Building Brand Authority Through PR with Lydia Bagarozza

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Welcome back to another episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This is Anne from the Food Blogger Pro team, and in this episode, Björk sits down with PR expert Lydia Bagorodtse to mystify proactive PR, showing that it's less about crisis control and more about shaping brand perception and earning credibility through the media. Lydia breaks down how to pitch timely newsworthy stories to the right editors and producers, and why clear positioning and specific expertise can turn a pitch into a yes. The conversation also makes the case for PR as a long-term investment. Lydia explains how appearing in respected publications and local news builds social proof, backlinks, and brand signals that feed into SEO, AI visibility, and trust. And she shares go-to tools like Quoted, Connectively, and Help a Reporter Out for finding real media opportunities. If you've been curious about earning press for your brand, this this episode is a great place to start. And now without further ado, I'll let Björk take it away.

Lydia, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you for having me. So excited to be here.

We're going to be talking about all things PR. I think people hear PR and they think that they know what it is. They maybe have a general idea of it, but give me a little bit of an overview. What is PR? Why is it important? And is it different than You know, when I think of PR, sometimes I think of like, oh, it's a PR nightmare. Like, oh, you gotta go and correct this thing that happened and you gotta, you gotta fix it. So like that as PR, but what we're gonna be talking about today is actually proactive PR. Uh, so let's just lay the groundwork. How would you define what it is that you do when we talk about PR?

Yeah, it's funny that you said that. People ask me all the time, oh, that's crisis management, right? I'm like, no, that's not what we do. So, um, PR stands for public relations and it's the idea of of helping the audience or helping people, the masses, understand the perception of your brand. So it's really about creating that brand awareness and also sharing your narrative and your story online and in the media so that people really understand and know your name or your publication, um, your name, your blog, you know, your brand, what it stands for, and really what you do and what makes you different from other brands.

Yeah, so can you give a couple examples? I know that you work a lot with CPG brands, so number one, define what CPG is in the food world as well. What would be an example of doing PR for a CPG brand or a beverage brand?

Yeah, for sure. So CPG stands for consumer product goods, and so we work a lot with product brands. A lot of them are food and bev, so perfect for, you know, our topic today. And so what that really looks like is let's be honest, like there's many, many products out there and everyone kind of has already invented something. So what makes your brand or your product stand out from others in your category? I think, for example, like Grazza Olive Oil, they do a really good job of this because they kind of reinvented something that's been around for a long time. Olive oil has been around for a long time, but their brand is very modern, very fun. It has a totally different application. If you don't know, it basically is like the squeeze bottle brand with the fun green And so it's really about like, how do we basically like share the experience with others in words, with publications? So when we're talking about, you know, our favorite olive oil brand as a consumer, we can think of, or we'll have Grazza olive oil as top of mind.

Yeah. So I can imagine that with a brand, you want to get in front of people, you want to have your brand have this kind of awareness factor. So hey, if you show up on the morning news, if you show up in a, article on Star Tribune, which is, you know, the paper here in Minneapolis, uh, that's beneficial because then next time somebody's in the store, they're like, oh, I'm going to go check this out. It's kind of like, um, you're winning that in having con— well, I guess, how, how are you doing that? So you have contacts, you reach out to those contacts. My guess is a huge part of it is the angle or the story. And then there's probably some that are like, I think of the local morning news. 10 years ago, Lindsay or I reached out and we're like, hey, would you be interested in us having this come on? They're like, yes. Like it was kind of like they're almost desperate to like, we really want somebody to come on. But then there's other ones that are going to be harder. So like strategically, if you are trying to think about getting in front of these media outlets, how are you doing that as both as an agency or how should publishers and bloggers be thinking about it?

Yeah.

Yeah. So I would say first off, there's a perception change that I think a lot of us need to understand, which is that You're most likely not going to get discovered unless you have a lot of followers or a big following, um, in which case you're building that credibility, you know, kind of more locally. And you don't need to do that, by the way. Like, you don't need to have a lot of followers in order to be featured. So there's ways you can go about doing this. I personally think that PR is faster to get there than trying to go viral on certain pages, but I understand, of course, like, there's strategies for that. Um, but the way that you would reach out is exactly like what you said. I'm so happy that you said that. The Morning News were excited to have you on because I think something we don't realize is that the media is looking for you, but it's kind of like needle in a haystack. So the way that the industry works is writer or is brands or publicists will reach out to the writer or reach out to the producer. It's not the other way around. That's just how the industry's worked for a really long time. We're kind of like all in this, you know, beautiful little machine and that's how we work together. It's very collaborative. So if you're a brand listening today, and you're like, you know, I really want to get on local TV, a great way to do that is to reach out to them and then remember that they're always looking at what is relevant, timely, newsworthy right now. So say you are a chef and you would love to come on to talk about like fun different recipes for the summer. Summer is about to happen, right? That would be a great way to reach out to them and say like, hey, I think it could be fun to, you know, bring a really simple salad recipe. I can bring the ingredients. I'd love to come on your show where You're providing them with value and they're already interested in thinking about seasonal stories and making them interested or more likely to say yes. So that's just like an example of something that you can do for local TV. But if we're thinking about online publications, the exact same thing applies. So I'll go back to the olive oil example, but say I'm Grazia Olive Oil and I want to reach out for a summer story. Maybe I say like the best summer must-haves for your barbecue, and I can reach out in this timely, newsworthy way. Where I'm still able to highlight my brand and talk about the differences of how it makes it unique, but also really align it with the seasons of what they're really covering at this time.

