Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the podcast today we have Natasha Zo. Natasha, welcome.
Hey, hi. Thank you, Thomas.
My pleasure. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a bit about yourself and what you do?
Sure, I’m a former journalist. Today, I run a small but mighty PR agency with a team of five amazing Wonder Women. And together we get entrepreneurs, help entrepreneurs build their media presence. We book entrepreneurs on like shows, podcast, magazines, interviews, radio, et cetera et cetera, and how people just connect with their message and spread their message through media sounds great.
One of the things which you said that you’d be happy to talk about today was finding your message. So I think it’s a good thing to cover because I think in a lot of instances when people, let’s say they do their own business, their message tends to be like, I do PR would you like to hire me as a PR person? Whereas, as you are probably well aware, there’s all sorts of powerful stories that you can put behind it and reasons why, you know, you’re appealing to people. So when you go through the process of helping people find their message, what do you advise them to do?
Right, Okay, so, amazing topic. I just finished actually like a class on it for my internal group. So this is a whole day about the message. So I laugh. I believe in the modern day business, where the business and personal beliefs and business and personal values go really, really hand in hand. So I really believe that that’s kind of a message that we are all given, right? Find something that is your own passion and turn it into a business, right? So, therefore, I really believe in digging inside you and digging in your own story to see how this life shaped you in a way to be the right person for this to be doing this business today and now.
So, they’re quite often there in your own story, there in life events and, you know, different things, experiences that shaped you, that, you know, made you believe that this is what’s needed today, and I’m the one to bring it forward, right? So in this way, finding your message is both something that’s going to help you in your business, but it’s also very much personal growth process, right? So, today, with my PR accelerator group, when we were talking about this, it’s almost like a therapy session when you’re like, okay, what are the building blocks of me as a person? What shaped me? And, I don’t know how, like, do you want me just to do the overview and then we go deeper?
Yeah, sounds good.
Okay, so because there’s so much, I just spoke about it for like two hours today, so an overview, I use a few tools, so first of all, maybe many people would be familiar with the Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell. So, you know, like a lot of classic stories of building this, a lot of, you know, stories of the modern media personalities and build on this as well, but then other tools that I look at, like I look at also, okay, so here is your story. Let’s see, you know, what are your relationships with the different topics? For example, I like to look, you know, finding something that you oppose, for example, let me give you an example. Something that you would go against, you know? So what is something that is a popular belief that you find wrong based on your experience? This is a great way to build your message, you know, speak against something. There is a little technique called stupid majority. So what is a stupid majority belief and what is a new thing that you need to educate them about?
Like, an example of that would be say in the in the health niche. For a very long time, people used to believe that like fats and cholesterol has to do a lot of this heart disease and causes heart disease, and then, you know, there came the whole new knowledge about the good fats there, you know, actually, fats are essential. It’s sugar that has more influence on heart disease and so on. So that would be an example, right? Like a popular belief that is fundamentally wrong and your message is to re-educate about this. And then there is also a message that can be built around just kind of a girl next door/boy next door story where you are, you know, you haven’t been like born with a silver spoon. You might be relatable to a lot of people from your backgrounds but however, you managed to overcome some particular challenges, right? And your messages, sharing a particular knowledge going on here coming back with a gift and sharing this knowledge. So very, very, very broad, right? So a few different tools that one can be using, we can go deeper in any of those.
Does any of this go hand in hand with sales copyrighting? I see that mass of creating your messages is gonna, you know, go throughout all of your communication, right? So definitely through your copyrighting as well. Absolutely.
Okay, and what would you say your main messages? And why did you choose that for yourself?
