Maximizing Press Release Impact: Expert Strategies for Small Business PR Success with Mickie Kennedy of eReleases.com

Announcer:
0:59

Welcome.

Peter Woolfolk:
1:19

Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast and to all listeners all across America and around the world. We are now ranked by Apple as being among the top 1% of podcasts worldwide, so let me say thank you to all of our guests and listeners for being the basis for this accomplishment. Now question for you should you or your company write its own press release or should you have a professional press release firm write it for you? Are the results the same? What services do these companies offer? Is it cost effective? Well, my guest today has an answer to these and other related questions. So joining me today from Baltimore, maryland, is Mickey Kennedy, founder and president of eReleasescom. So, mickey, welcome to the podcast again.

Mickie Kennedy:
2:06

Thanks for having me.

Peter Woolfolk:
2:07

Look, I thought it was very interesting that an article came out that you suggested that there are benefits of organizations, particularly maybe some of the small firms, hiring a new press release service. Start and identify what those topics are and have you sort of adjust them. First, you say that you have access to a professional writing service.

Mickie Kennedy:
2:30

So many people try to do it themselves and what they come away with looks like a press release, reads like a press release. It's not very. You know press releases aren't very sophisticated, but you know it sort of lacks the professional hook that often is needed to get attention. It really does showcase you in your best light using that inverted pyramid of the most important elements the headline and opening paragraph and it just results in a better product, a tighter service, more focused and more likely to attract media attention.

Peter Woolfolk:
3:07

And that's very much what our agencies want to happen is to get that attention coming in Now in the process. Once they come on board and they get a press, do you have an interaction with them for or during the writing process?

Mickie Kennedy:
3:21

We do so. Our staff of editors are available by phone or chat and email. We have no cell people, so if you just go to eReleases and call, they'll be dealing with an editor. They will work in consultation with the writer, making sure that you're working with the best writer. We have different writers for different subject matters.

Mickie Kennedy:
3:40

We have some that are really good for technology oriented products or services, those that are more geared towards, like, consumer products, those that are geared towards more women's interest things. So we do want to make sure that there's a good match and as a result of that, you know you're getting a better, a better product at the end of the day.

Peter Woolfolk:
4:01

You know now that you say. That certainly does make a lot of sense, because if it's in a PR firm, you might have one person that's trying to write a press release. Perhaps they might cover a wide range of those topics and they really have no background in it, correct, well, I mean, that certainly sounds like a solid reason to me. You also mentioned that once the you, they engage you, that organizations will have access to better networks as a result of using your service.

Mickie Kennedy:
4:28

Correct Using a service like eReleases.

Mickie Kennedy:
4:30

We have a partnership with PR Newswire. They're the oldest and largest newswire of press releases and you know they charge like in excess of like $1,600 to move a 600 word press release, but with us it's like a third of that price and it's twofold. We represent small businesses, entrepreneurs, startups, people who don't have the needs that. You know, all the needs that the newswire has and as a result we can sort of purchase and bulk. You know over 10,000 releases a year and we get a much better preferred pricing. So it really is a really good value for anyone who's looking to get a wide distribution, because the value of a wire is it's just available to so many more journalists.

Mickie Kennedy:
5:19

And you know we do have basically a duopoly in the United States of newswires of press releases.

Mickie Kennedy:
5:26

It's largely PR.

Mickie Kennedy:
5:28

Newswire and Businesswire probably control over 85% of the market and as a result, you know busy journalists aren't going to go to a lot of different sites looking for content and they certainly aren't going to their inbox much anymore because there's just so much spam and off-target press releases that they go to the wire, they log in and they have a very customized feed that's specialized to their industry.

Mickie Kennedy:
5:53

But also they can customize it to exclude releases that are off-target, you know, by putting keywords in that they don't want to see those releases, or make sure there's keywords that are definitely there and put them at the top. So the value of a wire is just, you know, so big. I mean, if you have a newsworthy press release, you can literally hit, send, go on the wire and potentially get dozens, if not hundreds, of articles written. And I do have a case study on the website. During the pandemic, we did a release for the dining bond initiative, which was set up for a short time to help restaurants that were closed during those two weeks that we were sent home to flatten the curve, and it did result in over 150 articles.

