’re trying to do something for Black Friday, like right now at the time recording in September would be absolutely perfect. To start drafting and then do that follow-up. Here’s another pro tip: after do not send an email unless you have an email tracking device installed we have software for everything get analytics see if your pitch is being open and And then you can make a drama in your head about whether or not the person hates you or they probably don’t even know you, right? So let’s figure out how do you get your emails open. If it’s not, it could be a deliverability issue. It could be an email issue. It could be a subject line issue. Let’s solve for the right problem. And so having that software to tell you who’s opening it, and if the journalist opens it three or four times, by the way, that’s a sign that they really like it. They’re just trying to find a place for it, right? So that’s a huge help in terms of my students.

Rob Marsh: In the novel writing world, it’s not cool to send out your transcript to several different readers at the same time. You kind of send one, you get the response and go back. That may be changing. Is that the same in PR? You know, if I have a pitch, can I send it out to 10 people at the same time? Or am I trying to be respectful that it’s like giving you the offer first and I want to hear back?

Gloria Chou: If you have something titillating that’s like an exclusive, you could shop around an exclusive. But if you have something that’s not a sensitive subject, I say pitch to everybody.

Rob Marsh: Okay, that makes sense. And then once we have that in place, let’s say that we’ve been successful and I’ve gotten two or three placements, I’ve been quoted in an article or two. How do I use that to grow my business? What are the best ways to actually capitalize on it?

Gloria Chou: Okay, to answer your question, this is where we can have fun because it’s like, oh, I’ve been featured and it becomes an addiction. People always tell me, oh, I wish I started this PR earlier and didn’t buy into this whole concept of I need to be a certain size business or I need to have a huge following because it’s not true, right? Okay, so let’s say you get it, you can put it on your email footer as seen in, you could write it into a newsletter, you can repurpose it into a blog, you can repurpose it into 30 types of content. I always say I’d rather start with a PR feature and then repurpose it into my content, then just create Instagram posts for Instagram. That’s not a smart use of our time. So always think, how can I work smarter and not harder? Sorry, my voice is a little chokey. I have a little seasonal allergies and it’s tickling my throat.

Rob Marsh: It’s all good. It’s all good. OK, so that that makes a ton of sense as well. You know, and again, as marketers, we should be able to figure out like, oh, yeah, I’ve been featured in The Wall Street Journal or even in my local paper. I want to let people know. And I imagine when that happens two or three times, that actually helps with future PR as well.

Gloria Chou: 100%. Like I said, PR is the only thing that gives you all those things at once. Your SEO, your traffic, your credibility. It allows you to charge higher prices, right? Because what’s going to, it’s really a third party validation. Ads don’t do that and neither does social media. I can go and buy a thousand followers today, right? We know that. So that’s why PR is something traditionally that the agencies have charged a lot for and what I’m trying to make it very accessible by kind of what I’m sharing with you here. And I always say like press just begets more press and if they actually see that you’ve been featured and you’re vetted You’re credible, you know how to talk to the media then it’s just a very lower It’s a lot lower bar for them to feature you again and again and in fact a lot of times People get featured in the same article, let’s say it’s like Forbes or whatever, because a journalist already knows them, and then you become their go-to person if they need a quote on something. It’s not a one and done. Once you’re on their speed dial, you cultivate that relationship. That journalist now, most of them are freelancers, so they’re writing for four or five different outlets. You can probably get featured in all of them, but you need to make that first contact. You need to do the work of pitching yourself and at least get in the arena.

Rob Marsh: So what about paid opportunities? Every once in a while I get an email or, you know, somebody connects with me on LinkedIn and they’re like, Hey, you know, we have this opportunity to feature even like video. Like I can get you on a TV show supposedly, but it’s going to be $5,000 or maybe it’s not that much, you know, for a mention or whatever you think about that crap.

Gloria Chou: You’ve really struck a chord. This is the bane of my existence. This is why PR gets a bad rep. They actually even target me. I’m like, yo, your targeting is not good. You’re targeting me. Anything that’s pay to play is not earned media. It’s not organic. It’s an ad that they’re masquerading as PR, but it’s basically them paying for an ad which you can just directly get with that publication, but they are giving you an upcharge because they’re the middlemen, right? So that’s really what it is. And a lot of times those TV things with like retired D-list actors, you pay a lot of money, they make you feel good, and then it airs in a South Dakota town at 4 a.m. when no one sees it. So not all publicity is created equal, but the best publicity is free publicity because that’s earned publicity. You cannot pay a New York Times journalist to feature you. You cannot pay someone at TechCrunch to feature you. That is not editorial. That’s advertising.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. So we’ve talked about a lot of the stuff we should be doing. Can we talk about some of the biggest mistakes? Obviously, doing the opposite of what you’ve been talking about, that could be a lot of mistakes. But what are some of the biggest pitfalls that you see, especially as we begin this process and we start to step forward and trying to get ourselves out there, that we really ought to avoid doing?

