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Media coverage doesn’t happen by luck – it’s earned through trust, relationships, and a thoughtful strategy. PR veteran Nancy Marshall shares her timeless principles behind generating earned media that actually moves the needle, builds real connections, and helps businesses stay visible.
Why Most Small Businesses Are Doing PR All Wrong (And How to Fix It)
Maybe you think PR is about sending out press releases and hoping something sticks. Or maybe you’ve tried reaching out to journalists only to get crickets in response. Here’s the thing most business owners don’t understand: successful media relations isn’t about perfect pitches or having insider connections; it’s about treating journalists like humans.
Revolutionary, I know.
I recently sat down with Nancy Marshall, who’s been running her PR agency for nearly 35 years (which makes even my 28-year-old company look young). What she shared completely flips the script on how you think about earning media coverage.
The Database That Started It All
Back in the 1980s, when Nancy was building her career at Sugarloaf, her boss told her something that changed everything: “You’ve got to stay on top of this technology stuff because it’s really going to change public relations.”
So Nancy built a database in dBASE III Plus (if you remember that, we’re definitely showing our age) with 1,500 media contacts. But here’s the genius part—she didn’t just collect email addresses. She tracked who wrote about alpine skiing versus cross-country skiing, who covered golf, and where they were located.
“I could call up all the media people that wrote about golf and Nordic skiing who lived in New Jersey,” Nancy explained. “I didn’t just send the same press release to a thousand people. I would try to niche down.”
We talk constantly about targeting audiences in digital marketing, but Nancy was doing this with PR in the eighties. The lesson here isn’t about the technology—it’s about understanding that journalists have specific beats, interests, and audiences, just like your customers have specific needs and pain points.
The Three Types of Media (And Why One Matters Most)
Before we dive deeper, let’s clear up something that confuses a lot of business owners and even many marketers. There are three types of media, and understanding the difference is crucial:
Paid media is advertising—you pay for it, you control the message, and if they get it wrong, you can demand they fix it.
Owned media includes things like your email newsletter, blog, and social media accounts. You own these platforms (well, except for social media, which is why Nancy correctly points out that your email list might be your most valuable marketing asset).
Earned media is what happens when a journalist decides your story is worth covering. You can’t control the message, you can’t pay for guaranteed coverage, and you definitely can’t tell them what to write.
But that’s what makes earned media is so powerful: it’s third-party validation. When a journalist says you’re innovative or when a TV host features your business, that carries weight that your own marketing claims simply can’t match.
The Relationship Revolution
Here’s where most people get PR wrong—they think it’s about the perfect pitch or the killer press release. Nancy’s secret weapon isn’t her writing skills (though they’re excellent). It’s her ability to build and maintain relationships.
“I think of myself as being a servant to the media,” Nancy told me. “A lot of people don’t like to think of themselves like that, but I have learned that by coming across as being of service, journalists are more likely to trust you.”
This isn’t about being subservient—it’s about being genuinely helpful. When Al Roker came to Maine for a Today Show segment, Nancy and her team didn’t just send him a press kit. They organized his entire itinerary, figured out the best coastal location for his broadcast, and were basically at his service while he was in town.
The result? Great coverage for Maine tourism and a relationship that could lead to future opportunities.
The Art of the Follow-Up (Without Being That Guy)
Following up with journalists isn’t something that most business owners or marketers look forward to. However, Nancy has a system that’s incredibly simple.
First, she sends targeted pitches to journalists who cover relevant, related topics. Then she follows up once—just once—with the people she really wants to reach. “You can’t be obnoxious and call a reporter and say, ‘Did you get my release?'” she explained. “But sometimes if you do that follow up they will say, ‘Oh, could you resend that to me?'”
The key is knowing when to take no for an answer. Journalists receive hundreds or thousands of press releases daily. Respecting their time and decisions is crucial for maintaining any hope of future coverage.
Press Releases: Dead or Alive?
Everyone keeps saying press releases are dead, but Nancy’s clients still use them regularly. Why? Because they serve as reference documents that help journalists get the facts right.
“Press releases basically have the who, what, where, why, and how of a story,” Nancy explained. “A lot of times journalists will pitch them a story idea either verbally or by email, but they’ll be like, ‘send me the release.'”
Think of a press release as a fact sheet. It includes contact information, proper spelling of names, relevant quotes, and background information—all the details that help a journalist write an accurate story quickly.
