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Verbatim text
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Welcome to episode number 135 of the Agency Trailblazer podcast. This is your host Lee. And on today’s show, we’re gonna be talking with Janet Murray, PR genius, all about creating content that gets you noticed and also unpacking what on earth PR actually is and what PR looks like in this modern day and age. I literally just aged myself by saying that. So sit back, relax, grab a notepad and pen unless you use computers because you’re young and technological and that’s also fine, and enjoy the show. This podcast is brought to you by the Agency Trailblazer community. Is agency life stressing you out? Then it is our mission to help you build an agency that you love. We’ve created a community which includes the agency reset roadmap that will allow you to get your agency back on the right track.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
We also have lots of noble straight to the point, easy to consume workshops. We have a thriving community of other agency owners. And we all wrap up every month with a mastermind call with myself and sometimes a special guest where we unpack your questions. For more details, check out agency trailblazer.com. Welcome to a conversation with me, mister Lee Jackson. And today, we have none other than Janet Murray. Janet, how are you doing today?
Janet Murray:
I’m good. Thank you. How are you?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m alright. Look at us rocking the 7 AM shift. Yeah. Well, we’re both early, but rocking the 7 AM shift.
Janet Murray:
Yeah. Well, we’re both early birds, aren’t we? We both, like, getting up
Lee Matthew Jackson:
early. Absolutely. Yeah. I replied to one of your tweets 2 hours ago. That’s how early a bird I was
Janet Murray:
this morning. That’s how I knew that you were up. Well, I know that you were an early riser anyway, but but, yeah, I thought it’s good to message him early on.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, I always thought it was just old people that got up really early, or I’ve just become old. I’m not actually a 100% sure what’s happened.
Janet Murray:
Well, I had to lie in today till 6 AM. Oh, yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Still young. Folks, if you don’t know who Janet Murray is, she’s a friend of mine. She is a PR and marketing expert with 18 years in national journalism under her belt and more. But instead of me trying to tell everybody what you do because I’m sure I’ll butcher it, I would just love for you to just give, as an introduction into the world of Janet Murray.
Janet Murray:
Okay. So where do I start? Well, nowadays, I’ll I’ll start now. So so I help, business owners mainly to promote themselves more effectively in the media. I do it through a variety of ways, so I help people through my membership community. So it’s just recently rebranded and it’s called Love Marketing, Make Money. I’ve also got masterminds, so I work with business owners who want to work with me more closely or I also work with business owners 1 to 1 as well. I also run live events. I’ve got a book called your press release is breaking my heart.
Janet Murray:
It’s all about how to get traditional press. I’ve got a podcast, which is, just a Janet Murray show, and basically, I spend my time if people ask me how I what I do, I often say, well, I help people to get better at marketing so they can make more money. So that’s kind of like my little my little, sort of elevator pitch. But in terms of my my background, so I I actually started out you might not even know this, Lee, but I started out as a school teacher, so that was my my very first job, and I taught English in secondary schools when I first left university. I think
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I would have actually have guessed that. If I had had to have looked at you, I I would have actually have guessed that. That slight, yeah. Yeah. The authoritiveness you have.
Janet Murray:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I started off as a as a as a gen a teacher, I should say. And I was when I was growing up, actually, I was sort of tossed up between teaching and journalism. I was actually gonna be a musician, but that’s a whole other story for another podcast. But, so I went off to train to be a teacher after somebody told me that it was too hard to get into national journalism and you had to have been to Oxford and Cambridge and know all the right people. So I went off and trained to be a teacher, and I didn’t hate it very well. Lots of things I I really liked about it, but I was about, like, 25, 26, and I sat up till the late hours marking books and planning lessons.
Janet Murray:
I just kinda thought, oh, there’s got to be more to life than this. So I went over to the London College of Printing, I quit my job, and went off there to do a diploma in journalism. And back then, I kind of had this entrepreneurial street street clearly because I went to get a job after doing this journalism course and I worked out that I could earn more money by being freelance and I was being offered, like, junior journalism jobs and they were less than as I was earning as a teacher. And I thought, right, I think that I I could make more money by selling my own articles to magazines and newspapers, so that’s exactly what I did. Yeah. And early on into my career as a a freelance journalist and actually, by the way, I got published in the Nationals within about 6 months, so people were telling me that people were telling me that I I couldn’t do it. Actually, I think it was less than that. It was actually while I was still on my calls, in fact.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Big middle finger to the naysayers.
Janet Murray:
Yeah. So so, yeah, I I kinda proved that it was possible to do all of that. Yeah. And I noticed something early on in my journalism career. And I pretty much always been freelance, but I have worked kind of in house, but was on a freelance basis and mainly at the Guardian actually. But I noticed something really early on in my career, and what I noticed was that people were dreadful at pitching into the medium. So I would get these awful press releases, these awful pictures in my inbox from people, and I I would just look at them and think, why would anyone think that anybody would be interested in covering that? And I I just remember thinking, what an awful waste of time and money. And what really annoyed me is when these press releases used to come in from small business owners, so it could actually be, you know, an a small agency that have paid a PR agency to write these press releases for them, and they were just so off, or I get these, like, PR people bringing me up and pitching me over the phone, and they just really hadn’t done their research.
Janet Murray:
And I kind of thought to myself, well, if these people don’t know how to do this effectively and they’re not getting results, why don’t I teach them how to do it? So I got together with another friend, the journalist friend, and we started doing these pitching workshops in London, and it was just really to supplement our income as freelance journalists because it’s not really particularly well paid. And we worked with the likes of John Lewis and Santander and big brands like that, and we’d get them in a room for a day and we’d teach them how to pitch better. And we actually did, this is probably my teaching background coming in, but we did, like, practical role play with them and things like that. But we we got them to kind of understand it from our point of view, and that’s what we were really trying to do. We were like, look, you know, you can go and do a 3 year PR degree, or you can do some kind of, like, you know, professional course on this, but actually, this is about what journalists want and what they’re looking for. And Yeah. Of that doesn’t mean anything. We’re the people who are getting your pictures and press releases, so we know what works.
