The Power of a Press Release

Business Brain, episode 546 for Casual Friday, May 3, National No Pants Day 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain here on this very special day. Business Brain, of course, being the show where we take an idea or six, we dissect them, we analyze them, we cogitate upon them so that each of us may use them to tune our business brains each and every time we get together here in Durham, New Hampshire, as usual. As usual. I'm Dave Hamilton and out here in.

The Sierra Nevada, well, not Nevada, Sierra foothills. I'm Shannon Jean. Glad to be here. Yeah. Still up on the Starlink. So I'm sure we'll have a little blip sometime during the show. It's kind of weird how it does that. Gets a little tired and has to kind of. And it's strange. Even at 93% coverage, it still does it.

So we get 93% of you for the show. It's great.

I guess.

So I just have to vamp suddenly.

The price is right. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Hey, so we're going to talk about promoting your business. I know you have something that. That topic, but before we get into that, I want to talk about, you know, language and how words impact us. I'm a huge proponent of learning to talk to yourself in a positive manner. How to tame your inner judge, if you will, to still be accountable. To still be accountable. But to understand that the, the, you know, to go negative in your head is kind of often the default and that's. It doesn't. Doesn't serve you well. I had a client that I was I a call with last week, and as we were getting to know each other and trying to, you know, figure out how I could help him, he made this statement a few times that, oh, I have an unsettled mind. And then we would talk about things. He's working on other opportunities here, and he's very successful trying to do this, trying to do that. And he kept saying this unsettled mind. And I said, you know, let's reframe that. Let's change that word and strike it from your vocabulary. And let's insert the word curious. Because a curious mind is awesome. I consider myself. I said that I have one. It's actually, I think it's a superpower. It pushes you to ask more questions of other people so you can be more focused on being interested in hearing from them instead of being focused on you being interesting. And so I saw it kind of connect with him and followed up and everything. And I Think it's already having an impact the way that we think. So it's just those little words that we use in our head. If you find, like, you can't ever say you're stupid in your head. You can't do it. It's bad for you.

Right.

Don't say it. And so, like, my son, he got scammed on some tennis shoes when he was in high school, buying online. And I saw. And he's like, I'm so stupid. And I said, no, you're so inexperienced. Yes, that's it. It's a very different thing. And there's enough negativity in the world coming down.

Yeah, you'll get plenty of that from externally, you'll get plenty of negativity. I always say it's a little off topic, but not really. The negative stuff in the world is always going to find its way in. It's just how it works. When bad things are going to happen, they kind of happen. You know, it's the good things that you get to control, whether or not you let them in. And you can choose to, like, close the door to all the good opportunities, the bad stuff. You know, the things like, you know, bills that show up or surprise problems. Like, you don't get to pick those, but the surprise, like, windfalls, you can say, nah, I'm not going to take advantage of that. I'm not going to do this. Don't cash that check. Like, you can choose not to cash a check. You can't choose not to pay a bill. Right. Don't take the check. It's yours. It's all good.

That's right.

When the good stuff shows up. And the same is true with that internal dialogue. I love your term, the inner judge. That's one that I think it means a lot for all of us. And it's really easy for that inner judge to go negative. Almost that judge's job. And so you need to tame it. And that inner judge can be really helpful in the right and limited moments, you know, but keeps you accountable. Keeps you accountable, correct?

Yeah, but don't overdo it.

Don't overdo it.

Those words that you put inside your head and that you're thinking of over and over, they impact your actions, they impact your worldview, your view of yourself. And so it, it takes practice, but strike out that negative stuff and swap out words that have a more positive, you know, feeling towards them. And, you know, I think you'll. You'll enjoy it.

I think you're gonna like it. You know, that me Changing from saying that I was busy to saying that I was productive. Like that one change from busy to productive has been life changing. And it's simply a word. Yeah, that's it. So, you know, watch your language, folks.

Watch your language. I love it.

Speaking of watching your language, I. What's the right way to say this? We at Backbeat Media, the company that I run that does the podcast advertising, sponsorships, we have been a relatively shy company. We don't say good things about ourselves. We don't say bad things about ourselves, mind you. Like, we're smart enough not to do it, but we. We just do what we do and we know that we're good. And it's frustrating when I see things happen when other people celebrate, you know, or are being celebrated for the good things that they have done with their. Com, or companies that are celebrated, especially when they're competitors. And it's frustrating when that happens because it's like, well, wait a minute, what about us?

Yeah, and you achieve that, too.

The answer is, well, if you want people to know about you, tell them. And so we have made a concerted effort this year to find reasons to send out press releases, announcements, whatever, and we just started building a list. I mentioned, actually, I forgot to mention, because we're having so much fun recording the show. Last Wednesday's show, like, a week ago, whatever. The last week, last full week of April, that episode of Business Brain was my 2000th podcast episode that I've ever done.

That's amazing.

That's amazing.

That's awesome.

Right? Thank you. Yeah, but, like, in the moment, I didn't care about it. Right? Like, as we were doing it, I knew it was coming up. Like, we had calculated this weeks before. It was like, oh, I think it's going to be that episode of Business Brain. And it turns out it was, because that's how math works. But doing it. The episode wasn't about that. The episode was about what we wanted to talk about that day. Because I love doing the show. I love doing the work that we do. But we did send out a press release about this. We shouted it from the rooftops. And it makes us look good. And I can't tell you how many people I've heard from that have been like, holy crap, this is amazing. And it just, you know, even if nothing immediately comes from any one of your touch points with your business, it starts telling people, you get to write the narrative of your business if you choose to. If you don't, then someone else will write the narrative of Your business and potentially lots of someone else's. Right. You know, it just sort of happens.

