How To Get Online Media Placements and PR For Free: Chris Kille - Elevate

SPEAKER_00 0:04

This is the Beyond the Story Podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Fris Kelly, what's up, dude? What's up, man? How you doing? Hey, if I was any better, I'd be twins. I like that. Could you imagine two two of us? No, no, not at all. I think there's enough to go around with just one. So we'll stick with it. Very, very scary. Very scary. Very scary for him. Absolutely. Well, I was just commenting on your uh your YouTube videoslash content backdrop there. Did a great job with the studio, uh, with the assistance of that knucklehead Owen video. He knows good.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Yeah, he definitely had he definitely helped quite a bit, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

And when I call him about design questions, he goes, I really don't know about design stuff. And that's an also a fat lie. So um because you have to pay him, that's why. I listen, I got 25 years of sweat equity with that fucker. I'm not giving him a nickel. Um so uh you and I connected through our mastermind group we're part of Apex uh a couple years back and uh quickly became buddies. And uh you're uh you're an A, you're in the Apex executives group uh with all the well, I'm in the middle group, I'll be there one day. Um, but um a bunch of different business ventures, um, but also building your personal brand at the same time. We like to call that building your machine uh in apex. One of those things that you've done to contribute to building your machine are media placements, and you didn't hire a publicist to get these media placements done. You just grabbed the bull by the horns, took what you were taught, and have been able to really get some awesome traction with that. So I was like, wait a second, let's sit down um for a quick conversation on the podcast and chat about exactly what you did, like from day one when you realized, ah, this is available. I'm going to go do it. Let's kind of back up there and unpack that whole process. Cool.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on, by the way. Um, yeah. So obviously, when a lot when when you sign up, you get access to build your machine, right? Everybody who's an Apex knows that. Um, it can be really overwhelming, right? And and a lot of times it's you know, it's designed to be done one week at a time. And most people, you know, A types, we come in and we're like, I'm gonna bang this out in a week, right? And and uh that's where a lot of people go wrong with it. But um, there are a whole lot of different uh avenues that you can go. And you know, you can obviously go social media and things like that. But what I found for me that worked really well, um, not initially, right? Because it took me a little bit of time to figure out the most efficiently a way to do it, was getting published, like you said, through Harrow. And um, you know, I I think I found a pretty efficient way uh to get a lot of bang for your buck out there.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Yeah, it sounds like it. So where did you start? Did you start with Harrow? Which by the way, it's help a reporter out. It's an acronym.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Yeah, help a reporter out. It's um, yeah, I started uh there and it there's an email that comes out three times a day. Um, and whenever you sign up for it, it comes right out to your inbox. And so typically you have anywhere from 24 to 48 hours to respond. But essentially, for those of you guys who aren't familiar with it, it's whenever uh reporters are looking for sources or um other people to cat to comment on stories and content that they're coming out with, they will actually solicit people online for their in for their input. And so what's cool about Hero is you don't necessarily need to be a complete expert at it. Like you go in and the way that I always worked it was hey, if I know a little bit about a particular topic, I'm gonna chime in. Maybe they like it, maybe they don't, but it's at the end of the day, uh it's putting my name out there more and more frequently um and building those relationships, right? That that we have. So look for look and look out for that email three times a day, and it gives you a lot of opportunities to uh to respond.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Yeah, absolutely. Where have you been able to find other placements outside of Harrow? Is it man?

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Because I know you mentioned a few other publications you're able to so there's quoted q.com. What I found is that one doesn't come out as frequently, but it's bigger names. So you'll have Newsweek in there. Uh, you'll have other, you know, larger name publications. Harrow has a lot of publications, don't get me wrong, but it's more of a volume uh play, in my opinion. There's a lot of uh very small publications. There's also some really big ones in there, but what I have found is quoted works works really well. It's the same principle, bigger names on less frequency.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

