Good day, and welcome back to another episode of become your own PR machine. My name is Trevor Young. Great to have your company. Today, I'm going to discuss something that I think is the secret sauce. But there's a lot of nuance, and there's a lot of parts to it.

It's not a set and forget. It's not a flick the switch. But if you're a lifelong learner, you will love this. It's called, the whole episode, but what the whole notion I'm talking about here is developing your own PR mindset. As I said, I think this is the secret sauce to great marketing communications.

And if this is your first episode listening, to this podcast, I do urge you to go back and listen to episode 1 and 2 in particular, where I do talk about what PR is, what it is, and bust a few myths. Just a very quick recap. PR is not just about getting your, getting your brand in the news paper or on TV or on radio. Yes, that's earned media, and it's a part of what we do here in the in a in a in a PR sense, part of the PR remit, media relations and influencer relations, and, you know, getting getting coverage on independent in independent third party media outlets, that's a part. But there's so, so, so much more today.

And part of this podcast is to demystify what PR is. And you know what? You probably if you're a business owner and you're out there actually active and doing stuff and, you know, marketing your business and communicating with your audience and creating content, you're actually doing a lot of things that fall under PR. A lot of PR tactics. What you might not be doing is the PR strategy and bringing them all together in a cohesive whole so they all make sense.

So my whole notion, my whole thinking around public relations is that, you know, you've you've probably heard me already, talk about what my definition of PR is, which is about, you know, deepening the level of connection you have with the people that matter the most to the success of your business or cause or issue if you're a nonprofit and that's the outcome you seek. So if that's the case, you've got to understand who your audience is, how do we deepen that level of, of connection with them, how can we, you know, build those, relationships with them, with people? How can we, you know, resonate with our story and our message? How can we stay relevant with these audiences? And over time, build the reputation, our personal brand reputation, and that of our of our business as well.

So developing a PR mindset, I think, runs through everything. And this you don't have to be a qualified PR professional to do this. In fact, some people, who I think are great exponents of PR and all it encompasses, and there's a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff that people probably think, oh, that's marketing. And look, you can do things that are marketing. Content is marketing.

But content to a large degree really, you know, when done with, editorial integrity and intent, is actually probably better to be thinking in a PR mindset. And the thing is, if you look at PR as a whole and you don't worry about just, the media relations side or the media publicity side, then your doors open and you see the bigger picture. If you just get hung up on, oh, I just wanna get my name out there and get some ink, well, then you you miss out on on on on the whole patchwork quilt of, strategic communications and how PR could really, really, really work for your business. And most importantly, set the scene. Pave the way.

Pave the way for your marketing efforts, so it makes your marketing efforts work more effectively. You know, good PR will do the heavy lifting often, for marketing. So it's not either or. They they really do work together. Okay.

So developing a PR mindset is, as you could imagine, a little bit esoteric, a lot of nuance, But I'm just gonna try and break it down and, walk through some some parts of what makes up a PR mindset. And as as I just mentioned, there are people out there, entrepreneurs. I've worked with them. I've seen them. I've talked to them, and had great conversations, with them around things.

They just get PR. I like to say sometimes people just get, and I'm just using air quotes, get PR. They get it. And once they get it, they can make it really work for them. And, but if what what I find is that there are some commonalities with what they've got.

And when I say they get PR, they have a PR mindset. So if you get PR, you actually have a PR mindset, and it's something that can be learned and nurtured. You do not have to go to university for these things. Alright? If you have gone to university and studied media and communications and PR etcetera, depending on what it's called at your university or college, you you should be, you should be listening to this episode because there are a lot of elements that maybe you're not nurturing within your own professional self.

Okay. So developing your own PR mindset, what does it mean? Number 1, I think it's really important to understand your audience and who influences them. Now when I say audience, audiences actually, or what we call in the PR games, which it sounds terrible, but your publics. Your publics.

Remember? I just said who are the people that matter the most to the success of your business, your cause, or your issue? You need to map them out. Who are they? Now it could be, obviously, your clients and customers.

Absolutely. The people who influence them. Absolutely. That could be the media. It could be could really be genuine influences.

