Chris Panteli takes us into the fast-paced world of linkbuilding in this interview packed with tons of actionable tips. Chris, who runs the agency Linkifi, is on the front lines and shares a wealth of knowledge that nobody looking to build a brand should miss.
In this interview, Chris brings us up to speed on everything new in the linkbuilding world and covers a range of topics, from new platforms and what journalists want to winning strategies for 2024 and beyond.
Watch the Interview
After introducing himself and talking about how he created his linkbuilding agency Linkifi, Chris confirms that links are more important than ever.
He starts off by talking about how HARO had been dominating the market for editorial links for the last 15 years, but the rise of AI contributed heavily to its demise. This led HARO to move over to a new location called Connetively which, unlike its predecessor, is not free. He also shares other linkbuilding platforms to be aware of.
Chris says that the important data he and his agency have collected over the last few years has helped them immensely in perfecting their pitching strategies, and he goes on to share some excellent advice about how to pitch journalists.
He reveals a new, free platform created by the original founder of HARO and discusses its benefits.
When asked about strategies for 2024, he shares how to pitch journalists on the platforms he’s mentioned to get Tier 1 links (revealed in the Google Search API leak to be very important), how to easily get information about your competitors’ PR links, how to answer queries, and what information to include.
He talks about getting multiple links from the same authoritative sites and several tips for getting notified of brand mentions and links as they roll in.
In this age of AI, Chris reveals what journalists really want and how you stand out as not only an authority in your niche, but also as a real person.
In short, this episode of the Niche Pursuits Podcast is jam-packed with insight from a true linkbuilding expert who holds little back. No doubt it will leave you prepared and inspired to start building the links you need now more than ever.
Topics Chris PaNteli Covers
- The end of HARO
- The rise of Connectively
- Where else to find PR link opportunities
- What journalists really want
- How to pitch journalists
- The original HARO founder’s new platform
- Strategies for 2024 and beyond
- If it’s still worth building links
- Pitch vs. expertise
- How fast you should answer queries
- Navigating the new pay-to-play model
- Tips for beginners
- Tracking the links you earn
- Pitching for PR links vs. writing a digital PR campaign
Links & Resources
Transcription
Jared: All right. Welcome back to the niche pursuits podcast. My name is Jared Bauman. Today we are joined by Chris Pantelli with Linkify. Chris, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me back, Jared. You know, I think it’s about a year ago you came on and you gave us a masterclass in building kind of whatever you want to call it.
So many different buzzwords for it these days, digital PR links, high PR links. Hi, Dr. Links is some people like to call them. Well, that’s not necessarily always the truth, but I mean, so much has changed in that world that you and I were catching up and we thought it was, would be good to have you back on because so much in that world has changed and we’re not even talking about the Google world.
We’re talking about the, that kind of the, the, the building links at this high PR level. Um, so you’re back on if you haven’t listened to chris’s first interview. We’ll link to it in the show notes It’s still relevant, but you’re going to want to listen today because a lot has changed chris Welcome back.
Maybe just for those who didn’t hear about you last time Give us a quick little rundown on [00:01:00] yourself your backstory How you got into linkify, et cetera.
Chris: Yeah. Well, uh, thanks for the intro, Jared. Yeah. It’s been, I can’t believe it’s been a year and it is changing rapidly. They’d have to do, we’d have to do one of these, I think every month to, to stay on top of how quickly it’s, it’s moving.
Um, but yeah, I was on a year ago. Um, we started linkify about three years ago now. Um, I was, I sold my. Bricks and mortar business. I got diagnosed type one diabetes and I was doing some, uh, link building on a, like a small personal finance site. Um, that’s how, uh, my. Came to meet my business partner who was running an agency.
I’d outsourced some guest post link building to, uh, to him. And he looked at my link profile for my site and saw all these, um, business insider, New York times links. And he was like, Hey, how did you get these links? And I just said, I was doing this, um, pitch request, answering Harrow, basically answering journalists requests.
Uh, and he said, oh, that’s awesome. Gee. Do you think you could get some of my, my clients, those sorts of links? I said, I don’t see why not. Um, so we sort of tested the [00:02:00] concept by just doing a few of his clients and then Linkify pretty organically sort of, uh, grew and then sort of blew up last year. Um, and yeah, that brings us to where we are today and we’ve had multiple Google updates.
