Surprise! These Are 5 Things Journalists Don't Know or Understand About Your PR World
Plus, EXCITING NEWS: We're teaming up with a HUGE branding consultant to talk all things partnering with influencers for a workshop you'll want to invite your clients to
Hi Top Tier Community.
Hope everyone’s week is going well. If you missed our standalone Substack from Wednesday, you’ll want to tune in. We’re teaming up with a badass branding consultant to bring you a new workshop that you won’t want to miss. More details below:
RSVP Today: New Workshop: How Brands Can Capitalize On Influencer Partnerships
Do your clients want to get their products in front of influencers to help them promote them?
Do they want to send out gifted product samples in hopes of social media love?
Or do your clients want to take things one step further and team up with an influencer to be a spokesperson for their products?
Are you a small business owner hoping to get in on the power of influencer partnerships but don’t know where to start?
Bringing in the Big Guns: Lifestyle Expert Veena Crownholm
We’re teaming up with seasoned mom lifestyle expert Veena Crownholm, a former Miss California who has made a living working with brands in formats from placements on national and regional television to branded content on social media. She’s worked with such brands as QVC, Cracker Barrel, Chicas Corn Chips, Walmart, Sunkist, Netflix, Kohls, Olipop, General Mills and beyond and truly knows the ins and outs of how to rock an influencer partnership. And now she also consults with brands on how to do this from their end of the game.
In this 75-minute workshop, Veena, Nicole & Jill will walk publicists and brands (yes, feel free to invite your clients directly as this will be a session they won’t want to miss) through the following in a formal presentation:
Why it’s beneficial for brands to team up with influencers
How to find the right influencers for your brands: Why it’s important to find your center of influence
How to work with an influencer
Tips for gifting an influencer product in the hope that they’ll share it with their audience vs. paying an influencer for a collaboration
How to put together influencer packages that will make an influencer want to share in return for products
How writers can work influencers into a story or why an influencer can help make a product appealing
Influencers vs. working with other experts
How to maximize your ROI with an influencer
Best practices to make a campaign run smoother: dos and don'ts
Influencer red flags (signs the partnership is not going well)
Q&A portion so you’ll walk away with all you’re questions answered
Wednesday, May 29 at 10 am PST/1 pm EST
Can’t make it live? Watch it on your own time … we’ll be sending the link out immediately afterwards to anyone who pre-paid.
Introductory Rate (RSVP now for this early bird discount!):
$49 Paid TTC Substack Subscribers; $99 Free TTC Subscribers
Ready to sign up?
Send an email to info@toptierconsulting.NET and we’ll collect payment to lock in your RSVP.
It’s time to sign up for May’s Top Tier Talk
Our next Top Tier Talk will be on May 23rd. We’ll be digging into ALL of your burning questions. As a reminder this is a free perk to all paid Top Tier Consulting Substack subscribers that we offer this monthly. To register, submit a question at the Google sheets link after the paywall.
Now onto this week’s topic:
Recently we tackled the top of Why Do Writers DO That?! Exploring the Things Publicists May Not Understand where we touched on things writers do on their ends that PR reps probably don’t understand, such as:
Not replying to PR emails
Receiving press samplers and not letting a publicist know
Not including a product in a gift guide after receiving a sample
Doing an interview with your client but not putting it into a story
Showing interest in a pitch then ghosting
Not knowing what an article will go live
Not sending a link to an article when it goes live
If you missed this one, it was a very popular read, which you can check out here.
Keeping up with that same theme, this week we’re diving into 5 things writers don’t know about your PR world + giving you a look into how you can help a writer to navigate these situations. (Spoiler alert: Not doing these things can create complications with a writer trying to work with your client and may eventually cause them to pass and move onto a different product or expert to feature).
We don’t know how the in-house PR team and their outside Agency of Record (AOR) divide up tasks and workloads.
Jill recently had a situation where she had reached out to an in-house PR team for a story she was working on, and only received a fraction of the information she needed. So she reached out to the AOR to see if they could help fill in the gaps for her article … but that AOR contact ignored her multiple emails.
When Jill asked why she was being ignored, the AOR contact seemed rather surprised that Jill didn’t know they she and her client had already collaborated behind the scenes … the response was along the lines of, “I know my client already sent you stuff, so I figured you were all set and didn’t know why you were reaching out again.”
Writers don’t know how your sausage is made. Plus, every brand divides in-house and AOR duties up differently, so it’s not like we could just make an assumption.
A little communication would have gone a long way here … always make things clear to a journalist and don’t assume they know how your world works. And don’t ignore a journalist … if a writer is reaching out, it’s because we think you can help us with something. Respond to us! If we’ve reached out twice, we REALLY need your help and are probably desperate. If you don’t think you can help or aren’t clear on why they are reaching out to you, communicate! Ask questions. Ignoring us puts us in a bind and damages our relationship moving forward.
Shoot, there’s a paywall and FOUR MORE TIPS beyond it! Not a paying member? Here’s what you’re missing out on:
Full access to our weekly newsletters
Access to our extensive archive of paid posts on every PR topic under the sun
The ability to attend/participate in our monthly Zoom Top Tier Talks
Discounts on all our most popular group workshops (like our upcoming Pitch Perfecting Workshop)
*Note: Our consulting sessions, workshops, Zooms and Substack newsletters are strictly educational. Signing up for anything has no bearing on landing coverage in any of our outlets. Our role is to fine-tune your approach and tactics so that you can apply these learnings when pitching other journalists.