Public Relations Training For Startups, Steemers & Steemit: PART 2

Personal Message From Michael

Greetings!

My name is Michael, and I have personally helped train well over 20,000+ small businesses and entrepreneurs over the last 7 years in the realm of online marketing, paid and free traffic strategies, public relations and branding, news media releases, authority marketing, and of course SEO (Search Engine Optimization) & SEM( Search Engine Marketing).

This is a continuation of the Public Relations For Startups and Steemit: Part 1 found here.

You may also visit Public Relations For Startups and Steemit: Part 3 found here.

Please follow along part 2 below, and don't forget to comment, share, upvote and follow me!

Much Love!

Michael

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Public Relations Research: Importance Of Finding The Right Influencer

If you do not find the right type of influencer, journalist, investor, or general target you are trying to connect with, you will be wasting your time and theirs. Going after the wrong target is the quickest way to frustrate yourself in this process, and the best way to ensure they put you in the spam box forever.

In order to find the right target, you must do some research on them. Don’t worry, it won’t take more than 5-10 minutes to get a decent idea whether or not you should pursue that target or cut bait and move on.

Focus first on looking for other articles they have written, what publication(s) they write for, what clubs they are members of, what groups they are members of on Linkedin and other social networks, And anything else you can find. This should give you a good idea whether or not you want to continue developing a relationship with that person.

I also find this method useful because I am able to segment people with more influence into a different list of targets. On this list of targets I will spend extra time doing research and developing relationships with them.

You will find that there are going to be some targets you will want to spend a lot of time nurturing a relationship. I generally end up with a list of targets segment it into low, medium, and high interest to me.

I also try to make sure I can make note of targets I can develop a relationship with fastest or those I have the most in common with.

When developing your list of targets, set up your sheets in the best way to meet your particular goals. If you get lost, refer to how I set up my sheets.

Keep in mind you're going to want to keep track of things such as names of articles and web address of those articles. You're going to need to use those later on when you're emailing your target and referring to their past work.

Your targets are going to want to see that you have seen some of their other work, and are familiar with their style and what they are interested in as a person.

I typically use their past work in conversation and pitches to build rapport. I will even reference specific parts of those articles to show that I've actually read them or looked at them. By using that trick, you can build rapport quite quickly with your targets.

You will have to manually search for some of the stories, articles, whitepapers, and work they have done, especially when you first begin your investigative process on a target.

Even though I reference journalists and the press quite frequently, remember you can use these strategies to build rapport with investors, and influencers in markets. You just merely need to find stories about those targets rather than written by those targets.

There are ways to help you out to meet this process, help you streamline it and make it much quicker. You can even train somebody to do this for you so you don't have to take any time setting up you are target sheets with their information you have researched.

Search their author profile on the site or sites they write for. Search their name in google along with the publication they write for, such as “John Smith Forbes” & “John Smith Forbes.com”.

Many sites have RSS feeds for each journalist or person, and they nearly ALWAYS tweet their own stories, so you should be able to find ample material to research.

Let's go over some methods you can use to make this research process smoother through good ol’ automation.

Compiling Articles and Stories By/About Your Target

RSS readers such as Feedly or Digg, which aggregate newly published articles on topics of your choosing, can allow you to easily pinpoint the influencers, active media and press in any given topic, and leverage trending content and topics.

Start by setting up your reader to follow topics that relate to your ideal customers. For example, if you own a yoga studio, you might follow topics related to personal health or healthy living bloggers. You’d be able to easily browse links to new posts pertaining to these subjects, making it easy to explore the influencers and media in your market.

RSS readers are particularly useful when paired with Google Alerts: Real-time email alerts triggered each time there’s a new online mention of a certain phrase or word that you’ve set up to follow.

Using Google Alerts To Find Influencers

By using Google Alerts, you can receive alerts whenever a story comes out targeting keywords you are monitoring. One great way to use Google Alerts is to setup an alert for your keyword(s) and identify influencers in the space to contact about your product or service.