I got a buddy that's about to launch a software. You'll be all over this as soon as he's a journalist himself. Um, but um he's launching a software that has preloaded PR contacts to get booked on publications, podcasts, D the whole night. It launches in a couple weeks. I'm really amped about it. But I had him on the show a couple of weeks ago, and I asked him, you know, what's the best way to be able to pitch um you know pitch people on story ideas? And he one tip he gave me, and you'll love this, is on Twitter, uh, there's a very popular two popular hashtags, hashtag journal request singular, j-o-r-n-o, uh request singular, and then also requests, and those are a plethora of different journalists uh putting requests on Twitter. I'm looking for um and fill in the blank from there. So being able to scan through that on a daily basis, another another great hack uh on there. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that there is a you know, there we're this is a new wave of being able to get media placements done because we're living in this content-heavy world where before you really had to sell the angle and the idea. Now it's more of can you fill the void for that specific article and what it's doing? And you know, software like my buddy's about to roll out and Harrow and these other things are are fantastic. Um, but you definitely check that out. Yeah, like you mentioned, yeah, I know you work a lot with uh with VAs, helping VAs get placed, help people find the right VAs as well. In fact, Eck, let's chat about that for a couple of minutes.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Let me let me back up real quick on your point, because you actually just made a really good point about it. Like with the content heavy world the way it is right now, that's the reason why I don't wait, I don't hold back on anything that I might not be a quote unquote expert about. It's because when you realize and you the game is, is they are trying to get more clicks as an advertiser, as a publisher, right? So the more information that they can provide, the longer they make the articles, the longer they're uh the more opportunity for ads that they have in there. At the end of the day, that's all they really give a shit about. Is it's not really about putting out quality content, unfortunately. It's about putting quality, it's about putting content out there that they can get people to click so they can sell more ads. Um, and whenever I figured out, whenever I started looking at it that way, it really took my ego out of it. I don't give a shit. I'll apply to 100 a day. It's a it's it's a shotgun approach now. Instead of being, you know, I want just so I I'm using their system against them, I want my name published as many times as I can, even if I'm not a quote unquote expert, right? On on subject that they're looking for. Yeah. We're mostly using each other.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

It's a symbiotic relationship. So you don't like sit there when you look at these topics, you're like, I really don't know a lot about that, but I guess I can go figure it out. I mean, writing an article about shit you know about is hard enough. How how do you mitigate through that? Or do you just sit on the VA on it?

SPEAKER_01 7:14

If it's something that's interesting to me, I'll Google it, right? And I'll chat GPT or whatever. Um, so typically my process is is it okay if I go through my my process real quick? Please. Okay. So super easy. So whenever I find something that's remotely interesting to me, um, I've got a VA that does it now, but what I did in the beginning was I would take my phone out and I'd go into the voice recorder and I would speak, you know, I would just give a a quick speech. Hey, I know you're probably getting a lot of uh, I know you're probably getting a lot of submissions to this, but here's here's what I can contribute. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I would then take that, upload that file into uh into Grammarly, uh, and then from there put the grammar, uh, make sure that the grammar was correct, make sure the spacing was good. I would clean it up, send it over to them. Um, but the tip that I was telling people on the uh webinar that I did, and this is something I hadn't told anybody yet, was um I would then make a Loom video and um I would attach it to the email as well. So I wasn't writing out, I wasn't spending a whole lot of time. It was like, hey, I'm, you know, I am uh I would have my bio linked in there as well. I've been published XYZ, right, for social proof. And then I would say, here's a quick tidbit. I'd love to chat on you more about it. I'm very knowledgeable on the subject. And then in the Harrow, um, I'm sorry, in the um, in the in the the Loom video uh or Screencast-A-Matic, which is one that I prefer to use, uh, I would say, I know you probably got tired of reading, so I figured I'd send you a video just summing up everything that I wrote. Uh and from there, that was how I was getting a lot of um, I was getting a lot of uh attention that way. Um, I would also, and this is something I did not say in the webinars, I would go find that journalist's regular email and copy that as well to make sure I didn't know if Harrow has any blocks or because you're always responding to a Harrow email. And that's so I'm assuming there's somebody there monitoring that. So I would try to find the journalist themselves and go around Harrow. I would keep them, you know, I'd keep them CC'd in there, but right, so that way there's two emails going out.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Yeah, I like that. CC the journalist on there. Another great hack would be go go to find go find the journalist on Twitter too. Exactly. Get him a quick tweet and just, hey, just let you know, I just submitted a Harrow request on there, thought I'd, you know, do my due diligence and circle back and let you know about those are those are both great, great hacks to to be able to do it. Before we get into what you do with the with the VA stuff, which I think is it's is extremely valuable because I've been able to successfully build our entire agency team from ex VAs. So I know they're very, very important. Before we get into that, let's chat a little bit about the very fine line between this whole world of paid PR, because I come from the school of you don't buy media and paid paid uh uh earned media is never ever ever paid for on there. It's just a bad look on there. There's a lot of these things that are popping up all over the place. Entrepreneurs got a few opportunities. Uh, the Forbes Business Council, which isn't even Forbes, uh, has an opportunity, these buy-in opportunities on here. And you know, where's your thought process with all that? I know how I strongly feel about it. I feel like, hey, listen, if I get a write up about something that I've contributed to, fantastic. Having a forecope, you know, having to stroke a check to be able to get placed somewhere. Aid PR is a little bit little taboo on there. Just curious to know what your thoughts are.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