Janet Murray:
So then we we kind of thought, you know, we were always kind of thinking, well, how can we help people with this more? And we thought, what do these people really, really want? Well, what they want is they wanna get in a room with with journalists because what they really struggled with was, you know, years ago, you know, journalists used to spend, you know, lots of time having long lunches with people, long booty lunches, But like most of us, people are expected to do more in in less time. And most journalists, they don’t even get out the office, you know, and they’re maybe having to do 3 people’s jobs now, that in the past would have been 1. So these people were really frustrated because they wanted to actually build up that personal relationship and they wanted to meet a journalist in person because as we all know, if you’re sat across the table from somebody and you can look them in the eye and you can build a relationship, it’s much easier than to to kinda suggest an idea or or to pitch over email. So we thought, how could we broker this for them? Well, what have we got? We’ve got these great connections, and we started putting on these big live events in London. We called them what journalists want. That’s what we started off with. And we basically would book, like, 8, 10 The posters on the table. Yeah.
Janet Murray:
8, 10 national journalists. We would charge people. We we basically just, like, put tickets on sale and just charge people to come. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing. Like, this was in the days pre GDPR. Yeah. And we literally, we worked mainly with universities, colleges, and charities. And we would literally just kind of go, right, we wanna contact all the university press offices, so we’re just gonna go on their website and we’re basically gonna scrape all their email addresses.
Janet Murray:
And so, you know, suffice to say, we don’t have all of those emails now.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
But Good.
Janet Murray:
That’s what we basically just kinda thought. How do we get in front of these people? How do we sell the tickets to this event? So we just did what we we needed to do, we sold the tickets. So at the time that I was working with another friend, and what I noticed from doing that is I started to get approach to do consultancy work. So people would say, can you come and deliver your pitching workshop in house for us? Or can you work with us as a on a consultancy basis? Or could you do some copywriting training? Or could you do some pitch writing training or press release writing training? And actually, that was much better paid than my journalism work. And it became to the point where actually that my journalism almost became like baked beans, really. So that was like my loss leader. And so I was getting all this nice consultancy work. And I thought, how can I get more of this? Because this is much more profitable than than doing the the journalism.
Janet Murray:
So I thought, tell you what, I’ll start a blog and I thought, what I’ll do is I’ll just start a blog like answering people’s questions. So people ask me all the time, what’s the best way to write a press release? How how’s the best way to to get a press opened? How do you pitch your journalist? How do you find journalist contact details? So I just started this blog and then, of course, I didn’t realize what I was doing at the time, but I was I was doing content marketing, didn’t didn’t know that’s what it was, but then, I realized that nobody was reading my blog. So how do I get people to read my blog? So I started to research on how to attract traffic to your website. I started to learn about email list building and how to build up my list, so more people would read this blog, and then I would get more inbound leads for my consultancy work. And I just started to really enjoy it. Like I just kind of loved the challenge of building up my audience, building up my community, and and bringing in those inbound leads. And at the same time, I was getting a bit kind of fed up with journalism because, you know, when I first started out, you know, if somebody had said to me, you’d be writing for the Guardian, like, all the time, you’ll be one of their regular writers in your specialist, and I would have kind of like, wow, you know, I’ve really arrived. But like anything, it gets boring and and I just got I felt like I was working in a factory, so I just kinda get you know, commissioned to write an article, and I’d go and work out who I needed to interview, what research I needed to do.
Janet Murray:
And then I’d write that article, and I’d do another one, another one. And I got to the point where I just thought, oh, I just I just need a new challenge. So I was really enjoying all of this stuff that I was doing with my consultancy side of my business. And I thought, you know what? I’d really love to help people who run their own businesses. I’d really love to help them. They may not have, the same kind of budget or the same time. I’d love to to kind of really work with those. So I started to pivot my business, because I was, you know, at the time, I was doing a lot of this consultancy and training work with education organizations, so universities, colleges, charities, that kind of thing.
Janet Murray:
And I gradually started to just pivot so that I was working mainly with with small business owners. So it’s quite interesting, and we can talk more about this as we as we go on. But, what I initially started with, of course, I had this great niche. So I was able to offer press and PR training and consultancy and education from this really unique position of being a journalist. So, you know, what journalists want, I was able to give the inside track, so this is what journalists are looking for. You know, don’t don’t read the textbooks, don’t worry about what you learn on your course. This is actually how you get in front of a journalist and how you get your stuff published in newspapers, magazines and how you get on radio and TV. So I kind of had this really unique niche.
Janet Murray:
I really went for it and thought, you know, I can also help people who run their own businesses and their own agencies. And, to gradually kind of move my whole brand along. Yeah. But then and, stop me if I’m
Lee Matthew Jackson:
No. I’m I’m enjoying the journey.
Janet Murray:
Stop it. Stop me if I’m going into, too much detail. But, so I wrote a book. So, your press release is breaking my heart. So I give you a clue about, the book is basically kind of a step by step guide to to getting press coverage.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I actually hope that one of my press releases is attempts isn’t in there because I sent some abysmal. I wish I’d saved them. They were awful. Never got printed.
Janet Murray:
Well, the thing is, you know, we could talk more about this later, but, you know, a simple email is often much better than wasting your time writing a press release and, you know, or or a personal meeting, can be much more more effective. So I wrote a book, I started this podcast, the the Soulful PR podcast, which is, it’s I’ve just changed it. It’s now the Janet Murray Show, but it’s been about 2 and a half years, but quite a following, really, of people who are interested in learning about press and PR. And I’ve spoken at quite a lot of big conferences, and we we first met at the Eupreneur conference last year, Christopher Eupreneur conference. I’m due to be speaking at inbound in Boston in in the autumn. I’m speaking at, a big conference in Nashville, later on in the year. I got another one in Milan, a big marketing conference. So started to get really known for this kind of niche press press and PR thing.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
What do you do in the other eight hours a day?