How do I set up Google Alerts?

Setting up Google Alerts is a simple process — you don’t even have to have a Gmail account to use Google Alerts.

Go to http://www.google.com/alerts/ where you’ll see this page:

Sign in if you have a Gmail account. If you don’t have a Gmail account, you can just start filling out the Google Alert form.

Enter the search terms you want the Google Alert to track, separated by commas. You can edit this later if you find you have too many or too few terms. If you’re not sure what to track, start with your name and your blog’s name. You may also want to include keyword phrases related to your brand and your niche.

Choose the Type of results you want Google Alerts to find and share with you.You can choose from the following:

News
Blogs
Video
Discussions
Books
Everything (so you can track it all)

Choose how often you’d like to receive your Google Alerts.

I like to receive mine once a day or even once a week simply because I’m trying to cut down on the time I spend checking email. However, if you’re tracking a timely project or news story, you may want to choose as-it-happens. Likewise, if you’re just keeping tabs on something that mildly interests you, but isn’t critical, you can choose once a week.

Choose how many results you want to get.

You can receive “only the best results” or “everything” depending on your needs.

Choose where you’d like the Google Alerts delivered.

If you have a Gmail account, you can receive them via gmail. If you’d rather, you can receive them via RSS or another email account.

Click the Create Alert button and finish. Congrats, you have now set up Google Alerts!

Getting To Know The Influencer

In order to be successful when pitching a journalist, You have to get to know them somewhat. That doesn't mean you have to become their best friend, you just need to pay attention to the things that are important to that person, there communication style, and what you can offer them.

One of the best ways to get to know them is by connecting with them on social media. I strongly urge you to connect with them on Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and other channels if they have them like Instagram.

Once you connect with them, take a look at what they're talking about. This is also a great way to be able to monitor the target and their content continuously, and it also allows you to go back over their history as well.

I also concentrate on looking at who the target is following. That would indicate to me that that person is an influencer to the target and I may want to investigate that person further as well.

This is especially powerful in Twitter and LinkedIn. Many times I'm able to look at their LinkedIn connections to verify that they are indeed a person of interest.

After I connect and do a little bit of research, I will then start interacting with them on social media platforms. Remember that you should only you social media platforms to socialize with the target, never pitch them on the social media platform, even via pm.

An exception to pitching on social media platforms would be LinkedIn, which is common to be pitched to and pitch to other on their private messaging channel. In fact I have a company called Press Advantage that I use LinkedIn to pitch to others quite frequently, and I am successful doing it.

Just remember the rule of thumb is usually always socialize on social media and don't try to sell. Create a relationship with the target and foster the relationship. Spread their content, make a comment, show you are actually mentally present...it goes a long way when developing and maintaining a long term mutually beneficial relationship.

If you want to interact with your target, I encourage you to interact with them on their blog, or in the comment section of blogs they comment on. Twitter tweets and Linkedin walls only allow shorter messages, so interacting on a blog allows you to create much longer comments.

Commenting on the targets blogs & websites, as well as websites your target comments ON also allows you to interact with your target on multiple levels rather than just a small interaction, as what would happen on Twitter. Your target will see you in common places besides social media, and begin to recognize you over time, especially if you are socializing with them via social media.

Best Media Pitch Practices Checklist (From A Journalist's Standpoint)

You’re familiar with what I write.
You know what I’ve covered recently.
You keep it conversational and brief.
Your pitch is timely.
You can tell me why your story is relevant to my readers.
You ask before sending attachments or mailed packages.
You leave me wanting to know more.

HUGE BONUS - PERSONALITY PROFILING

If you REALLY want to get to know them BEFORE you pitch them - try using my FAVORITE TOOL: CRYSTAL

Check out their personality...

Write an email that will work for their style of communication.

Works on social media networks, so it can grab real data about your targets.

How to get their contact information

One of my favorite tools for finding email addresses is the EmailHunter service and corresponding Chrome extension. Email hunter is a great tool that allows you to find many email addresses quickly, from social media services such as LinkedIn, or from any web page you are on.