I like it within reason. Um what I've been finding, you know, I signed up for both the Forbes and the Entrepreneur. And the way that the reason why most of this is being built is to establish authority. And, you know, fortunately or unfortunately, however you want to look at it, a lot of um are prospects or people that don't know about this type, they don't know the difference. And in my opinion, you know, it's the Google effect. So when somebody Googles my name and they see Forbes, they see Entrepreneur, you know, it's they see all these, you know, all these other publications that I've been in. I mean, if you know, you know, and I'm fine with it. If you don't, I'm okay with that too. I mean, I I personally don't I don't personally look at it as cutting corners or cheating, right? They are essentially selling ads and placements for us instead of advertisers. And from what I understand, it's a pretty significant source of revenue for them. So everybody wins, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that was a great response. I I'd not seen it that way. It's just what my initial hunch and thought process. You ask a traditional journalist about that, they will just rip you to shreds, which for sure just to poke the bear. But uh, you know, it it it you're exactly right. That social proof on that's tough to argue when someone goes and Googles your name and they see a plethora of different large publications in addition to the other stuff you've been doing. Uh great, great point for that. And so let's talk a little bit about what you're doing here with with uh with with virtual assistants and helping people because people are constantly on the hunt to find good help, not just full-time employees, but people that can come in, fill gaps, take things off your plate that you just don't want to do or should not be doing. How does all that how does all that work in your world?

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Yeah, so we do things a little bit differently where we focus on more of the senior, like higher level type executive assistants, um, people that can actually come in and help you get organized, not tasked, task-based stuff, but think of more of like the director of operations for you personally in your business or an actual operations manager in the business. We do quite a bit of those. Um, whenever I first started off, we would do anything, right? We would take money from anybody. We're like, yeah, cool, let's go ahead and find that. And the offer that we put in place was equipped with a guarantee. And um, I'm happy to, you know, fulfill those. But what we ended up finding out was we were getting a lot of very specific, like almost unicorn type requests for people that were very, very, very hard to place, right? And we would we would find them and then something would happen. Or if something happened, then we were like, this is gonna be difficult to go back and find again. So it's a significant amount of work. So what I've done recently is actually really uh narrowed the focus of client that that we do uh choose to work with here. Um and that allows us to have a much easier and smoother onboarding process and then an overall improved customer experience.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Love it. So if you're looking to find someone to, you know, a position to be able to fill within your organization, uh, Chris and his team can definitely help you do that. It's very, very strategic. This isn't somebody just to respond to emails. I'm sure you could probably help out.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Yeah, the the entry-level type people are not really my game.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

So love it. So uh, new YouTube channel just launched a couple months ago. What's that all about?

SPEAKER_01 13:10

So putting together videos uh for virtual assistance and about virtual assistance. Um, what I found was was actually really fulfilling whenever I started this business. It was an unintended consequence was I didn't realize how much fulfillment I was going to get out of actually helping people get jobs, not just, you know, finding business owners and helping them out to fill their needs, um, being able to actually find the best of the best over in the Philippines, which is primarily, well, it's exclusively where we operate, but being able to find top-tier talent over there and matching them with entrepreneurs and business owners here, where it worked out really well, um, ended up being, I think it's more fulfilling than the business development side for me.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

I love it. And that's what's important is making sure you're doing work that you actually enjoy. Yeah. And then as a direct, you know, some my mentor of mine told me years ago, Sebastian, money is a direct result of doing what you love. And it took me a long, long time to figure that out. But it's clearly you found your lane, you know, with all that. So this has been great, man. I wanted to find out. And I and I'm actively doing the same thing, trying to, I haven't been creating content for 12 years now, but you know, the the media aspect of it and the media placements will continue to be um, you know, something that supports your brand and edifies your your your your personal brand and your business ongoing. So I appreciate you taking some time out of your day as well. If you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, hey, listen, I need a uh virtual assistant, remote work individual to come in for an actual position for my company outside of tasks and things of that nature. Uh be sure to hit up Chris. I'll put all of his details in the show notes. That's the description of this podcast episode in case you're wondering what the hell a show note is. Well, dude, been great to see you again. Thanks again for hanging out for a few minutes and sharing your expertise uh with the with our listeners. Any final thoughts?

SPEAKER_01 14:48

You know, I just appreciate you having me on, right? I'm anytime that I get a chance to share value and especially with the Harrow and stuff like that, it's stuff that it's really not a secret. It's just I happen to figure out a way that works efficiently for me. And if I can share that with somebody else to make their life a little bit easier, it's you know, all the better.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

That's how it's done. Thanks again for your time, brother. Great to see you, man. Yes, sir. Appreciate you. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story Podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Be sure to appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios. We'll talk to you next time.