Peter Woolfolk:
6:39

Wow, now that's impressive. How do you let them know? Let's see about pick up, do you? Is that part of the service as well?

Mickie Kennedy:
6:48

It isn't. So. The funny thing about pick up is there are clipping services out there that will monitor for you, and a lot of companies do use them, but they usually start at $1,500 and up a month, and if you get picked up in a monthly publication, it can be three or four months out from the time that you sent the press release because of the long lead time. So you can tell broke the small business doing clipping and monitoring through a service like that. What I recommend to my clients, and something that we do, at least for the first couple of months, is we do Google news searches and we also do Google web searches, and the reason for the Google web searches is there are many publications that have asked to be taken out of Google news, but they still remain part of Google web search, and so we will look at both.

Mickie Kennedy:
7:43

But you can also do it yourself. There's something specific to what your press release was about, because it's going to be rewritten in an article, but if it's about a product, you know that product name that's going to be in any article that appears. You can actually go to advanced search in both Google news and Google web and set the date parameters, so started the date that you issued the press release to today and put that product name in there or company name and anything that appears there will be on the day of the release of the press release to now, and then you can sort of figure out does this look like? This is the result of the press release, and so that's not going to pick up everything. There's still stuff that's gated and things like that.

Mickie Kennedy:
8:29

But if you're on a budget and most of my customers are, because they're looking to spend under $500 a press release. That's a really good indicator of the majority of media pickup. You still might have traffic come into your website. If you have access to your logs or analytics. You might be able to see where people came from. Also, when people sign up with you either through purchase or a newsletter, or even if you have people who talk to your clients on the phone, that would be a good idea to ask how did you discover us? And sometimes that'll pop up that they saw you in a trade publication or they picked you up in a particular newspaper or magazine.

Peter Woolfolk:
9:08

You know, something you said in the beginning certainly gets my attention too. You said in terms of reporters, you know have a lot of screening going on, but you also say that using your service will help build relationships with the media.

Mickie Kennedy:
9:21

Correct, because you know, one of the things that happens is, when you go through a service like ours, you're on the wire.

Mickie Kennedy:
9:28

The journalist is going to skim and see you. Maybe this headline doesn't speak to them or resonate, but now they're familiar with you and, as they see you again and again, that familiarity is going to say maybe I should explore this company a little bit more. Maybe this is something that I want to learn a little bit more about and maybe this is something good to write about, because one of the things that's about journalists is they're always looking for companies to write about, but what they're really looking for is to provide an engaging story for their audience, and they have to decide is this press release going to result in a story that's either going to entertain or educate or even delight my audience? And so the more times that you're out there, the more likely they're going to feel like I can probably look around at you know this release, and maybe even at some of the prior ones, and see if I can't craft a story out of bits and pieces of all that.

Peter Woolfolk:
10:30

You know, another thing that sort of covered once you brought this up, was the fact that there's a possibility it'll help boost SEO search efforts, because that's always important. That's really how you can get picked up or get identified, right.

Mickie Kennedy:
10:45

So yeah, and there's a lot of misinformation in this space about that, because in the early 2000s, one of the things that the newswires did was they syndicated your press release, and they still do so. When you hit send on, you know a press release, that goes out and hits the wire, it's going to appear on Yahoo News, it's going to appear on a few different websites and it'll be the press release, an article that was written about you, and that's not the goal. We're looking to get the article. But it was really cool for a lot of people Like you just hit a button and all of a sudden you're on a few websites and so in that time a lot of people noticed that their search engine results would improve because of these press releases on different websites. And it doesn't really anymore. There's still a few anecdotes from people that swear that that does, but it's not supposed to.

Mickie Kennedy:
11:39

All the links in these press releases are no follow links and that isn't the gross providing any benefit. It's created a whole cottage industry of companies, many of them with newswire in their name, that do nothing but syndication, and they put your press release on a bunch of different websites that no one sees. There's no traffic to them. You know, in one case you can get over 700 links of press releases on other people's websites, but they're just locations of websites with no traffic, there are no follow links, and they really help, providing the SEO benefit. And the shame that people are spending money on services like that because no journalist is going to see that, nobody's going to take that and turn it into an article. And so what happens when someone does turn it into an article, you know, with the original content, whether it's the follow or no follow tags, it's proven that when Google sees a link coming from a trade publication, it gets considerable value because it's extremely relevant and the media has a lot of authority and that authority gets transferred through that link.