So in my own story, right, okay, before we go this way, so sharing stories is what I’ve done from very early on. I became a journalist at the age of 15, and I kind of like had to really fight my way to be a journalist at that age. So it was like 15 to 20 years old I was a journalist and I felt really free expressing myself, sharing my opinions, you know, caring about some major topics. I did like I did, I did a lot of like an investigative journalism at that age and so on. And then what happened is I kind of got disappointed in media for various reasons, just you know, in the media as an institution and um that’s the stage is like okay down five years of it. I was I want nothing to do with it anymore, this is done. And what happened with me afterwards, I kind of like, shut this door, I shut the, I don’t know my own connection with being able to find my own voice and um there was a time in my life, later on, a few years after where I was like, okay, I kind of want to write again, I kind of wanna, I kind of want to put the stories on paper on diaper stories until my MacBook and I couldn’t, it was really, really, I was like, you know, having this whole writer’s block but mostly it’s not that I didn’t know what to say it’s like I didn’t know what I wanted to speak about.
And I guess the mission that I pursue right now is helping people helping others, while I also helped myself to like really dig up this, you know, this personal story, this personal message and to share it with the world. So I’m personally going through a process of reconnecting with my voice from being disappointed in media to being able to speak and write and share again. I became a contributor to several digital online publications. And my life is connected with the media anyway, so I’m trying to find a way to still be a part of this world but do it. Not as a journalist who’s just paid to cover you know whatever the editor says but as a PR agent. In this case I choose the people that really inspired me and I choose to share their story and I choose to make their stories louder.
Do you feel like because one of the things which I thought we could talk about today was you mentioned that you can do your own PR and it can help you grow your business while boosting your confidence and the thing that I find with interviewing people who have a particular skill. So in this instance yours would be PR. You have that skill because you have to do it for yourself first. Is that true, would you say?
Not necessarily. I didn’t do my PR when I was a journalist. So I think the skill comes rather from that time.
So would you say that as a result of your job being a journalist you then had some inside information in terms of how you can then apply that to?
Definitely. I had like right now my job as a PR is to connect with the journalists and editors and producers and you know kind of get into their minds and understand how they think and what do they need. So while I was on the other side is you know it’s way easier for me to do that, there’s a lot I think a lot of people who let’s say they’re in a particular business or you know they’re trying to share their message. All that kind of, should we say print or journalism is all kind of so far away, like I don’t know who to talk to, I don’t know how to position it et cetera. Whereas you kind of have those skills already.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve been in the newsroom. Yeah. Okay. And what do people get wrong about, should we say approaching journalists?
So first of all, they don’t approach them. This is the biggest thing, everyone gets drunk. The biggest belief is that you need to be, you know, well known and famous and wait till they knock on your door.
So it’s in marketing speak, push versus pull is very much a push activity.
Yes, I actually in these terms I actually divide PR into like yeah, push and pull proactive and reactive and reactive is obviously the you know, the easier place to start. But even for that one, you don’t really need to wait until you’re known and famous. And on the cover of a magazine, think about the writers and journalists and editors is they have this little trick where, like, you know, they need to bring the most objective information, right? So, you know, they cannot just say like, you know, you and I can be chatting here, we can say take Claritin it’s good for your eyes. If I’m a journalist and I’m writing an article, I cannot take care of it. And it’s good for your eyes. I have to say Claritin is good for your eyes, according to Dr X Y Z from the, you know, institution, expertise, from the research experts. So, you know, that would be kind of referencing an expert and you know, that goes for, you know, for many different cases, they need to have references, they need to have sources, they need to have proof, they need to have anecdotes to prove their point.
So like you know, a good article is considered well written article when its sources multiple sources. And you know if you are if you’re you know nor normal human being, you know, you don’t usually know you know I specialist who can just you can just pull up and verify facts about correcting. You can google but you know, it’s usually expected to have actual source. Not the you know, second reference source when you just referenced someone else’s article is someone else reading. So that’s why there is a big misconception. In fact, they need you first. If you are an expert in your field, if you have a particular data, if you have particular research or anecdotes or real life stories, people behind you know, behind the screen editors and journalists, they need you, they need diverse sources. So that’s something that most people don’t know and what kind of journalism we do, what for myself.
