Speaker 1: Hey guys, welcome to this week's podcast episode. And I've got Mickey Kennedy coming out of Delaware and he is president. He's e-releases press release distribution. And we're going to talk to the audience all about public relations, marketing services, your business. And I think for the audience, there'll be a really interesting conversations. Mickey, welcome.

Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I really, I really love. Having guests such as you and yourself come on. And so start off by introducing yourself, what you do, how you got there. And I'm excited to dive into the conversation.

Speaker 2: I guess around 27 years ago, I started working for a telecom research startup as employee three. And I was tasked with writing press releases because I have a writing background and I did that and didn't have much success initially. And then I started to look at the articles that journalists were writing and I noticed they tend to like a story arc and that kind of makes sense because we all like stories from even small children, love the story arc, the, the pattern of a climax of leading somewhere. So I started looking at what we were producing, which was mostly data tables and trying to flesh out what the stories were behind some of the data. And when I started doing press releases about that, we started to get lots of media pickup. The first one was about why was one country in the Caribbean accounting for more inbound and outbound international telecom traffic to the U S and basically all the other countries in the Caribbean. And it turned out that was because that country was a big call center for 1-900 numbers, which were popular around 27 years ago, where you call 1-900 something and you'd get your horoscope for the day, it might be prerecorded. Or for two or $3 a minute, you could talk to someone about getting advice for your pets or something along those lines. When I sent that press release out with that sort of story arc, it got picked up by the financial times, the economist, the wall street journal, and the Washington post, as well as three telecom trade publications. So I felt, wow, I maybe I've figured this out. I continue to do subsequent releases, focusing more on the story and the story arc, and we continue to get pickup. And I just felt I could do this for others. And around the same time, a lot of journalists were calling me after I was faxing because I was faxing at the time, not for anybody who knows the banes of having to fax something and getting an error and all these other things that happen with faxing. I started building a little Rolodex and I thought this is so much easier. I can just email releases in the future. And so I spent about a year networking online, mostly in bulletin boards, which I think also are mostly gone and getting journalists to agree to accept releases from me. And so I launched in October of 1998 with almost 10,000 journalists in my database. And I just played matchmaker on behalf of clients and sent releases. And over the years, PR Newswire approach does like what we were doing and said that we should add Newswire distribution to it. And they charged $1,600 to move a 600 word press release. And I really fought to get national distribution for my clients. And so today every press release that goes out over PR Newswire, over e-releases is a national PR Newswire distribution. And with a new customer discount, you can pay basically a third of what you would if you went directly through the Newswire. So it's a big savings for small businesses, entrepreneurs, startups, and individuals like speakers and other people. So it's been a really great value for people utilize us and we move over 10,000 press releases a year. So we work on behalf of lots of small businesses and individuals. It's definitely, it gives us a lot more authority and power with the Newswire.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Interesting. And I have a question about Newswire and journalism, but before we do that, one question I have for you is what's interesting is you've developed a very distinctive brand and for the audience that are on YouTube or actually on the Spotify video, what's, can you tell the audience the story about behind the glasses and is that how you help your brand or makes you stand out?

Speaker 2: During the pandemic, I started doing a lot of podcasts and I had gotten these glasses, the rainbow glasses for pride month, and I got some headshots with them and, and then when I took the glasses off at the end of June, I would come to podcasts and I could just see people being really disappointed that I wasn't wearing the crazy glasses. And so I, I started, I think after a month I put the glasses back on because I felt like I either need to change my headshots or I need to, you know, put the glasses back on and I put the glasses back on, people seem to really like them and so it's just become my thing now. So I, I do update them as my eyes change, but yeah, I am known for my rainbow glasses.

Speaker 1: Interesting. Yeah. And the next question I have for you is in this era of social media and a lot of people are tuning out, like the big cable news networks are, they're actually at peak, I think they're on the decline now. And how are you positioning yourself for this change in consumer attention? How people consume mass media? How are you positioning yourself? Cause you talk about a lot of people, the young generation consumes their information on TikTok, which is really interesting. I'm not sure if it's a little bit alarming, but how are you positioning yourself?