Mickie Kennedy:
12:50

Even in cases where you don't get a link, like, say, the New York Times, which says they don't link to anybody. I have had them link to one person once before, but it was a really built out resource and you know I think that was the reason for it. But their policy is we don't link to anybody, even if they write about you an article. It does improve your SEO. Google has a patent about conveying link credit, or some people call it link juice or link authority that will convey that to you even when there's no website or URL pointing at you. They can contextually tell based on this article, that it is about you and contextually they know that definitely your website. So they will give you the credit even though there is no link. So that's why so many people who are media darlings really advance their ranking and appear, you know, slowly drift upwards and you know that that's one of the great side benefits of getting good PR.

Peter Woolfolk:
13:53

You know you just you also touched on this as you were describing some of these activities early in that this process also gives your business authority, simply because they probably see that it's coming from a reputable organization.

Mickie Kennedy:
14:07

Yes. So one of the things that happens when a journalist writes about you is you get this third-party corroboration. It's almost like social proof or even an applied endorsement. You know this huge credibility of a journalist choosing you and writing about you and you know that signal of trust really radiates outward and it's one of the reasons that many of my clients will say, hey, we got like 240 visitors from this article and it looks like over 150 of them bought. Is that possible? Over a 50% conversion rate. And I have to tell them that probably more people read it than click through. But of the 250, some that did click through, they were ready to buy and you obviously had something that wasn't outrageously expensive and they just purchased. I do the same thing.

Mickie Kennedy:
14:59

I see a great blog post or article or even a piece of social media about a really cool Kickstarter campaign. I get this warm feeling reading about it and I really want to support this.

Mickie Kennedy:
15:12

I click through. I see that it's, like you know, affordable. I just click and you know, back that campaign and I think that's really natural. You know we want to do business with people. We want to elevate and support people and one of the great things about a really well-written article is it really helps to humanize a company or a brand or the people behind that business and it really makes us want to do business with them. And the same thing works with your existing customers and leads. When you get an article like that, you can take that you know link to that article and share it with your social media, share it in your newsletters. Customers are always, there's always churn and you always lose a few because they decide to shop around, test someone else this year and they read that and get that same warm feeling.

Mickie Kennedy:
16:04

I'm not going to say hey, we should. You know, consider someone else this year or shop a different vendor. And when you have leads, you know you always have the leads that don't convert. And first one people it's like 90% of their leads do not convert and maybe they read that article they get that warm feeling and maybe in that case 80% of your leads don't convert, going from 10% that do to 20% that do. And you know that kind of jump can happen by exposing of your, your own people, to these articles and that great signal of trust, that emotional response and amplification that happens with PR.

Peter Woolfolk:
16:44

It gets better all the time, and one of the one of the other bullet points you mentioned, of course, is that it's the best use of your time, because I can attest that, being on a small PR firm, writing a press release probably is something I might not want to do because I've got something more important for a client to do, and rushing through this does not always produce the best results. So which ballad is not having an outside organization do it?

Mickie Kennedy:
17:09

Right. So the last thing you want is a busy person, you know, quickly drafting a press release or relying on AI to create a press release and send it out, just to cross off the list. Because if you're not going to do it well or have someone professionally do it well for you, you really aren't out there doing your best. And I think that there's so many people they're just looking to get so much off their plate that if they really embraced PR or used PR company or service that really is working to try to develop a really newsworthy idea for you, the difference is night and day.

Peter Woolfolk:
17:52

Now, you certainly touched on the fact that you can measure your results, but here's another thing I think that's hugely important and you touched on that a bit too is that it certainly helps to build your brand awareness.