Janet Murray:
Yeah. I seem to manage to get, quite a quite a lot done. Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s amazing.
Janet Murray:
Yeah. I’ve got quite, I’m quite productive. So, but, yeah, something sort of I started to feel a little bit wrong about it all because I think, you know, the media has really, really changed. And I would get clients coming to me and they’d say, could you help me get in the Guardian? Could you help me get in the New York Times? Could you help me get an article placed in whatever industry magazine it was? And I could help with that, like, totally. But what I’d often find is that people, they were hanging everything on getting this like one article in an industry publication or getting in the Guardian or the Times, whatever. And they were sort of imagining that if they got this one big break, then their their whole business would explode. And you know, like anything in your business, press or PR, it’s just one of the, you know, we’ve all heard the the stats about most people need 7 or 8 touch points before they buy. For me, press and PR is just one of those, you know, one of the ways that people might see you or hear about you before they become a customer.
Janet Murray:
But people kind of had these really massive expectations of press and PR, like everything, you know, you need to do a lot and and you need to keep doing it. And so people were kind of just wanting to do press and PR and they weren’t actually looking at the other ways that they could be promoting their business. So they weren’t blogging, so they weren’t attracting traffic to their website and getting inbound leads. They weren’t building their email list and keeping in touch with them regularly. They weren’t using social media marketing. So it meant that any press coverage that they did get, the impact of it would be minimized because Mhmm. They were only doing press. And, you know, it also meant that they were kind of missing out on other opportunities to promote themselves and weren’t really kinda getting the impact of it.
Janet Murray:
So I’ve often found myself people would come to me and say, can you help me with this? They were like, I can help you with that, but actually, you do need to be thinking about these other things as well. So my membership and the whole way that I work with my clients really changed and I I ended up kind of re rejigging my membership, so we had kind of 4 key areas. So content, so blogging, attracting traffic to your website, email marketing, social media marketing, and press, and press became one of these kind of 4 key areas that I, would encourage people to focus on. And so that’s kind of really where I am at the moment. I’ve literally just kind of relaunched my membership again because, you know, I’m constantly, evolving, constantly changing and trying to get better. But I feel I feel that kind of marketing in PR that people often see it as an activity that you just kind of do when you’ve got a bit of time, and I’ll get clients who come to me and say, oh, I really wanna do press. I really wanna do marketing. But, you know, I’ll do that when I’ve got a little bit more time.
Janet Murray:
And I’m just like, well, hang on a minute. That’s how you make money. That’s how you get clients. So are you telling me that you you don’t have time to attract new clients and customers? Like, you you don’t have time to keep your funnel filled up. You know, it is like the lifeblood of of your business. So what I wanted to do is kind of tie marketing and PR activities much more closely with income. So the way I’ve set my membership up now is that we have specific these are the activities that you need to do to get to a certain stage in a certain income goal in your business. And I’ve got kind of, checklist, basically, that people can look at.
Janet Murray:
The missing piece is usually email marketing if people are not making enough money, by the way. So so I’ve now tried to kind of tie what I’m teaching, what I’m sharing with people, what I’m helping people with with specific income goals. Because for me, marketing, it’s it’s it’s basically how you make money, and it’s not just some kind of activity that you you do. It’s a tick box or a checklist. It’s absolutely integral to everything you do. And if you’re not working on it every single day, if you’re not working on promoting your business every single day, then sooner or later, you’re gonna arrive at a point where you don’t have any clients, you know, or
Lee Matthew Jackson:
or I heard a phrase years ago, sell every day. And, so it’s just doing one piece of even if it’s just one piece of marketing activity per day just to keep those things rolling. Because back in agency life, for us, it was very often feast and famine. We would make some sales and we would work on the projects and do absolutely no nothing to look after the pipeline. And, and then we’d be freaking out trying to find really ridiculous ways of filling in that massive gap and saying yes to some awful projects. I do have one question because, I I don’t know what people’s perception of press and PR is around the world. And I get a feeling that a lot of people like me may just remember PR as just simply being announcing I’m a start up, and I’ve just launched and popping that. And, and maybe trying to tell some not really very relevant story about my business just to get it into the local rag, which I attempted so many times, and and always had to know.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So do you mind just describing to us what, what the standard perception of PR is? And I’d love to unpack that some more because you mentioned earlier as well about blogging and everything. So I’ve got a whole ton of questions for you.
Janet Murray:
Yeah. So, I mean, one of the challenges that I had actually, which has also prompted me to change what I do, is that people have different hugely different definitions of what PR is. So for me, PR is is how you promote your business. It’s how you show up in the world. So it is everything from getting coverage in newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV, traditional PR to how how you answer emails, like, how you answer the phone, like, what what kind of content you’re putting out there. So it’s everything about how you show up in the world to your prospective clients or customers. So I think a lot of people see press, and PR in the kind of traditional sense, and and they think about, like, you know, getting coverage, newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV. And I think it’s hugely, hugely changing.
Janet Murray:
And the thing that’s changed a lot for me, and I think this is relevant for for everybody who is in business, is that we don’t have to wait to be picked anymore. So I I think the kind of way that the traditional media works is almost like you’re you’re clamoring for attention and you’re you’re trying to kind of, you know, get in front of that editor at The Guardian. You’re trying to get in front of that BBC producer or whatever it might be. But actually, we are all you know, I think as Gary v says, we we are all our own publishing houses now, and we have the capacity to be out there creating really high quality content that attracts the kind of people that we want to work with through podcasts, through blogs, through YouTube, through our social media content. So, yes, it’s brilliant to get press and PR. I mean, the one thing that’s really good for it gives you credibility. So, you know, if you can put, I’ve got it on my website as featured in BBC, Huffington Post, Guardian, whatever, I call it the bling. So having that bling means that people will kind of like, you know, if Lee is, if what Lee has got to say is important enough for the BBC to put them him on their breakfast sofa, then he must know what he’s talking about.
Janet Murray:
Right? So it’s it’s that that kind of thing.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That was yet to happen, but Yeah.