So I was doing a little bit of everything. I was 15, so, you know, I obviously started this with whatever they could give to a 15 year old. So corporate events. I covered some, you know, some social events and politics. I ended up doing a little bit of investigation, like, I did some crime in this investigation at the age of 20, which I think kind of contributed to me stepping out of it. Like it was just very heavy stuff to handle at that age.
Yeah. So, do you have any examples, both journalism and PR that you’re particularly proud of? So a story you wrote and then also a client that you helped?
All right, let’s do it. Okay, so journalism. This is interesting because it’s been really, really – well so yeah, I mean it was a it was a heavy one, but I think I’m quite proud of this. That was like one of the latest stories in my career. It was actually a series of stories. And because it was an investigation story, it started in the area where I was living. There is like a military university where the officers study and people from all over the country come here to study there and one day the news broke that one of the students killed himself and you know the military institution I think in many countries they are like very close up. They don’t answer any questions and they don’t really leak any information there. Just like you know of course that the parents and family were devastated. So at that time I just happened to be physically close to the place and I just went knocking on doors. I went I guess I also used the fact that I was you know a young 20 year old girl.
And the institution was like full of guys of my age and I would just like wake up in the in front of the doors and be like hey, can you like you know where to go chat with me for 15 minutes? So yeah, I, you know, I found the story, I did the effects and a made up end up making a follow up for like 33 pieces follow up on that particular institution because there was a lot of dirt, there was a lot of abuse, like within the institution, there was a lot of corruption there. And I end up making like a 33 part series, but of course it hadn’t in fact on me and I guess I’m proud of it because I could think of a real change that it did. You know, I could think of a family who okay it didn’t bring their son back, but it gave them some information that they were denied before. So you know, it makes me feel that there was no change.
Well done on that one. Although I didn’t know we were going to go in that direction on this conversation. I told you it was dark. But on a more positive note, what’s the client work that you’re proud of?
Okay, let me change for a second. Lots of client because clients, you know, I choose my clients myself and I mostly work with people in a personal growth and personal development space. So reasons I chose these clients is because I really believe in what they do and what they teach. I believe that, you know, just accessing more information, people can live their life better. So I don’t know why this one comes to mind. The guy was a memory expert. He was one of the top memory courses on you to me. And we were working on his book launch and it’s the same as we do for everyone. We took him on a podcast tour. We booked him some really, really great shows and yeah, his book was a great success. His tour was a big contribution to selling the book. He was telling me that I kind of got tired of doing the interviews but they help to move the books. So I, you know, I talked it out anyway. So I don’t know the client stories, they are definitely on a lighter side and yeah, for a client stories I guess I’m proud of all of them.
Well done. You mentioned the podcasts both recently and in the beginning, what do you make of the media, the podcast media for? I don’t know because it moderately knew what your thoughts on it.
Well, I think that’s one of the only places where people still pay attention. So I guess a good client story would be very, like a very good way to demonstrate my point would be very working this um a celebrity hypnotherapist.so she’s really well known and at the time we were working with her, like, you know, we were not the first pr agency working with horses, She already has had quite a bit of presence. So in our case, we got her own Today Show in US, which is you know, this is like a PR dream and it has like a four million viewership I think you know, it’s a big deal. So, like, you know, she flew from New York to do that, and when it came out, like, you know, we were really looking to see what it’s gonna do for, you know, for the website. She had a book at that point. But to be honest, the correlation, there wasn’t really much correlation at the time.
And then, you know, we just, like, went on, you know, it’s still good. She’s been placed on the Today Show, and a few months after that we got her on one of the top podcasts, So School of Greatness by Lewis Howes. So, at that time, he was somewhere that, like, you know, top, top three, I think it’s up and he’s definitely, like, crossed over five million downloads and when that one came out, you know, same woman, same story. When that one came out, 40 minute conversation or an hour conversation. First of all, it was one of the top of YouTube videos on Lewis’s channel for the time being. But second of all that for the client herself, the feedback of that, like her website has her website traffic tripled over the week. And that of course has like a huge, huge impact on business. So what I make of it is a podcast is one of the few media where people still pay attention.
