Release Yourself, with Mickie Kennedy

Mickie Kennedy, PR expert and the founder of eReleases, a leading press release distribution service, dives into why press releases aren’t just for the big boys, how to create the best one for maximum attention, and what to do in a damage-control setting, plus shares his “3% rule”, and explains how even local press can net BIG wins for your business.

About Mickie:

Mickie Kennedy is the founder and president of eReleases, a leader in affordable press release writing and distribution services. eReleases launched in 1998 after Mickie realized that small businesses desperately need a press release service they could actually afford. Beforehand, he’d been working at a PR company when a small business owner called, saying to Mickie “We won an award and I want to send out one press release. I’ve called all the PR firms in the yellow pages and they all have a minimum starting price of $20,000! Can you help me?” Mickie had to confess that the big PR company had the same minimum spend, but he saw an opportunity to help — and eReleases was born.

Mickie created eReleases to give small businesses access to the media and to a national newswire – all with a personal touch. eReleases has grown since then and even works with big names now, but the spirit of Mickie’s original intent has not changed. eReleases delivers personal service and exceptional value to every customer, with every press release, at every price point. eReleases has helped more than 10,000 companies over nearly three decades.

Mickie lives in Baltimore County with his family and two feuding cats. He enjoys British science fiction and acknowledges an unhealthy addiction to diet soda. Mickie holds an MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry from George Mason University. He still writes poetry most Monday nights (virtually) with a group of fellow misfits in Brunswick, Maryland. Mickie loves podcast interviews, having appeared as a podcast guest on several shows.

Mickie is also an accomplished poet, and the winner of the 2024 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest.

Learn more at eReleases.com and MickieKennedy.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
Do you ever wonder why some businesses get featured in the media and others get ignored? Maybe yours gets ignored. Today’s guest Mickie Kennedy has spent over 25 years addressing that question exactly as a PR expert and the founder of E releases, a leading press release distribution service, Mickie has helped 1000s of businesses stand out, establish credibility and grow so Mickie, thank you for joining us today.

Mickie Kennedy
Well, thanks for having me.

Host
A lot of our listeners are solopreneurs, small business owners, that kind of thing. First of all, let’s just start by maybe dispelling a myth that PR press releases, things like this aren’t just for the big boys.

Mickie Kennedy
Yeah. So I think a lot of people feel that PR and press releases is something that is only for people you know, large companies well funded, you have to be established. And the fact of it is, is that journalists get the most shares and engagement on articles they write about when the audience doesn’t know about it. Covering a well known company in your industry, most people know about it, but if you have a new discovery, new tool, new service, journalists get the you know, they see the most engagement, the most shares, the most people looking at the article. And for that reason, you know, being unknown, being new, being a, really, you know, just a startup or a solo business is not an obstacle to getting PR. It’s actually easier for people who are in that stage of their business. So don’t discount the fact that you’re, you know, you feel like it’s a little premature to get started with PR and press releases.

Host
What is the difference between PR and advertising?

Mickie Kennedy
Right? So PR is sending out press releases to the media for PR firms that might also include pitches over the phone as well as email pitches. Advertising is, you know, taking, you know, an ad and putting it in front of people. You know, a lot of people are familiar with, you know, ads that they see on blogs and certain websites, but there’s also ads on social media. There’s ads on YouTube, but a lot of our blinders come up when it comes to advertising. You know, content, when someone chooses to write about you, like a journalist that’s seen as a big you know, credibility indicator. You know there’s social proof this. You know you’ve been chosen to be written about, and it creates the signal of trust. And for that reason, they know the language isn’t your language, it’s the journalist writing about it. So if they’re excited and talking about how great you are, they trust that where they wouldn’t trust it if you were saying it an ad. And when people are in that mode, they are behind you. They’re not looking to now see if they can find a cheaper option on Amazon, or is there something that could work maybe just as much price shopping doesn’t really participate in that sort of conversion, where, with advertising, it does.

