Increasing Your Means Quotient (MQ) – Part Two

What happens when your MQ drops, or what I call Media Intelligence?

Does this drop over time or because of your actions or behaviors?

I believe that poor decisions can lead to actions and behaviors that lower your MQ.

This, in turn, impacts your reputation.

Think low-MQ people and the names Paul Wolfowitz of the World Bank, Ben Cousins ​​of the West Coast Eagles, and Paris Hilton come to mind because of their recent actions that have eroded goodwill with their stakeholders or fans.

Understanding how the media works is vital to obtaining successful coverage for your organization and raising your MQ.

What does the media want and how can they increase their chances of getting coverage?

Here’s the second part of the three-part series on increasing your MQ.

To interview: Does sending photos with press releases help get publicity?

Thomas Murrell: Yes, you can add them and they are useful for web and print launches, but a waste of time for television and radio. Don’t show your ignorance of how electronic media works by making this mistake.

My general rule of thumb is to add a line at the end of the print and web press release that says “images can be provided on demand.”

There are exceptions, of course. Take, for example, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), which has a radio and television network and now an extensive online news portal where they publish images because a visual image, both in print and online, can increase the impact of a history.

Of course, you can also send a video press release (VNR) to a television station.

While they are expensive compared to the cost of a traditional press release, they allow you to provide information that the television station may not have the resources to collect.

An example would be a remote mine or even computer generated graphics for a new stadium, transportation development, or oil and gas project.

Any graphically attractive element that can add value to the story.

Small regional television stations that have limited budgets for news production or are understaffed often use fancy packages made to look like news with an unedited reporter.

While some stations have a policy of not using VNR, it is good public relations practice to provide professionally recorded video clips designed to be used as stock footage.

Some critics of VNRs have called the practice deceptive or a propaganda technique, particularly in cases where the segment is not explicitly identified to viewers as a VNR.

So it is a gray area and you have to be careful. At the end of the day, you have to weigh the costs of doing so against the possible return on investment.

If you only have a small budget, you would avoid a VNR and only use a standard press release.

To interview: What other aspects are important in putting together a press release to help get it published / aired?

Thomas Murrell: Accuracy, time and quality of your distribution list. And, of course, you will be more successful if you have a personal relationship with interested journalists or editors.

Sometimes having coffee or lunch with select media can be so successful in gaining media coverage that simply breaking into a list you have no connection with.

The media is bombarded with hundreds of launches a day. If you can target specific sections: health, business, education with specific angles, you will be more successful.

To interview: I have heard that lunch works well!

Thomas Murrell: Lunch is good, but the media often don’t have much time. You should pay and never have any expectation that something will come out of your lunch.

To interview: Can you give us some advice to take advantage of your ideas?

Thomas Murrell: If one person has questions about their area of ​​expertise, there will be many others with the same questions.

To interview: Can you expand a little more?

Thomas Murrell: Turn all of these questions into headlines for articles and press releases that you will write.

For example, with your permission, I will take all the questions you have asked in this world online forum and my answers and turn them into at least three articles.

These articles will be submitted to professional health journals, websites wanting articles, and of course my own ezine. Media motivators read by 8,000 professionals in 35 different countries.

You could then take seven of these articles and then turn them into a free white paper or e-book.

This could be given away as a downloadable PDF on a website or other online forum.

You’ll see that providing personalized content that provides answers to your potential customers’ most frequently asked questions is the new currency for promoting yourself as a recognized authority.

I call this the gravity effect of a strong personal brand and position itself as the ‘go to’ person.

By attracting prospects to your business through this powerful and invisible force, you not only have more qualified leads that will increase your sales conversion rate, but you will also have less waste.

Traditional marketing reaches people through the push approach, but the gravity approach uses information to attract people to your business.

In addition to being interviewed in an online forum, here are five other ways I take advantage of my experience:

1. Writing articles for electronic journals, websites and specialized magazines.
2. By turning these articles into a traditional e-book, white paper, or book.
3. Interview other experts for an article, book, or podcast.
4. Read other books and review a book with key points. Learn and then take advantage of others.
5. Record presentations and turn them into a product or split and broadcast as a podcast or video on YouTube.

You see, I’ve spent an hour on this forum and I’ve still written three articles at the same time! So thank you for inviting me to participate.