Yeah, it seems like that in and of itself, that idea of you need to reach out is an important one. Yeah. Uh, we think of that and have that conversation a lot in brand partnerships. So you are reaching out to a brand you really wanna work with and you want them to pay you. And, uh, I think when people are initially getting started, the initial thought is like, hey, these brands will just reach out, which sometimes does happen.

Yeah.

Similarly, it's like occasionally you'll get, uh, like Star Trib here in Twin Cities reached out to us and, uh, Lindsay had written an article about like her favorite NA drinks and they're like, it's January, we're doing like a dry January thing. Would love for you to weigh in on it. And one of the things she said when we were having a conversation with her, she's like, I'm really surprised that we've never partnered on anything at the Star Trib before because you guys have been, you know, we've been doing it for 15 years and we've lived here our whole lives. But it's like, we've never reached out and I'm sure everybody there is busy doing their own thing. So you really have to be intentional is what I hear you saying. You have to think about pitching and in a similar way to how you'd pitch to a brand. My guess is within that pitch, there's a couple things important. Uh, number one, who you're reaching out to so you're, that you're getting to the right person. And then within that, that you're crafting a compelling story. That will make their job easier. So how do you know who to reach out to and how do you set something up in the best way possible to make whoever it is on the other end receiving that say yes to whatever your idea is?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're spot on with all of this. So I will say like every strategy, it takes a little bit of time. So, um, I, my whole like spiel I would say is like, hey, how much time do you spend on social media? And what is that really doing for you? And this is not to bash social media by any means. I think it's really important to have a robust social media because it's kind of acts as a business card or it acts as a space for our current audience to stay up to date with what we're doing. And, you know, especially for food blogging, I think it's probably extremely important in that space. But what's also important too is thinking about the other areas that bring new audience members in. So PR is kind of like borrowing other people's audiences. So if we get on a TV news segment or if we get on a publication like Food and Wine, for example, for example, those are new places where new audiences that are aligned with something that we're already doing are— it gives them an access point essentially to us or an avenue to our pages. So, and then of course, like online stuff is really good for PR. It also populates, it populates our brand in LLMs. And we can talk about that in a little bit if you're interested in some AI conversation. But when we're thinking about like who to reach out to, to answer your question, it's really thinking about like, okay, what, who are we and what are we looking to communicate or do? So say I'm a chef and I really want to be an expert for a story about different types of food. Maybe I'm a vegan chef and I really want to talk about, you know, vegan cooking. I would then look up vegan sites. You can also look up food publications as a whole, and you're going to look up the food editor. Or you can do lifestyle sometimes. Sometimes lifestyle, they cover a lot of different topics. Maybe they cover like, you know, clean eating, something like that. And I would take the time to just like create a spreadsheet where it's like, all right, food and wine. Here's the food writer, Bon Appétit. Here's the other food writer. These are the things that they cover. And so when you do that, it probably takes, you know, an hour or so. You have a nice healthy list that you can reach out to time and time again with different angles. Sometimes it's a little bit of a, not like a numbers game, but kind of where it's like we kind of want to pitch one angle that's timely. Pitching meaning reaching out, emailing that angle, and see if they're interested in covering it. And then we get to pivot with the different angle or with the different like seasons and whatnot. So yes, it's really important to reach out to the right person. Um, also we don't want to waste our time or anybody else's time reaching out to the beauty editor if we're not looking for, for beauty content, right? So, um, I would recommend taking a little bit of time. Sometimes I even recommend like doing it in front of the TV when you're watching a movie and just create a little spreadsheet for yourself. And it's something you can use time and time again.

Yeah. Uh, let's talk about the AI piece. Um, you know, there's so many people who are interested in the world of AI. There's so many contemplations around, you know, do we, in our world, a lot of people are thinking like, do we want to be showing up in search results in AI? Because Is it going to display our recipe? Is it going to display all the recipe? A lot of back and forth around like, should we block AI? Should we not? But let's assume that we want to show up in as many places as possible. And I will say this, I think it's also really important just from an authority standpoint. And, um, you know, there's this ambiguous, you need to be authoritative, you need to have a strong brand. What does that mean? A lot of things, but I think one of them is that you are showing up in other places where there's credibility. What does credibility mean? You know, there's the two extremes that I think of would be on one extreme, we show up in really like the lowest of low-end sites where they're scraping content, they're including links. The site is maybe there for like 3 months and then it's taken down. Who knows what or why, but if you look through like our data of link content, you can see this stuff popping up. Is that helpful for us as a brand for Pinch of Yum, our food site? Probably not. Uh, so that would be one way to show up. On the very other end of the extreme would be these more established, uh, news sites. And so these are ones like, I don't know, New York Times or The Atlantic, like long-form, well-established, established, well-known sites. And what would happen if Pinch of Yum every week was showing up in one of these established news sites or local news or Good Morning America as another example? That would be hugely beneficial in my opinion. We don't have any concrete data to look at from an SEO or a, you know, showing up in AI algorithms. But there is the online component of it. Like, are you building authority? Are you building credibility? And that's not even touching the general awareness piece, which is like somebody sees it and they're like, oh, this is really interesting. You're probably not gonna get a lot of direct traffic from it. Like, you are on Good Morning America and it's not like then the next day you have 50,000 views. Yeah. Or page views on your site. But talk about the piece, you know, from a PR standpoint, how you have seen and how you are advising people. And it could be bloggers, publishers, creators, or it could be brands as well. It's maybe a little bit easier to talk about it within the context of brands, but how you are advising people to think about the PR angle and then showing up when somebody searches, you know, what are the top Minnesota food bloggers? I don't know. That would be an example where hopefully, you know, if somebody searched that in Minnesota, Pinch of Yum would show up. Or what are the best food sites for, you know, vegan? Like, okay, you're going to have to have some authority and credibility to show up there. So what does that look like on your side? I wonder if you've seen—