Like, if you calculate, would say people spend – I don’t know – 40 minutes a day on Facebook, just scrolling through multiple accounts? Like, you know if you do your marketing on Facebook, how much attention do you have? It’s like, less than a minute podcast is the place where people actually go and on purpose listen to like a whole half an hour conversation, where else? Because someone is going to listen to me for half an hour. YouTube. Yeah, yeah. YouTube maybe. So yeah, because people come here to learn something. I’m a big, big fan of podcasts.
Cool. And we touched upon doing your own PR. Why is it that you think that it helps with confidence and why? What would you advise for someone who has done none? And you presumably you’re an advocate of doing your own. So what, what advice would you give them?
It’s definitely a great thing to do to do for your own business. So, yeah, if we spoke about how it helps your business, definitely helps your own confidence as well. First of all, your mom’s gonna love it. You know, there are a lot of clients back I received, but one that’s very, very persistent as, you know, whenever anyone is in the magazine, they’re like, my mom loved it. And you know, there is this perception of a media, be the traditional media or be the podcast, like your immediate circles see it as success, you know, even the people closest to you see it as a big success getting featured. It’s just like, and then, you know, and then the environment sees you in this way. You elevate your perception of yourself as well. And other than that, it’s also just a lot of practice, right? You go out to share your message to share your thoughts and practice over and like, for example, the podcast, right?
Very intimate environment like you and I just, we’re just chatting and then suddenly the people are gonna listen to it. But you know, if your public speaking is not your forte, you know, you don’t need to be thinking about the people who are listening, you’re just having a very natural conversation. Is just one other human being on the other side. And yeah, same for them for the traditional media, maybe for a print or online publications, it’s a strong perception that’s why PR is powerful for it as a business tool as well, right? There is a strong perception of credibility completely different philosophical questions whether or not there is credibility in fact that there is a strong perception of credibility and that’s why it you know, work so well to give a borrowed credibility to your business and that’s why it works so well to also give them this sense of confidence boost to do yourself as someone being featured.
So does that mean your family are going to be seeing this episode then?
My family doesn’t speak English that well but my partner does. He’ll definitely celebrate it.
Cool. And what about the next steps question? So, I’ve got no experience. What do you advise that person to do? Who has, let’s say they do have their message, but they’re not sure how to go about sharing it, right?
So, we briefly touched upon the like push and pull PR so I would definitely start with reactive you know, proactive just like, you know, basically reaching out to journalists it’s quite easy, but it’s a lot of it’s very time consuming. So reactive in this way is way easier. So if you want to go in the specific, so there are a whole bunch of platforms for every specific media where you can find either podcast holes who are in need of guests or the journalists in need of sources producers in need of in need of different people for their stories.
So, let’s be specific here. So let’s start with this podcast, you and I met on the matchmaker. I don’t know if you share about this with your audience, it’s a great platform where the whole start looking for guests. So that’s, you know, you don’t really all the work you need to do is just, you know, going through the different podcast and seeing if you’re gonna have fun having a conversation with this person and reaching out, reaching out to him or her, bunch of Facebook groups as well where people are posting about their podcast where they’re looking for guests. Actually, I don’t know if it’s the right time, but I do have a Facebook group where we share the podcast guesting opportunities. It’s absolutely free. So you know, anyone can also go and find themselves different podcast nesting opportunities there. Yeah, so that’s for podcast, for media, there are a few so the two best known ones would be the website called Help a Reporter – HARO – but I think the full name on the website is Helping A Reporter Out. And the second one is going to be a SourceBottle, sorrybottle.com. So they’re the same principle. You go there, they’re free. You register as a source, you like make a little bit, you make a little bit of your profile and the way they work, you’re gonna start receiving for you kind of emails a day this arrow, it’s three emails a day. The storage bottle, you can choose how many you want and they are going to send you the specific media requests in the specific categories that you’ve chosen. So let’s say it’s a business marketing they’re going to send you the journalist looking for experts and specifically this category. So all you gotta do is set up the alerts on your phone to, you know, to go check or literally takes two minutes to check that the email, see what call outs are there today.