There could be certain people on LinkedIn who actually can and do influence your your audience, particularly if you're in a b to b and it's it's very specialized, and you're only after, you know, top echelon business people or decision makers. But it it's also your employees, if you've got employees. It could be your partners. Now partners doesn't necessarily mean business partners, but, you know, you could have suppliers and other people you work with, you you partner with to get stuff done in your business. They're part of your audience.

You you to to be, you know, operating well, they and to be successful, you need to have a good relationship with them. So what are you doing? What are you doing to help them? It could be people within your community, just the community generally. It could be councils.

It could be a government. It could be, if you're in the financial game and a public company. Of course, it's analysts and, obviously, the financial press. And so you can see once you break it down, it's gonna be different for everyone. You know, if you're in, a professional services, say, law or accounting, or HR, then it might well be, you know, you look at the, the industry itself and the profession itself and the professional bodies and the people who are running those professional associations.

You know, talent, big and small. And, and so, you know, you need to develop and build an employer brand to get the best talent And, you know, so potential, potential employees, is are an important audience as well. Make up an important audience for you. So that's what we want to understand is look at our audience group, understand them, understand them, who influences them, understand them in terms of priorities, and yes, it might well be clients and customers, but not all the time. So, you know, think more broadly.

You wanna be part of a bigger community. You wanna be part of a bigger industry. You wanna, you know, be part of other people's communities. You know, every so many, business owners say, oh, I wanna build my own community. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But they couldn't be bothered being part of anyone else's community. If you wanna build your own community, you need to you need to be part of other people's communities. And when I'm talking community, I'm being quite general there.

I mean, there's communities that are paid communities and gated or online and that sort of things, which, you know, we've we've had, I talk often about Mark Masters and the You Are the Media community. Fantastic community, where people, he's involved. It's his. He runs it, but, you know, people help each other and talk to each other, etcetera. So he could walk away for 6 months and then still keep going.

If you're building a community, you want to have an ecosystem, I think is sometimes a better word that we should be using, an ecosystem of of people who we need to get close to, and, they need to be part of your world, but you also need to be part of their world. So that's that's a mindset to do that and to make the effort to to reach out to other people, which I'll talk about in a tick about the, the the need to build relationships. But let's let's just leave that side of things for a moment. The other thing is I think that's incredibly important, we did really lay it out, I think, in the second episode, where we looked at the whole what I call, my marketing communications pyramid. And at the base, we have owned, earned, and social media.

But, you know, we need to understand what makes up owned media, what makes up earned media, what makes up, social media, and how they all interact with one another. That's very, very important to be able to understand those channels and how they integrate because you're gonna be integrating and, you know, pushing out your message and your story across those those channels, and they need to be consistent. And, obviously, some channels are right for some audiences, and some some channels might be a little bit broader. So, again, you need to understand your audiences to understand the channels that you should be using. What else have we got?

I've I've got an acronym here ABBYC, which is always be building your community. So we've we kind of ticked that off. But the other thing we wanna be doing is is creating a culture of content, and this is something I might actually do another a full episode on, but this is so important to create a a a a culture of content in your business. Now I don't care whether you're a solopreneur. You could still have a culture of content internally, or you're very you know, you run a very big company or a growing company or a small business.

At the end of the day, this separates, the really great content creators and the the the great content marketers from the people who, oh, I better tick that box. I better have a blog. I better do, let's do some video. And they do 3 videos, and then they fall off the bandwagon. They start on social, they fall off the bandwagon.

Look, the whole thing around a culture of content is that it's a recognition internally that this is really important. And I've worked with clients, and they've embraced this. And that means that, you know, they put aside time. Busy people internally put aside time to create content, to be interviewed, to do videos, to record podcasts, to, you know, do social media, you know, whether it's a LinkedIn post or whether it's just a TikTok video or Instagram video, etcetera. What what I'm saying there is that you don't see content as a chore.

It needs to be imbued within your business again, whether you are the business or you have a big team. It's the same thing. The bigger the team, the more, obviously, work you have to do in getting people involved in that. And that also means that they see a story or, yes, they wanna help or they wanna be involved, but they see a story. And they also will share that content as well if they've if they've had a hand in it and there's a little bit of, I guess, ownership of that content, then they're more likely to be promoting it through their personal channels as well on social media, which is really important.