Yeah, absolutely. I love that you touched on brand credibility and authority. First off, whoever's listening, if you're thinking like, I don't have any credibility or authority, you do. So that can be built in lots of different ways. That can be built like for example, say you are a chef and now you have a food blog, or maybe you worked in restaurants for the past 15 years and you've always been interested in just trying different recipes and you've been a foodie and you started an Instagram and then it turned into this and that. And, um, there, there's lots of ways to talk about credibility. So I will say that's like step one is your personal credibility. Could be life experience, could be academic, whatever that is. Then your second layer of credibility is how are you credible in your brand, in the context of a brand and online. So that could be that you have, you know, a lot of followers. Maybe you don't have a lot of followers, and that's also okay. So then in the context of other followers, I mean, I think like everything eventually will come with time, but if you don't have a lot of followers, you're looking to earn credibility, everything looks good, your brand looks good on the back end, you're ready to go. The next step I would say is getting featured into magazines. And so So getting featured into magazines, we would talk about like the stuff that we were talking about before and getting associated with like New York Times, Good Morning America, those things. Credibility can be used in so many different areas. It doesn't just mean those like vanity pieces of like getting the features. It also means that you can put those, you know, logos on your website. You can talk about it when you're speaking with others. And then also it can populate onto AI. So AI pulls from earned media over everything else, which is very great for, for my, my whole thing because we talk about building authority through PR, right? But it's basically pulling from all these earned media sites. Earned media.

Did you find what that is? Yeah.

Yeah, of course. Earned media means that you are not paying to get featured. So we're not saying like, you know, it's an advertisement. The only exchange is you're providing value for access to their audience. So if, Björk, you get, you know, featured talking about the blog. They're wanting your information, your expertise. And so you might get interviewed for a story about how to create, how to build a blog from scratch. And then that link would go directly to your website. So it's creating this like, this like backlink essentially, which is going to help your SEO. And it's also going to inform Google and ChatGPT or any AI model that you are an expert. So I don't really know necessarily how to like block AI, and I completely understand that that could be something scary, but I'm not really sure if we have full control over like what's available online these days. I don't, I really don't know because if we like—

That's also a hard piece where it's like you can put these text in internet, uh, world in internet speak. You can have like a robots.txt, which can give a directive to have like certain bots crawl or not crawl. You know, terms of service, you can outline it there, but to your point, the question is like, how much are these bots respecting that? And that's still not clearly defined. But I think even if we don't know exactly what that looks like, what we do know is like, what should your sentiment as a creator be around blocking or not blocking? We've decided that we're not going to block, but I think— this is getting into the weeds a little bit. Some people in the creator space will follow pretty closely. I think the risk for us is that if we are not blocking, uh, you know, explicitly within robots.txt, then eventually down the line there will be some, uh, litigious outcome where we would get a, you know, payment as a creator. And if we weren't explicitly blocking them, then it would've been like, you know, kind of double dipping.

So, yeah, there's a lot of things going on in the backend with that.

Yeah.

But our general thought with it is like, it's good to show up in, uh, as many places as possible.

Yeah.

As long as the way that you're showing up isn't with your content being completely replicated and displayed within the Chat result. And so we've had other conversations with creators where we've talked about, hey, if a recipe is just showing up in an AI overview, that's bad. If your brand is showing up, When somebody searches healthy food creators or vegan food creators or best creators for, you know, uh, Christmas cookies, that's good. And so there's this hard in-between where as creators we're trying to figure out what does that look like? My general thought with it has been, hey, let's push to do whatever we can to influence what the output of these results look like. Yeah. Um, you know, Raptive has had, uh, which is an ad agency that we work with, some great initiatives around, uh, really speaking directly to, or as directly as they can to some of these channels like Google to say, hey, you can't, you can't display the recipe in a search result. Like, and so we've had some of these conversations, some great interviews on the podcast around that, but it's a, it's a little bit harder in the world of creating content where, especially on a blog where the thing you are selling is the content. And if that shows up in its purest form,, or its most original form in the search result, that's going to be negative. But for a brand, I think even last night we were, uh, putting our girls to bed, 5 and 7, and we have this kind of wooded area in our backyard and one of our daughters had a tick and we're like, oh shoot. And it's like the— I'll get around to it here. Uh, my point with the story that we were like, uh, bummed. Uh, we had previously sprayed and we decided not to, cuz we also don't like the idea of spraying for ticks. So then I just did some research where I go for that now is like Claude and ChatFBP.

