Welcome to episode 181, this weeks episode is focussed on an interview with Janet Murray from Soulful PR. I appeared on her podcast recently and since then she has been achieving great things with LinkedIn so I thought you would all like to hear from her.

But first…

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

Bumblebizz is now live! LinkedIn to launch Talent Insights in 2018

Janet Murray spent 17 years as a freelance journalist before setting up her Soulful PR business. She now focusses on helping people to ‘pitch’ into the media to get better exposure for their business.

Key things I took from this episode;

• Traditional PR is not enough anymore
• Four areas of PR you should be paying attention to on a regular basis;
• • Publishing content on your website
  • Email marketing / newsletter
  • Social media posting and activity
  • Press coverage (show the results on your website)
• To build relationship with journalists you have to read the papers, show patience and work at getting to know them.
• Be aware of what is going on and when a story breaks that is relevant to your specialism, contact relevant journalists via Twitter or call them. They are always looking for stories so you are potentially being really helpful.
• Make a list of relevant journalists on Twitter and LinkedIn (mainly Twitter) - find them via a Google search/alerts.
• #journorequest on Twitter can be helpful
• Media enquiry services such as Response source, help a reporter out and source bottle
• Journalists like to call (for speed) so put your telephone number in your profile (summary not headline) and Twitter bio
• Make sure you have relatively recent Articles and videos in your profile so that a journalist or producer can see that you can write and appear comfortable in front of a camera.
• Clarity in your headline is key….journalists needs to see quickly exactly what your niche is (arguably this is true for everyone, not just journalists)
• Journalists always ask “Why do people need to hear this now?”
• ‘Everything is potentially content’ If others care about it then it will probably fly on LinkedIn.
• People are more interested in ‘how’ you work than what you do but PR about the ‘how’ allows you to talk about the ‘what’

Win a free 60 minute PR strategy session with Janet (worth £300+vat). You can read more about these sessions here

You can enter this free prize draw by entering your details below

Links to other things mentioned in this interview;

Cara Mackay’s LinkedIn profile Book - Your Press release Is Breaking My Heart Media diary Soulful PR Studio The Soulful PR Podcast

If you have any questions that you want me to ask Janet, I will be happy to do so if you drop me a voicemail (link on the right edge of this page) or email me at [email protected]