The Social Media Strategy You’re Not Using
Here’s something most business owners miss: the real power of social media for PR isn’t about going viral. It’s about amplifying your earned media coverage.
When Nancy gets a client featured on TV or in a newspaper, she doesn’t just celebrate and move on. She shares that coverage across social media platforms because “when you have something you’ve earned and then you share it with your audiences on social, it has a lot more legitimacy than you just making a post and talking about yourself.”
This is where the three types of media work together beautifully. You earn the coverage, then you own the platforms where you amplify it.
The LinkedIn Factor
Nancy uses LinkedIn primarily for thought leadership, posting several times a week with articles from her Forbes column and original content. But here’s the part most people overlook: journalists check out her LinkedIn profile while they’re talking to her on the phone.
“Sometimes even while I’m speaking to them on the phone, they’re looking up my LinkedIn to check me out and find out if I’m legitimate or not,” she noted.
Your LinkedIn “About” section is highly searchable content. Google often points to it when people search for information about you. If you haven’t updated yours lately, add it to your to-do list.
The AI Question Everyone’s Asking
With AI tools everywhere, I had to ask Nancy how it’s changing PR. Her answer was refreshingly practical: she uses ChatGPT to help write press releases and polish emails, but she’s not worried about being replaced.
“If you’re a vanilla, very boring person, maybe you can be replaced by bots,” she said. “But I feel like all of us should be really developing our personal brand and what makes us unique.”
This ties back to relationships. AI can help you write better pitches, but it can’t build trust with a journalist over coffee or remember that a reporter’s favorite story angle involves underdog businesses.
Your Next Steps
If you’re ready to start building media relationships (and you should be), here’s where to begin:
Identify your goals first. Who needs to know about your business? It might not be thousands of people—sometimes a handful of the right people is enough.
Start with coffee dates. Ask people in your network who you should be talking to. Word-of-mouth referrals work for finding journalists just like they work for finding customers.
Show up in person. Don’t just sit at your desk writing emails all day. Attend industry events, chamber meetings, and networking functions where journalists might be present.
Be genuinely curious about people. Nancy’s superpower isn’t just being extroverted—it’s remembering details about people and following up on them. When you see someone again, ask about their dog, their fishing trip, or whatever they mentioned last time.
Follow through on commitments. If you say you’ll call back by a certain time, do it. If you promise to send additional information, send it. Your word is your brand.
The truth is, most businesses never try to build media relationships because they think it’s too complicated or requires special connections. But as Nancy proves, it’s really about being consistently helpful, genuinely interested in people, and professional in your follow-through.
Start small, be patient, and remember that every journalist you meet is a human being with their own preferences, deadlines, and pet peeves. Treat them accordingly, and you might be surprised by the coverage you can earn.
Insider PR Strategies for Small Businesses Episode Transcript
Rich: My next guest is known as the PR Maven. She’s owned her own PR agency, Marshall Communications, for nearly 35 years. Her agency’s areas of expertise are tourism, outdoor recreation, and economic development. Personal branding is one of her offerings.
When it comes to media relations, she and her team know what it takes to generate publicity coverage in the media. Today we’re going to be discussing how your business can earn media through insider PR strategies with Nancy Marshall. Nancy, welcome to the podcast.
Nancy: Rich, I am so happy to be here, and I just think you’re awesome. And every time I see you, you bring a smile to my face. So thank you for having me.
Rich: This is how I want every guest to introduce themselves on the show going forward. I’m just putting that out there in the universe.
You and I have been friends for years, and you even spoke at the most recent Agents of Change Conference here in Portland, Maine. Somehow I never got you on the show, and that was obviously a terrible oversight from for me. But for listeners who may not be as familiar with your work, can you just share a bit on how you got started in PR and media relations?
Nancy: I’m grateful to my father, who has been gone from this earth since 2006. But he was an electrical engineer with Westinghouse, and he knew the PR people in the headquarters down in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and he knew that I had the same personality type and skillset as those people. So when I was 19 years old and still in college, he flew me down to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
I was at Colby at the time, and I was doing liberal arts at Colby, but I didn’t really have a career path mapped out. So I spent about three days job shadowing the PR staff at Westinghouse. And after that, I came home and I’m like, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to do PR.