This new button is embedded into LinkedIn profiles. You can click it to view someone’s email address. It doesn’t always work, but I find it good enough to be my first line of research.

The extension uses the first name, last name, and company of the profile to find the email address in our database. The extension guesses the email address using the email pattern used in the company (for example {first}.{last}@company.com) and returns a confidence score.

As you can see, this email address was found with relative ease.

You can also search for email addresses directly from any domain. This search was conducted for Hubspot:

This can allow you to find many other addresses and influencer opportunities you may not have known or considered within an organization.

Each time you visit a website, you can get a list of email addresses directly in your browser. They'll display every email address found on the web, with the domain name of the site you're visiting. For each email address, the extension shows our sources with their discovery date.

When the Chrome extension guesses an email on LinkedIn, it also displays a confidence score to help you know if you can rely on it. This score depends on the probability that the email pattern is correct and the complexity of the name you supplied.

You can save as many contacts as you like indefinitely, it is only limited by the plan you use. You get 150 email addresses for free per month with EmailHunter.

This works very well when you are researching venture capitalists, investors, startups, small companies, blogs, and media/press sites. Look at this VC site (one of the biggest baddest VC firms in the world):

Along these same lines, EmailHunter also has developed a Google Sheets extension.

With the Google Sheets extension you can find all the email addresses from one given domain name. You can filter them by type (generic or personal) and relevance. This helps you find email addresses from first names, last names and company websites (or company names). As you can see, this lets you enrich your data with email addresses in seconds!

Google limits the maximum duration of a script to 6 minutes. That means you can only find between 300 and 500 email addresses at one time, then re-launch it manually. But for bigger volumes, we recommend using our Bulk Email Finder on Email Hunter's website.

When using linkedIn, email hunter may be utilized from the search page. Results appear like this:

EmailBreaker will help you determine the format of a company's email, which is helpful and can save you much time during your investigative and pitching processes.

You can type in a domain, and it will tell you the format the domain uses for their email addressing. It is not always 100% accurate, but it works pretty well for what it is.

I usually use this as my alternate first source of information along with EmaiHunter. Between the two services I get ¾ of the email addresses I need to get a pitch done. Using this along with LinkedIn will get you access to most people you are trying to get in touch with.

Another amazing service is Email Checker. Email Checker is a simple tool for verifying an email address. It's free and quite easy to use. Just enter the email address and hit check button. Then it tells you whether the email address is real or not.

Linkedin For Research

I recommend that you use LinkedIn for the first part of your investigative process of a target. I use LinkedIn quite a bit to find targets and determine their level of worth to my goals. Some people are very wired into networks, which you can take advantage of.

When looking at profiles, you quite often will find that your target has multiple ventures, businesses, and various ways for you to research them further. This will let you get a very quick idea about who you are dealing with. I also like to use LinkedIn since many of the tools we use integrate with it, we can gather data and save it on each target. You will find this to be invaluable as you continue your research.

Twitter For Research

Twitter is an amazing resource for researching your target, because it lets you into their mind through their tweets. I also get to see who they follow and who influences them, who they tweet at, and who tweets at them. As you can imagine, this is to be a great resource to you as you go.

Check out journalists on Twitter asking for people to interview on various topics! https://twitter.com/journorequest

Whois For Research

Many targets you investigate have their own websites. One way you can get an email address to email is from doing a Whois check on who owns the domain name and their contact information. There are times you have to resort to this, though it is not the most efficient way to contact someone. I get randomly lucky with this method, but it’s worth a try versus not.

PR Guerrilla Steem Training

Here is a list of sites you can get Whois information from:

Guessing An Email Address

Another way to figure out an email address is to just guess it. Many people format their email addresses as:

Most people have Gmail addresses, but there are some that still use Yahoo and AOL addresses. You can use EmailBreaker to test and see if it appears active, though you won’t know if you emailed the right person or not until you get a response.