If there’s something relevant, sit down and write it out quickly, write out the response and submit. That’s religious exchanging emails. And this is a very big benefit of doing it for yourself because when we do it in the agency, we gotta have all this answer prepared basically, that are like, you know, if you figure out how to have time how to get the, you know, relevant answer that our experts gonna sign off in really no time to a journalist who are always in a really, a really short deadlines. But if you’re doing it yourself, that’s that you own your own words, you own your own expertise, so you just require a few of those a day, and this is you’re gonna be surprised how actually do able to it is to get a mention in a different publications through the stool, same goes for the SourceBottle. So, I would advise this reactive tools to get started whether you wanna take a shot at doing the publications or the podcast or both. Just go to this platform where people are already seeking for your expertise.
Thank you very much for that. It’s a very detailed answer.
Well, I really hope that people do it because I always look at it as like one of the most under looked tools in marketing. I used to run a marketing team before as well, I used to run a like email marketing built funnels for a big company and so down a little bit of everything, you know, emails, conversion, optimisations, advertising and all of that. And what I often feel is when you’re doing your own marketing, you’re marketing your own business, your own brand, personal brands the learning curve like right now the digital marketing is such a, you know, multiple headed monster. Like there’s so much to learn, you can take like a fool degree on that and you know by the time you’re done they’re going to come up is and you think it’s going to be irrelevant but just send like but anyone can just send emails and share their expertise like you know the level of learning you need to do here and there is just it’s just incomparable. So I really believe in that being like a really easy tool that pretty much anyone can use without much prior degree.
Have you got any thoughts on podcast agencies? Because I get quite a lot of approaches from agencies who just deal in podcasts. Do you think that that’s just what do you remember that the agency like who are who produced podcast or agency who they represent?
Essentially they represent guests. And in a way that’s even away that’s my agency as well, right? So it’s sort of a rebrand I think we’re good. I have an example, after the episode.
Sure, why not?
It is a bit work of like you know like it is a very easy thing but it’s a very time consuming thing you know going on and also as an agency like for me personally I get a chance to build relationships you know so with some hosts we’ve been working pretty much here like my agency exists for four years and with some of the whole podcast host we’ve been working for four years and it’s a very you know it’s a very tight bone by now so they know that they know that they’re going to give a good recommendation and I know that you know that that they gonna give a good you know experience to the to the guest that I represent.
So yes. Do you remember how you got your first client?
Yeah, all this, that’s a friend circle but there is not much to it. I I remember that summer that I decided that I’m going to go fully into PR. I was at a networking event during that summer with like 1,000,000 entrepreneurs and we had a great time, met a lot of great people, you know mentioned this to a number of them a few times and one of them said, Hey you know, I want to launch a book soon, do you want to go around and teach me? And I was like of course, so I literally accepted to whatever price they named at the time and it went 12. I was happy. They were happy as well.
Actually right now at this very moment we are about to do I think fourth book with this same client, so four years after. And that’s a very, very fruitful relationship for both of us, right? And I wanted to ask about one thing which is once upon a time people or at least some people used to think of PR as like a press release. So, you know, something’s happened, they’re gonna put a press release out and now, I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, is it starting to go away or is it still a tool that you utilise?
Depends on who you are and what kind of news you have. So I guess, press release, our press releases are still for public companies, for any acquisitions hires, you know, big kind of big kind of movements, the merger emerges partnerships by out going public, you know, like everything, everything that happens for public companies happens through press releases, definitely.
I only worked with one founder of a public company. And even in his case we didn’t, but the kind of work that we did was more around his personal book, his story, his book launch. So many press release platforms by now even don’t consider a book launch as a as a as a new sport they think so depends yet there is a sector where it’s still think and I don’t even want to call with self-starters because, you know, a lot of, a lot of self-starters, you know, running digital entrepreneurs are still around like a relatively big companies and the teams, but you know, I guess um I guess in this digital business world I don’t see what kind of what kind of event could be there, that would be, whether it would be, that would be announced to a press release.
