In this YouTube interview, Eric Siu introduces Adrian Salaminovic, author of the Free PR book, who shares three actionable PR strategies for getting more press regardless of industry. The first strategy focuses on securing product or service reviews in top‑tier publications by researching high‑intent search keywords with SEMrush, identifying the first editorial result, locating the journalist’s contact (using Hunter.io if needed), and pitching a differentiated angle to earn inclusion or a feature review. The second strategy covers landing podcast appearances: determine the target audience via surveys (Typeform/SurveyMonkey), compile a list of relevant podcasters (often outsourced on Upwork) with contact details, warm them with personalized LinkedIn outreach, then email a value‑first pitch that offers expertise rather than a sales pitch. The third strategy explains how to pitch journalists by email: craft open‑ended question subject lines, personalize the opening by referencing the journalist’s recent work, explain why the audience will care, and include an exclusive hook such as early access, samples, or interviews to prompt a reply. Adrian emphasizes brevity, relevance, and passion over expensive PR firms, and promotes his Free PR book for deeper guidance.
Chapters
Alright everybody, today I have a special surprise for you. This is my good buddy Adrian Salamunovic. He wrote this book, Free PR. Today we're gonna talk about 3 surefire ways to land top-tier publications. Check it out, subscribe, and click the little bell button so you can learn more about marketing and business. So without further ado, we're gonna go over to Adrian.
Thanks, Eric. So today we're gonna talk about 3 power tips on how you can get more press for your company no matter what business you're in. So the first one's all about getting reviews of whatever product or service you're selling. How do you get reviews in top-tier publications? Well, the answer is really simple. The first thing you want to do is think like your actual customers. An example would be my past company, CanvasPop. It's a photo printing company. So I got to think, what is the last thing somebody searches for before they're likely to buy from me? In our case, we tried different things like canvas printing, photo canvas printing, photo canvas printing reviews, etc. So your first step is you want to use a tool like SEMrush to be able to see what the search volume is for these terms. And if you think about it, when people are doing searches, they're like ready to buy. They're, they're just about to pull the trigger on whatever they're about to buy. So these are very valuable type of search keyword terms you want to go after. The second thing is you want to look at the first editorial hit that comes up. It shouldn't be a competitor, obviously, and it shouldn't be an ad, but the first editorial hit. You click on it and you look at who's on there. If your company isn't included on there, just reach out to the journalist. You can find any journalist's email address usually in the link. Right in the article, and if you can't, you can use a tool like Hunter.io to find almost anyone's email address. The next step is you want to tell them how you're better or different than your competitors who are already reviewed. If you do a good job of that, there's a good chance that they may include you in that review and update that page. Maybe if you're really good at pitching, they might even write a feature review on your company without your competitors included. So this is a really powerful way to get natural organic search results on terms that people are already looking for with just a little bit of hustle and a little bit of pitching. So the next thing we should talk about is podcasts. 2019 is definitely the year of the podcast, and if you or your brand isn't getting on podcasts, you're missing the boat. So it's pretty easy as well. Getting on podcasts, the first step you want to do is really understand who your audience is. If you don't know who your audience is, you should prepare surveys, and you can do that easily using tools like Typeform or SurveyMonkey. And just ask your customers, and it could be just an email, say, what are the top 3 podcasts you listen to? And after a while, you're gonna see a pattern. You're gonna see the same names and brands coming up for podcasts. So once you have that list, what you want to do is go to Upwork and just say, I'm looking to build a list of the top 100 podcasters in my industry, and here are 5 examples of the perfect types of podcasts I want to be on. When the person is building your list for you, make sure they get the host's name, email address, their LinkedIn, and their Twitter profile. Go through that list and make sure you add every single one of them along with a personalized note on LinkedIn. This is a way to warm them up and signal— I call it signaling out to them so that they know who you are. Now, about a week later, what you want to do is email them. And if you can't get their email, you can just use the contact us form on most podcasts' websites. Now, it's really important that when you're pitching them, you tell them what you can teach their audience about what you do. You don't want to try to sell them on whatever product or service you have. You want to say, I have this knowledge and I want to share it with your listeners. And that's how you get them to pay attention to you. One of the questions I get asked the most is, how do I pitch journalists by email? And again, if you follow a couple simple steps, it's really, really easy. So the first and most important thing is your subject line, because an email that doesn't get opened doesn't get read. So you want to use open-ended questions. Do you think your readers will be interested in this? And the reason we want to do these open-ended or question mark subject lines is because it forces them to to open it and it leads with value. Once they open the email, you want to show them that you've taken the time to get to know them and their audience. So I always like to say something like, hey, I just read your article. What that first line does, it shows them that you've done your research, that you're a listener or that you're a reader, and that you're, you know, at least spending some time to get to know them and their audience. The next thing you want to do is say something along the lines of, I think your audience will be really interested in what we're doing because... And that's what you wanna talk about is the because is the pitch. So here's why I think your audience, not you, not here's what I'm selling, but here's why I think your audience will be interested in what we're doing. In the 3rd paragraph, what you wanna do is offer them some sort of dangling carrot or a lure that gets them to just simply click the reply button. We found what works really well is telling them, I'd love to give you an exclusive first look at either a feature or something you're launching or something you're working on. Journalists love to get the scoop on things that are happening in the future. The other thing is free samples work really well, exclusive photography, or interviews with you or the founders. All those things work to get replies. The only goal of a good pitch is to get them to reply and then ask questions. The biggest mistake that I see is people write really, really long pitches and journalists just don't have the time to read them. Pitching to the media is way easier than you think, and you don't need an expensive PR firm to do it. All you need to be is passionate, and have a great story to tell. And in my book, Free PR Book, we go through everything, lots more tips and value, and I hope you find it useful. If you want to check it out, just go to freeprbook.com and grab your own copy.