Speaker 2: So the good news is the newswire is, has been very accepting of influencers as journalists and giving them journalist access. I follow somebody on TikTok named snackalator who each week does a roundup of new snacks hitting grocery store shelves. He also does new fast foods coming out. And he mentions many times that the images he's showing are pulled from the press releases he gets off the wire. And in addition to that, I know that a lot of Instagram influencers, particularly in the fashion industry, use the wire to get access to videos as well as photos from brands, the moment that they publicly announced them. In both cases, it gives them a leg up because they get the stuff basically as early as possible. The only exception would be if they were given exclusivity or behind the scenes before it's publicly announced, but the newswire allows them to get at the moment that it's available publicly. And I do see that a lot of people are turning to the wire to get access to a lot of this information as well as collateral. And I think that that's one of the important things about these things is social media is very visual. So you want to make sure that when you are issuing a release on the wire that you're, you are including photos and or video. So I think that's a really important consideration as you utilize that. But I think that the wires are going to continue to be very valuable for the media as well as influencers. In the U S there's a duopoly of news wires of press releases and it's PR newswire, which is the oldest and largest and who we work with. And then there's business wire and there's no need to go to both places because journalists will fish in both ponds because if they only fish in one pond, they're ignoring half of the market. And there, there was a third player out there, but over the last 10 years, journalists have been tasked with doing more with less and they just don't have the bandwidth to go to a third site. So that company has pivoted and basically says, Hey, for publicly read companies that want to save money, you could use us. You'll meet SEC compliance. And even more importantly, you really want to have those nosy journalists looking through your financials that that's what they pivoted in. There are other wires that people probably recognize like AP or associated press, Reuters, UPI, and a few others. And they work in a different business model. They don't transmit press releases. They actually transmit articles they've written and they license those to usually the newspapers and other types of websites that want to run their articles. So if you're at the Baltimore sun and it's five o'clock, you're getting ready to leave for the day and the Supreme court just makes a big announcement that you can just pull an article off the associated press. And it's going to be a really high quality article and you just pay a licensing fee or you already have a subscription arrangement and you can just go home and not worry about having to stay a few hours and research and write an article there that's the real big difference between those types of wires. That being said, if you do a search, there's probably 30, 40 other companies out there with wire in their names that want to take your money to transmit a release and most of those are in what we call syndication where your press release gets replicated on a bunch of websites. They don't reach journalists and they'll never be turned into an article. And that's the goal of, at least I feel in PR is that you transmit a press release to the media looks at it and some of them turn that into an article. When you send it through these syndication places, the only outcome is you'll get a link to several links to your press release on many different websites, sometimes as many as 700 websites. And the problem with that is the location on these websites aren't places that people are actually looking. If you go to that website and do a search, your press release won't show up. It's usually a sub domain where it's just an RSS feed of these things. People pay a fee to these news organizations for that sub domain. And it really is just a distraction. It's not really what I feel is the real goal. The real power is getting earned media, because if you get an article in the right place, it can really lead to a lot of new business, new leads, potential customers, as well as the huge credibility boost that happens when a journalist writes about you, because it's almost like an implied endorsement when a journalist writes about you and it creates this huge signal of trust. And it really makes people want to work with you. And so the leads that you get through earned media generally convert better. And they usually have a higher lifetime value and they're less likely to shop around for a lower price. And in addition to that earned media, when you get it, you can share it with your social media. You can share it with your leads as well as share it with your customers. And if you convert your leads at 20%, if you share that earned media over time, those people are going to convert much higher than 20%. And in addition to that, your customers, there's always a certain percentage of churn, and if you share these, they read that article, they sit there and say, Hey, we were going to shop around this year, maybe try someone else out. But I feel like we're with the right company having read this article and seeing that they're really doing some really great stuff. And so it really does give you a lot of exposure and elevate you and your position, both as a company and as an individual,

Speaker 1: Yeah, really interesting. I love how you describe the process. It sounds like the really good journalists, they basically get all the information could be through yours and, and the basically assimilated and create something in social media amplifies it. Cause I was reading this article where a lot of people's consumption habits are a video, short form video. And just short form content and just audio. I think audio is growing. People don't read as much anymore. Next, next question I have for you is just, you talked about building credibility through different channels and what common mistakes do entrepreneurs make when trying to gain media attention?

