10 Yetis Insight Vlog - Busting 10 Of The Biggest Public Relations Myths Around Outreach

Hi I’m Shannon Peerless and I’m Head of PR at 10 Yetis, and I’m Andy Barr and I’m Managing Director of 10 yetis.

So myth #1 Shannon, I think you need you always need a press release for outreach.

Well Andy Barr, that is not true, actually. I think it’s really refreshing when people don’t use a press release. Journalists are getting hundreds of them into their inboxes every day. If your approach is a bit different you’re stand out a lot more. So even just a brief email summarising what the story you’re pitching is, if you’ve got some really interesting content like video or images. Just think about another way to put that across rather than just writing it up into a boring press release.

It’s not to say we don’t use press releases because we do, but you know there are those stories where you don’t need to.

Myth #1 busted.

Myth #2 you should never call journalists.

Shut the front door, you should always call journalists. The only people who don’t like calling journalists are PR people because journalists are sometimes not very nice. Just today we’ve had a journalist shouting at one of our staff for no reason what so ever. Just because they can, but calls to journalists are very important.

Myth #2 Busted

Myth #3 Shannon Peerless, you shouldn’t contact low domain authority bloggers.

I disagree actually. Anyone that knows anything about SEO, Search Engine Optimisation. Knows that it’s actually really good to have a wide spread of links across a number of different website that have a varying domain authorities. So actually it doesn’t really matter is the blogger doesn’t have a very high DA. Perhaps it’s only got a score of 20, there are still worth going after.

The second reason being that, it’s actually worth looking at their followers on things like Twitter and Facebook, and the number of people they actually get visiting their blog because they might actually be influential in real life.

What like in the real world, is there an emoji for that? I... probably.

Myth #3 busted.

Myth #4 you need a contact book that is busting at the seams.

That absolute rubbish, no you don’t. You just need to have a really strong angle. Journalists don’t really care if they speak to your week in week out, or not at all, if you got a strong angle, they don’t give a fudge. They’ll run the story anyway.

Myth #4 Busted.

Myth #5 in order for a good title to run it, surely it needs to be an exclusive.

Definitely not actually. If you story is good enough, and the content you’ve got is good enough, I would argue that journalists won’t mind that they don’t have it exclusively.

It does help sometimes if you are targeting a Sunday paper, they aren’t going to want to run it if it’s already appeared in all the other papers throughout the week or online everywhere. But it doesn’t have to be exclusive, I always say if the story is good enough it’s going to get coverage.

Myth #5 Shannon busted

Myth #6 the out reach process can obviously be automated.

Let me stop you right there. SEO people, I blame SEO people for this. They think you can press a button and it’ll take data from one piece of software, add it to another, create a tailored message. They just sit there, put their feet up and vape.

No. No it doesn’t work like that; you have to have a tailored message. Yes, you can do mail merges and things like that to make it quicker, but you need to personalise things, you can just press a button and outreach like a hero. That doesn’t work.

Myth #6 Busted

Myth #7 Build it, they will come.

No, nothing goes viral anymore stupid. You can have the most beautiful content in world but unless you’ve got a really decent outreach plan, no one's going to see it. So how will people know about it. How will it go viral?

Myth #7 Busted.

Myth #8 Just one piece of content is best.

Let me stop you there sister. That’s wrong. You need to have loads of different pieces of content; interactive infographic, infographics chopped up into little pieces so that they’re squares that you can share on social media, little videos, clips for Instagram, GIFs. The amount of things we do to support our outreach campaigns is amazing.

Just one piece of content? Is it 1980?

So that’s myth #8 busted I guess.

Myth #9 if you haven’t got a link in a piece of content from the start. You ain’t never gonna get one.

Nope, not true. If you don’t have a link in your online piece of content to start with you can actually ask the question and see if the online team will add one in for you. We’ve had really good success with this in the past. But I would advise on this one, if you don’t have a really good relationship with the journalist there, sometimes it’s best not to ask. So you need to use your own better judgement really because we have had pieces of coverage taken down in the past just because the journalist got annoyed that we asked.

Myth #9 busted

Finally, myth #10 you can only go to the media and influencers in the country where your client operates from.

That’s so wrong it hurts. You can go to influencers and media from outside the country that your operating in just to get a wider mix. Only last month, we got 65 extra high domain authority links from Indian and American press, really good news sites, because we had gone to the free wires that are available. The national wires, like we have the press association like we do in the UK. So no don’t just limit yourself to the UK. Spread your message wide and far.

Myth #10 busted.

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