Yeah.

And like, who are the, you know, most reputable companies near me that would do like perimeter-based tick spraying? I follow up conversations and then I whittle it down to like, okay, here's the brand. I take that, I create a to-do for today to call this company. And so I could imagine that being extremely beneficial in the context of product, or like if you have something that you're actually selling, what's the best natural cereal? What's the best N/A cocktail? And then as a brand, a creator brand, if you are showing up kind of around these general terms or ideas that people are searching, I think of, you know, a bunch of different examples, friends from the past as food creators, 100 Days of Real Food. It's like, oh, if people are searching for real food, they would want to show up. You know, so can you talk a little bit about what you would see as like the benefit on the other side? So you get these placements, you're able to show up in the morning news. And my guess is you probably start small, start with local news, start with morning news. You build some social proof, which then you can point to in the future and kind of build to get more exposure on these bigger platforms. Talk to me about, as a creator, what would be the reason to do that and the motivation to do that? And my guess is it also ties into like cookbooks and things like that as well. Before we continue, let's take a moment to hear from our sponsors. Building a creator business isn't getting any easier. Between AI, constant platform changes, and the pressure to keep growing, it can feel like you're running just to keep up. That's why we're excited to partner with Raptive. Raptive works with thousands of the web's leading independent creators, including us, to help them earn more, grow smarter, and build sustainable businesses for the long term. They combine industry-leading advertising with personalized guidance, data-driven insights, and a team that's constantly helping creators adapt to changes in search, AI, and the broader digital landscape. They're also leading the charge to protect creator content and advocate for a future where independent creators can continue to thrive. And now it's easier than ever to join. If your site gets at least 25,000 monthly page views, you can apply to become part of the Raptive creator community and get support that's designed to grow with your business. To learn more or apply, visit raptive.com/fbp. Thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode.

So you don't necessarily have to start small. And what I mean by that is like, if you have those credential pieces, um, backing you— so say you are a chef, a certified chef— that is a credential where you could go directly to a big publication and you can get quoted in a story of like how to, you know, make the best sourdough, something like that. Um, now if you're somebody who doesn't have those necessarily like typical credentials, you might to start small first and then build your way up because it's building that credibility. So that's what I meant before by like your credibility needs to come from somewhere and there's different layers of that credibility. But there's always ways to continue to grow, which is really cool about credibility. And then I love what you were talking about in terms of like population, like, like company population, brand population on ChatFBP or on Claude. So a lot of people are using these AI platforms instead of Google. And we used to use Google as the same way of like, I want my brand to populate on Google. And so now I think we need to start thinking of the context of I want AI to populate my brand. And what's cool about it pulling from earned media is we're kind of in control of that in a way. Like, I personally want to be in control of the way that I'm perceived online. So if I'm approaching my PR strategy with I'm pitching Food and Wine, I'm pitching Bon Appétit, I'm pitching X, Y, and Z, Martha Stewart, Pioneer Woman, and I want to get those features. I am then getting interviewed in an area of my expertise. Whatever is getting narrated online is now in the ethers with AI. And so it's naturally pulling things that I'm already an expert in because that's the way it's getting fed information. So you're kind of in control of the way that your brand is perceived online.. And the way I think of like a good well-rounded press trail, if you will, is things is like topics that I'm an expert in and speaking on. So say even we could go back to Grazza olive oil, but like say the brand is, you know, featured in the top, um, cool new, cool new products for your kitchen. And then they're also featured in like the best tasting olive oil. And then it's like, here's the best application for your olive oil. It's like, they're all those different differentiators that we're expert in or like something that we want to be highlighted that's all being fed to AI. And when you are typing into AI and you're asking questions, they're gonna a lot of the times link where these sources are coming from. And so it'll link and say like, oh, we got this from Bon Appétit or X, Y, and Z, right? So it's not like fully giving you information where it's not sourcing these things. So, you know, AI is getting better. It's, it's learning for sure. And there's definitely some kinks in it., but I will say if you're trying to build credibility and really be a brand that's more of like a household name, I think it is important to think about as a strategy.

Yeah. Can you talk through, let's say Pinch of Yum, you don't have to know anything about Pinch of Yum, but let's say, you know, it's, uh, oh, I creeped on you guys.

Okay.

So you have a little bit of context. Let's say we came to you and we're like, hey, we really want to, uh, as a food creator, we want to figure out How to increase our authority online, or, you know, we're going to show up in more places. What does— how— walk me through what the— that looks like.

Yeah. So, um, I had a client that was a chef and they had recipes that they wanted to get featured on the other places. Um, so would you want your recipes to be featured somewhere?

Yeah. I mean, I think that would maybe be part of the conversation is like, um, You know, Pinchy Viam makes money through people visiting the site. So it's traffic.

Yes.

Um, it's occasionally we'll do meal plans. So we'll sell meal plans, uh, that people will sign up for. It's occasionally branded, uh, like sponsorship. So like we partner with a brand and, um, they pay us money to do like an Instagram reel. Um, and then maybe some affiliate get income. So in a situation like that, would you say, would we still be a candidate for, if we're just like generally looking for more traffic? Uh, we don't really necessarily have a product that we're trying to sell. The product is the content. Um, but we do, I personally, I think the main benefit for us would be links. Like we would have links on Good Morning America or links on the local news And that just generally is a good thing. Like we're showing up more, the brand is showing up more. Lindsay, who does the content creation on Pinch of Yum, is the, is seen more as an authoritative figure. That would be my perceived benefit of it. So add anything that you feel like should be considered there and then talk me through what that would look like if we came to you with that as our goal.

