TL;DR – Responded to a Journalist Request I found via JournoRobo🤖, gave as much value as I could, a few weeks later got quoted in a HubSpot article with multiple DA93 backlinks. You can do the same.
Sliding Into My DMs 📥
One evening, this cheeky little Journalist Request Alert slid into my inbox.
JournoRobo🤖 doing exactly what it’s supposed to – finding me the perfect opportunities to help journalists!
You see – this is the mindset you need to have.
Start with thinking what you can give rather than what you can get.
Sliding Right Back 📥
When it comes to most journalist requests, speed is key 🔑
Like all of us, journalists are busy people. They may well have a tight deadline, and even if not, they don’t want to spend hours thumbing through potential experts to quote.
Ideally, you want to:
- Be the first to respond
- Stand out
- Offer so much value that they don’t feel the need to even look at other responses
That is always my aim.
Within minutes, I had created this short video, and sent it in an 𝕏 DM to the journalist:
A few minutes later I received this response…
Give Give Give! 🪙
Here’s your opportunity to really add value.
My goal here was to think about the journalist’s needs. In most situations journalists want:
- A quick response
- Clear & concise expert answers
- Easily quotable content
In this scenario the journalist asked me 4 questions.
I responded via email and in total sent around 700 words.
Though that is a relatively large amount of copy, I made sure that my answers were laid out well in a scannable format. I used a lot of bulleted lists with extra explanation so that my answers were clear and helpful for giving the journalist context, but also easy for them to lift certain sentences to quote me.
Reduce The Friction 🔥
Continuing the thought on giving value – make sure you value the journalist’s time.
I always ensure that I am reducing the amount of emails and follow up questions that the journalist needs to ask.
To that end, in the email response along with the answers to their questions I included:
- My name
- My “title”
- A short, relevant bio
- A relevant website link I wanted them to include
- A Google Drive link to a selection of headshots
You always want to make the journalists life as easy as possible. Make it easy and a no brainer to feature you because you are reducing as much friction as possible!
Follow Up ⤴️
A few weeks went by and I checked in with the journalist to find out when the article was going live.
I see no harm in following up with journalists, politely asking if they need any additional help etc.
You won’t make the cut in all circumstances, but more often than not, if you have entered the situation with an attitude of wanting to be as helpful as possible – you’ll grab that press you’re after.
There’s nothing better than waking up to an article in a well known publication sharing your expertise along with a DA93 backlink to go with it!
Rinse & Repeat 🚿🔁
As far as I am concerned, there are two reasons for wanting to get press like this:
- SEO – it’s no secret that getting backlinks from high “Domain Authority” websites does wonders for the authority of your website, which in turn will hugely benefit your ranking in the search engine result pages.
- Clout – James Brooks – as seen in; Business Insider, HubSpot, The Daily Mail, The Times, Ideal Home, etc. Sounds pretty awesome, doesn’t it? This James Brooks probably knows what he is talking about 😉
I do it for both. Cos I’m greedy 🤣
Once you get in the swing of it, the key is, keep doing it! Once it becomes a habit you’ll be getting press mentions most weeks.
Imagine what that will do for your personal brand, business, and website traffic over the course of months and years?
Make it your side-mission to help journalists regularly and watch how it has huge impact on your business.