Okay. Alan Sugar’s company maybe that’s one of the, I did some let’s say prep before our talk, looked at some of the social stuff and some of your – should we say that the videos are about getting into a magazine. So how much of your time do you think – there’s a yoga magazine, if I’m not mistaken – how much of your time do you sort of spend in that area reading things up, getting into magazines, basically?
Depends on, I mean it really depends on a client, right? It depends on a goal but yeah, quite a bit best job ever, right? I get to read magazines and talk to people for work. Yeah. It does sound cool. And I do think you made a point if I’m not mistaken, which was the people who are in those particular publications are probably no more qualified, no more smarter than perhaps what you are if you’re also an expert in that field.
Good. Yeah, that’s a good comment. A good thing to comment on. So what happens in what happened and just like, you know, and the understanding of the media and behind the scene? You know, at the time when everyone got in digital, all the stuff basically was decreased, right? You know, any magazine going from a press to digital, it means the smaller team, which means that one person covers more different areas. So, you know, uh, you would say in the yoga magazine, 11 writers can be covering health science, same writer would be covering news and I don’t know, maybe like a skin care, just, you know, making it up. So of course, it’s not, it’s not that they are not smarter than you are. It’s um, just physically sometimes are really important possible to be an expert in, you know, all of this area at the same time. Keep up with news. Keep up its updates. Keep up with the new developments while also watching for the things like, you know, click through sense, what kind of clicks this headline is going to generate. And is it going to be enough to keep our advertisers happy? So, in fact, when you are reaching out to someone with the news in your industry, with, you know, new research, new development, new trend explanation of a new trend, you’re doing them a huge, huge favour. And a lot of pr is trying to get good enough understanding of what person’s job is, you know, what is kind of stories that he or she will always cover. And, you know, and the best kind of kind of pr is when you offer to do them their job for them, you know, and when you manage to do it in uh, in a way that that is still a journalistic piece, right? That still is non-bias as it possibly is features you your point of view or, you know, in my case, me and my client, my client point of view, and still provides a somewhat objective information, um, the objective information to the reader.
And, you know, quite often, they would just quite often you suggest like a new idea for a writer for article, and I would write something like, or would you like me to submit a full article? And they would be like, yeah, please go ahead. Rarely they would really republish the full article because they’re still like an editorial guidelines and so on. You cannot go that much into someone’s head to really understand how they need to write, but that would be a big, big yes.
Great answer. So, I got one where, um, there’s gonna be some predictions from Natasha. Now, maybe you’ve given some thought to this or not, but where will PR be in the future, let’s say, 10, 15 years, what will it look like?
Yeah. Well, to answer that, you need to think where will media be in the future? All right and where we do most of media, where the most bibles the media go right now. So we’re on a huge right to rise of the personal personality media versus the institutional media right there, Tiktoker who might have more subscribers than, you know, than BBC, YouTube and so on. So, it’s gonna it’s gonna go towards it’s going to stay in a relationship management, right? But very likely into influencer marketing and um yeah, relationship management in this area. So, what do you think someone should do as a result of that?
I don’t think it’s regardless of that, you should be, you know, choosing the – making friends in your industry, not, you know, not necessarily with people who only those who write about your industry, but generally making friends in your industry. Because PR is public relationships, right? And no business is really gonna exist without. It feel like you’ll be making for you’ll be making a good connection today and you think that you’re just both small and starting out and you know, in five years of good-natured relationship, you have a really strong ally in a good and powerful place.
So, always that’s for me that’s timeless. Doesn’t matter. You know how we reshaped and you know, who is who are the people that everyone is watching? What’s the channel that’s everyone’s watching is always going to be human relationship. And that’s very, very basic. one of the predictions I heard about personal branding is that bigger companies will start to use employees for personal branding, because one of the things which I think they struggle with is having that person that they can put in front of the camera. Do you think that in the future you’ll be sort of you’ll have clients who are actually the bigger company, but their employees will be the ones that you’ll be doing PR for?