Janet Murray:
Yeah. But I’m sure it will happen. But, you know, I think that actually, those opportunities are few and, you know, few and far between. You know? I I I said to you before we got on this call, I’m actually filling in for an editor at the Guardian for the next few weeks, and I’m working as a commissioning editor. I only have a very tiny amount of space. I have 2 pages that I look after, and essentially, I’ve got 3 slots, 3 three articles and some of that space is already taken up by regular features, regular columnists. So I will get over the next few weeks, like, 100 and 100 of pictures from people, most of them will not be usable and so so that space is, you know, as a journalist, you’re in a kind of powerful position because you have either space in a newspaper, magazine or online, it might be or on on on a show, you might have airtime and I think that there’s a lot of people out there putting a lot of resources into kind of getting picked for those kind of spots, but actually and that’s great and it can be great for your business, it gives you that kind of credibility, that external validation, but actually, let’s not wait around for that. Let’s get out there and create podcasts.
Janet Murray:
Let’s get out out there and make blogs and to create our own high quality content. And the other thing about it as well is that, I mean, I’m running an event in London next month called Media Influence Live, which we’re gonna talk a little bit about later, but this year, I’ve really changed it radically. What I used to do is that old format that we talked about before, where I used to just book 8 national journalists to come along and talk about what they’re looking for, and they would sell out really quickly because everybody would like, brilliant, I wanna meet journalists from the Guardian, from the BBC, from the Independent, Telegraph, brilliant, and you’ve provided them all in a room, that’s great. But actually, I feel that would be disingenuous of me to to put on that kind of event now because actually, what I feel I should be encouraging people to do is to make their own media because making your own media can be one way to get noticed by the media. So to give you an example, one of my speakers at my event next month is a lady called Emma Gannon, and she’s the host of the Control, Alt, Delete podcast, which is currently, I think, number 2 in the business charts. And how I know about her is because I’m a podcaster. That’s right. Yeah.
Janet Murray:
It’s brilliant, isn’t it? Yeah. That’s right. And how I know about her is that I have a podcast as well, and I generally tended to be in the top 50. But I noticed there was this lady who was always ahead of me who had this podcast. I was like, who is this lady who’s always ahead of me in the charts? I must listen to it. And what she’s done, Emma Gannon, is that she’s created this this podcast, which has almost got, like, a kind of cult like following. And she’s now got a book. She just she just published a book.
Janet Murray:
But she’s attracting high profile media coverage in the likes of, you know, lots of women’s press as well, like, and Guardian, and Cosmopolitan, Red Magazine, a lot of places that a lot of, you know, female business owners that I know would love to be featured in. But she’s attracting that kind of media attention because she’s out there creating her own media. You know, she’s not standing around waiting to be picked and and kind of, like, clamoring and trying to pitch herself for all the magazines, but they’re approaching her. And I think that that’s a really important message. I mean, there’s these guys, that I often refer to on Instagram. They’re called the gay beards or the glitter beards, I think they’re called. And their whole Instagram feed is just about every day they publish a photo of themselves with glitter on their beard, which sounds that sounds absolutely mad.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Sounds pretty cool. I
Janet Murray:
dropped the earpiece. Maybe I
Lee Matthew Jackson:
should join the club.
Janet Murray:
Yeah. I’m gonna have a look. But it sounds mad, but they’re actually really good quality photos. They’re really kind of funny, and it’s the same thing every year and has been every day and has been for ages, for years, in fact. But they’ve attracted loads of media attention because they’re creating their own media and doing it in an interesting way. And I think that’s my point is what I really want to encourage people to think about. I mean, one of the women I’ve got speaking at my event is a lady called Jess Dante, and she’s got a YouTube channel called Love and London. And she sells travel guides for London, obviously.
Janet Murray:
And, again, you know, she’s not waiting around for the BBC to put her on the TV so she can talk about her travel guide business. She’s made her own TV show. You know, we’re making a radio show together now, aren’t we? And and you’ll Yeah. You know, we’re reaching people who who might wanna work with us and might wanna engage with us, by, you know, co creating this this radio show. And so Jess is is You know, she hasn’t waited around to be picked, she’s created her Love in London YouTube channel. It’s bringing her clients and customers all the time. And I really feel that that we need to be out there, you know, as Gary Vee said, I mentioned it earlier. I think it’s Gary Vee that says, isn’t it? We need, you know, we’re all our own publishing media houses now.
Janet Murray:
And I think that’s a really powerful thing. So although I still really believe in the power of traditional press and we believe that, you know, getting coverage in newspapers, magazines, radio and TV, what people, you know, have traditionally thought of as PR, I think that’s all important, but I think we do need to be thinking about it in a much wider sense and seeing PR as as maybe content, really. I don’t know if that’s a better way of of looking at it. I mean, I’m still not sure if I 100% know the answer to this. You know, I’m still feeling yeah. I’m still feeling my way around it, but but I certainly feel it’s it’s, you know, this key thing about get out there and make your own media and and and and get found. Don’t wait around to be picked.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So so let me try and and see if I’ve understood. PR is how you market your business. Essentially, you are making your own media by being creative, creating your own media by being creative, creating your own content, etcetera. PR still also the traditional PR still has some relevance as well today because the BBC, The Guardian, these big brands have massive brand equity, and to be related to those or to be featured on those as well is a massive credibility boost as well. But it sounds to me like PR of maybe 20 years ago is a lot different to PR and marketing today.
Janet Murray:
Yeah. Do you know what? I think I’ve just thought of the definition I could have given you in about 5 seconds.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, let’s go for that one. I always like the tweetables because my brain is rubbish at retaining to your coverage.
Janet Murray:
So I I think and I’ve been trying to get my head around this with so recently. I think it’s it’s about a PR, which is content. So it’s content that helps you get noticed. So if you wanted to summarize it and if you, you know, it’s It’s
Lee Matthew Jackson:
your podcast number.