AI has gone from being like a tool, which was, uh, not heard of that much. This was sort of. Pre GP, a GPT four blown up. So you could get access to these AI writing tools. Um, but they were normally like these sort of quite dodgy app sumo deals or something like that. Um, so it was like something which we could kind of leverage on our sort of pitch ops end, but now it’s become so prevalent.
Anyone can use it. So I say a lot’s changed, but I think it’s still a golden opportunity, a golden era to, to win awesome backlinks. And I think it’s now it’s more important than ever as well.
Jared: Interestingly, I’m wondering if the people listening who almost had checked out of digital PR link building because of how so much of what used to be, i.
e. Haro, had gotten [00:03:00] saturated. And so, so many changes have come to the market. But maybe that’s actually a huge opportunity for people, both people who are new and thus didn’t really participate in the old way of doing it, but also people who had gotten burned out or had phased out, or who’s just had gotten a little bit.
We’ll just call it disinterested, maybe because of because of how how it was going for them. Maybe, like, obviously, we know Harrow is the big name in town when it comes to a platform that people use. Help a reporter out. We won’t go into a deep dive on Harrow. If you haven’t heard of it, go, go do some research on it on yourself.
Lots of podcasts we’ve talked about previously, including Chris’s last year, but what are the big changes? And let’s kind of use that to set the stage for today’s conversation.
Chris: Okay. Yeah. So, um, Harrow was the, the main source of, uh, what we sort of generally call as an umbrella term PR requests. So it’s, it’s one sort of side of the equation of.
What one might call PR link building. So it’s, you’re earning editorially earned media links. [00:04:00] Um, so you’re not paying for a link insertion or buying a guest post. You are trying to earn a link, um, by, um, connecting with a journalist one way or another. And one side of that is by, by running PR campaigns.
And the most well known side of that is by actually answering journalist requests directly of which Harrow was the, the biggest provider of these, these links. These requests and had been dominating the market for 15 years or so. Um, with the onset of AI, we sort of had a period where, um, I think both sides of that Harrow equation were, were suffering.
So we were seeing journalists getting bombarded with nonsense. Click and send AI generated responses. Um, couple that with the sorts of, uh, people that may have been trying to do that spammy response, which, you know, maybe for looking for a cancer expert and, you know, uh, a marketing manager for some website that has nothing to do with health is, is trying to answer that query.
But it, and it’s an AI generated response. So [00:05:00] the journalists are getting. Their inbox is absolutely bombarded with spam. Um, and as a result, the journalists were somewhat turning away from that, which meant that the genuine sources, um, on the other side of the equation are seeing a drop off in the number and quality of source requests coming in.
Um, so. The Harrow platform as a sort of response to this has now moved over to, uh, what’s now called Connectively, which is a, an actual dashboard, uh, albeit somewhat clunky, um, and it has taken away, um, some of what we’ve all been talking about. Come very used to in terms of that thrice daily, um, email system where you would, you would receive a bunch of emails morning, afternoon, and evening, obviously time zone dependent.
Um, and then you would scour through these emails, you’d find suitable requests and you would send your response to the journalist that’s now moved not only to a complete non email system, or that you can get some emails back. Based [00:06:00] on keyword alerts, but it’s, it’s not really worth the time or effort. Um, what it, what it boils down to now is actually going onto the platform, um, and looking through these requests that get added periodically.
Uh, there’s no set time. Uh, once they’ve been submitted by the journalist approved by the system, the moderators, it then gets added to the platform and you’re then able to, um, answer the queries that you, that you feel are appropriate. Uh, another major change is it’s now no longer 100 percent free. So it’s a.
Pay to play model. I think you get three, five. Responses per month, which is obviously tiny. Um, I mean, it’s not expensive. I mean, you know, it’s an increase if you’re, if you’re doing this in volume, but, um, for most normal users, you’ll, you’ll just be answering the most relevant queries and for that, you know, this I think is a dollar maximum per query.
So it’s, it’s quite a significant setup change. Um, but like I said, there’s some real. Uh, opportunities, um, as it probably has answered, um, the actual question, which, which it was trying to achieve, which is reducing the [00:07:00] spam. So having that small monetary barrier to, to actually enter that, that ecosystem has, I think, from what we’re hearing from journalists that use the platform, it has significantly reduced the spam.
Um, And, uh, we are seeing a good number of opportunities available as well.