That’d be cool. I think it’s yeah, it’s interesting. I think it’s happening already, right? I’m not sure you tell me that’s for the spokesperson. I wouldn’t be able to really give example that. But yeah, I think I think that’s I think I sort of know what you mean by the speak spokesperson.
It’s just I don’t know whether they’ve quite gotten that right to you know if you and I were to have this conversation or you’ve done like your Facebook posts and stuff like that. I don’t think that bigger companies quite have that down yet in the sense that having that, as you say, that kind of relationship that you could have with a, with an individual that also works for that company, if you see what I mean it’s very, it’s a very big possibility because there are so many cases where, you know, the founder isn’t the best articulated or the most relatable kind of person and you know, if it’s, if it’s not the skills as entrepreneur, right? If it’s not the skill you have, it’s a skill you hire. However, there is, there is um, there is also like a little bit of a risk here as a, at least millennials don’t hold the job for longer than five years, right? And we don’t even know what gen Z is going to be like, like, so how do you hire someone to be a face of your person, to be a brand, brand of your company knowing that they’re gonna leave in five years. So that’s potential downfall I can see maybe.
So, what is your goal, Natasha?
Professionally, I just would love to also, yeah, launch my own online publication. Yeah, I’m not 100% clear in it.
So, what would an example of that be online magazine, basically?
Right now I chose the path of for the sake of telling the stories that inspire me. I chose the path of knocking on the doors of people with a big audiences, media, this big audiences. And I feel it’s a very natural the next step to just create one of my own where I’ll just tell the stories whichever stories I want. You combine your skills of journalism and PR into one place. Yes. Yes.
Yeah, that’s what I like in the modern day media is this very, very highly personal idea of it. That’s like, okay, this is not some ultimate objective place, this is just a place where, you know, it’s my channel. And I want to feature the people that inspire me, and I want to feature people that I find are bringing amazing things into the world. Yeah, maybe like maybe like a podcast, right? That’s something it needs. Like, I’m still imagining more of a written form thing. So, yeah, I think it’s going to be more like online magazine, life, education, like a success magazine or something.
Yeah. Cool. I love it. Is there anything that you think would be valuable to the audience regarding PR which I haven’t asked you about?
All right. What I think would I want to reemphasise of doing it yourself and I want to mention the common mistakes a lot of people do. So a very common thing that I see people do is they are like, oh, this is just sending emails are going to hire an assistant, pay him or her $5 an hour and you know, it just helps him or her pitch me two different magazines. And what I find was one of the biggest mistakes because the whole, yeah, like the process is writing an email is easy, you’re right, an assistant can do it. But the connection that their understanding, you know of it, like what those people usually do is send out a team template and emails and this is really, really, really a killer of your relationship, like, you know, early on. So I really advise people get a gist of it, really. Look at it yourself, you know, see a few people that you want to connect with, a few media that you want to connect with, really study their style and you know, maybe you want to write different reaches and send them to the similar magazines again and again, and maybe it’s like after that you want to outsource it, find someone who’s like, you know, help you write in your voice and outsource it.
But at first, that’s like a sure way to kill your relationship before they started. I’ve had, it’s something like one or two seconds before someone decides they’re going to read the full email or not. And if it smells of template then it probably won’t get very far.
So yeah, Natasha where’s the best place for people to find you?
I tend to hang out on Instagram a lot, so it’s natashazo_. I also have a Facebook group, I think I mentioned before, where I share the free media opportunities. It’s not podcast only, we do share the online conference speaking gigs, we do share some requests, journalist requests as well that come my way where I don’t have the right client tool for them. So that’s also a great place to join and that’s somewhere where you can always contact me and ask questions.
Okay, well, thank you for letting me pick your brains today. I think it’s been really valuable.
Pleasure. It was really enjoyable.
It was really insightful. You made me think there are a couple of times.
That’s the idea, I guess.
Thanks again.
Thanks, Thomas it was great.