Janet Murray:
Is about creating content that that gets you gets you noticed and, you know, and and helps you attract leads and sales. So for me, getting featured in The Guardian or the BBC, it’s just content, isn’t it? But it just so happens that it’s somebody else’s, somebody else’s show or somebody else’s newspaper or whatever. It’s the same with but, you know, I really encourage my clients to get a podcast like this because it is a fantastic way to to reach new people. It can only take, as it’s gonna take us this morning, half an hour, 60 minutes of your time, you’re constantly, you know, potentially reaching thousands of people, guest blogging. But, yeah, the PR really is just is just content, and you can approach that content, content that helps you get noticed, and you can approach that in lots of different ways.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Then I feel like there is a natural question coming from this. Do you have maybe a couple of tips to share with our listeners on what sort of content does get you noticed, bearing in mind that obviously I’ve submitted terrible, pieces of content in the past to, organizations telling them about myself. But equally, I’ve also created the most boring blog posts on the planet, and no one’s ever read them. And, you know, I’ve made a lot of mistakes in life, and especially for people who realize I need to create content, I need to be doing content marketing, and I have no freaking clue how to get started, or I’ve created something and no one’s even looking at it or cares. Got any tips for that sort you know, how do you get noticed?
Janet Murray:
Yeah. That’s my favorite favorite question in the world.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh, good.
Janet Murray:
So the first thing to say, and this is true of press, so traditional pure press, if you wanna get in a newspaper or magazine, it’s not about you, basically. It’s about service. So the biggest mistake people make when they’re trying to get content in the traditional media is I’ve got a story. I I sometimes use the metaphor. If you know those children’s toys, the shape sorters, where you have to put the square the square peg into the square hole and the round one in the round hole. Well, what most people are trying to do, which is why they’re not successful at a traditional PR, you know, press is is they’re trying to put a square peg in a round hole. So they’ve got a story. They’re trying to ram that story in, and then they’re like, why is no one interested? A much better approach, and this is true of all content, you know, it’s true if you wanna be on a podcast, whatever it is to go, okay, so I really want to be in The Guardian.
Janet Murray:
I really want to be in The Telegraph. I really wanna be on BBC Radio for today program or whatever. And so, okay, let me actually sit down with a copy or listen to the programs, okay, what kind of content are they covering? So, okay, I can see that they have a regular structure. If you look at any newspaper, the same kind of content will be in the same place pretty much every day. And actually, just spending that time to really understand that publication or that program and its audience, and then offering something that will be a good fit. So really common mistake people make, so this happened to me the other day actually, so I was in my Facebook group, and, I I basically said I’m gonna be at the Guardian doing some shifts shifts for a few weeks. Anybody got any questions about, you know, how you get featured in a in a national newspaper? And people just started pitching me, like, you know, and and so somebody said, oh, I see you’re gonna be working on the education section. So, I’d like to write a piece for you about I’m like, hang on, back up a minute.
Janet Murray:
Have you actually looked at the education section? Section? It comes out in a Tuesday. Have you looked at it? Do you know what they cover? So we actually never do opinion pieces from parents, you know, if you I didn’t I didn’t say a lot of this at all. I was very diplomatic. But actually if you took it and you read it, you would know that that wasn’t a good approach. And because we just don’t do that kind of content, so it’s taking the time to really understand what what that publication does publish or that program does publish, how it’s put together, who the audience is, and then just trying to offer something as a great fit and being completely of service. I think meeting journalists in person really, really helps from that point of view. So if you can get in front of a journalist and you can just ask them, like, what do you need help with at the moment? What stories are you working on the moment? Is there any way that we can fit in? So so that’s a kind of overarching theme. So press, it’s not about you.
Janet Murray:
It’s about understanding the publication and trying to be of service. You might think I’ve got a story I wanna get out there. Journalists don’t care about you. They don’t care about your business. They just care about great content. So, you know, the more that you can just basically think, okay, how can I be of service? How can I help them? Then better? Exactly the same when it comes to your own content creation. So I recently ran a Facebook page engagement challenge for my membership community, and a lot of people were quite skeptical at the start of it because they were saying things like, oh, well, the Facebook algorithm has changed and, you know, I’m posting stuff and nobody’s seeing it. And I just say, look, if you’re posting stuff that nobody’s engaging with, it’s because your content is boring and you’re not you’re not actually trying to engage people.
Janet Murray:
So how I tend to explain it, there’s 3, possibly 4 types of content I think that we should be publishing regularly if we want to get engagement. And the first is is actually I’m actually I’m not gonna start with that one because it’s the hardest one. We’ll work up to that one. So the first one is, what I call I know about this content, and this is the the lowest hanging fruit. So if, for example, you have a Facebook page or social media channel and you’re trying to get engagement on there, instead of just saying we’re doing this, we’re doing that, you know, we’ve got an event coming up, we’ve we’ve got we’re we’re just working with new client. And who cares, really, that you’ve just got a new client? Or who cares that you’ve got an event coming up?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I totally submitted that one. So instead, what you do is you wanna start a con
Janet Murray:
you wanna start a conversation. So Yeah. I
Lee Matthew Jackson:
thought and we have moved.
Janet Murray:
Yeah. We’ve moved. On that one. Yeah. That kind of thing. So you wanna start a conversation. So it’s basically, I say think to myself, how can I get people to talk about the thing that I want to talk about without making it about me? That’s Mhmm. That’s probably a tweetable as well.
Janet Murray:
It’s probably a bit long, but, you know, how can I how can I get how can I get a conversation going about exactly what I want to talk about, but it’s not about Mick? That’s something I think all the time. So for example, I I started running these pop up events, locally recently, and I wanted to be talking about the fact that I was running these pop up events. So instead of posting, oh, I’m running a pop up event today because I might have gone, oh, that sounds nice with a couple of people, I said, I’m running a pop up event today, and I I know that some people find it a little bit scary when they come to a a networking do. What one thing would you want me to do for you to make you feel comfortable? So few things going on there, turning it back on the audience, make it really specific. What one thing, would you want me to do for you to to make you feel comfortable? I know that you’ll know about this one as well, Lisa. When I spoke at the Youpreneur Summit last year, I wanted to tell the world, we’re speaking at this big, you know, this big, like, marketing and business event. But if I just posted on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, I’m speaking at the Youpreneur event. Come and listen to me.