Jared: Having used the platform for so many years myself, and I know that early days of Harrow, it was not uncommon to. Submit a request, submit something to a journalist, hear back from the journalist, even begin to develop a relationship with that journalist.
Not all the time, but you’d hear back from a lot of journalists. As time went on, you’d stop hearing from journalists, and you’d just kind of find out that your link went live, if you were lucky enough to have a link go live. As that progressed, The percentage conversion per number of, um, inquiries you responded to, and then that you landed links from would drop.
It all seems to boil back to some of the larger things at play. Like you talked about the journalists getting bombarded and the effectiveness dropping. Did you see at [00:08:00] scale at your agency was like the effectiveness of every outreach you did on through Harrow dropping and it’s, and it’s a amount of success.
And then I guess you say that. It’s working better now. Like, have you seen early results one way or the other with using connectively that compared to the old Harrow?
Chris: I think as, as an agency, we’ve, we’ve obviously grown and evolved and learned and, and honed our systems across all PR requests. Don’t forget connectively isn’t the only player in town.
Um, So, uh, it’s just the, the, the single biggest, uh, place where, where these are aggregated together and you can find this still for free, um, on places like X, you know, just follow the main journalists in your space. These guys are posting source requests frequently using hashtag journal request or, um, hashtag PR request.
Um, there’s also other platforms like quoted, um, press plugs, some you, you big UK based platforms. Um, so. This actual system of journalists, uh, sourcing for expertise, um, is [00:09:00] still very prevalent. And as an agency, what we’ve learned is, um, to increase our success rate against the spam, um, by First of all, producing higher quality, more relevant pitches.
Uh, and then also having the ability to have built up, you know, three years worth of data now, knowing the X domain never links or X journalists from Y domain doesn’t link, but Y journalists from Z domain. Um, so this is like invaluable data, which can save at the number of pitches that we need to send, reduce that significantly, which obviously, uh, increases the win rate.
Um, and then you also have the fact that, um, if you’re doing your positioning correctly. So if you’re a gardening expert, let’s say, then if you really portray to that journalist that you are, uh, a relevant expert, um, and you’re Uh, you have the right and the ability to, first of all, answer that journalist question.
[00:10:00] And then second of all, give value to that journalist. Because the reason that the journalist is sourcing expert commentary in the first place is not to give SEOs and website owners backlinks. Like that is not part of the system. Um, When Peter Shankman developed the, uh, Harrow, the, the, the point was to connect journalists with experts and it’s going to give, uh, the experts coverage, um, which is, which is important, but more importantly, the reason the journalists are doing it is to enhance their article, give more credibility to their article.
And in the era that we live with AI content, um, good quality, high authority content. Content, maybe the last bastion of that, of that sort of content being produced is the news publications and they want to give their readers, um, credibility. And they’re going to do that by utilizing experts. So when you’re doing your pitches, you’ve got to, first of all, demonstrate your expertise.
And this is what we’ve done and what we’ve learned to do better and better. And then also you’ve got to give clear [00:11:00] visibility of that expertise because I could have a half an hour conversation with a fake Joe Rogan now and think it was the real person. So this is how good AI has got. So if you’re using AI images and you know, you haven’t got, um, a LinkedIn profile and if you’re not a real person and you don’t give the journalist, you give the journalist any indication that you’re not a real person, then they’re going to just go to one of the hundreds of other, Responses they’ve had, the way they can trust that that’s a real person.
So really building out your pitch profile, really, um, highlighting to the journalist, uh, who you are, where they can find more information about you, where they can find other articles that you’ve been featured in. It just gives that, um, that professional credibility on both sides and you’re much more likely to be able to win, win the, uh, win the pitch and then hopefully the link as well.
Jared: I have a gazillion questions for you on strategies and tips for succeeding nowadays with, with these type of pitches. Um, but you mentioned the founder. So let me ask now because it’s on our agenda and I wanted to ask you [00:12:00] about the original founder, Peter. And now he started a new platform outside of Harrow and connectively.
Like, can you go into, is this relevant and can you tell us more about that?
Chris: Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, like, like you said at the start of the, um, interview, it’s fast moving this world. It really is. I mean, I can’t. Keep on top of everything. I’ve got a billion tabs open now of new things to test and look at.