So from the time I got out of college, I worked for Maine Public Broadcasting, then I worked for Sugarloaf basically for a long time. And I started my agency when I was 31 years old. And here I am.
And you know what, Rich? I possibly could retire. I have no plans or desire to retire. I am having so much fun. It’s like I don’t see any need to retire.
Rich: I think you and I are cut from the same cloth when it comes to that. I don’t see any finish line. It’s just I’m really enjoying what I’m doing.
In the bio, I mentioned that you’ve been running Marshall Communications for nearly 35 years, which tops even flyte new media at 28. Which means that when you got started, digital probably really wasn’t a big part of public relations. What do you feel has changed in your industry over the years, especially in regards to digital?
Nancy: I’m grateful to Chip Carey, who was my boss at Sugarloaf. He was vice president of marketing, and I reported to him for many years early on in my career. And you know when the internet became a thing and technology started taking over from old fashioned typewriters and the postal mail, which is what we used to use. He called me “Briggs”. Briggs is my maiden name.
He was like, “Briggs, you got to stay on top of this technology stuff, because it’s really going to change public relations.” And I’m like, okay, Chip!” I didn’t really know what he meant by that, but okay, I’ll do whatever you say.
And back then I built a database in dBASE III Plus. Which was like coding. I had about 1,500 media contacts and I had all this information in the database about my contacts, so I knew who wrote about alpine skiing or cross-country skiing or freestyle skiing or even golfing. And I had them all broken down by their mailing addresses, because that’s how we used to send out press releases.
But I learned that’s how you could really target your media contacts. So I could call up all the media people that wrote about golf and Nordic skiing who lived in New Jersey, for example. So the press releases I was sending out, I didn’t just send the same press release to a thousand people or 1500 people. I would try to niche down.
And it’s really interesting how now we talk so much about targeting your audience, but I was doing that in the eighties. I’m not bragging or anything, but I have understood, with media people, that somebody who’s at a business newspaper like Maine Biz, for example, they don’t want to get a press release about cooking or anything that doesn’t have anything to do with business, they want to know that you’re targeting them.
So that’s true with all marketing, obviously. We really want to be targeting and we want to understand the personas who we’re going after. And I’ve been doing that since the eighties.
Rich: Nice. Nice. In dBASE, it reminds me of going to high school and practicing COBOL with the punch cards that we used to have.
So I mentioned earned media earlier. Can you just break down for us the differences between earned media, paid media, and owned media, so we better understand the landscape here?
Nancy: Sure. Earned media is what you get as a result of either a press release or a pitch, or a journalist covering an event or a story. With earned media, you can’t really tell a journalist how you want the story to come out. They are journalists, which means they’re reporting on something, and they want you to give them information and perhaps some quotes, but journalists do not want you to tell them what to write, and they’re actually offended if you do.
Paid media is advertising, which could take the form of online advertising. We do a lot of digital paid digital, or we do print advertising, or there’s advertising on television, advertising on streaming services. But that’s something you pay for, and you can control the message. So for example, if they get it wrong, you can call and say, “I’m paying for this. Straighten it out, change it.”
And then owned media is the things you own. And email newsletters are owned media, and email newsletters are really valuable. Email lists are like you own that list, and that could be almost the most valuable asset that a marketing department or a company has is that email list.
So I think some people think that it’s more important to have a kind of count on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or whatever. But Meta or all those companies own that. They can take it away from you at any time. Whereas your email list is, you own it. They can’t take it away from you.
Rich: So Nancy, when you’re working with your clients, how do you balance those three, the earned, the paid, and the owned media? Do they work together? Are they separate in their own silos?
Nancy: First of all, you have to start with your targeted audience or audiences. So you should understand who you’re going after, whether it’s a customer or a client or even an influencer might be your target audience. But you need to understand who you’re trying to get at, and then you can understand better what methods to use.
But I always feel like getting earned media is really valuable because it’s third party. Testimonial or third, you’re not saying, “we are the best”. It’s a journalist saying they are the best. Or journalists saying something good about you.
And I love to generate earned media like an article in a newspaper – people still do read newspapers – or a story on the TV news. You’re on 207 on News Center Maine. So getting something on there and then sharing it on social. Because when you have something you’ve earned and then you share it with your audiences on social, it has a lot more legitimacy than you just making a post and talking about yourself. So that’s why I feel that earned media is still important.