Mickie Kennedy:
18:04

Absolutely so. My first job before I started the releases 25 years ago was I worked at a telecom research startup and I was employee number three and my job was to figure out press releases and send them to the media. And at that time we were going faxing and we sent it out and not much happened with the first couple. But I started to get a sense of what the media was looking for. They were looking for a story and they were looking for a story arc and we were just publishing numbers, and a chart of numbers isn't going to really impress anybody. So what I did was I looked for the story behind the numbers and I would look at anomalies and say, hey, why is this one Caribbean country generating more traffic to and from the US than everybody else? And it turns out that it was the center of all call centers for 1,900 numbers which were real popular 26, 27 years ago. And so I wrote about that, put it in a press release, sent it out and the media loved it and we were getting picked up by, like the economists financial times, washington Post, wall Street Journal, all the big ones, all the trade publications, telecom trade publications and we just started driving sales and we would do more of these releases, sharing more little anomalies and fun little things that were happening in the world and things that we were noticing, and we would just get in print all the time. Every time we did a release we would get print.

Mickie Kennedy:
19:33

And so what happened was, when I started, the owner of the company, who was a telecom attorney, didn't know how to price the data that we had, and so he sold it in a yearbook for $600 at the time. Today, 27 years later, it now costs $30,000 to access this for a year and it's now a database to access it through the web, not a book. But that shows that there was considerable value here and the company just wasn't aware how valuable it was at the time. But the one thing that they did was they got their brand out there and everybody recognized them as the experts and sole holders of this telecom data. Nobody else has that data. Nobody trusts that data with anyone else.

Mickie Kennedy:
20:24

The owner of the company worked with the ITU initially to go to countries where there was competition and say, hey, we're never going to publish your individual data, but we want to aggregate it for the country, and that trust was shown and it's a position that no one else, I think, will ever get the opportunity to have that same position. So they sort of are monopolies of this data and for that reason they can charge an amazing amount for it. And the people that use it are those in the telecom world. But a lot of investors use it because all of a sudden they see an uptick that's consistent for several years in telecom traffic in a country. That's a big indicator that their economy is growing, developing and technologically they're developing as well. So brand is so important and in this case for that company telegeography, pr was so instrumental and sort of developing that brand and showcasing it.

Peter Woolfolk:
21:23

Well, you know you touch the ones again, because you also said that you know, having this release, that the impact is almost immediate.

Mickie Kennedy:
21:31

Correct. So as soon as you hit, send that releases out there and sometimes it can take a little while for it to show up. Like I mentioned, monthly. If you're looking to go in a monthly magazine, it could be a couple of months or longer before it appears. But in the world of Instance everything, there are people that pick it up and run with it immediately. You know some places that will run at the next day, in a few days, but it really is out there and available. You know it is. It is really important for that reason to sort of recognize that you know using a professional service With a wire is so instrumental because it really, you know, makes a huge difference for you can just hit the ground running to so many places.

Peter Woolfolk:
22:16

Mm-hmm, now talk about how you actually go about supporting the people. Once they sign on and they say, yes, we want to hire you. What does that exchange like? Do they send? Send it to you first and you guys look at it, and then you get back together and discuss and move forward. Just how does that work?

Mickie Kennedy:
22:35

so we work in a lot of different ways and you know some of it is a matter of Customer preference. Some people want us to look at their press release before they actually purchase through us, and our staff is willing to do that. Usually allow one business day to get back to you. We'll often have maybe a couple of improvements if possible to the press release and, but generally you know, if you're looking for us to write their lease, you would place the order online. Then we would assign you to the writer. The editor would look at your website, look at you and pick the right writer and, and then it is a matter of just you know, going back and forth over the next few days, sending you a draft of the release, taking any comments or suggestions or need for clarification, and Then, once you've approved it, the matter of scheduling it and then getting it out there. Then, after the fact we're available when the release goes out, the wire sends this really complicated report. You know we're there for you to help talk to you over the phone and walk you through the report, showing you some of the indicators of where it went and Some of the pick up. Some of it's going to be syndication right off the bat, but I've mentioned, isn't really that important. It's just, you know your press release in a bunch of websites.