Speaker 2: So I think the biggest mistake they make is they look at what everyone else is doing and they copy it. And so the most, one of the most common press releases that we get is a new hire. So you've got a new associate in HR and the truth is very few people are going to be interested in that. And I always tell people, unless it's a new executive that's important or an industry veteran that people would really recognize and be excited about, you're probably better off just taking that person's headshot and write a few sentences about them and send that directly to your local newspaper or business magazine, if you have those. And also maybe to a couple of trade publications. And if you look, some of those trade publications will probably have a separate email address for sending these on the move sections where people, you know, transition jobs and things like that. The other biggest mistake, aping what everybody else is doing is the new product release. You have a new product or a new service and the releases look very similar. Here's the new product. Here's a list of features. Here's a page to learn more and buy it. Again, for journalists who like a story arc, not a lot of stuff to work with there to build a story. So I tell people that take that release and incorporate a use case study. Assume that you beta tested it, had people try it out. What was their experience? Focus on one company. What was their position before trying it? What was the outcome? Ideally, if you have some data points and numbers, and then also have a quote by them talking about the experience of using the product or what the outcome was. And that much more satisfies a story arc. So they can say, here's a new product. Here's the company that utilized it. This is the transformation they saw. Here's a quote by them and here's some features on the product. So that much more satisfies what a journalist is looking for. I think, you know, not being strategic enough is one of the big problems with press releases. I know that a lot of people say that press releases don't work. And I would agree that 97% of the press releases that get issued over the wire probably do not generate earned media. And with those kinds of odds, it's why would I recommend it? And it's because if you focus on the 3% of press releases that do get picked up, you can find lots of patterns there that you can replicate. And I call those strategic releases. And I have a free masterclass that teaches you those types of strategic press releases. You should focus on, and it's about an hour long video. So I tried to make it as digestible as I can. So it's not a 12 or 14 hour course, but it's available at eReleases.com slash plan, P-L-A-N. And again, it's completely free, but it breaks down lots of different releases that are meaningful and strategic and do work. So that if you build a PR campaign of six to eight releases and they're all strategic, you're going to have two or three of those releases, at least the generate earned media. In fact, one of those releases that I recommend has never failed, always generates earned media. And on average, it's usually more than half a dozen earned media articles from a single press release. And that's what I think that people really should focus on because PR can work and it can work really well. But you really just have to make sure that you're providing something that the media is going to find irresistible. They're in the same position where they're trying to keep their audience and determine what rises to the level that it would really educate or entertain or ideally both their audience base. And so many of us approach press releases of, we have something that's important to us and therefore we just want to push it, but you have to put the pill inside the cheese, like you would for a dog and put some more information in there, that's going to better satisfy them. And often if you work from a more strategic approach, you're going to be able to do that.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And an adjacent question I have for you is with disinformation and misinformation and where do you see AI playing a role in press releases? I'm just curious to see how you are, you're positioning yourself with this new technology coming into the, to the forefront.