Yeah, absolutely. So what I would do first, I'm like, here we go, we're going to do a whole strategy live. Um, what I would do first is I was, I would think about your credibility or your like, um, what am I, your credit line. So that's like the way that we basically say I'm a whatever your titles are. So you would say like Lindsay, founder and creator at Pendjivium. Um, then you would think about how do I position myself as an authority and introduce myself to these publications? Stations. So, um, because the website has good traffic, maybe you've worked with different brands and partnerships, you were already featured in a local station, um, I would mention those things. So say that we're a food blog based out of X, Y, and Z. We have had over the past few years, we're known for, you know, reaching this amount of followers and traffic, um, been featured recently on X, Y, and Z, right? So we're positioning ourselves to be an authority. So if I were to read this as a writer, I instantly am like, oh, okay, they have a lot of traffic on their site. They were already featured. They have worked with this brand before. So, um, I think when we're thinking about those credibility pieces, we want to position ourselves as an authority when we're approaching someone. And then once we approach them, we want to also think about, well, before we approach them, we want to think about like, like, what do we actually want to be known for? What, um, information do we want to be interviewed on? So maybe it would be more business sites, and you want to get interviewed on how to make a blog successful. That is something that you're an expert in. It might not necessarily be like the direct audience, but it'll definitely be people interested in blogs. And then you create that backlink. So getting featured on Inc. or Entrepreneur or Forbes or something, and then you get that backlink that goes directly to your site, and you get to say, I was featured in Forbes and Inc. and Sometimes those logos are actually really good for investors. I know some people have goals of going to investors and they can say like, hey, my site performs and I've also been featured on X, Y, and Z. And so I think when we're thinking about PR, it's thinking about where do I want to be in 10, in 5, 10 years? And let's backtrack and build a PR campaign that supports that to get there. Now, if we want to put like maybe millions meal, the best, um, you know, 2 meal preps that'll feed your whole family for, um, the week from Monday through Friday, and we want to reach out with some recipes, you could totally get some features and some recipes where they say like Lindsay from this site is linked here, here's the recipes, you can go here for more. So it's like, it's basically creating all these links and these like owning your, I want to say like authority and owning your place in your market share online. That's kind of like what you're doing and you're building. So I would look at different areas of where you want to be featured. Maybe it's recipes, maybe it's talking about building a successful blog or food blog and, and really like hone in on those areas of expertise and go for that on different sites that are aligned.

It's interesting. It's almost like the first most important thing is positioning.

Yes.

What— and that's why maybe Pinch of Yum would be hard because it is such a broad general site.

Right.

But the more niche you get, you know, you do healthy food for kids. Okay, man, we could think of 10 different ways that you could position that over the summer for busy parents who don't want to do fast food and showing up in all these different places talking about here's how to do, you know, we have soccer practice tonight and we're trying to figure out, okay, so do we do like packed lunch for the girls? What do Lindsay and I eat? We're trying to figure that out. I'm guessing 100,000 other people are trying to figure that out tonight. So it's like positioning, which we should all be doing and thinking about. And then once it's positioning, then it's taking that positioning and pitching it to these different companies. My guess is once you have something that is compelling from a story perspective and something that would be compelling for the publisher, for you as the creator, say like, yeah, I want to be talking about this. It's important for me to build this as my brand. Then it's working through that list.

List.

That's one of the main benefits with working with an agency like yours is that list, those people, the preexisting contacts that you have that you can, after you shape that, you can start to reach out to those people. So talk about what that process is like and maybe, yeah, you know, if somebody's doing this on their own, they're kind of doing the DIY version. I think we kind of see what the arc looks like. You're building your own list, you're doing your own reach reaching out. It's a lot of work. My guess is most people won't have the time for that. So then they decide to work with a PR agency. What does that working relationship look like and what can they expect in terms of stages of the process? Is it like a year-long engagement? How does it work to actually work with a PR agency as a creator?

Yeah, for sure. So at Visibility on Purpose, we do more like done with you, um, options. And then I do have my own agency, which could be like the next step. So essentially what Bridget and I realized was that there literally is no starting point for brands when it comes to PR. It's either like 0 to 100. I've worked in PR for over 10 years and I understand that it can be a big investment. I know that the reward is, is great and it's a fantastic strategy to implement and to have for the long term, but it can be pricey and it can be a lot for brands that are just starting out.

So like when you say pricey, what does that mean? What does that look like, price range?

Yeah, I mean, I would say to work with a good PR team, the minimum you're probably looking at is like $2,000 a month.

Yep. Just as a retainer.