Mickie Kennedy:
23:52

We're really looking for that earned media. Yeah, you know we can also. You know we provide a lot of education for people on. You know how to build a proper PR campaign and work on strategic types of releases. In fact, I have a free masterclass at your releases comm slash, plan, pl A n that actually goes through the types of releases that get picked up by the media again and again. And If you were to build a PR campaign using these ideas, you would. You would have a really strategic PR campaign and Probably you would have more hit than misses and you know.

Mickie Kennedy:
24:31

That's one of the things to know is, when you're doing PR, it is quite likely that you could send a press release and you get no earned media. It does happen.

Mickie Kennedy:
24:39

But if you are doing the types of releases that the media finds engaging and the ones that tend to work, you're going to have more hit than misses. And One of those ideas Incorporating data Into a press release the media likes data. So if you have a new product and you've just said here's a product, here's a list of features, there's a link to it, journalist doesn't find that very engaging. If you go back to it, you put some data in it like, hey, our product solves the solution in the industry and actually 67% of Businesses new businesses in my industry fail, according to so-and-so, because of this issue. And y'all a sudden. That really puts the stakes right there, front and center and really engages people more.

Mickie Kennedy:
25:27

You know, one of the recommendations I also make is to go in and put a use case study. You so not only do you have a product in a list of features, you also have a story Like. This is a company that beta tested it. This is the result they saw. Here's a quote by them. It really fills out. You know more of the elements of a story arc that a journalist is naturally looking for, and so you know that's one of the things to keep in mind and one of the ways to be more strategic when you're doing a press release.

Mickie Kennedy:
25:57

You know, I think you've touched on it, but the fact that you have, in essence, described how this is very, very cost effective to use a service like yours, yes, it's not unusual, for you know, for someone to come in and spend, you know, under $4,000 doing a PR campaign of six to eight releases over a period of time, and for a small business that may not be six months, it might be a year, it could be a year and a half to do six to eight releases. But you know, for that little bit of money and a little bit of time, you can really go through and test these strategic types of press releases and find which ones work and which ones don't for you. And you know, the great thing is, if something works many times it can be used again and again. I had one client, clutchco, that years ago tested a survey and they represent a lot of little, I guess, micro vertical industries and counting software and software for architects and you know all these different little niches and so they did a survey and it generated a lot of earned media, and now they do like 20 to 40 surveys a year for each of these little verticals. They do a survey and so they're doing a lot, and on average they're getting between eight and 14 articles for every one of these press releases and that's, you know, original articles, earned media for each press release and so I've coached clients through that process. It's not a service I offer, it's part of that free masterclass I mentioned at earleasescomcom, but it basically you come up with 16 really captivating questions that are very timely for right now. You put them together I recommend SurveyMonkey for questions per page four pages. If someone stopped halfway through the survey, they got half the responses.

Mickie Kennedy:
27:56

And then you take that link to the survey. You go approach a small or independent trade association. You want to avoid the large ones because they won't see the value of this. But the small and independent trade associations we're talking like five, 600 members to you know, and up maybe around 1500 members or more. If you approach them and say, hey, you know we're doing a survey, I would love for you to send this link to your members. In exchange for that, I'll mention you in the press release we'll be issuing over the wire.

Mickie Kennedy:
28:27

Because of small and independent trade associations a lot of people don't even know who they're there. You know they'll often see this as a win-win allow them to get some media attention. Sometimes they might come back and say could we sort of co-brand the survey? So it's both of us and I don't see a downside to that, but it is one of the great ways in which to really get some responses.

Mickie Kennedy:
28:48

And ultimately you're looking for 100 or more responses to really be able to have a little bit of statistical relevance, and you're going to look at the results from the 16 questions. You're going to figure out what are the surprises here. You know what people find most interesting and you're probably going to focus on like two to three of those questions when you draft a press release and you're going to put a quote in there by you as to why you felt the numbers skewed a particular way. Because you're analyzing this, you're the expert, you're the one who did the press release and when you put that all together, I recommend having a website where you put all 16 questions and responses and make that link available in the press release as well, because a really great thing as a journalist can go in there and hunt for a different story and if you see you're getting picked up because of a different question, you can go back and do another release focusing on that question or a couple of other different tangents. And so, like I said, most attention people issue these survey press releases. They get, like you know, as much as a dozen media pickups, sometimes a little bit more.

