Instant Credibility (Part 2): How to Get Your Name in the Media (and Keep it There)

Credibility can be an especially difficult challenge for real estate investors. When the media is going nuts with stories about mortgage fraud, foreclosures, and some guy that scammed the old lady next door, building trust can definitely be an uphill battle when you are negotiating with motivated sellers and looking for private money for your deals. That’s why credibility can play such a large and important part in your business. While testimonials may be great for your marketing materials, we all know that anyone can take a picture of their aunt and uncle and write some blurb about how great you are and slap it up on your website. Although this strategy may still be effective, nothing can beat a third-party editorial about you and/or your company in a major news publication. A positive article about you in the newspaper, magazine, or trade journal, on the radio or TV, or on the internet can do wonders for your business!

A few weeks back I posted Part 1 in this series about how to get your name in the local media for free, and use that to springboard your credibility immediately. If you missed it, just click here: http://cmyatesnews.com/?p=353

Once you’ve got the free, local stuff down, it’s time to step into the national spotlight. What would happen for your business if you were quoted in publications like MSNBC.com, Newsweek, or Entrepreneur.com, to name a few? I can tell you, because I’ve done it, and the results I saw were unbelievable! Here are just a few of the articles that I’ve appeared in recently using this strategy: http://cmyatesnews.com/?page_id=398

So how, you ask, can “just anyone” pull this off and go from “new agent” or “newbie investor” to “national expert” in a matter of hours? Simple:

Step 1: Write a great bio about yourself, and then have someone else doll it up for you. We often need others to give us the credit that we deserve, so write a rough draft for yourself and then let someone that knows you and your professional experience take a crack at making it sound awesome! Here is mine if you’d like an example: http://www.cmyatescapital.com/index.php?page=aboutus Note that you can have a great bio like this even if you don’t have a bunch of experience yet in the industry. If you are a new real estate investor, you can tout your previous experience as a housewife as “Vice President of Domestic Affairs” or your night job bartending as “Director of Public Relations”, and still manage to tie it in to the business. If you’ve never closed a real estate deal before, but have written a bunch of offers, you could feasibly say that you have “participated” or “consulted” in dozens of transactions, etc. Get my drift? Although my bio is quite real and yours will be too, the point here is create some initial credibility for yourself when a journalist is considering putting you in their next article. That’s all.

Step 2: If you haven’t done so already, read Part 1 of “How to Get Your Name in the Media (and Keep it There)”. Then, implement it. If you don’t get an interview within the first few days, don’t worry about it. You’ve sent your rockets out and they are still flying. Wait a few weeks and take another crack at it. In the mean time, move on to Step 3.

On the other hand, if you already completed Step 2 above and you DID get an interview and now have an article to show for it, use this as a springboard to even greater credibility and success in Step 3 below.

Step 3: Time to add some serious leverage to your PR arsenal. For a very reasonable fee, you can be made aware of a huge number of articles currently being written for both local and national media, all of which have journalists looking for “experts” (aka, YOU), and you’ll know days before they are published so you can get your foot in the door! Better yet, why not just get your name in the article and be done with it!

Here’s my secret: PR Leads – “The fastest, easiest, and most economical way to get publicity.”

Pretty simple? Yes. Here’s how it works:

1. You sign up and pay the very reasonable monthly fee.
2. You set up your profile and select the industry that you are a part of. In my case, real estate, and finance.
3. You begin receiving e-mail notifications of articles being written and experts needed. You will see a description of the article so you’ll know if you want to be a part of it or not.
4. When you see an article that you’d love to be in, you simply reply to the journalist. I always include a quick reply about their article, what I think about it, what my opinion is, a link to my bio (or a simple copy and paste of the short paragraph), and if you’ve succeeded in step #2 above, a link to an article that I’ve already been in (you MUST be credible if someone else has already written about you…). Then I include my contact info for them to reach me if they’d like to conduct an interview. That’s it!

I know it sounds easy, but that’s exactly how I got the MSNBC.com article. Don’t make it more difficult than it has to be! Oh, and speaking of easy, did you notice that the Newsweek article is exactly the same as the MSNBC.com article? Here’s another secret; I never did an interview with Newsweek! The story was “syndicated”, meaning that Newsweek bought the story from MSNBC to run as content of their own. Two for one!

Go to PR Leads now and setup your account: Click Here

This stuff doesn’t work unless you actually do it (like most things), so get started now! In Part 3, I’m going to show you how to properly use web-based press releases to not only get your message out to literally millions of people (like this: http://www.entrepreneur.com/PRWeb/release/6903.html), but also how to use these syndicated press releases to push your website up to page ONE on Google globally! Go ahead. Go to Google right now and type in “private money lending“. See anyone you know? CM Yates Capital is consistently ranked in the top 10 of Google search rankings organically (ie., free). One of the tools we use to do that are syndicated press releases. These can get a bit more pricey, but still not bad if you do what I tell you, and the results can be staggering.

Tackle everything I’ve told you so far and you’ll be way ahead of your competition, even the big dogs out there. You’ll be surprised to see that you can be as publicized as other people and companies that have six and seven figure PR budgets, just by using the simple strategies that I am showing you here. Whether you are a real estate investor, broker, or an “expert” in any other industry or trade, these strategies will work great for you just the same.

Until next time…..

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