Yeah, as a retainer. And the way that PR works is it's a relationship building type of thing. So it does take time. So typically the retainers are like 6 months or a year. So I've had, you know, brands come to me and say like, I spent $60,000 and I got nothing. And that makes me so upset to hear. Like, guys, whoever's doing that, please stop ruining our, our industry. Thank you, bye. Um, but what I will say is, for brands that are boutique or just starting out or have never gotten PR before, if you're interested in working with somebody, work with a boutique agency. Boutique agencies understand startups, and startups are like, that's their expertise. And They're going to understand how to position you well, and they're going to understand what it takes to break into, and, uh, break into like these big publications. My biggest no-no, and I'm sorry for the big agencies, is if you're not a huge brand, you shouldn't be working with a big agency. That's kind of where they thrive, and they will take on some startups here and there. And I think some can maybe do well. This is not, you know, it's not a blanket statement for all, but I would recommend like really starting out with somebody who, um, maybe has the case studies to back working with somebody of your size just when you're starting.

How do you know if they're boutique? Just from like case studies they have or previous clients they've had?

Case studies. I would ask for case studies and really like take a look at the different brands. Like if they're— if they have like the world's biggest brands on their list or the brands that you're like, oh, I would dream to be them someday, it could be a potential almost like like red flag just starting out. You definitely can get there just because they don't— they work with brands that already have established names, and so their relationships and their skill sets a little different. So that's, that's what I would say there. Um, but if you're doing done like with you kind of thing where you're having somebody help you with the pitch, you're having somebody help you with the list building, um, which is something we offer at Visibility on Purpose, it's way more affordable. So it's more, you know, it's done with you, but we really help like feed you those opportunities and how to build everything is, I think it's great to learn the landscape of media and understand it before you even work with a publicist or a big agency because it also helps you understand how to position your brand really well and how to best support them. We only know what you tell us and a good publicist will ask you the right questions to help position you well. But I think it can be really cool to get that education piece. And what's nice about it is you also start building relationships yourself with writers. Writers will come back to you if they like working with you. So for example, going back to the chef, we had a chef for about 6 months and, um, there was one writer that absolutely loved her responses. She emailed us every 2 weeks and was like, hey, I'm writing a story on this. Can I interview them for this? Hey, I'm writing a story on this. Can I interview them on this? And this writer was a freelancer. And so she worked with a lot of different publications.. So they got a feature in Martha Stewart, VegNews, where else? There was another like blog that was like a really good high-caliber food blog. And so what's nice about that is you got, you get to start building those relationships and building that credibility and those logos directly into your inbox. So PR, when I say it's like a long-term strategy, it's long-term in terms of like it's not going to happen overnight, but it doesn't take forever. It's really just something that builds, I would say builds momentum in month 3. And by month 6, like you're really seeing the results and you're starting to get the features come and go live.

Yeah. Can you explain what, uh, Done With You means? What does that look like if people decide to work with you? What should they expect?

Yeah, that's a great question. So Done With You is, um, we've realized we've, we've been in, we've been doing like courses and things for PR for a while and obviously people don't have time and we get it. So what we do is our first step, I I think, which is a great place to start, is our PR plans where we build you a strategy at the beginning. It's a document. So at the beginning, we build you a strategy. We'll write your pitch for you. Um, so make sure to provide us with the most information on your intake forms so we can write the best pitch for you. I think a lot of us get stuck on writing the pitch, like, what do I even say? And I get that. Um, so we help you with that. And then we'll give you 5 to 10 outlets that are most likely to feature And then we give you tools on places that you can put yourself. I'm actually going to give you a link to Quoted. You can put that in your show notes for everybody. I think everybody that's a source or an expert needs to get themselves on Quoted. You will see writers posting essentially exactly what they're looking for. They'll, they'll post something like, hey, this is Martha Stewart. I want to interview food bloggers on the best, I don't know, the best meal prep meals for, uh, for the summer. And what you can do is you can create a profile on Quoted. You don't have to buy the free version. If you want to use our affiliate link, that's great. Um, but there is—

Buy the paid version?

Yeah, buy the paid version.

Sorry.

So there is a paid version. There's a free version too. You get a certain amount of credits, I think a month. Um, but it's a great way to start building your credibility. We call that like inbound inquiries versus you proactively pitching. So it's a great way to do it.

QWOTED.

Yeah.

So it's essentially getting quoted, written, written in a fun way. So QWOTED. So it's great for sources, for bloggers. I think it's a great place to start. And then, um, Done With You is essentially like now we have this PR plan and we, we walk you through what the strategy looks like to start pitching and getting out there. So what we like to do is we like to be your accountability buddy. We also are happy to share some contacts with you because we have them. So why not share them with our, with the brand that we're working with? And we really help you, you know, get those features that you're looking to get. And every brand is different. Your, your, like, your goals may be, you know, maybe you want to get on more TV. Somebody else's goals maybe wants to get on X, Y, and Z sites. And so what we can do is we can really help you get there. So you would be doing the pitching, but we'd be there along the way throughout the process, making sure that you know how to coordinate those responses with writers and stuff when they come through.

Yeah, that's great. So that's a personalized PR plan, $500, $499.

Yes.

Price might change depending on when you're listening to the podcast. Yeah. Um, and essentially that gives you kind of your book of work that you then you can take and feel confident to start to reach out to people. My guess is the actual outreach process is a lot easier today than it would've been 3 years ago. Even for myself now, I'm starting to realize this is a non-work example, but I'm gonna be talking about a lot on our yard. This is gonna be an abnormal amount of yard talk that we're having on this podcast. It's important. So we have, we have the, the ticks in our backyard, but we also have pine cones. And so I got this, it's actually called the Nut Wizard. Which is the best name ever. But it's essentially like a rake that you push and then it like collects pine cones and acorns and, but the size was too big. And so, uh, I, you know, I'd like roll over and then it was just me pushing this thing around our yard, but it wouldn't actually collect any of the pine cones. So I needed to get a different size. Usually what I would do is I would look up the support information. I would draft up the email. I'd explain, you know, what happened. But in this case, what I did is I just, so I use Whisperflow, which is awesome. It's like voice to text.