Mickie Kennedy:
29:52

The least I've ever seen is four articles, and what I think is really amazing is there are PR firms out there that will charge a client 20 to $40,000 a year. I know that's because they come to me and they said we tried this with a PR firm and we spent like $20,000, $30,000, $40,000. And we got almost no pickup, or in some cases they got zero pickup. And yet here's an idea that I think that anybody could have implemented certainly a PR firm, especially one charging $20,000 to $40,000. And it would have definitely seen results. So those are just some of the strategic ideas you know that I have in that free master class, and the great thing about it is it takes a little bit of work. But you know I broke it down in a very simple process. It's pretty straightforward, and most of the time when people approach these small trade associations, the first one usually says yes, about 70% of the time, and so at worst you might have to go to a second backup or at worst, a third.

Mickie Kennedy:
30:56

But you know, if you do research and look there are so many trade associations around you that you know are in your industry you don't even realize they're there. I looked up in PR and you know some of them are regional, some of them are, you know, specific to sort of demographics of the paraprofessionals. But there are so many out there that are just waiting for you to reach out to and share this opportunity.

Peter Woolfolk:
31:21

You know, there's also a global PR organization as well.

Mickie Kennedy:
31:25

Yep, absolutely. But I will be honest with you, I would avoid them. I would avoid large trade associations because they do not. They don't see an opportunity here. They're like we're the global or national giant association. Why would we ever partner with you? I've never heard of you, they don't. They don't see it as a win-win. And then, when you've written the survey, they're like well, we now have to send it through five levels of management to approve this and modify it. And all of a sudden, you're not asking interesting questions anymore. The questions are not at all. I find that the small and independent trade associations are the best to go to, because generally, the person you end up talking to is the only person you need to approve the press release and to approve the question.

Peter Woolfolk:
32:12

Well, make it up me saying that, you know, having listened to you, I've certainly learned a lot. You've opened my eyes to a lot of things that I had not thought about. Let me just ask you now is there anything that you think that we may have missed in this discussion?

Mickie Kennedy:
32:25

Well, when it comes to PR, I can talk endlessly. There's lots of opportunities that are out there and I think I mentioned to you earlier that I've probably written over 1500 articles on PR on my blog. It's just one of those topics that you can talk about endlessly. There's so many different approaches. The one thing I'll say is if you're a small business, an entrepreneur, a mom and pop, a lot of these people come to me or I talk to them and they just are not interested in PR because they feel like they're not important enough and they're too small.

Mickie Kennedy:
33:01

And one of the things that I always say is you know, what you have to recognize is that journalists don't like covering giant, well-funded companies. They know they can advertise, but, that being said, they also recognize they have to cover them the Googles, the apples of the world but the small mom and pops are the ones that they often find most rewarding when they write about them, because when they showcase a small, unknown company that has a product or a solution that no one in the market knows about, they get a lot of appreciation and pass on the back because it allows them to be seen as curators Like, wow, this person really has brought to life this great solution. I knew nothing about this company, I didn't know they existed, and so they'll tell you that they get their most positive feedback on these little discoveries when they put a spotlight on an unknown little company. And so don't feel that being small is a weakness. In many ways it can be an advantage when it comes to getting media attention.

Peter Woolfolk:
34:06

Well, mickey, let me say I think I've learned a lot as I listened to you here today. And let me say thank you so very much for coming on the Public Relations Review podcast, and I'm sure all listeners have benefited from it greatly. And again, my guest today has been Mickey Kennedy. He's founder and president of eReleasescom and certainly if I were you, I'd give him a ring and look him up, because this sounds like a great idea that perhaps a lot of people are not taking advantage of. So, mickey, let me say thank you again. We certainly appreciate it your second appearance, by the way, on the Public Relations Review podcast.

Mickie Kennedy:
34:40

Thank you for having me.

Peter Woolfolk:
34:42

And to my guest if you've enjoyed the show, we certainly like to have a review from you and, of course, give eReleasescom a shot and perhaps you can benefit from them as well and also share this information with your friends and join us for the next edition of the Public Relations Review podcast.

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35:04

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