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PR Strategies - PR Leads Review

Guest post by: Evan Carmichael

Article Overview: My Entrepreneur Tool of the Week this week is PR Leads. PR Leads is one of my favorite tools and I use it everyday because it got me an interview in the New York Times. PR Leads is a service to help put you in touch with reporters who are looking for experts to comment on the stories they are writing. As entrepreneurs we’re all experts in our industry (if you’re not then you should move to a different industry!) and the media is always looking for experts to quote for their stories so why can’t you be that expert? Why let it go to your competitor? PR Leads can help you: Build your business, Sell more books, Get more speaking engagements, and Make more money.

PR Strategies - PR Leads Review

My Entrepreneur Tool of the Week this week is PR Leads. PR Leads is one of my favorite tools and I use it everyday because it got me an interview in the New York Times. PR Leads is a service to help put you in touch with reporters who are looking for experts to comment on the stories they are writing. As entrepreneurs we're all experts in our industry (if you're not then you should move to a different industry!) and the media is always looking for experts to quote for their stories so why can't you be that expert? Why let it go to your competitor? PR Leads can help you: Build your business, Sell more books, Get more speaking engagements, and Make more money. Some of the benefits I'll touch on in this article include: Finding reporters from top publications, Getting matched up with specific stories, Getting free media training, Being published immediately, and Building ongoing relationships with reporters.

Find Reporters Who Need Your Input

PR Leads gets approximately 100 requests per day from reporters who are writing stories for major publications and desperately need to find experts to quote in their stories. PR Leads will give you their names and email addresses and their story angles so you can contact them directly! If you have the information they need, they'll feature you and your books / website in their publications. They deal with some of the largest publications and media outlets in the world including The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and Newsweek. I signed up to try the service and was sold when I was interviewed and featured in the New York Times. It was a goal of mine to get written up in the New York Times and PR Leads made that happen! It ended up being much easier than I thought!

Get Matched Up With Specific Stories

With so many media requests coming in every day to PR Leads, it would be easy to get overwhelmed with unrelated stories. After all, as a small business expert I would never be featured in Glamour so I don't want to see those stories.

When you sign up for the service, PR Leads will personally interview you to find out your area of expertise and passion. They have over 200 topics to choose from and they will only send you leads that are related to your expertise. For example you could position yourself as an expert in Marketing, Branding, Advertising, and Sales. Whenever a new media lead comes in that matches your criteria you will be given the story and reporter contact information to follow up and introduce yourself. There is no limit on how many stories you'll get and you can choose which ones you want to reply to.

I check my email every day and am excited to see the new media opportunities flow in. If it's a busy week then I may not always have time to reply and if it's a slower week I hit the PR trail! There will always be new opportunities to become an expert so you can use the service to fit your schedule.

Receive Free Media Training To Properly Sell Yourself

If you're worried about not knowing what to say when you talk to the reporter, PR Leads also throws in free 30 days of email coaching. You'll also be able to attend their Master Classes by telephone where you'll learn valuable PR secrets from their clients. Finally, you can also get advice and feedback on your sample responses to reporters to maximize the chances of you getting featured. When I first got started I emailed the reply I wanted to send to the reporter to Dan Janal, the President of PR Leads and he gave me useful tips that helped me land the story. PR Leads want to see you succeed because if they don't offer up quality experts to their media contacts they won't get many more leads from them!

Don't Wait Months to Get Into the Media

Hiring a PR agency can be very expensive and can take months before it delivers any results if you can wait it out and haven't drained your bank account. One of my favorite aspects of PR Leads is that the reporters who are submitting their stories are not only from major media outlets, they need experts right away. They often have tight deadlines to get their articles out and are forced to find subject matter experts for their comments. This means that the stories will be published relatively quickly and you can get a rapid turnaround time from when you are interviewed to when you appear as the expert in the publication.

With PR Leads the tables are turned where suddenly the reporters need you much more than you need them! After all, you can choose to reply or delete but the reporters need to have an expert to complete their article!

Quickly Build Relationships with Reporters

By providing expert commentary for the reporters you are often doing them a huge favor. The next time they are doing a story on a topic they know you can help with who are they going to call for an interview? PR Leads has not only helped me land stories with reporters who I was introduced to for the first time, the service has helped me build ongoing relationships with the reporters which has led to multiple stories being published with my name on them.

Many of the reporters are also freelancers who cover their favorite topics for various publications. For example, a reporter might write on management issues and you could get in touch with him for a story for The Wall Street Journal. Chances are that same reporter will also have other stories lined up for other publications like The New York Times and Business Week. Once you get into his roster of experts he will call on you for other stories that might be a fit for you.

Being featured as an expert in the media will drive more business for you than buying advertising and it's a whole lot cheaper! PR Leads now makes it easy to connect with reporters from major media outlets who are looking for experts to comment on their stories. It got me into The New York Times, among other publications, and I recommend it to everyone who is trying to expose themselves as experts and get media publicity. You can learn more and sign up for PR Leads at their website.

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Article Tags: competitor, entrepreneur, favorite tools, money, new york times, pr strategies, speaking engagements



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