Try to be creative if you run out of options with your tools. If you still can’t find it, move on to someone else(there are PLENTY of targets out there). You can always circle back later and try to find some additional information. I have found it very useful to try and find someone my target is connected to, make a connection with THEM, and then ask for an introduction to the target. Now you have someone they know pitching them ON YOUR BEHALF.

Follow This Public Relations Research Example #1

In this example, I did a quick search for the keyword “Cryptocurrency”, then went to Google News results. I identified a news article:

I did a quick read of the article to make sure that it was along the context I am looking for. It is, so I then start researching the target, David Seaman.

Most sites author names link to a page that displays their other work on the site, and their social media profiles, a bio, and sometimes other contact information. There are times an email address or telephone number are right there.

In this case, I was able to get quite a bit of information about David on his HuffPo profile page:

I discovered that Dave is a cryptocurrency enthusiast, so that is good from a target perspective as my company is a cryptocurrency company and blockchain development company. I also see he likes wine, so we now have two big things in common.

A really great bunch of data is located in his description itself. He states that he has been on “The Young Turks” (I love that show), CNN, Coast to Coast, RT America, and other publications. That makes it easy for me to do more research and find lots of things I can use to learn more and develop a relationship with him, reference during pitch and conversation, or even places to go and start commenting right now. Believe me, even if the story is a year or two old, they still monitor comments.

On top of that jackpot, I also notice his Twitter icon, which leads to his Twitter page. That should yield some great additional information:

Indeed it did. One thing I see is that David is an influencer with 27.6k followers on Twitter. That means I can take advantage of the traffic he can wield from tweeting a story about us. I also notice 5 other people following David that I know.

That means I can potentially ask them to introduce us, or ask them to help engage the target to get their attention, and gets me a little more insight into his audience.

I also see he has a website address DavidSeaman.com. That address ends up forwarding to his YouTube channel, which shows many subscribers:

On his YouTube profile, I found a link to his Google+ page. I also see he has quite a few subscribers on YouTube, so I may want to consider doing a hangout with him to leverage the subscribers and traffic he can bring.

As you can see from his Google+ page, quite a few people that have him in their circles, and he appears rather active there. I also confirm his interests by seeing the hashtag #bitcoin in his content.

At this point, it is time to begin reaching out to David.

Follow This Research Example #2

Continuing the cryptocurrency search, I came upon an article called “A brief history of cryptocurrency drama, or, what could possibly DAO wrong?” from a target named Jon Evans with TechCrunch.

Reading the article, I found a link to an old article from 2011 that he wrote on Bitcoin. That might come in useful later during pitch time, or during engagement mode on social media.

From this page I now have his Twitter profile, his TechCruch profile, an old article he wrote, and a lot more to go on from there.

His Techcrunch profile is full of good stuff:

You can find an RSS feed, his LinkedIn, Facebook (personal profile - and yes I sent him a friend request), Crunchbase, and Twitter profile.

I also noticed the name “rezendi” being used quite a bit, so I Googled it and came up with a ton of sites with Jon’s info on it. He also owns Rezendi.com, and is principal engineer at HappyFunCorp. Looks like we found the email for him at HappyFunCorp!

I see he is also a novelist, and has written a number of books displayed on his website. The next step in contacting him would be to craft a good pitch discussing his recent article, his previous article, his lack of sleep from jet lag ( I can relate and would likely do so with a short sentence about a jet lag hell trip I have had...there have been a few).

Jon appears to be someone I would really like to connect with, as an investor, journalist, thought leader and influencer.

Training Conclusion

I really hope enjoyed the training, take what you have learned throughout this course and put it to good use toward driving more traffic, customers and subscribers to your business. You can expect to see some real results from these strategies as you implement and continue to put the training into action.

It is my wish to bring value to Steem and the community by publishing content like this from time to time. If you like the content, please comment, upvote and support me and my time spent putting this together for you. By doing so, I will be able to spend even more time here helping the community flourish.
Stay Awesome,
Michael