MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

How do you leverage public relations more? Joel Roberts says you should always begin by asking yourself, “What is the problem that I am trying to solve?”

Don’t talk about the solution until you have talked about the problem. Here’s one more secret on how to get attention from the media.

There’s a huge struggle in this area because as a business owner, you have to grow rich in your niche. But, to get mass media attention, you have to broadcast for a reason. That means your message is broadcast to a lot more people than those in your niche. This is where most people get it completely wrong, and here Joel Roberts gave a very interesting example.

“If you have a problem that tackles illiteracy and helps people learn how to read, how do you get on a radio show?” he asked. Nobody in the audience had a clue as to how to answer that question.

Frame It in A Bigger Perspective

The mass market has to pay attention. Joel Roberts’ suggestion was to find research that shows that illiteracy is related to crime.

• The more illiterate people, the higher the crime rate.
• Show that illiteracy is related to income – namely, the class divide.
• Show that it’s also related to taxes because people that are illiterate generally don’t produce a lot of income, therefore they don’t produce much in taxes for your community.

I found this information useful because I had certainly never looked at it that way.

This Gets People’s Attention

You can go on radio and talk about crime. You can then talk about fighting crime by fighting illiteracy. People will listen because everybody cares about crime. If you don’t make those connections, you’re never going to get on the radio; you’re not going to get publicity from any mass media.

No matter what your niche is, you have to figure out a way to frame it so that the masses will listen. If you can grab their attention for an instant, you can then go into the details. But, if you start with the details and the solution, you won’t get anywhere with the mass media.

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About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike

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