How to Connect With Traditional Media Influencers

Are you seen as an expert in your industry?

Want to develop relationships with the media to become a go-to expert?

To explore what marketers need to know to connect with traditional media influencers, I interview Josh Elledge.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Josh Elledge, a consumer advocate and founder of SavingsAngel.com, a site dedicated to consumer savings. He's a weekly syndicated newspaper columnist and has made more than 1,000 TV and radio appearances. Josh is also the founder of UpendPR.com and host of the Savings Angel Show.

Josh explores how to connect with traditional media influencers.

You'll discover how to develop and build relationships with media via Twitter.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
Listen Now

You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher.

Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
How to Connect With Traditional Media Influencers
Josh's Story

Out of high school, Josh joined the United States Navy and became a journalist. He says it was a great way for an 18-year-old to participate in producing video news stories for the Navy and Marine Corps.

About 9 1/2 years ago, Josh started a membership-based website called SavingsAngel. SavingsAngel pursues their mission to end hunger, lack, and need in communities by helping consumers cut their grocery bills in half; Josh's company charges customers $3.99/week.

Since he had no money for advertising, he was forced to look for other ways to get exposure. Josh shared the mission of SavingsAngel with every media influencer he could get to pay attention to him. His outreach wasn't about promoting SavingsAngel to make a lot of money, it was about finding a way to work with others to achieve what he wanted to do in his area.

With print publications, Josh knew to ask for remnant space, or the unsold ad space publications typically fill by running ads for themselves. Josh suggested an alternative to 20 media outlets; they could do a revenue share based on a 1/4- or 1/8-page ad. Several of those outlets made suggestions and he quickly learned what was possible.

For radio, Josh developed a segment in which he shares the best 3 to 5 grocery deals in the area (he currently lives in Orlando, Florida). This segment has now become his syndicated newspaper column. He's also been doing a TV segment for the last 5 1/2 years. It's a very popular segment. He gets great feedback on it, and his local FOX affiliate absolutely loves the content he provides each week.

Listen to the show to hear what Josh did after the Navy and before he started SavingsAngel.

What Marketers Need to Understand About Traditional Media

Josh explains that it's very important to understand that you're asking the media to give you publicity and to take a chance on you. You have to pitch them with a great concept for education or entertainment content as part of a segment or in a news story.

PR is all about the long game. It's incredibly important not to use any kind of sales language. This opportunity is not about you selling your thing. Josh says the media will be sensitive to you trying to sell to their audience. If you try, you won't be invited back, or worse yet you could be blacklisted. Trust that the influencer will credit you, and give them the space to do that. It's okay for you to mention your brand in passing, but it's absolutely not okay to give calls to action.

What is the long game with PR? Become the reliable source and subject-matter expert that the media contact can go back to time and again. Josh says he has been quoted in the Chicago Tribune close to a dozen times and has done his TV segment on FOX 35 close to 300 times.