I want to share some of the misconceptions surrounding publicity. The first is that it's free. There's really no such thing as free publicity. Time is money, and it takes time to craft your pitches and reach out to reporters. So technically, it's not free. Second, one big story.

I know small businesses want to get that first story in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, fortune and Forbes. Those stories are pretty hard to come by out of the gates unless you're really changing the industry. And quite frankly, more often than not one story does not make a company to use a baseball analogy. While it's nice to hit home runs. It's better over the long haul to hit for average. What I mean by that is what you're really looking for is a steady drumbeat of news.

There are companies that debunked this rule, Dollar Shave Club's launch video, for example, but it's typically not the norm finally makes a good product better. Unfortunately, a bad product or service is a bad product or service. A story won't make that product better. Let's discuss some obstacles with securing publicity. America has five PR people per reporter. That means a lot of people are vying for a reporter's attention.

That also means reporters are receiving more information than they can possibly cover. And unfortunately, much of the information they receive is irrelevant. How do we know this? many reporters receive upwards of 500 emails per day. Here's the other problem. PR people are pressed to get their clients covered.

So to save time, they use media lists to identify potential reporters and then blast emails regarding their clients and the industry. It's called spray and pray and it's shotgun accurate. The other problem is that the relationship is transactional. Here's the thing. publicity is just like dating. So don't look for quick hits.

Look to build lasting relationships. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for reporters to cover our stories. To do that we have to spoon feed them the information we have, and make sure it matches up with what their audiences consuming. reporters are increasingly tasked with getting click throughs on their stories to drive advertising dollars to that means the story we're providing has to generate eyeballs. By understanding the world the reporter lives in and how they're beholden to their readers. We can better offer our information to show the benefit to their readers.