Gloria Chou: So not being specific, not being relevant to the times, making your pitch super long so that when they open it, it’s like five big paragraphs and immediately they want to stop clicking on it. So use my CPR method. Do not attach any kind of slide deck or case studies. If they want to learn more, you can add a hyperlink. Don’t add too many images, one tops. As a copywriter, you probably don’t need to be adding images. Images are more for like products, so just keep it very short. Another big one is not following up, because everything, you know, everyone that gets featured, they probably had to follow up. And so no, you’re not bothering the journalists, you’re just simply reminding them. I like to follow up on email and DM after seven days. So every week, I like to follow up. And then using your email tracker, you can see who is opening it. If they don’t open the email, they probably don’t even work there anymore. But if they keep opening the email, and the software will tell you, actually, like, this person actually clicked on the email four weeks later, it means that they went back to their email for a reason to open your email. At that point, you want to keep the conversation warm, like you would a lead, and just be like, hey, I loved your article that you wrote last week. Are you working on this? Lots of different ways you can break the ice with the journalist, whether it’s compliments, whether it’s asking them what they’re working on. that helps us nurture a relationship because that’s what it is. It’s not like buying an ad. You’re nurturing a relationship with a writer that has the ability to tell your story to millions of people. And so, yeah, it takes some time. We’ve had people getting featured in one week. We’ve had people getting into Vogue from a pitch that they pitched six months ago. But you need to start planting the seeds now. Which leads me to my last thing, the big mistake is waiting until you’re ready. Because what you don’t want to do is wait and then look around and be like, hey, I launched. And it’s like crickets. So the smartest entrepreneurs are building a relationship with journalists in their beat even before they’re launched. So that way when they do launch, they can go back to the journalist and it’s not the first point of contact.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, that actually seems like the biggest key is that this is the kind of relationship building that you need to be doing now. I mean, we do the same thing with clients. You don’t want to have to reach out and ask for the favor when you’re desperate for clients. And I’m assuming it’s the same thing with PR. It’s like the first contact isn’t the big ask. If it is, sometimes it works. I mean, two out of 100. But if you’ve got that relationship, it makes all the difference.

Gloria Chou: It’s really what it is. It’s really a relationship building. And once you do build that relationship, like I said, there’s no limit to the amount of stories they can write because they’re probably freelance writing for multiple outlets.

Rob Marsh: So let’s say I’ve been listening to you talk, Gloria, and I’m ready to do this. Maybe I’ve got a niche, and so I’m starting to look for a couple of people who write within my niche. I start to reach out to them. Other than sending them a specific pitch, is there anything else I should be doing that basically gets me on the radar so that they can see, oh yeah, this is a guy I can trust?

Gloria Chou: I teach this follow-up framework in my program where you basically just schedule send all the emails. So it’s not like you have to do it like when you feel like doing it because otherwise it’ll never get done. So just spend a few hours on a Monday or a Friday, batch like schedule all of them. You can press the schedule send button so that the email goes out on a weekday at 9 a.m. for example. and then actually DM them. So it’s really important on your media contact database, which we have as well, it’s like, you need to know where they’re on social media, so that way you can follow up with them and connect with them on social media on more than one platform. Most journalists are open to that. There are some journalists who will say, DM’s not open, or don’t message me. That’s fine, I think that’s a rarity. But it’s really about, like you said, a lead, it’s like multiple touch points. I have you on my email, but I also am talking to you on the DMs. So how can we increase that frequency? Another thing is to monitor what they’re talking about. So someone just wrote a story about, like, let’s say leadership for, you know, like leaders who are on the spectrum, right? And if you have some experience with that, or you’re working with a client, like, that would be a great time to be like, hey, I loved your story about that. Here’s also what I found to be interesting and just start a conversation with them.

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Again, the relationship side makes a ton of sense and I love where that takes us. So, as far as then getting started, you know, we’re starting to see some success. Is there anything else that we need to know or keep in mind as we start to, you know, go down this road as far as getting PR, sharing it with the world, you know, steps that we need to be taking?

Gloria Chou: I think it’s literally 90% mindset because it’s a very unnatural act, especially for my community as women of color to take up space, to pitch themselves. And so I think if you can get over that, that’s like 90% of it. It’s just pressing that send button because I always say everything you want is on the other side of that send button. And the CPR method also works for speaking and awards. It’s just a way of having a conversation that gets that person to say, yes, tell me more. And so I think that you can think about where else you can be applying this. Think about how your business needs you to be its number one advocate and spokesperson. No one else can do that for you. Now, once you master this, you can delegate this to a virtual assistant, but you need to learn how to pitch. You need to learn the fundamentals of it. And then you can create a system, right, in your business where, like what I have, where someone’s pitching me for like, you know, 50 different podcasts, and then every month we’re kind of looking at how many we’ve got. So that way you have a steady rotation of that visibility, whether it’s podcasts, whether it’s online, whether it’s speaking or awards. But you want to start to create a system in your business like you do with everything else, because this is really the $10,000 an hour asset that you’re building that’s going to give you a lot more ROI than spending hours on social media.