Janet Murray:
I would have got crickets, basically. Yeah. So you know what I did instead. Can you can you remember what I did instead to, get people talking about the fact I talked about it at Youpreneur? I’m totally putting you on the spot now. Can you remember what I did?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You’re you said a lot of stuff and,
Janet Murray:
I’ll give you I’ll give you a clue.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And I I also told you that you were the best at Looker despite the fact that I think Chris Ducker was in earshot as well. So I I I may have made an enemy with Chris Ducker now.
Janet Murray:
Oh, okay.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. Yeah.
Janet Murray:
Then what? Well, I’ll give you a clue. Dress, do you remember?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I remember well, alright. Okay. So I remember I I yes. You basically, took a picture of you, and you were trying to work out what dress to wear for the Uprineer Summit, and you got tons and tons of engagement on that. It was red or blue, wasn’t it? And then Yeah. Even after the show, you chose blue, and after the show, the conversation still carried on because people were saying, oh, I see you chose blue, and it was awesome, and all that sort of stuff.
Janet Murray:
Yeah. Yeah. So in
Lee Matthew Jackson:
the It was a really clever way of saying, hey, I’m going to the entrepreneur. We’ll
Janet Murray:
see you there.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m gonna try it. We’re stressed a lot
Janet Murray:
more folks.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. So
Janet Murray:
I’m sure the innovators
Lee Matthew Jackson:
would love that.
Janet Murray:
I mean, you can do it with anything, but, you know, so so I I basically wanted to tell the world we’re speaking at this event, so I took a picture of myself. It was really it was true. It was genuine. I couldn’t decide whether to wear the blue dress. It was actually the pink dress, but a lot of people thought it was red, which was a conversation point in itself, you know, like that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh, that’s just like that tweet, isn’t it? You know? Was it black oh, sorry, white and gold?
Janet Murray:
Yeah. Yeah. They marked was it Marks and Spencer’s dress?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. That’s right. You created a viral post. Nice.
Janet Murray:
And and basically so so people I mean, I did it on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram are gonna recycled it as well. And people were just like because it’s easy for them, you know, that all they had to do was type red or blue or, pink. I think it should have been, but pink or blue, whatever. And what happened was that then when I got to the event, people were coming up to me saying, what did you decide to wear? Because I spoke on day 2, and I thought, I couldn’t possibly say. And you may remember, I also I showed the picture in my talk, and I I then said, you know, oh, I wore the blue one, by the way, and made it you know, brought it into my talk. People were tweeting about it. People were tweeting things like she wore the blue one. But what’s interesting is when I put when I asked people to put put their hand up and said, have you seen this picture before? Most people had seen my picture Yeah.
Janet Murray:
Which was quite interesting. So I call that, like, I know about this. It’s really easy, you know, it’s so easy to tell, you know, blue dress, pink dress. You can do it with new logos and new artwork that you’ve got. You can ask people to to give you their opinion. I often do things where, I I give people kind of like a, you know, a a a a series of options, so I don’t know, trying to think of an example that I’ve done this work really well. I mean, sometimes I do it on not businessy things as well. So on LinkedIn, I had a really successful post where I said, what’s your do you use a false name in Starbucks? And, because I always make a name up because
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I don’t like them shouting my name across the
Janet Murray:
but I actually I talked about Mine’s
Lee Matthew Jackson:
always Mickey.
Janet Murray:
You use it you you do it as well, don’t you?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. I do as well. I’m Mickey.
Janet Murray:
Yeah. Yeah. So I have a variety of ones, but depending on what mood I’m in. But it got people going because some people hate Starbucks, obviously. That’s that’s one reason. A lot of people like us. They they use a fake name too, and they wanted to talk about what name they use. And you might think, what’s this got to do with your business? But it’s getting people talking and and, you know, people like to do business with people, as Chris Ducker says.
Janet Murray:
So the more that we can just start conversations and, actually, there was a business point in there because I was talking about how, what what was the reason behind it, and I thought the reason I thought it was, like a sort of marketing or PR gimmick, but it turned out a few people who’d worked at Starbucks said, no. Actually, it’s just because a lot of people were taking the wrong drink. It’s like a customer service thing. And, you know, but it got a debate going. So, you know, that’s the first time. So I know about this. The other the one other one that works really well is I know how that feels. So, you may remember that I shared across social media.
Janet Murray:
I I I as I ran the London marathon this year. Unfortunately, I had to pull out of the London marathon this year because I got I I ran into trouble with the heat. It’s the hottest marathon on record. But that post the post that I ran I posted in the run up to that because I had various, various setbacks along the way, like, I had injuries and things like that. I got loads of engagement. But the post that I posted on the day that I had to pull out of the marathon and the support that I got from people, and again, it was about a personal thing, was absolutely phenomenal. And then I later ran the Liverpool marathon later, and then I got, you know, posted about that and got, you know, engagement on that. So I think if people feel they can empathize with you, like, I posted something the other day.
Janet Murray:
I get quite a lot of, because I do a lot of email marketing. I get some kind of quite narky emails from people and I posted, an example every time.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You had a spelling mistake, didn’t you? But it wasn’t a spelling mistake. It was
Janet Murray:
a typo, but somebody emailed me, seriously, a copywriter and emailed me and said, she said, I she said, just to let you know I’m subscribing from your list and, I’m sick of seeing all the the grammatical and type errors and typos in your emails and, by the way, if you’d like to hire a copywriter, you know why I am. She actually said your email marketing person needs a good kick up the ass, which upset my email marketing person. And then she said, why
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Who are you?
Janet Murray:
Yeah. Well, no. It’s actually I I I do have somebody that helps me with it. I I do most of the writing, but I do Okay. I have got a really good person who works with me, and she does write some of it. And it does had actually turned out she had actually written that one, so she felt she got upset. But, you know, mistakes happen. But this lady basically said, you know, PS, if you need a if you need a copywriter, you wanna hire 1, you know where I am.