Host
What is a press release really, because it used to be pretty cut and dry, but now, in the digital age, what parts of it are essential at its core, what must it be?

Mickie Kennedy
So generally, it’s an announcement to the media. The rule of thumb, going back to journalism, is that it answers the who, what, when, where, how and why of what you’re announcing. And you know, if you’re announcing that you’re going to be speaking at an event, you want to make sure you know that people know where it is and when it is, and you know all of those things. And so, you know, take that into account. It doesn’t have to be very long. It does have to have a headline, and, you know, that’s an area for you to position yourself appropriately. But the big mistake I see a lot of end users make with headlines is they write it for the consumer, and they’ll, you know, use some New York Post puns and stuff like that. But you know, this is not the headline that is going to be in an article written about you. Journalists write that or their bosses, you know, managing editors and people like that, write the headlines. And so you’re writing a headline to get the attention of the journalists. But more specifically, you want to communicate that this is appropriate to them, to their beat, their industry, who they cover. Um. So rather than be clever, boring, detail oriented, headlines work the best, and so you want to communicate your most important aspect right there in the headline. It’s often a good idea to mention your company name. Most journalists, their biggest complaint is their inbox is just filled with spam. I think that’s why, even when PR firms pitch via email, they often have to call and walk the journalist through how they can do a search to pull it up in their inbox, because it’s really difficult. The biggest mistake people make is they write their press releases from their perspective of this is important to us, and what you have to do is make it important to the journalist. The journalist is a gatekeeper. Their biggest asset is their audience, and they have to decide, is this content that’s going to educate or entertain my client, my audience, or ideally both. And so you have to sometimes reverse engineer your announcement to make sure you’re incorporating material that’s going to excite and really educate the audience. You know, I think the most popular press release I get is a product launch press release, and it’s usually, here’s the product, here’s a list of features. Sometimes it’s just bullets, and then here’s a page to learn more and buy now a journalist. You know, all journalists like to follow a story arc, and even if you read small articles, you’ll notice they generally follow the story arc. It’s near impossible to turn that type of product launch into a story arc, but what you could do is incorporate a use case study. Here was someone who beta tested it. This was their success, ideally, if you have some numbers around it, that looks really good, and then get a quote by them, and all of a sudden, that’s a little story that they can put and better position your product launch. And that makes a journalist probably 10 times more likely to cover your product launch. You know, the one press release that I’ve never had fail by anybody I’ve ever coached, is to do an industry survey. And so whatever industry you’re in, you know, survey other people out there and, you know, get their perspective on things that are trending. What are things that people would want to know from other people in your industry? Are there things that are influencing it so you can ask questions around that? I always tell people, what are the type of questions that you could not wait to ask other people in your industry at a trade show or conference? Often, those could be the type of questions you should consider asking in such a survey. And I like to do 12 to 16 questions, four questions per page, and then you take that link, and we don’t expect you to have a Rolodex of people in your industry, but there’s lots of small and independent trade associations in every industry. Avoid the big one, you know, the big one. Everyone knows, but do a little Google searches and look around, approach that association and say, Hey, I’m doing this survey, I would love for you to send it out to your members. I’m looking for at least 100 responses for it to be statistically relevant. And in exchange for doing this, I will mention you in a press release. I’ll be issuing you look at the results of the survey and pick one at most two of the responses that you feel are going to be the biggest surprise for your industry, and then focus and make that the press release, and you’re going to provide a little bit of analysis because you’re the author of the survey, you know, quote by you as to why the numbers skewed that way. Everybody I’ve ever coached doing this has received at the very least six articles of, you know, six earned media articles appropriate to their industry. Sometimes, you know, 14 or more articles result from this. Build a resource page on your website where you put all the questions and answers, because a journalist might say, hey, this was interesting. But you know what other questions were asked? And maybe they find one question that is intriguing to them, that might be a good second press release. It works. It’s a little bit of time involved, but it doesn’t have to be very difficult. I have a client who did this for seven years. They built that resource page for each of the surveys and most of the trade publications and people that covered it online linked to that survey, and their SEO has been amazing because they were getting so many requests from journalists. They realize we are seen in this industry now as thought leaders. We get requested. There’s a new merger in this one little vertical. They want to know what their perspective of that is, and get a quote by them, and so they’re getting media attention all the time. And how did they become thought leaders? They just claimed it by doing this survey annually, and they’re still always in the media and always getting media attention.