And, uh, I saw, um, on X that Peter Shankman, obviously this great guy, he created Harrow 15 years ago, he sold it to, you know, big company, um, Sissian. They, they took over the operations, um, and we, they sort of maintained the system as was for over a decade. Um, this change, I think while it’s got many positives, uh, like I said, the, you know, the, the.
The small pay to play element, which is still very accessible, but you know, has rubbed some feathers the wrong way. Um, the fact that it’s not via email. I mean, if you’re a journalist and you’ve been [00:13:00] in the game for 10 years and all of a sudden some, you know, you’re not, you can’t just look in your emails to look through your, your requests that you’ve been doing, it’s, it’s rubbed up some journalists the wrong way.
So. Uh, I think Peter saw an opportunity to sort of go back to his original idea. Um, and so he released a hero. So help every reporter out that that changed yesterday too. So that’s no longer what it’s called. It’s now called a source of sources. com. Um, So yeah, I said it’s fast paced. It is. That just changed today.
Yeah. Um, so now, um, I think the way he’s positioning that is if, if a journalist is looking for an expert, an expert commentary, they can, they can send an SOS, a source of sources to, to try and fill their, their, their, their. Uh, what they need for that particular article. Um, and that is very much in the guise of what anyone that’s been using a Harrow historically, uh, it’s very much the exact same format.
So you get, um, I think he’s at twice daily currently. Um, I think he’s currently at 20, 000 [00:14:00] users. I think he said he was growing a thousand a week or something. He wants to be over a hundred thousand by the end of the year. It’s moving quickly. Um, and you’re seeing some beautiful domains on there. Now that’s not to, to belittle or tell people not to use.
Okay. Other platforms. It’s just another platform that we can use and utilize. And it’s much more in the old, uh, well, it’s very much the old style of what we used to, and also it’s free. Um, there’s also some really nice integrations that he’s putting in there. So there’s an integration with muck rack. Um, we never really used to have any protection as the, as the expert.
Um, as the expert, so it was quite a lot of protection and, um, not safeguards, but like the ability for the journalists, let’s say, to, uh, block users, um, or obviously, you know, they have all of the requests come in and it’s up to them to decide who they include, but as somebody who wants to offer expert commentary, um, Certainly towards the, the, the latter stages of Harrow and then even on connectively now, many of the source requests would actually just be some kind of three way link [00:15:00] spam.
Um, so SEOs, if they find a gap, something to exploit, they will. So one way that they could do that was posting a, a quote unquote fake query. Um, and then they’d receive a bunch of responses and maybe they’d send a reply out saying, Hey, Thanks for your quote, you know, I’ve actually got enough quotes for this.
However, if you give me a link to this site, then we can include a link to that site. So essentially three way link spans, um, you’d see, uh, queries posted saying it would be on, on one domain and it would turn on another, um, journalists that weren’t really journalists. Uh, so he’s actually done an integration with muck rack, which is one of the biggest, um, like journalist profile websites.
Um, so as, as experts now we can, we can go through that and actually verify the credibility of the journalists that we’re. We put in our time and effort to send our expert pitches too. So it’s a really nice, uh, additional, um, side of the equation on, on that front. Wow. So that is early days there. Um, have you guys used this platform at all?
This new one from Peter? Yeah. Yeah, we’re testing it. Um, it’s currently, uh, email [00:16:00] direct. Uh, so journalists, if you remember the old days of Harrow, it’d be like an autoresponder email, um, like, uh, Not the actual direct journalist email. So it is currently the direct journalist email. So it’s good opportunity until it changes.
It will be changing. We spoke, I spoke to Peter recently and it will be changing to the exact same style as the old system, but now might be a nice time to, you know, send a really, really good pitch and formulate a relationship with the journalist maybe, and see if they’ve got any other articles they’re writing for different publications.
Um, but yeah, it will be moving to the old school auto responder format. Um, and it’s gonna, and it’s free and. It’s going to remain free as well. So it’s just another, another tool that you can use and utilize and, um, much more like the old system, but, but again, having said that it’s going to be quite difficult for, for that system to prevent spam.
Um, Unless Peter introduces something new, um, above and beyond what the old system was. Whereas I think connectively, just, just by the very [00:17:00] virtue of the fact that there is payment involved in order to access the queries, I think the journalists are seeing a significant reduction in spam. And what does that mean for us as experts?
Well, send, send a good pitch, send a great pitch, actually be an expert. And you’ve got a really good shot of winning, uh, winning the pitch, winning the quote, winning the link.