I just learned about this yesterday. So funny.

Oh wow. Yeah. It's, download it today. That'll be your to-do coming out of it. Okay. It's, you have a nice mic and it's amazing for taking voice and then turning it into text. And what I've used it for primarily is voice to text into ChatFBP, Claude, or OpenClaw, which is essentially just like a, a port into ChatGPT for us. And in this case, what I did was in OpenClaw, I said, hey, we have this product, look through my email, find the company, look up what their return policy is, and if you can draft an email I'll draft that in my inbox and ask if we can do an exchange for the size smaller. And you know, that took, I don't know, 30 seconds. Yeah. But it would've previously probably been like 15, 20 minutes of my time. It's not making the world any better for me to do that. It's not adding value in any way. And my point in saying that is I think some of this manual outreach Um, especially the transactional stuff where you're needing to have a touchpoint, you're wanting to craft something specific, can be drafted. And then what you can do is you can go through, you can look, make sure that it looks accurate. But essentially it's like me saying what I want the words to be, but I'm saying it by just like talking them out. And then it takes all that, puts it into a draft, and then it gets it ready to send. I go, I just review, I look through it, make sure that it looks accurate. Um, but I think more and more as creators, solo entrepreneurs or very small team, we can be thinking about, okay, we have this list that we've created and probably have some help from AI in creating that list to, uh, you know, reach out to these people. And then how do we kind of create a system and process around it? Keep the human parts human. Maybe it's a call, maybe it's a Zoom, uh, you know, but then any of the manual stuff, like how do we, Manual non-human stuff, information gathering, drafting, you know, how do we automate as much of that as possible? So I feel like this is a really great launching platform for people, especially people who don't have $3,000 a month to spend on PR, but they want to start to build their authority, start to build their brand. It's one of the things that comes up so often in the world of AI is people say you need to have a strong brand. Okay, well, what does that actually mean? And I think one of the tangible deliverables in having a strong brand is references on other sources of media. And so I think this process, you know, signing up for Quoted is a great example of some of the things that you can tangibly do. Talk a little bit about your agency where you're actually doing the work. Is that something that you personally are doing with brands? And at what point would it make sense for somebody to reach out out to work in that capacity.

Yeah, absolutely. So, um, I do want to mention quickly for the Done With You, we do offer consulting, meaning like we'll just walk you through that process. And I love that you were talking about different tools because I even as a publicist use tools that like will mass pitch out a certain list. Obviously I'm very curated on what my list is and who receives those emails and who's open to receiving those emails. But, um, yeah, I mean, we have tools to do all of this for us. Quoted is just a tool where we get to connect immediately with writers. And back in the day, like, brands didn't have access. It was basically just the publicist had access or like they didn't really know what to do. And now you can just sign up for Quoted and you have direct access to these writers. Like, there's so many tools out there that make it easier, which makes me happy because back in the day, like, there was just no access for the general person unless they had lots of thousands of dollars and all this information was gatekept. And we're out here at VOP being like, like, we're not gonna gatekeep any of this information. Um, but a brand, if a brand were coming to a boutique agency like mine or an agency where they're really wanting to work with somebody hands-on, they don't wanna do anything and they're kind of just like, run my PR as my partner, let's do this. Um, I typically take on brands that either feel comfortable with the retainer. I know like the retainer can be a lot, or it's a brand that has a budget already in place and they come to me and they say like, hey, Hey, I know that this is a long-term strategy. I'm excited. I'm ready to do this. From there, we are very much— we very much handle everything. We make it super easy for our brands. So we set up a Slack channel. Something that I didn't like when I worked in like the corporate-y types of agencies was that it was a big freaking deal to like have a conversation with your publicist. And it was like, all right, you have a question, we'll schedule a call in 2 weeks from now. The whole team's going to come on. Like, it really is not that deep. Sometimes you just have a question. So we set up all our clients on Slack. We talk to them weekly. Um, and you don't have to, some of our clients are a little bit quieter and some message us on the daily and that's totally fine. We offer that. Um, and then what we do is we'll have a kickoff call, having a conversation about how you want to be positioned. We really like to listen to your voice and the words that you use, like Björk, the way that you explain your blog, it could be similar to somebody else's, but the way that you explain it is going to be different. The words that you use are going to be different. And so we've really listened to those exact words. And position them in the best way possible so that we are an extension of your team. It doesn't feel like this is like a third party that we're just paying for. Like, we want to be like within your team representing you in that way. Then we reach out to our media list. We're constantly researching new publications, new writers, depending on what you're looking for. And from there, you usually hear from us in about like 2— a week to 2 weeks. With media already interested. So if you're a product brand, it might be that they want to sample the product to potentially review it. If you're an expert, that may be that you want to— they want to interview you on X, Y, and Z. And so we'll send you an email with a media opportunity. And, you know, we're really good with like deadlines and everything. So we always ask, like, make sure that you are available on your email or on your Slack channel because sometimes media will be like, hey, I'd love to interview interview, you know, these are like top—

in 8 hours.

