Supercharge Your Public Relations Efforts With Video

Simple talking head. Video is one of the greatest tools ever for your public relations. If your goal is to get media attention, whether it's local media attention, the local NBC affiliate, national attention, on Al Jazeera, cnm, BBC, having video where you're already talking about the issue the reporter wants to talk about or the host wants to talk about is a huge step up. Producers want to see, can you talk about this issue? One technique I've used with tremendous success over the years is when there's a breaking news story that relates to my area of expertise, let's say it happens at 10 in the morning. Well, by 10:10, I've done a video analyzing it. Whether it's a politician saying something stupid or going down in flames at a press conference, I will analyze it in a video format, short, typically 90 seconds or so, and then put on my website, put it on YouTube, tweet it, but also send the video to producers I know will be covering that story. And quite often that gets the call. They don't have to wonder what my opinions are. They've already seen it. They don't have to wonder if I can speak on camera. They've already seen it. So it can really catapult your whole PR strategy in a more powerful way and get you a lot more coverage because you're making it easy for reporters, bookers, producers to use you. This is much easier than writing the 800 word op ed piece and thinking about it for two days and then trying to push it to the media after they've long forgotten the issue. It's immediacy of it and the fact that you're showing media outlets, even print outlets, that you're articulate and you have a strong, interesting view on a subject. So if you're not doing this and you're spending money putting out press releases or dealing with a PR firm, you're really missing out on a lot of.