Personal Branding Blog – Dan Schawbel

Press from the media, which now includes blogs, is a big deal because visibility creates opportunities for your personal brand. Corporations want good press because it gets their brand name out there, or reminds stakeholders of it’s existence. A lot of individuals view press as something “really cool” and if they get it, they start blabbing that they are suddenly “celebrities.” What is you gather bad press? Do you think that all press is good press because it draws attention to you? I think, within reason, press can be a powerful tool for people to learn about your achievements.

In my new book, Me 2.0, I have a short section called “visibility creates opportunities.” The big idea is that if you aren’t visible you don’t exist to the world. If hiring managers don’t know about you, you aren’t in their pool of candidates. If a male or female hasn’t heard of you, then you aren’t in their “pool” of people to date. The power of the press is that it creates a 3rd party endorsement of your personal brand. One of the most important ideas you have to get into your head about personal branding is:

“You are the chief marketing officer for the brand called you, but what others say about your brand is more impactful than what you say about yourself.”

Endorsements rule the world. Consider them word-of-mouth marketing powerhouses. When people start talking about you, instead of you talking about yourself, it’s ten times more powerful of an effect. We’ve all been in situations where we are trying to date, or form a relationship with, someone of the opposite sex. We realize that in order to be successful, we need their best friends endorsement. We pray that they will say good things about us and “approve us,” because when that happens, it’s a deal sealer. The same goes with marketing your personal brand!

Here are the benefits of press:

• Press statements as endorsements: If the New York Times or TechCrunch, for example, cites you as an expert, you can leverage that statement on your website, blog and other materials, in order to generate more leads, get a job, get into college and so on. Also, if you have a business or a product you’re trying to sell and get a press write-up, then you can advertise their recommendation in your materials.
• Traffic to your website: Some online media will include a link to your website and some will not. I keep telling everyone to “own your Google results” because if they don’t include a link to your website, then a percentage of people will Google you instead. A link inside an article will yield high traffic depending on the circulation and visibility of the article on the media website. Obviously, a front page press hit will give you much more traffic than one that is buried. Also, this traffic can be converted to RSS subscribers, email newsletter subscribers and friends on social networks, of which you can market to directly anytime!
• Rank higher in search engines: The Huffington Post has a PageRank of 8, TechCrunch as a PageRank of 8, US News has a PageRank of 8, The New York Times has a PageRank of 9, and Newsweek has a PageRank of 9. To view other sites go here. You can benefit in two different ways here. First, if they link to your website, your PageRank goes up (your asset increases in value). Second, if there’s no link to your sites, the article will rank higher for your name, so you’ll benefit as well.
• Increase share-of-voice/mind: You might have a saturated market or you might have just established the market on your own. Either way, when you’re cited in the media, more people will associate a particular field with your name, so you gain both share of voice and mind. The more press you get in a short period of time, the more people will remember you and each article will re-emphasize the next. Competitively, the more times you are seen, the more people will go to you and not them.
• Sell more products: If you’re promoting a product and someone writes about it, then a small percentage of those readers may decide to make a purchase based on the recommendation. If you have a website, it’s obviously easier for someone to go through the buying process. If your product is in stores, then next time they go to a store that sells it, they may remember it enough to buy it!
• Press as a status update: As you progress throughout your career, there may be milestones that you want people to hear about. Getting press for these announcements can help you get more customers, or opportunities that can make you even more successful.
• Attraction-based networking: When people hear about you, they may be drawn to make a deeper connection with you, with you putting in little to no effort. If the press hit is targeted enough, the exact people you want to meet will come to your doorstep. When you meet people who take genuine interest in you based on what they’ve heard about you in the media, they become your good friends, powerful allies and possibly your business associates.
• Other people will write about it: The interesting thing about press is that they all read each others work. Traditional journalists read blogs, watch TV, listen to radio and visa versa. They all learn from each other, getting new story ideas in the process. This is a huge plus for you because it means that you can get covered in multiple locations, without additional effort.

How do I get press?

Luckily for you, I have already created two how-to guides for pitching to traditional journalists and bloggers.