You can't make your employees to do that. But in a in a in a business where there is a or an organization where there is a good culture and that includes a culture of content, then that will that will happen. The other thing about content so let's keep on the content line because everything I talk about is really content driven somewhere along the line. You've got to think like a media proprietor. And I think it was in episode number 3 where, I talked about thinking of you're thinking of yourself as a media proprietor and building a media, you know, building a media group.

I mean, this is the, this is what a a media network, you know. Often I've always said, you know, become your own media channel, and I still believe that. But now I'm thinking a little bit more broadly because the opportunities are out there for us to do that, and that is build your own media network. So I use the example of the BBC. You know, the BBC is a great brand.

It's BBC 1, and then it has other channels like BBC 2, BBC 3. You gotta make me go to BBC 4. And, you know, so maybe your blog is BBC 1, and that's the home of all your content, and and that's your flagship. And then you might add a podcast and and a video channel, that side of things. Or you might not have go to the blog.

You might just say, look. I want a fantastic newsletter, and it's gonna be my BBC one. And all roads lead to this great, newsletter, which is like an online magazine and its archives. So, you know, that's think of that as your flagship, your BBC 1, and then you can add some strings to that bow. Don't go crazy, of course, and try and do all the things.

But, you know, as you get better at this, you know, we've we've really seen great content creators. And whether they're independent content creators or businesses creating content to support their business, you know, going building multiple channels out, owned media channels. And then in keeping with the BBC theme, they also have BBC parliament, BBC news, BBC lifestyle. So more niche channels as well, and and you can think of that as your social media channels reaching different audiences. So, you know, that's what I say.

Think about yourself as a media proprietor, and it starts opening up, the line, you know, the lines of thinking and, really starts to stretch you what is possible, and and you'll start seeing the opportunities. Now in keeping with, think like a media proprietor, now we wanna act like a journalist. Now it's one thing that journalists do, that they're very good at is they see stories. Journalists, by the way, aren't necessarily the best writers. You know, you hope that they can write, and that they they they are good writers.

You want that. Some are magnificent writers. But at the end of the day, they're not necessarily the best writers. But what they're the best at doing is digging up stories, seeing stories, being curious, asking questions. What's the hook?

They're very good at the the hook and the story and then, you know, being able to, lay out an article or a story. And it's not just about writing an article. I mean, journalism, it goes across radio. There's audio journalists. There's video journalists.

It's about what's the story, what's the headline, what's the hook, what's the first power, how are we going to get into it, introduce, and then, you know, do we interview, do we have snippets, anecdotes, what's our narrative, how are we gonna tell that story? So the key, though, when I say act like a journalist is really, always being on the lookout for stories. I think that, you know, in your organization, more broadly, there's gonna be a lot of stories there, but which ones are the right ones to tell and which ones locked back into your or aligned with your content strategy. If you're running a micro business and you are a solopreneur, basically, and you are the business, you know, you will see stories that it's people that in your day to day travels, you'll come up with an idea. You may be speaking somewhere, and, you know, you take people behind the scenes of that speaking gig.

It might be that you interview people. I like the whole idea of interviewing other people and and extracting their insights, stories, ideas from them. And that's, again, another good thing about being a journalist is is being able to always have the radar on. Now part of this and part of what makes a good journalist is, your curiosity. And I think curiosity is a very unsung attribute to have, but I think it's possibly one of the most important attributes to have if you're a professional, career professional person type person, and you're moving up the corporate ladder or you're, you know, particularly if you are a leader or a, an entrepreneur or a business owner, curiosity.

Just, again, having that radar on, looking looking at ideas, uncovering it, allow yourself to go down rabbit holes, on the on the on the web. You know, we we say, oh, time management. You know, we can't spend time wasting it on social or whatever. But, you know, if you go allow yourself time, not all the time, not the whole day, but, you know, research and go deep and and and look at a video and and and listen to podcasts and and obviously read books. And, of course, we've got so many, so many sources of information today.

It can be quite overwhelming. So, you know, you've got to be controlling your curiosity to a degree, but who are the people that challenge your thinking, that put ideas out there that that that, you know, start start something in the brain and say, oh, there's something there. There's something there. You know, like, you wanna be challenged. You want to see, where if I pull this thread, where does this one go?