Yeah, they'll be like, hey, I'd love to interview your client, can they get this by tomorrow? And it's like 10 questions and you're like, yeah. So, you know, sometimes you have to be ready to be on the fly like that. I will say like most writers give you quite a few days, like it'll give you like 4 days or something, which you'll be able to find time. But there are those instances where they're like, the turnaround time is in 5 hours. So I would just be prepared to, to get those emails every once in a while. But usually they're worth it, you know, usually it's some really cool site and then you get to be featured on there and create that relationship. With that writer.

That's great. And to be clear, that's the kind of boutique agency done for you.

Yes.

Visibility on Purpose is kind of a little bit of the done with you productized a little bit. Yes. It's to help get it off the ground. There's no retainer with it. It's kind of a one-time thing that you do and then you go off and are doing it on your own.

Yeah.

It's like a one-time where we can do a little bit of like a consulting retainer with you to basically like get it off the ground. Um, so we kind of create that same idea as working with a publicist like myself full-time or Bridget, but it's more like you're do— you're doing the work and we're just kind of overseeing it as you're like, I would say like account manager, if you will.

Yep. That's great. Um, any other tools that you would mention that have been helpful, uh, that creators might want to use or be aware of? You know, we mentioned—

I got all the tools.

Yeah. What are, what are your like top 3 favorite, um, that you'd want to Mention.

Yeah, um, so there is featured.com. They just changed their name. Hold on, I think they just changed it to— I bet you if you type in featured.com, it'll still populate.

Sure.

Um, I think they change it to Connectively back, but it's very similar to Quoted. So both of those platforms are fantastic in which you can create a login profile. There's a free version if you just want to test it out for a little bit. I will say for Quoted, I would recommend if you think you see— start seeing a lot like inquiries that make sense for you to pay for it, 'cause it's so worth it. Like our brands get featured all the time through Quoted. Um, and that's not just because we have an affiliate link. I swear, like because we're obsessed with it, we asked them for an affiliate link.

Yeah, that's great. We were like, do you wanna share what that is? I mean, if people wanna sign up for it, do you know, is it like a simple, uh, I think it might just be quoted.com/vop, but I'm gonna send you the link so it'll be in the description. Great.

Um, so thank you. But obsessed with those two sites because they make it really easy to connect with writers. And then another one is helpareporterout.com. This one's an OG. It's been around for a long time. It's a newsletter that comes into your inbox 3 times a day. It's like 5:00 AM, 12:00, and like 6:00 PM, something like that. And every day it's all those, those 3 newsletters, it's the exact inquiries of writers that are looking for looking to interview somebody or looking for products. So it's the same idea, but it just comes into your inbox. If you have those 3 tools set up and you are consistent with them, you will absolutely get featured and you really don't have to do the output. So I mean, I recommend like, of course, pitching because you get more curated responses and building relationships with the exact people you want. But if you want to just sit back and start experiencing some features, I think it's a great way to do do it. I will say with things like HARO, because it's through email, you just want to make sure that you present yourself in a specific way, and we can teach you how to do that in VOP. But with Quoted or Connectively featured, those have profiles where you actually build out a profile. So basically you just have to like respond to whatever inquiry they're asking for, whether it be a product or interview, interview responses, and then you have the profile so they can see about your brand already. Already, which is nice.

That's great. Uh, Lydia, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. Uh, it's helpful for us to have some of these conversations around what does it mean to build a brand. A lot of people talk about how important it is, talk, talk about how important authority is. And, uh, I think these are the tactical ways that you can actually do that and go out and get your site, get your brand mentioned in other places. Um, and there's a lot of benefits that come along with that. So super helpful conversation. Appreciate you coming on.

Thank you. So grateful to be on the show.

Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please take a moment to leave a rating or review wherever you listen to your podcast. Since we are kicking off a brand new month, I wanted to let you know a little bit about what you could expect in the Food Blogger Pro membership this month. We've helped thousands of food bloggers grow and monetize their businesses through our courses, monthly live Q&As, coaching calls with Björk, members-only forum, tools, and so much more within the membership. If you're curious to learn more, you can head to foodbloggerpro.com/membership, and we hope you'll join us. On Thursday, August 6th, we'll be releasing a brand new site audit with Erin from the blog The Forked Spoon. You can watch the video replay or listen to the audio replay on the live page within the Food Blogger Pro membership. Next up on Thursday, August 13th, we'll be releasing an update to our Facebook for Food Creators course. To go along with that course update, our monthly live Q&A will be all about Facebook strategy with Andrea Belogin, our social media expert. That Q&A will be on Wednesday, August 26th. 6th at 1:00 PM Eastern, 12:00 PM Central, and 10:00 AM Pacific time. Again, you can head to the live page within the membership to add the event to your calendar or submit a question in advance. We hope you will join us live for that Q&A, but if you can't make it live, you can always watch the video or audio replays, which will be up the day after the event. It'll be a great month in the membership. We're really looking forward to it. And in the meantime, we will be back here next week with a podcast interview with Janelle Castro from Janelle Eat. Hope you have a wonderful week.