And I feel, unfortunately, public relations or media relations gets dissed by a lot of people. I heard Andrew Davis, who’s quite a thought leader in our field, he said public relations doesn’t exist anymore. And I got so mad, and I haven’t really had a chance to tell him yet how mad that made me. But there still is a great demand and it’s all part of a marketing strategy. But it’s ultimately intended to communicate with your targeted audiences and targeted publics. And the media are part of your publics.
Then there’s also thought leaders, and there’s civic leaders, there’s elected officials. So when we do our Marshall Plan, which I have a banner behind me about the Marshall Plan, we make a list of all of those targeted audiences and the best way to connect our messages and stories with those people.
Rich: So some of the things about earned media that make it more difficult, and thus more interesting, is that there does seem to be the gatekeepers out there and there is this idea of journalistic integrity. So it’s like they’re not taking bribes to put your stories in there. They’re not taking money to put your stories out there. So there is that gatekeeper influence. There’s a halo effect, if you will, when it does come to that earned media, would you say?
Nancy: Yes. And you just mentioned the term “influencer”. Influencers are people that you can pay, you can give them your product for free, or sometimes they charge thousands and thousands of dollars for one or two posts.
But no, you can’t tell a journalist that they have to. You can’t just send them an email or call them up and say, we are the best. They’re going to be like, why? And that’s going to be an instant turnoff if you expect them to write about you or report on you that way.
And I do worry about young people coming into our profession who really don’t understand that you don’t just tell a journalist what to say. That’s not a good way to start a relationship with a journalist. I think of Rob Caldwell. Again, he’s the host on 207 and I’ve known him for a long time. And I still, if I present him with a story, I know that probably half the time he is going to say no, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to go back another time.
Rich: Absolutely.
Nancy: I just keep coming back and back again and again. I’m like a vacuum cleaner salesman, I just keep knocking on the door.
Rich: It’s so funny. So you and I are of a certain age where it used to be journalism was untouchable. These days, there’s definitely some people who question the credibility of quote unquote “mainstream media”.
Has that impacted the approach to PR at all, or do you just still consider them to be like the gatekeepers, the people that you need to get in front of to be able to get that earned media?
Nancy: Certainly if I don’t know a journalist and I’m approaching them either by email or phone or asking for a coffee date, I’m going to approach them in a very respectful manner and treat them like a journalist where it’s their choice whether or not they find my story newsworthy.
Over the years I’ve developed relationships with these journalists, and I have hundreds if not thousands of relationships. And I think that’s actually, as you might know, one of the keys to my success is I really am pretty good at connecting with people. And I have this mental Rolodex where I keep track of who’s who and what they’re interested in. And sometimes you do have lunch with somebody or maybe have a drink or a cup of coffee and you’re like, “Okay, here’s three stories that I think are really great”, and you just watch how they react and respond. And over time, you get to know who’s interested in what types of stories.
And then David Sharp is somebody who was with the Associated Press here in Maine for many years. And he was following a story that I was pitching from Sugarloaf of this Paul Shipper, who’s a guy who skied like every day. Sugarloaf was open for 24 years, he skied 3,903 days consecutively, except for in the summer. And I knew that over the years, David Sharp from the AP was really intrigued with this guy, Paul Shipper. He wasn’t even a very good skier. He was a pretty intermediate skier.
Rich: You would think after nearly 4,000 days he would’ve gotten a little better!
Nancy: He might’ve got a little better, but I mean, he got pretty old, too. He was in his eighties, and he kept going out there. He had a cancer diagnosis towards the end, and his surgeon wanted him to go in and have something removed. I’m not sure what it was, something in his internal organs. But he said, “No, I got to finish the ski season before you take that thing out with cancer”.
Rich: That’s so funny.
Nancy: Anyway, I knew that David Sharp was kind of interested in updates, so I would pick up the phone and call David Sharp, or if I ran into him somewhere, I’d be like, oh yeah, Paul’s still at it.
So that’s another thing that, again, if you pay attention to who’s reporting on what, you get to know not only what stories they’re interested in, but how they want you to communicate with them if they want. If they want to wait till you’re face to face and you’re having a drink or a coffee and you just update them. Or some want an email. I text with some of my journalist friends.
And so I think it’s really important for anybody who’s trying to get into this to understand that not all journalists are alike. They’re all humans with different ways of operating, and you’re going to be successful as a PR person if you can target the way you communicate with these journalists.