And so I think, always be nurturing your curiosity. And, of course, it's it's not just necessarily in your your domain and and your lane and the things that, you know, best practice in your area of expertise. That's really important to always be always be learning in that regard. It's more so around, you know, is it music theater, other types of media, watching films you normally wouldn't watch, you know, probably being a little bit more broader in in what you take in, and and push yourself sometimes. You know?

If you don't watch Current Affairs, maybe watch Current Affairs. Watch some foreign films. Go into into, you know, niche bookstores and and have a look around. Subscribe to magazines. Subscribe to you know, there's so many terrific newsletters on Substack.

I can't tell you. There are so many. Go on to Substack and discover a whole stack of fantastic writers, and you will be better off. You know, like, maybe subscribe to 5, 10 of them, okay, over the year and their stuff and read it. And you will be smarter if you pick the right authors, the right newsletter writers.

You will be smarter and more rounded at the end of the year than what you are at the start of the year. Alright. I'll leave that that bit now. That's curiosity. Part of that has also become a media junkie.

So, you know, we do if we're going to really earned media is what we're talking about and and getting our our brand, our ideas, our our thinking, our story out into the marketplace further than what our own content can do, well then, of course, we need to, you know, start getting some editorial exposure on independent third party media outlets. This definitely is in the PR remit. It's where the, the history of PR probably began. And years ago when I started, I did a lot of that. These days, some PR people don't really deal with the media.

But if you're a publicist, you're dealing with the media all the time. Now the media today, of course, as we know, you've got traditional media. You've got big blogs. You've got podcasts. You've got, you know, brands that are creating their own magazines.

Often, if there's a, you know, an industry journal or an industry publication, it will be an online publication, but they often have a podcast or a a YouTube interview show. So today, what we define as media is very, very broad. But become a media junkie. You know, subscribe, look, keep your eyes out, particularly in your area or where where your audience who's your audience is, who your your priorities, what are they listening to, what are they watching, what YouTubers do they watch, What newsletters do they read? What magazines do they read?

You know, what TV shows do they watch? Have an understanding of that, and then start taking it in, taking it in, taking it in. Become a media junkie, if you're not already. A couple of just a couple of other things I I wanna move towards now is, I like the whole idea of documenting your progress, taking people behind the scenes of your business. This is a little bit of the secret sauce.

Of course, people like to, see behind the, you know, the the public face of the business. It humanizes your company. And we, you know, we do business with people, not logos. You know, if you're trying to get recruits and new employees, they wanna come to a place where they can see the people and get a really good feel for the for the leadership and the culture. You know, this hiding in the in the shadows of the boardroom doesn't work anymore.

And, you know, obviously, if you're a smaller business and a solopreneur, that's a lot easier because you could be on camera every single, you know, minute of the day if you really wanted to. You wouldn't get much done. But, you know, it's a lot easier maybe than if you're leading a company with, you know, a couple of hundred staff. But the same thinking. This is all mindset, the same mindset.

You know, let's bring people behind the scenes of our business. Let's, you know, get our experts, our internal experts out and shine the spotlight on them. Let's shine the spotlight on our partners, on our employees, on our clients. This is all about documenting, you know? So think more like, you know, being like a documentary maker, and and, you know, showing those sorts of stories can go a real long way in terms of differentiating your brand from everyone else, your personal brand, your business brand, because it's unique, and so this is a good way to differentiate.

And in a world where it's really there's a lot of commonalities and, you know, anyone can look good, but, you know, scratch beneath the surface, they might not be all that good. This is a great way to differentiate your brand. There's a there's a great book that I've enjoyed reading called Show Your Work by Austin Kleon. Now he's talking more around the, people in there who are creatives. And, you know, it used to be that you'd hide your your work if you're, you know, you're a painter in the attic, and you'd hide your work until it was finished, then you can unveil it to the world.

But today, whether it's writing, whether it's, you know, any any creative pursuit, and creating content and building a business is a creative pursuit, don't ever let it say that that it's not, then, you know, you show that work in advance. I mean, so so many top authors now, you know, they don't write the book and then unveil it. They're writing it. They're blogging about it. They're, you know, they're putting out articles that become blog that are blog posts that might make it into the book, and then they're sharing that, and they're getting feedback from people.