Host
So we know how to not be ignored and how to craft a winning press release. Is there an upper limit to how often we should be doing this?

Mickie Kennedy
I wouldn’t do it for the sake of doing it. I feel like I tell small businesses, try to come up with a newsworthy idea at least quarterly. If you have natural milestones coming up, incorporate that into your timeline, like you have a new rollout, or you’re celebrating something that’s important to the business, or you have a strategic hire, like an executive or an industry veteran who’s coming in as a salesperson. Personnel changes outside of that, don’t bother to announce you have a new associate of HR. Now I think that you have to find what works for you. I think for most people, new to PR, I think trying to do something every other month or at a minimum quarterly, is something that people should try to strive for. You know, the most important thing is that you know, you’ve picked something strategic and newsworthy to talk about. Another one is being a contrarian. If everybody in your industry is talking one way, so many people think that they should do a press release, joining the conversation, saying the same thing as everybody else. It used to be called news jacking to try to get in there early, but it really rarely works now, because so many people are trying it. But if you’re the one person that says something that’s different than everybody else in the industry, that’s a time when you could really succeed and do well. Many times journalists go to print with everything being one sided, and they rarely have anything negative about it, because very few people have raised their hand and said, Hey, here’s the contrarian viewpoint. But you know, you’ve raised your hand and said, Here’s the con side of things. So every time a journalist writes about the subject, they you stand the likelihood they’ll plug you in, you know, if you can take a contrarian viewpoint that doesn’t alienate you with your customer base, or, you know, create any stigma. That’s a thing that works really well.

Host
What is the 3% rule?

Mickie Kennedy
97% of press releases that get issued over the wire. They do not result in earned media. You know, I scratch my head every time I see a product launch release, which is, here’s the product, here’s a list of features, and here’s a link for more. I would say almost all of them are like that, and it really does even satisfy what a journalist needs to write an article for. So now you’ve given them the job of, how do how do I find something interesting that I can incorporate with this product launch that would make it entertaining or interesting for my audience? You do the work. Give them that use case study, give them quotes by someone who used it, you know, put publicly available data points like you have a logistics software solution. Talk about the fact that 63% of new transportation companies fell in the first five year. That’s probably a data point that exists in every industry. So get that. Cite it. It shows the stakes of, why is this important? You know, take that model and just sort of just try to be instructive. You know. Think about the story arc. Think about what are the industry blind spots? What is it that your industry and trade publications aren’t really reporting on and should? That’s how you stand out, and that’s how you, you know, you take the 3% rule and you you write releases that are only within that 3% and all of a sudden your success rate is going to be, you know, maybe a third of the press releases that you do, maybe two thirds of the press releases that you do will get pickup.

Host
You know, we had mentioned earlier that we have a lot of small business owners in the audience. Small often means local. And you had mentioned even local media, local publications that make a big impact. How can small businesses turn local press into big media wins?