Speaker 2: So I've always told people that while we offer writing services, press releases are not very elevated writing and that you can really attack it yourself. The most important thing is going to be the headline and your quote. So spend a lot of time with that. But that being said, you can utilize AI to help you write a really good press release. Never ask AI to just draft the press release. Give me an idea for a press release because AI has been trained on the 97% of press releases that do not generate earned media. Another thing I do is I come at AI with what I want the press release to be about, but I never say write a press release about my new product and here's a few sentences about my company and, and just let it go because it will produce a 400 to 600 word press release. I D if you tell it the word count, it may get close to it. Sometimes it may not. Uh, but what it ends up with, it's what I like to call it soft. So the way I approach it is I ask AI, Hey, I'm writing a press release about my company on this subject. Here's a little bit about my company. How would you structure that press release and come in at around 500 words? And then it'll tell you the breakdown almost paragraph by paragraph, what it would do, and then I attack it piece by piece. I was like, okay, I like that. Give me 10 variations on the headline. And in between each headline idea, pause and think about how you can make that next headline a bit more different, a bit more strategic, or a bit more of an alternative, and whenever you ask AI to slow down, it doesn't, it still spits it out really frigging fast, but I find when I tell it to pause between the things, it does give me a lot more variety and varied types of headlines. And then I break it down. Okay, now let's write the first paragraph of this and go. And if I'm not happy with the paragraph, I go, eh, I really want to focus on this aspect in the first paragraph, redraft it. And then if I'm like, okay, that's okay. Give me three variations of the same paragraph and think about it for a few seconds between each paragraph. How can I give you a more varied and interesting type of paragraph? And again, asking it to slow down a little bit, it tends to give me better things because if I just ask for three variations of the same paragraph, it often spits out what I would call very similar, but when you ask it to slow down, it can really vary it in a way that's interesting. So it's so interesting how asking AI to slow down and it doesn't seem to slow down, maybe it's a few microseconds slower. I'm not sure, but I do end up with a better response and then I will take it paragraph by paragraph. Sounds like a lot, but I'd done these in videos that I've shared with my staff. And at some point I'm going to put some of these videos up online, but the longest I've ever had is 24 minutes. And that was a bear of a press release that I was working with. So this is something in less than half an hour, if you approach it piecemeal, but ask it to build the structure first, you can get a really good press release at the end of the day. And the press release, when it gets replicated on the web, because everybody does a little bit of syndication, even PR Newswire, there are no follow tags. They're written in a way that Google knows that this is duplicate content, the actual press release. So you're not going to be penalized for it having been written by AI. And the journalist is going to transform it by writing an original article based on it, so you don't worry about the content being out there, being AI driven. So I think a press release is completely appropriate for using AI. And in addition to that, I do tell people go back to that quote. If the AI creates the quote and really make it a strong quote and by strong, it could be like how it creatively says it, but you're probably not going to get that from AI. But how strong it is, how condensed it is that you want it. If the journalist takes the quote out of the article, that there's a loss, there's an ache for what was previously written there because you said something so powerfully or strongly condensed that it actually takes way more words to explain what you said in just a brief sentence, so make sure you spend a lot of time on the quote because a quote can save you. I've actually had clients in the past inspire an article, the article gets published a couple of days after the release goes out and they're not mentioned at all and what I found is it's not because the journalist was being mean to the client, the journalist wrote it, put the client in there with a quote, attributed it to him and his business. And then the managing editor saw the article, read it and said, why this quote? This is such a weak quote and crossed it out and that person got removed from the article, they inspired. But having a strong quote, I guarantee the managing editor would say, I've never heard of this company, but wow, what a great quote. Maybe even put a little asterisk or red checkmark beside it. Don't discount the importance of a quote in a press release that you're doing. It really is something that's really strong and I say, always read the press release to make sure that AI is writing it in a way that's natural and it's very readable, but my experience with chat GPT 4.0 is that it usually is very readable. It's just make sure you go in it with an agenda and a plan of attack. How can people find out more about you and connect with you? Sure. So my website again is ereleases.com. All of my social media is on the lower right of the website. It's my personal LinkedIn. If you have any questions or you want to talk to somebody, feel free to call or chat or email on the website. I only employ editors, so there's no salespeople, there's no commissions, there's no quotas, and if you draft a press release and you're unsure of it, feel free to send it to us, we'll take a look at it, whether you're a customer or not, just allow a couple of business days for us to get back to you. And again, I think a great place to start is that free masterclass and that's available at ereleases.com slash plan P L A N. And like I said, allow an hour or so to get through the video, but it's very actionable and you should walk away with a brainstorm of at least half a dozen ideas that you could do for press releases that would be strategic.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. And really, I really enjoyed this conversation and talking about media and press releases and AI. And for the audience, be sure to give Mickey's socials a like and follow and check out his company website. And thanks so much for coming on.

Speaker 2: Oh, you're very welcome.