Jared: Lock it on. Okay, so that’s fascinating. Okay, let’s maybe adjust a bit. Let’s talk about a digital PR link building strategy for 2024 and beyond, because I think a lot of people would say that it was overwhelming.
And the first 15 minutes of our conversation has probably only served to overwhelm people even more in terms of this is what’s changed. This is what’s new. This is what’s different. This is, this is different now. Now you have to pay. Now you have access to this. I mean, maybe we could start from the top, but why is it still relevant to be building this kind of, these kinds of links to be connecting your brand with these kinds of features?
And then. How do we navigate things going forward? I’d [00:18:00] love for us to really get into some detailed tactics or a more detailed step by step plan that people can grab their, can put their minds around. So they can walk away knowing where to go from here.
Chris: Okay. Right. So the best way to start, okay. So digital PR, like I said before, editorially earned backlinks.
So, uh, elephant in the room. Yes. Many sites have been hit by, by Google updates, but is it still worth building links? Um, so if you still want to access that, that free Google organic traffic, which is still there and you know, it’s going to be there for a while, uh, and it’s, it’s, it’s good, uh, traffic, it converts well, and it’s free.
Um, then there’s, then there’s. Then you need to build links. You need to build high authority links to grow your domain authority. Um, outside of that, then you also need to build high authority, uh, links or, or even features brand mentions need to align yourself with high tier, high authority publications in order to Develop your brand and brand is obviously going to become so much more important.
Now, especially in the era of AI, you [00:19:00] read people like Jason Barnard, who’s on X. He talks about controlling your narrative from the large language models. They’re going to be learning about you and your brand. They’re going to be. Taking their source data from different places. And that’s going to be high authority, um, sources.
So getting yourself featured in these is going to not only, uh, give you algorithmic juice with Google and allow you to grow your authority, your rankings, um, and perform well in Google for as long as you know, Google is, is, uh, a plausible and decent source of traffic for you. Um, but after that, it’s going to allow you to grow your brand and your brand can be invaluable.
And you always want to grow your brand. You’re going to convert more. You’re going to get more traffic. And you are also going to be able to, uh, possibly control the narrative on the AI side. So practical steps to do that. The best way to start is by answering, uh, PR requests. So running digital PR campaigns, uh, which we may talk about later, uh, is definitely something that you can look at, but I would recommend starting.
With, um, answering PR requests, the two platforms I would [00:20:00] recommend now is obviously Connectively, um, do the five free per month, um, if you’re just getting started, um, and then Hero as well, um, sign up for that. It’s completely free. You can answer as many as you want. So the single best strategy, if you’re getting started, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, let’s say you’ve got a good site, um, and you know, you’re doing well and you just want to bump your authority and get some of those juicy links for your homepage.
Um, and then Just quickly as a sidetrack, a Google search API leak just happened today as well. And they’ve just basically, um, it’s everyone’s been diving into what it means. And there’s a really interesting, um, part about, um, uh, I pull rank guy from, uh, sorry, um, Michael King from my pool ranked at a real good breakdown of it.
Um, and you look at, uh, one of the important metrics is source type. So this is how Google values the links. Um, and, uh, And he’s given a lot of credibility to fresh pages and to tier one publications. And where do you get links from fresh pages and tier one publications? You answer a PR request for let’s say homes and gardens or the sun.
Uh, they release a brand new article on a huge [00:21:00] high authority domain. So we know we have found out today, even if Google won’t tell you themselves, they accidentally leaked their stuff and we’ve read it and we understand it. And we know that these are the links. So how do you get those links? So whatever niche you’re in.
Find your competitors that are also in that niche. Okay. I call these your foundational high tier links. You want to find a handful of your competitors, go to their homepage, see if they’ve got a press badge. One of those little featured in, uh, rows at the top of their, um, website. And that’ll tell you, um, some of the five, six, seven, eight, nine biggest publications that they’ve been featured in essentially got links from.
Um, and most of the time, uh, these publications, they will have earned that link via their website. PR requests. So what you’re doing is a really quick and easy competition analysis to find out, okay, I’ve got a gardening blog. These are five or six other really big gardening blogs I know of. You’re going to go look at their homepage, uh, see if they’ve got a press badge and see where they’re shouting about that they’ve been featured.