Mickie Kennedy
Sure, so local media, I tell people, you don’t have to write a press release. Local media is just introducing yourself to the journalists here. Email usually works. The exception is if you’re in a huge city like New York or Chicago. The problem is, in a lot of the bigger markets, they’re dealing with that email spam from the databases. But fortunately, it’s minimal the amount of spam that local is getting. And so what you’re going to do with them is do a pitch. It’s going to be like, Hey, I’ve seen a lot of people talking about recently businesses going green. And as a local dry cleaner, I’d love to talk to you about our investments and what we’re doing. We’re not using any of these, whatever chemicals. And here’s some photos, you know, here, here’s an amazing quote. And the reason I like to include a quote is because if a journalist is considering an idea and you have a really great quote, they can envision that that’s like a right hook that’s going to make that article stand out. And what do I mean by a great quote is you said something very succinctly, active verbs, very condensed, very powerful. Know that if they were to paraphrase, that it would be a loss. You’d be like, Oh, you said it so much better perfectly. You know, sometimes it could be, you know, creative or snappy, but it doesn’t have to be. You don’t have to be a wordsmith or or something like that. But just really make sure it’s active verbs as condensed as possible. It’s the one area where if you lean on AI, you may not get the best results. You know, if your writing is not great, it’s appropriate to lean on AI. But what you do is you go to it and say, Hey, I’d like to do this press release on the contrarian viewpoint on this issue, which is really trending and hot in my industry. This is my position, maybe bullets of what I’m comfortable doing. I want to be rational and not seen as a crazy uncle, you know, or someone who’s just being a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian. And I want to have an amazing quote, you know, how would you structure this press release? And then AI will give you the structure and then say, Okay, let’s take it. Hop down. Give me 10 headline options for this press release. Okay, if you’re happy with one pick that, if not, say, I like this one, but give me three variations of it and then say, okay. Now give me three opening paragraphs of this press release. Pay attention. Is all the who, what, when, where, how and why, sort of answered in that paragraph, or does it need to be? And then go, Okay, now give me the second paragraph and just go like that. You know, generally the second third paragraph. Wanna make sure there’s a quote there. And that may be the area where you go back later and say, okay, that quote that you have here. Give me 10 versions of it. I want it as strong as condense, make it sing and give me 10 versions of but you might have to go in there and you massage it a little. One sentence is best. Two sentences are okay. Beyond that, you’re talking too much. But when you’re pitching these local journalists, you know, include that amazing quote, because even if they feel like this is soft news, that quote is going to make them say, Wow, I could really write an article there. And that quote is going to make it be like a smack on the page or online. And the reason I like including a couple of photos is a lot of people have gone online. And even your local papers, even if they’re print only, generally, have online as well, and they know that engagement is higher when there’s a photo. And the great thing that’s happened in the last 20 years of PR is the photos people engage with best are candids. Make sure you include a couple images, because that gives you a little bit of an edge as well. And you’re, you know, just introduce yourself. Say your local business, put your little pitch there, invite them to ask if they have any questions or anything like that. I like to do this at least quarterly, and if you look at it in your local market, it’s probably less than 10 people who would ever write about you. So target your local paper, find out who covers your industry. Call or look online, see if you get their email address other places in your community, business magazine or business newspaper, if you’re lucky enough to have one community papers, smaller little papers, sometimes these are free papers. But also, don’t discount the possibility of TV or radio. Is there something you could do that would be engaging on TV? Is there something about your business or something that people would either want to come in and take a little video of you, or you go to the studio. So if you have a pitch around that that could work well, radio, are there local segments that sometimes spotlight businesses? You know, you know it may be am FM, but pay attention and keep in mind describing how it’s going to look for someone who’s on TV describe how it’s going to sound, or what you’re going to discuss that’s going to be captivating over the radio. And going back to those weekly papers and little neighborhood papers and stuff like that, this is a place where people have done really well in certain segments that might be applicable to a column. The thing about these weekly neighborhood papers is they are focused 98% of their energy on selling ads. And then they go, Oh, no, we now have to put content in here. And so if you go to them and say, Hey, I would like to do a monthly column, they’re going to push back and say, We’d like you to do a weekly Yeah, I think all of these things work really well. It’s so doable. What I do find is people who are really good about pitching the local stuff get really good at then pitching nationally.

Host
Little different type of question. Usually we think of a press release as a good thing. It’s getting the word out about something that we’re offering, something we did, something that’s happened. It’s a bit of a brag, almost. But sometimes we have to put out a press release for a reason we might not want to. How can we be smart about crafting a press release in a damage control sort of setting?