Rich: One of the things that seems to be a theme in this conversation is relationships. And I can vouch for you because you and I went out for lunch maybe a month or so ago to talk about something, and everybody seemed to know you, and everybody seemed to want to talk to you while we were out to lunch. We kept on running into people we knew, especially people who knew you.
And this is obviously, you’re leveraging both personal relationships, you’ve also always been connected with technology to make the most of these relationships. Is this something that somebody can do internally, or is this really only something that a dedicated PR professional, whether internal or external, is able to do?
And maybe another way of asking it is like, can a business owner or marketer as part of all the things they need to do, be able to do what you’re talking about?
Nancy: Yeah, I think they can. And part of it is being curious about all people. I’m curious about journalists, but I’m pretty much curious about everyone. As a matter of fact, it’s almost a problem. I almost have this compulsion. Because when I walk down the street or when I’m in a restaurant, if I don’t know somebody, I want to know them. And I’m just really curious about people. And when I meet a person, I really do try to listen and learn.
Some people might think I’m so extroverted, I’m just always talking. But I do actually stop and listen and try to remember something so the next time I see them, I can remember that they’re really into dogs or fishing or whatever and then ask about that. And I think that’s been part of my success.
I also, it’s as basic as I smile a lot, Rich. And people like a person who smiles. People are attracted to a smile. And I kind of figured that out as I went along. And now, I smile and it’s like…
Rich: You smile all the time. You laugh all the time.
Nancy: And people like that. Yeah, I do have a distinctive laugh, I will say. And if I’m in a room and people hear me, they’re like, oh yeah, Nancy Marshall’s here.
Rich: Nancy’s here.
Nancy: And that’s part of my personal brand. And people will talk about it to other people, so it generates word of mouth marketing, which is really the most valuable kind of marketing.
Rich: So earlier you talked about influencers in passing. So I’m wondering, as you started with this list in dBASE of 1,500 or so journalists. As time has evolved since you got started, what are some of the different categories of people that you do this kind of outreach for as the landscape has shifted over all these years? Or is it still just traditionally journalists that you’re pitching for new stories?
Nancy: My agency has been handling the State of Maine Office of Tourism public relations since 1993. So in that role, we work with travel writers or travel journalists. So that could be anything from somebody who writes for The Boston Herald about travel. There’s a woman named Maura McCarthy, who I’ve known for years, and she writes about ski and golf travel for The Boston Herald.
But we also worked with Al Roker from the Today Show a few years ago when he came to Maine and we worked on his itinerary. He wanted to do a broadcast from the rocky coast of Maine, so we organized exactly where he would go, where he’d do a story. And pretty much we were at his service while he was here, like whatever he wanted.
And I’ll say that one thing I think of myself as being a servant to the media. And a lot of people don’t like to think of themselves like that. Like some people are like, oh, I don’t want to be anybody’s servant. But I have learned that by coming across as being of service, journalists are more likely to trust you.
And of course, I talk a lot about know and trust. You want to know somebody, like them, ideally, and then trust that they’re going to do what they say they’re going to do. That’s been our mantra, I guess. At my age, I have six employees and basically all of them know that we need to be trustworthy. If we say we’re going to call you back by a certain time, we’re going to call you back. And if we say we’re going to meet you or we’re going to send somebody to meet you, we do it because our word is sacred.
Rich: All right. Now let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about press releases. Many people say they’re dead and they’ve been dead for years, yet people are still using them. What role do press releases play in today’s digital marketing world?
Nancy: Press releases basically have the who, what, where, why, and how of a story. And a lot of times journalists will, you might pitch them a story idea either verbally or by email, but they’ll be like, “send me the release”. Because there’s just a certain format that a release has that has all the facts in one place.
It might have a quote, it’ll have contact information for the person who can do an interview. So it’s one page with all the boilerplate that you need about a story. So I believe that press releases are still valuable. It helps a journalist, or even an influencer, tell your story better. It has all the information right there.
And whether you’re producing a TV show or somebody like Erin Ovalle, who we know has the show, Maine Life here in Maine. She likes to have a press release too, if she’s going to do a story about a farm or a cheese shop or a lighthouse. It just tells the facts that she needs to relay to her audience, and it helps get things right. If you post something on Instagram, you might put a funny video, or you might put a little blurb on Instagram, but it’s not going to say who’s the contact person and have a quote. It doesn’t have all the things that a press release has in it.