Janet Murray:
So, you know, that kind of thing, I know how it feels. I got a lot of engagement that because, you know, people everyone’s had a am I allowed to swear? But everyone’s had a unpleasant email from from somebody. It was
Lee Matthew Jackson:
very controlled in practice.
Janet Murray:
Yes. It was very controlled. I just substituted the word at the right time. But, everybody’s had an unpleasant email that’s upset them. A lot of people had an opinion on it, so that’s the second time. I know how it feels, sharing experiences and getting people to talk about you know, people love telling stories, don’t they, about what’s happened to them and, you know, so that’s the second time. The third type is harder, but if you can crack it, this is this is basically, I I I call it, this is what I need right now, content. So this is when the likes of you or I, we have a a great blog post that we want to share or we have a podcast episode that we want to share.
Janet Murray:
Now, you probably have this experience as well, but when I post sort of my new podcast episodes, if I just say I’m gonna do this after this call, hey, my new podcast episode is is out today and it’s about how to how to launch more effectively or something like that or how to write great email marketing copy or something. I will get a couple of weedy likes or comments. Can you can you, relate to that, Lee? Mhmm. So you
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. And and and my entire life kind of hinges around those as well.
Janet Murray:
That’s really tough to do it, isn’t it? Because you’ve worked really hard on this content and you want people to see it. And it is useful and you know it’s useful because people are telling you that their content is your content is useful and it’s changing their lives and whatever. But when you put it out there, it’s embarrassing because, like, you get 2 likes or whatever. So what I do is I I always try to pre qualify people who are gonna consume my content. So instead of just saying listen to my latest podcast episode, I I ask a question that qualifies people. So if my latest podcast episode is about Instagram marketing or something, I will say something like, how are you doing on Instagram? And I’ll give people choices, so I’ll say, a, great engagement. Thank you. B, my Instagram account is like a ghost town help.
Janet Murray:
C, I’m not on Instagram or whatever. And so then people will I do this in my Facebook group, but I also do it on social media as well. So the people who say, oh, my Instagram engagement is great, and not many people do when you do that kind of thing, I I might say, oh, that’s brilliant. Well done. What’s a great tip? What’s working really well for you? And that’s a useful conversation to have. But then those people who say, my Instagram account is not a ghost town, you say, okay. Well, it just so happens I’ve got this great podcast episode for you. And then you actually put you know, so you’re putting your content in the hands of people who actually, you know, want to deal with it.
Janet Murray:
Another technique that I I use is, I might pull out something controversial. So I had a blog post I wanted people to read about how to, how to get high profile speaking gigs. And, you know, it’s just a kind of, you know, really kind of useful tips on on how to do it. Pretty standard blog post, but in it, there’s a line that’s quite controversial. It says, if you can’t afford to buy a ticket to attend an event, then you’re not ready to speak on that stage. And I knew that that would get people’s go a little bit. And so I basically just pulled that quote out, put it on LinkedIn, and said, you know, do you agree or disagree? But, yes, here’s my blog post. That’s what I call a grenade post, so that’s when every
Lee Matthew Jackson:
now and then I post it. Is that almost trolling?
Janet Murray:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s not trolling, but I call it grenade post. It’s when you post something that you know people are gonna have strong opinions about Yeah. And you just kind of leave it there and you let people and then you and then you And
Lee Matthew Jackson:
then you run around and then you go look at the comment damage that you did.
Janet Murray:
And then I I mean, I don’t do it very often, but occasionally, I’ll just think that would be a great grenade pose to get people talking.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Responsible for the odd divorce in the comments.
Janet Murray:
But it kinda leads me into my last point. There’s another type of content that I’ve been doing quite a lot, and I think that is is again and I do this when I’ve got a a blog post or a podcast. It was I did one recently on why you need to sell more than you think. And so instead of just posting the link to the podcast episode, I’ll kind of it’s almost like a polemical or something where I’ll kinda, like, say, look, there’s this subject subject and I really wanna talk about it. I wanna get this out in the open, and I wanna tell you what I think about it. And I think that, you know, if you wanna get noticed online, then vanilla just doesn’t cut it, you know. Yeah. I think there’s people who love me and they love what I do, but there’s people who don’t like my style and they don’t like, you know, the fact that I’m quite opinionated about I’m particularly opinionated about people not investing in in themselves and and people Yeah.
Janet Murray:
Cheapskates and things like that. You know, people who don’t invest in training, don’t invest in development, And I will talk about those kind of things. So in this particular episode, why you need to sell more than you think, I I I talked about an example. It’s a story. I told a story about how, I’m running this event, media influence live, and I feel like I have been talking about it everywhere. Like, it’s been my life. Like, I I worked out, I’ve mentioned it in 25 podcast episodes in the intro. I worked out, I’ve made something like a 100 social media posts about it.
Janet Murray:
It’s even on the banners in my Facebook groups, on Twitter. It’s everywhere. But someone went into my Facebook group where the banner there was a banner above where they posted and said, I can’t find any information about your event, media media live, she called it. It’s called Media Influence Live. And it kinda made me smile because, you know, often I mean, I sent, like, 30 emails or something. Often, you know, when we’re we’re out there marketing, we kind of can feel that we’re making so much noise, but there’s always someone there who doesn’t know about our products or service, doesn’t know about us, and that’s kinda why we need to be selling every day. So so so I write these other posts which were almost, like, you know, they’re quite opinionated and and and people will come on and they’ll agree or disagree or whatever. So that’s 4 different types of content that, they get much much better engagement and I think it’s better to do less content that’s really engaging.