Rob Marsh: Obviously, we don’t want to spend hours doing it. What is the appropriate amount of time? And I’m guessing when we start, it’s going to take a bit more time. But yeah, if I’m running a business, I’m working with my clients, how much time should we be spending on PR?

Gloria Chou: Well, I mean, like you said, you know, you got onto my free PR masterclass. I mean, that’s 45 minutes of training. Once you watch that, you start drafting your pitch, you start getting your media list together, put the two and two together. I mean, you can start with just 15 minutes a day and just start connecting with five journalists a day because you’re already on social media watching animal videos and cooking videos anyways. Why not just spend a little bit of that time to actually connect with journalists? And before you know it, you’re going to be able to start to create that list and connect with a lot of journalists, and you’re going to have your own contact database.

Rob Marsh: What gets you most excited about the future of PR and the possibilities here?

Gloria Chou: For me, it’s making media representation more diverse. So we know that black women start small businesses more than any other demographic. We don’t see that in the media. And so for me to help people really leverage this way of doing media, which is to be their own publicist, I’m really hoping that we’re going to be able to see more diversity of stories. When we think about entrepreneurship and small businesses, I’m hoping that we’re just going to have more diverse people from all walks of life being featured. And that’s the work that we’re here to do. That’s the work that I’m here to do. And that’s what really drives me every day.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that. Maybe one final question. How is AI impacting this realm of either pitching, coming up with ideas in the interface between journalists and business owners?

Gloria Chou: So obviously, I don’t have to tell you since you’re a copywriter, it definitely helps you, right? So in terms of research, you can ask it, what are some of the trends? But I don’t think that AI is super updated, so it doesn’t give you all of the topical things that’s really in the news. So I think it’s less relevant for PR. What you can do is after you write the pitch using my CPR method, you could Spit it in chat to make it more concise, just to shave off a few words. I think that could be a good way. But so far, I haven’t really found AI to be super helpful in writing pitches because that relevance piece is like, it’s super new, right? It’s like you need to know what’s going on. You need to be a good steward of the news and see what’s happening.

Rob Marsh: Seems like there might be some opportunity for somebody to come along and create the AI HARO type tool out there, but I haven’t seen it yet.

Gloria Chou: I do use ChatGPT to rewrite your press page and bio section. So if you need help to rewrite the about us section, that’s great. You can use that with ChatGPT

Rob Marsh: Yeah. Cool. Gloria, where can people find out more about you, your programs, especially the way that, you know, you’re working with, as you said, women of color. And there are a ton of introverted women, you know, who are copywriters, content writers, who definitely need help getting out there. Actually, all of us do. I shouldn’t even limit it to introverts. Men, women, we all need this help. Where can we go to get that from you?

Gloria Chou: Oh, thank you. Yeah, so I’m on all the social media things, mainly on Instagram, at Gloria Chow PR. That’s Gloria C-H-O-U PR. You can watch my free masterclass, the one that you watched, which actually reveals word for word, from subject line to the last sentence, how the CPR method is used. And you can watch it now at GloriaChowPR.com slash masterclass for free. I also host my own podcast called Small Business PR, where we are asking journalists all the things that nobody will tell you. Things like, what do you not like in your inbox? What about sending samples? What about follow-up? All those questions can be found on my podcast. So those are the ways you can connect with me. I love being in my DMs. I love meeting people. So DM me and let’s chat.

Rob Marsh: If you’re struggling with the idea, I’m not ready to do this, the podcast stuff that you put out there may be the thing that helps people get over that. So they have the information they feel like they need. So yeah, check out all those resources. Thank you, Gloria. We appreciate your time.

Gloria Chou: Thank you.

Rob Marsh: Thanks again to Gloria Chow for showing us her framework for getting PR along with so many helpful ideas for doing this work. You can check her out at GloriaChowPR.com and Chow is spelled C-H-O-U. So GloriaChowPR.com. There’s a free masterclass on her site that will get you started and help you decide if this is a strategy that could work for you. 

Gloria also has a podcast. I’m going to be on her show in the coming weeks talking about email and how to make sure that your messages get read. So you can check that out as well. Be sure to subscribe to her podcast. 

This whole topic of PR and getting coverage in the media is not one of my areas of expertise. We’ve done a bit of it early on when we launched the first TCC IRL, that’s our in-person copywriting event. We were featured in Inc Magazine. We probably should have leveraged that success to build even more PR as we talked about with Gloria earlier in this episode, but building trust and establishing yourself as the expert that your clients can’t wait to work with is something that we’ve helped a lot of copywriters do. We’ve built a bunch of helpful resources inside the Copywriter Underground to help you do that. 

And once you start to get PR, you need a home base where people can learn about you and how you can help them. And that’s where all those links that you’re going to be getting will be directed. Hopefully that’s to your website and not necessarily to a LinkedIn page that you don’t control. The resources in The Underground make it easy to figure all of that out. Be sure to visit TheCopywriterClub.com/tcu to learn more about those.