Rich: Alright, so it doesn’t sound like you’re immediately just sending out press releases to every journalist or even to the journalist you’ve hand-picked. How do you start, how do you tease up the press release or to vet if there’s some interest there?
Nancy: We actually do once a month on behalf of the Office of Tourism, we send out a press release with upcoming events to a few thousand people. Or if I’m working with a client and they have a new product or a new service, we might send a press release to a huge list, but then we make a list of the people we really want to know or we want them to report on it.
For example, I work with VIP Tires and Service, which is a franchise that has 75 stores throughout New England. And if they have a new store, we’re going to send a press release about it to everybody in the whole state. So that might be one of the New England states, but then we make a shorter list of who we want to be sure has that release. And we follow up individually one by one with the people we really want to report on it.
And you can’t be obnoxious and call a reporter on the phone and say, “Did you get my release?” Because journalists are receiving sometimes hundreds or even thousands of press releases every day, and sometimes if you do that follow up they will say, “Oh, could you resend that to me?” And so again, having that contact and doing the follow up is really important.
But you also know when to take ‘no’ as an answer. And you don’t want to be a pain in the you know what, by continuing to follow up, because then they’re just not going to take your calls. And you don’t want them to block you completely, right?
Rich: No means no.
Nancy: Yeah.
Rich: So how are you using platforms like LinkedIn and X to either connect with journalists or to keep building relationships with journalists?
Nancy: I use LinkedIn for thought leadership. If you have looked at my LinkedIn, you can see that I post regularly, several times a week. And I post articles that I write for forbes.com. I publish a column in forbes.com about public relations and marketing. I also write “How to” columns for MaineBiz, and I also produce content that’s specifically for LinkedIn, so I use that for thought leadership.
But you know the “about” section where you have about yourself on LinkedIn, that’s highly searchable content. Like Google, if they’re looking for something about you, Google is very likely to go to that “about” section. So everybody who’s listening to this should take a new look at their “about” section on their LinkedIn and make sure it has all of your keywords or that it’s really accurate. It tells us about your background and who you are. So yeah, I do find that a lot of journalists will, if I’m going to speak to them on the phone, sometimes even while I’m speaking to them on the phone, they’re looking up my LinkedIn to check me out and find out if I’m legitimate or not.
And then you mentioned X, of course. X, sometimes I’m like, who’s looking at this? But journalists have had a longstanding relationship with Twitter. Many of them have defected to other places like BlueSky. There was a movement at one point where a lot of journalists were going over to BlueSky, and I have to confess, I don’t look at BlueSky a lot. I do periodic visits to BlueSky, X, and Threads, for example. But I’m pretty consistent with LinkedIn, and for my personal stuff I do look at Facebook and Instagram. Because that’s how I stay on top of what my friends and family are doing.
Rich: How has AI changed your job?
Nancy: AI basically is whoever those bots are. I’m still not sure exactly who they are or where they are, but they’re going out and they’re scraping, they’re looking all over the worldwide web to find whatever information they can and then bringing it back. So the more information you put out, the more content, the more those bots are going to be able to find out about you.
And interestingly enough Rich, a few months ago I was experimenting, and I asked ChatGPT to write an obituary for Nancy Marshall. Because I was interested to see what it would show up. And they found a different Nancy Marshall, because they wrote all about how I was a dog lover, and I gave to charities supporting abandoned dogs, and went on and on about dogs. And I do like dogs, but I’m not known as a dog lover. So they must have found a different Nancy Marshall.
And that actually was a reminder to me. If somebody’s looking for Nancy Marshall, I want them to find this version of Nancy Marshall. So that was a reminder to me to keep putting content out there so those bots can find me, and they know which one.
Rich: Absolutely. But has it changed the way that you are doing any outreach to the media or helped you write press releases? Or is that just not an area you’re touching?
Nancy: No, it has helped us with a variety of things. Writing press releases, sometimes taking a look at an email and seeing if it could be reworded. And I’m experimenting with ChatGPT every day to see how it can make my job easier.
But I will also say, Rich, that I still believe humans are really important and branding is personal, which means that is the word person in it. So I don’t think that ChatGPT or any of the AI things are going to replace, they’re never going to replace me.