You know, they're putting ideas out in the on social media or on Twitter and seeing what people are thinking about it, and that might go into their book. So they're building their booking public. And certainly on the technology startup tech space, you know, you get a lot of tech entrepreneurs who are building in public all the time. But it's not just putting it out, a beta you know, version of your software out there. It's telling the story behind it and and and where we've come from it, and you start the story well back, not just when you're launching.

So when you're launching anything, I don't care whether it's a restaurant or you're going to launch a book or a new product, The story starts well before that, and you build that that that community and that audience before you launch. And that's again, this is all PR type stuff. Just a couple of other things, relationships and actively connecting. So, of course, we we talked earlier that it's about deepening the level of connection you have with the people who matter the most to the success of your business or your cause or your issue. And that is a 100% right, and, relationships is a massive part of PR.

You know, it's called public relations or I like as I like to say, public relationships. And it's, you know, who are the people you need to develop relationships with? It might be a journalist. It might be a podcaster. It might be influencers on on Instagram or or TikTok or or LinkedIn.

It might be, you know, bloggers. Who knows? Who knows? You know, again, it might be people in your professional association. It it it might be, you know, people who have the ear of, you know, the decision maker in a company you're selling to.

So we need to understand that and develop relationships. And it's this is all done genuinely, authentically. This is not about just piffing out, you know, going to an event and piffing out your your business cards. Does anyone have a business card anymore? And, you know, just trying to collect cards.

This is about less about quality and, you know, being part of these people's world. They're part of your world. Content sometimes plays a role. Maybe there's, you know, how can you deepen the connection with them? Is it going out and having coffees with them?

Sometimes having a coffee with the right person who's who has influence in an organization can be a really powerful thing. Attending events, meetups, community meetups, all of those things, really, really important. Industry events, you know, taking a spot on an online summit or an industry seminar. You know, all of these things all of these things can help you, build your, connections, deepen the level of connection with people, in the audience, and grow relationships in a qualitative way. So that's all PR.

And finally, to make this all work, there's humility. And this is this is what a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners struggle with, I think. It's that it's all about them. It's all about them. And, a lot of thought leaders are like this as well.

So I don't call them thought leaders if they make it all about them. A good thought leader brings people along for the journey. They share their ideas. They give other people a voice. They lend their platform to other people to get, you know, so they've got a voice.

You know, an interview show on a podcast, for example, is a great example of that. And so it's about bringing people along for the journey, listening to others, making it about your audience. It's not just about you and your business and your products, but it's about the bigger picture and being part of that world versus making it all about you. So that's a humility play. Now if you if you're not humble and you genuinely, think it's all about you, well, then you're gonna struggle having a PR mindset.

You've got to make it about the other people. Even if you're going down the media path, what you've got to think about the media, you've got to think about, an editor and what he or she is struggling with on a day to day basis. What's in it for their audience? What value can you deliver? If you always think about what's the value I can deliver over and above my products and services, particularly to clients and customers, well, then you're gonna be in really good shape.

And that that takes, humility, and I think it's a really good place, to start. That's kind of like your your baseline and get that bit right. Because I think if you do all the other things anyway, that will develop your humility as well. So, come at it from a position of service. Come out of it from how can I help you?

Come out of it from, you know, I want to add value and be part of this, versus I have a message, and I'm gonna bombard you with it. Or I have a, you know, a bit of content, and I'm just gonna blast it everywhere. Or I'm gonna email everyone and just bang, bang, bang, bang, and it's about me. And, you know, we've all we've all been on the receiving end of of messages from people on LinkedIn who you haven't heard from for 10 years, and they just pop up out of the network. And, oh, they just happen to be looking for a job.

Or, you know, they they need something, and they've given nothing back in in in the front end, you know, in advance. And so that's the sort of thing I'm talking about. It has to be about your audience and your part of it, and you're delivering value, and you're coming from a place of service. Alright. My speaking of service, my sermon is over.

Developing a PR mindset, it's not something you're gonna switch on. But have a think about, some of the things I've spoken about today. You might not want to do all of them, but I think they all interconnect somewhere along the line. And if you if you can get into that mindset, and it's a very positive mindset, I think you go a long, long way with your PR efforts, which in turn will help you really go a long, long way with your marketing efforts, which in turn will help you go a long, long, long way in building a a sustainable and flourishing business that you're really proud of.