Yeah, I love it, too, because those, like, press releases, we used to do the same thing. And it may seem like a minor thing to you.

Yes.

But it to others, perhaps not, you know, and those press releases become part of your content library. And when people come to learn about your company, they come in and they say, oh, wow, look, these guys have. Even if they're. They're not going to read your entire press release, but they're going to look at the headline, they're going to look down. Like, adds to your credibility, totally your recognition, even though you're recognizing yourself. And I don't know if that's a. I think we're all taught to kind of be humble maybe, and you can.

Be humble and confident at the same time. There's. There's a difference between confident and cocky. Speaking of language. Right?

Yeah, that's right.

And you don't have to be cocky, but you can be confident and tell. Like. We sent out a press release last week. We partnered with a hosting. A podcast hosting company called Blueberry. I've known these people for years. They don't offer. They offer sort of programmatic ads for their hosting customers, but they don't offer host read ads like what we do here. And so I've known their founder and CEO and their team for a very long time. We all kind of started in the business together. And over the last six or eight months, we formulated this thing where I was like, well, why don't we put this together so that we can offer this to your hosting customers, the ones that want it, like, it's totally opt in and all that stuff. And we sent out a press release about it. I have had three conversations with prospective podcasts to come on board with Backbeat, none of which are hosting customers of Blubbery. They learned about us from the press release. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Like, that's a big deal. Now I don't know if we're going to sign any of these or if it's going to make any. Any, you know, a difference or not, but it's like, oh, hey, wait a minute. Right. We just got to say things about ourselves because nobody's going to do it for us unless you see the pot.

Yeah, right. You're expanding your net. And I like to cut through it. And I like to say, because I like this word a lot. If you don't think you're a badass, how can you expect anyone else to?

Yep.

So you do need to be confident, you know, a little brash, maybe a little vocal. You don't want to be cocky because people don't like that. No, you don't want to. You know. But I like we used to say. I, I don't like saying we're the best but I'd like to work, you know we the premier. You know I used to say award winning all the time because we have won awards.

You only need to win the one, folks.

All you got is one. If once you get once you're the. The number one book. Like one of my books was number one on Amazon. Well I, you know I'm best selling author. Yeah. Yeah. On you know, this kind of thing. So those words matter the way you think. It ties right into the language concept that we, that I was talking about the beginning show. Use those words when you talk about your business because other people will think the same way. They're going to pick up on that.

You're teaching them how to think and talk about your business. They because otherwise they have to do it themselves and they will. It's kind of how life works. So you have the opportunity to teach them and coach them and guide them or they'll just do it on their own. And you may or may not like the results of that.

Yeah. And it's why testimonials are so crucial because people want that social credibility. They want to come, they want to read quick little blurbs about how this company helped me, this company, they changed my life or there was a problem and they fixed it. And you know all these kinds of things that connects with us as you're people are trying to figure out what your story is, whether it's you're building a brand individually, whether you're building your company. Yeah. People want to know and I like that concept of you get to write the narrative or everybody else is going to write it for you.

It's just going to be written by default. Like there's nobody out there that wants to write the like if this is the case, even if they want to write a bad narrative, it's awesome that you've got someone that's not involved in your company that wants to say things about you better if they want to say good things but you've done something right if they want to say bad things too. But chances are you don't. And so what you wind up with is people writing a narrative by default. And that is going to almost certainly be super boring.

It's not good. Yeah, that'll be boring.

And inaccurate.

So, you know. Yeah, we used PR Web to, you know, send out our stuff. I don't know. You know, they're great. Not very expensive testimonials. You know, I've been using this app called Senya. I O S E N Y A I O. They're great testimonials. To is another testimonial gathering service that makes it very easy for people. Yeah, Senya is great. I love it because I just fire off a quick link and they do it and they build this, they call it the wall of love and you can embed it and all this kind of stuff. So it's cool. Those things are great.

I'm looking to see what Sadie used for this. I don't know. I can't. I can't figure it out.

Can't figure it out.

No.

What was she doing for.

For the press release that we sent out. I know we used a service and I don't know.

Yeah, PR Web is like a kind of a self service.

Yeah, we've used that before. She found another one and I'm not sure which one it was, so.

It'S also great.

I'll find it in the show notes.

Yeah, yeah. It's also great for SEO.

Yeah.

It creates backlinks to your website because there'll be some, you know, organizations that'll pick up the press release and publish it and maybe get a link back. So all that stuff's great. You got to be confident promoting your business. You don't have to use hyperbole and say we're the greatest and number one and all that kind of stuff. You can just be confident that, you know, our service is valued, we're going to do a great job and our customer service is amazing.

Yeah. Say the things that, you know. If you believe them to be true, say them. Say the positive ones. Yeah.

And if you don't, that's a problem.

Well, fix that. And then you get to go say it. Like, pick the story you want to tell. Take a lesson from Shannon Jean's book here and pick the story you want to tell. Pave the path to get there and then friggin tell the story. Like that's going to work.

It's awesome. Tell your story to us. Feedbackusinessbrain Show Tell us what you're working on. Come on the show and talk about your business. If you want tips, we'd love to hear from you.

Absolutely. Feedbackusbrain show Keep living that charmed life, folks. Have a fantastic weekend and tell us about your business. Maybe we'll talk about it and give you one of those backlinks Shannon mentioned. See you next week.