And if you’re a vanilla, very boring person, maybe you can be replaced by bots. But I feel like all of us should be really developing our personal brand and what makes us unique. And again, putting that content out there in a variety of places so that AI is going to be sure to find you when people are looking for you.
Rich: What’s one unconventional tip for media relationships that most people don’t know that’s been very effective for you?
Nancy: Well, I try to show up as much as possible so that again, when people see me, it leads them more to see that I’m active, I’m engaged. I went to a Chamber of Commerce meeting this morning and there was several reporters there, and I was sure to shake their hand.
There was another, I have a polka dot dress on today, there was another reporter from MaineBiz, and she had a polka dot dress. So it’s like, whoa, let’s take our picture together. And then I put that on Instagram. And again, that just sends a message not only to all journalists, but everybody, here’s Nancy schmoozing at a chamber meeting.
So I guess that the advice would be, Rich, don’t just sit at your desk writing press releases or emails all day. Show up in person because then people see you as being accessible, engaged, involved, and friendly again. Yeah, a smile on your face.
Rich: And I think it comes back to your superpower of actually just building and maintaining relationships coming from a very sincere place but making those real-world connections and those human connections.
Nancy: Yeah. My mom, who’s passed now, but she used to describe somebody she called a “Good Time Charlie”. And a “Good Time Charlie” is somebody who shows up at a party in a big way and they work the room. They’re going around, they’re slapping people on the back, but that “Good Time Charlie” couldn’t care less about anybody else except themselves.
I never want to be that person. I might come in to a party and people will know I’m there, but I really want to know who else is there, and I want to make connections. And I also really put a premium on connecting both in person and online. So if I meet a new person at an event or at a party or at a restaurant, I try to connect with them on whatever social platform they’re on.
Hopefully it’s going to be LinkedIn because I’m really active there. But if they’re primarily on Threads or whatever, I try to connect with them there. Because have you ever met somebody, then a few weeks later it’s like oh yeah, I talked to that person, and they clean out gutters and I need a gutter cleaner. But you can’t remember who, but you can remember that you connected with them and then you can find them. So you always want people to find you when they need what you have to offer.
Rich: Alright. If a listener wanted to implement a media relations strategy tomorrow, what actions would you recommend they take first?
Nancy: Again, I think they should identify their goals. Who do they want? Who is going to be the buyer of their services, and then who else is going to be able to influence their buyers? And who should know about it? And sometimes you don’t need thousands and thousands of people to know about whatever you’re doing. You might only need a handful of people.
So if I was starting a new business or service, I would probably start with a lot of coffee dates and asking others to recommend who you should talk to. So again, that good old-fashioned word of mouth marketing is still really important.
And I do have a sheet I put together for your listeners with 10 tips on generating earned media coverage. It’s at marshallpr.com/tentips, and 10 is spelled out. So that would be a checklist that you could follow if you’re just getting started.
Rich: Awesome. And we’ll have links to that in the show notes beyond the top 10 PR tips. If people want to learn more about you and more about Marshall Communications, how can they reach you online?
Nancy: If they do download that 10 tips sheet, they will be subscribing also, or they can subscribe to The Marshall Report, which is my monthly e-newsletter all about media relations and public relations.
But also at prmaven.com they can sign up for my monthly newsletter on personal branding. And if you’re more interested in positioning yourself either as a thought leader or as a consultant or a go-to person as opposed to a company or organization, they should go to prmaven.com.
And I did do a podcast on PR for five years and I did 300 episodes. So those are all available, too, through my website.
Rich: Awesome, and we’ll have links to those as well in the show notes. Nancy, it was awesome seeing you. Always great seeing you in town, and I’m sure we’ll grab a coffee, or a lunch, or a drink sometime soon.
Nancy: I hope so, Rich. I always enjoy talking to you and always learn something from you also.
Show Notes:
Nancy Marshall has over 30 years of experience helping clients build powerful brands through earned media and strong relationships. She’s passionate about personal branding, media strategy, and building lasting relationships, and shares that through her writing, speaking, and PR Maven series.
Rich Brooks is the President of flyte new media, a web design & digital marketing agency in Portland, Maine, and founder of the Agents of Change. He’s passionate about helping small businesses grow online and has put his 25+ years of experience into the book, The Lead Machine: The Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing.