How We Helped Our Advisor Get a Spotlight Article in Medium
Everyone wants to be in the spotlight and financial professionals are no different. Here’s how we got one of our financials professionals highlighted in Medium through these easy steps.
Part of our marketing efforts that we offer our financial professionals is to be quoted in industry specific news and here’s how we did it:
Sign up for HARO:
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a free resource that will send you three emails a day (morning, afternoon and evening) with story requests from journalists. Some media outlets that use HARO include: Fox News, TIME, The New York Times, Refiner29 and The Wall Street Journal.
We scrub through all of the story requests to find the perfect match for the financial professionals expertise, interest and target market.
Here are some key takeaways we have found that will make your experience easier:
Get straight to the point and send in your pitch answering the exact questions from the reporter
Start off your email saying "Hi <insert first name>" and have your closing state "Hope this helps with your article!"
Always include your contact information at the of the email (name, title, company, company URL, LinkedIn personal URL, and if they request it a link to your headshot)
Note - your initial email pitch goes directly to the HARO database and it does not render attachments or images embedded inside the email. Best practice is to create a link through Dropbox (or you cloud folder) and include it in your email so the journalist can have direct access to your professional headshot.
Keep an eye on the deadline the reporter includes in their request - sometimes you have as little as 24 hours to submit something and depending on what type of compliance clearance you have, it might not make sense to pursue.
Be Diligent.
The more pitches you submit, the better you get. I scrub the article requests every single day and send them out to specific team members but that does not mean they will be chosen for the article.
Because we have been consistently submitted our pitch ideas to some of the same news outlets, we are starting to build connections outside of HARO with the journalist. This is making it easier for our story to be selected and getting first dibs on trending articles.
Do Not Get Discouraged.
It may feel like you are constantly sending in your pitches but not seeing the same return on getting selected for the stories. Again, we cannot preference this enough- keep applying..and then apply some more!
You just need one reporter to select your pitch. Try to think of the topic in a unique way and give your personal response - after all you are the expert. This is pretty much what happened with John Caserta's story. I found the article request and knew John had just done a public appearance with our local news station, WTNH, on a similar topic.
Here is the timeline, in case you were wondering:
April 1
Initial request came into HARO
Sent an email to John alerting him about the opportunity and made him aware of the deadline (April 15)
John submitted his pitch and background for the story
April 17
Reporter emailed John back asking him to be part of the story he was working on and included all of the questions for the article
April 20
John starts working on his script
April 29
We submit his script to our compliance department to make sure all of his answers are approved
April 30
The script was approved and submitted back to the journalist
June 1
The article goes live on Medium with Authority Magazine
Every pitch request in the HARO emails (morning, afternoon and evening) are unique. Some of the journalists need your pitch ASAP because they are running the story in two weeks.
We knew this article with Authority Magazine was a prime PR opportunity for John and worth the wait.
Final Thoughts
I am a big basketball fan, so I will leave you with this philosophy: "You miss all the shots you don't take." All you need is to schedule out the time that you are going to look for PR opportunities and hold yourself to that schedule. Commit to a goal of submitted 5 PR pitches per week and see what positive outcomes stem from that. Journalists are always looking for experts like yourself, so make sure you are being heard - you never know who will see it!
Disclosure: Our PR Opportunity process is all part of our Private Label Experience. For more information about our program, please contact Clint Hall.