Mickie Kennedy
I think the biggest thing is to get out there quick. You know, if a mistake is made, own it. There are a lot of people that don’t want to say. Okay, we really screwed up here. They feel like, oh, you know, attorneys cringe at that and say, You’re just submitting liability. Now, if it’s a product and, you know, involves a recall, you’re going to have parameters that you have to what you can and can’t say. But the thing is, get out there. Communicate quickly. When it comes to a recall that you’ve owned it, you provided all the information very quickly. You’ve put a resource page where people can find out more easily, find out if their product is affected. If you know someone at the company has said something stupid, or you know, they’ve said something I found a lot of people doing this on social media, they’d said something pro one political party, and now there’s a backlash, because their customer base, turns out, was two thirds the other side of the party. And so, you know, get out there, own it quickly. And you know, you know, if you’ve offended a core part of your audience, apologize and say, I’m sorry that I, you know, I’ve hurt your trust and understand that. You know, these, these are the things that we do for anybody in our community. And you know, I think that backpedaling and saying that’s not really how I feel. No, you have to own what you said and just say, even though our political allegiance may not be aligned. I love my community. I love my customer base. I don’t agree with everything on my party, and I feel that if we were to sit down and talk, there’s a lot more that we agree on than we disagree on. And is there something that you could do that’s measurable, like you know, for the for the rest of this year, 5% of all profits are going to go to something that is not the other side, but is something that’s positive. You know that something that would help your your community, something that your audience would recognize, this is a good in our community, and so, you know something like that, but you know you’re not you don’t want to pander to the other side. You don’t want to say, Oh, I was lying, you know, because then you’re disingenuous. But you want to own it quickly. You want to acknowledge that you failed them. Because my grandmother’s advice is, there’s no place for politics and business and, you know, in social engagements and things like that. And I should have minded her business bring grandma into it. I was like, Oh, he loves his grandmother. You know, I soften a little bit towards him and things like that. So, you know, try to put some perspective in it. You know, be honest. Own it quickly. If you’re able to legally apologize, I think, apologize, fall on the sword. You know, don’t, don’t backtrack. But because backtracking, people go, the only reason they, they, he’s, he’s, he’s backtracking now, is because he’s losing his customers. You’re like, this is my this is how I felt, I feel make a donation or something like that. And that’s a good way to sort of just like, Okay, it’s raw what you did, but you’ve, you’ve immediately owned it, you’ve immediately apologized, and you’re, you’re trying to be positive, and you have focused on several things that you know, we we recognize differences, we come to agreements, and maybe inject a little bit of humor in there as well, if it’s appropriate.

Host
Mickie, time is short, but I don’t want to let you go without mentioning that you’re also a highly accomplished poet with a new book out. Tell us, if you will, just briefly about your foray into poetry. Perhaps it’s a long standing one. Do you know how that developed? And maybe about the new book and where people can get it?

Mickie Kennedy
Sure. So I actually graduated with an MFA in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry, I think around 30 years ago, over 30 years ago, actually, and then I transitioned into business because I I was tired of waiting tables. And my first job was a startup where I learned how to write press releases, and that’s where PR grew from that. But I took 20 some years off of poetry to focus on growing my business. And then I guess, around seven years ago, maybe eight years ago, I started reading more and starting to write, and I had prostate cancer, and so I agonized over a lot, and I turned to poetry and wrote about it. So my first book is glandscapes, like a play on glands and landscapes. And if you’re interested in learning more. My poetry website is Mickiekennedy.com or glandscapes.com will take you directly to order the book online. And it’s just about my journey, what it means to go through that I found that there’s a lot of people that don’t talk about cancer, and specifically prostate cancer, and also, you know, a lot of doctors don’t communicate fully about what’s going on and what to expect, so it was just sharing that, and it’s done really well with having individual poems published in journals, and then that manuscript got picked up and won an award and is being published through button poetry.

Host
That’s fabulous. Well, Mickie, we wish you all the best. Thank you so much for the generosity of your time today and all the information you’ve given us. And we really appreciate you joining us.

Mickie Kennedy
Thank you for having me.