Janet Murray:
And, and also the the other my other little tip is that everything is a content opportunity. Somebody send you a horrible email, you can turn that into content. You don’t know what address to wear for an event, you can turn that into content. You know, that’s the thing.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
My most engaging post, on YouTube was when I when I had a hater send me a horrible, horrible message, and it got very sinister and creepy. So I did a thing about it on YouTube just saying, you know, he was basically saying, who the hell are you to be offering advice? Here’s my opinion about you. And and then I just did a a whole thing about, well, how do you measure success? Mhmm. You know, and and and did it off the back of that hater. And that got tons of that was one of the most engaging posts I think I had on on YouTube, which I have neglected for the last 2 months, and many people have reminded me. So I I I feel bad about that.
Janet Murray:
That’s a classic I know how it feels post that is. Yes. Yes.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
See? So without not realizing it, I was doing one thing I love about you, Janet, is, every question I’ve asked you, you’ve given me literally an ebook response. So I feel like I should just get this whole thing transcribed. It would be absolutely you’ve even structured every answer as if you’d prepared. That’s amazing. Folks, if you wanna find out more about Media Influence Live, I believe there’s not much time to get in, is there? Your that’s janetmurray.co.uk/mediainfluence live because the show is not long off, and I believe you’ve nearly sold out.
Janet Murray:
Yes. So this is my annual event where I can get you in a room for a day with high profile journalists and influencers. So this time around, we’ve got journalists from the likes of The Guardian, from Grazia Magazine, from The Sun’s Fabulous Magazine, from BBC Radio 5 Live. We’ve got, ITV’s Good Morning Britain, but we’ve also got Emma Gannon, the podcaster I mentioned. YouTubers, vloggers, so it’s a really great opportunity to kind of, you know one thing about my events is I hate those events where you go to an event, speakers get up on stage, and then they go, or they just sit there on their phones. I make my speakers sit
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Or they get mobbed and you can’t get
Janet Murray:
in. Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I mean, because they’re that
Janet Murray:
hyper Exactly. Yeah. So I make mine sit with the sit with the delegates in the nicest possible way. We have table talks in the afternoon where every speaker is on every table, so you get to meet every single one. And, you know, so you get lots of access to so if you’re if you’re looking to build up relationships with journalists, you’re looking to, you know, actually kind of, you know, essentially pitch them, I wouldn’t suggest you go in and you start pitching them. But just kind of build a relationship with the view that you may well want to then run some ideas past them, then definitely worth the investment.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s awesome. So that’s janetmurray.co.uk/mediainfluence live. I know for a fact that Janet puts on amazing events because we know all the same people. I think we’ve known of each other for many years, including Phil Pallen, who absolutely raves about you. And, I’ve heard amazing things about your events. So that’s janetmurray.co.uk/mediainfluencelife. And I was just reminded of when I was at Youpreneur last year. And you know, at Youpreneur, the great thing about that was that even though they were high profile speakers, they did hang out with us as well, which was super freaking cool.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
But I remember bumping into Pat Flynn and getting so ridiculously starstruck that I have no idea what I said to him. But I feel like I might have creeped him out. And I kind of I remember the kind of sort of sort of look of panic and horror on his face, and I just kind of apologized and ran away and went and hid for the rest of the day. I was so embarrassed.
Janet Murray:
I fawned over.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Everyone else I was fine with. It was just him I’ve been listening to so many years and I just went
Janet Murray:
I fawned over him as well because I was, you know, I went to speaker speaker’s dinner. I made sure I sat next to him and fawned over him a bit. He didn’t seem very interested. My fawning, I don’t think.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh, no. Oh, bless you. Oh, well, I don’t feel so bad then, but I have no idea what I said. I just think it must come across super creepy as I make. I’ve listened to you all my life or something like that. I don’t know. I must have said something weird. So anyway, Janet, you are a rock star.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Thank you so much for your time. You you’ve highlighted a whole of things that I’ve done right which has been encouraging, but you’ve also encouraged me to do some things that I’ve definitely, been neglecting, I think. And and one of the things that I haven’t done, I’ve kind of held back from, as a personal brand is actually putting my opinion out there. I think I’ve tried to sit on the fence too much to, you know, to please too many people. And actually, I think people would be interested in, you know, what is my opinion on specific types of things in our industry. What’s my opinion on themes? What’s my opinion on x, y, and z? Or how you’ve been tracked? So I started last couple of days in within our Facebook group starting to share some of those opinions. And I’ve been a bit worried about it because I thought some people might just think I’m a bit of an ass, And they probably will. So may maybe that’s gonna happen for a bit.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m gonna have to ride that storm. But actually, I think it it those sorts of posts have encouraged conversation, which has been great. And they’ve also encouraged more ideas for me for more content, which has also been cool. Mhmm. But, yeah, I I think I’ve taken from this especially is is being myself, creating my content, which I’ve been doing. I love how you say creating our own radio show because as a kid, I wanted to be a radio DJ and no one will have me, so I’ll just create my own instead. And, and yeah. And that whole kind of being yourself because people want to engage in people and people wanna talk about themselves as well.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So asking people questions that are not necessarily about your business, but getting people to give you their opinion or tell tell you what they’re doing. So again, in the Facebook group on Monday prior to this call, just did it by accident, I was asking what are people’s plans this week. And, loads of people commented telling me what they were doing. And some people, they’re doing crazy amount of work in a week, but, you know, also killing it. So that’s that was great. So thank you very much for your time.
Janet Murray:
Thank you so much for having me. It’s been great. Thank you.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
No worries. Cheerio. And that wraps up today’s show. So remember, if you want to be a part of Media Influence Live, then get on over to janetmurray.co.uk/mediainfluencelive. The link is in the show notes. You don’t want to miss out. Sounds like it’s going to be incredible, and it also sounds like they’re pretty low on tickets. So I’d get in there if you could.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
If you’re not part of our communities, then consider joining up. Come and join our free community to get a taste of what life is like with all of us nutters. That is over on agency trailblazer.com/group. That will take you to our free Facebook group. And if you’re an agency who is pretty stressed out and wants to, find a group of people that they can connect with and share some of the more private things about agency life, get over some hurdles, change things in your agency, etcetera, then consider becoming a member of the Agency Trailblazer community over on agency trailblazer.com. Have an awesome day.