And you’re going to see [00:22:00] homes and gardens, better home and garden Metro, the sun express. Okay. You’re going to see a handful of websites where they’ve been featured. And now these are very, very high DR websites, DR 80 plus and organic traffic in the millions. They have not purchased those links. They haven’t bought those links off Fiverr.
Um, they haven’t done some dodgy, uh, backhand deal on a WhatsApp group. They’ve earned those links 99. 9 percent of the time via PR requests. So that means then with your free, uh, Five free monthly pitches on Connectively and all of your free pitches on Hero. You can just whittle down your opportunities to those domains that, A, you know, your competitors have been able to win a link from, and B, you know, are going to, if your competitors have got them, it’s going to be very advantageous for you to also get them.
So that would be my starting point. Uh, and then how do you answer those queries? First of all, absolutely. Make sure you are vocalizing on your website, who you are and what your expertise are now in gardening. It’s a [00:23:00] lot easier than some niches because a lot of us can be gardening experts. So, uh, for that actual, um, demonstration part.
It’s quite easy. But if you’ve got anything else that you can provide, if you’ve ever entered any gardening competitions, um, if you’ve ever been, uh, featured in a newspaper, you want a gardening competition, let’s say, uh, gardening awards, any accolades, certificates, credibility, anything like that, put it into your about page, uh, bio and make that, um, track, make that expertise track across your social.
So what a journalist doesn’t want to do Is receive a pitch from a gardening expert and go onto the gardening website and look at, um, the profile and say, okay, here it is. This man saying he’s a gardening expert. He stood next to a plant that all looks fantastic. Then they go to your LinkedIn page and it says you’re an SEO wizard and there’s no mention of gardening on your LinkedIn page.
Straight away. It screams that you’re gaming the system. You’re not being truthful with the journalists. They’re not going to like that. So make sure, and obviously you can change these as you go. If you are a, you know, a [00:24:00] multi website operator, if you’re an expert in multiple niches, then. Just when, whatever campaign you’re running at that time for winning those links, make, just update your LinkedIn, update your Facebook, make sure that all of those social assets that you’re providing as like a wider web visibility proof of those expertise, make sure it tracks through because the journalists do check that it only takes them two seconds to check.
They just go LinkedIn. Okay. This guy is an SEO expert and he works for an SEO optimization agency. Why is the answer in a gardening query? So make sure that that tracks through, and I guarantee you that you will be able to get those handful, those first handful of three, four, five, super great links for your website, your niche, uh, very quickly, just by doing that, that the simple process of.
First of all, whittling down the domains that you know, you can get, and then making your template scream credibility and reflecting that through your social profiles and the way that you’re defining yourself in that opening paragraph to the journalist. You’ve talked
Jared: entirely about the way you set up your profile, [00:25:00] your homepage, your website, your LinkedIn, verifying and establishing and showcasing credibility and expertise.
You haven’t talked much about the actual pitch itself. Should I infer that level? Like I feel like so many people put all of their time and effort into the response, into the pitch that goes back to the journalist and don’t put as much time into some things you just talked through. Is there a lot of significance in that?
Do you think that having all of this set up is more important than maybe the actual pitch itself and people are getting it backwards if they’re going about focusing too much of their effort on the pitch and less time on their expertise and backing that up?
Chris: That’s a great question. Um, I would say that the, the pit, it boils down to, um, the first of all, identifying the, the, the pitch itself, the, the, the, the query, the request itself, now, 90 percent of the requests will fall into the bracket of what you’ve just described there, Jared, uh, what the, the journalist is not, um, that they’re putting together an [00:26:00] article and they’re looking to enhance the credibility of their article.
By quoting an expert now with their asking for experts to suggest the best time of year to plant tomato seeds or tomato, should I say, uh, what, what’s the best time or country
Jared: agnostic here?
Chris: What’s the best time of year to, to, uh, plant tomato seeds in order to get the best harvest of the tomato plant.
Now the journalist already knows that. Or, uh, it’s something they can easily find out. So they’re not actually looking for the most innovative and creative and like out of the box thinking pitch on when’s the best time to plant tomatoes. They’ve, they’ve already like, you know, basically 90 percent written their article on, on whatever it is they’re writing.
And they just want to add a segment that’s backed up by an expert. And in that case, yes. 90 percent of the, of the, of your chance of winning is going to be down to the pitch template. Now that’s not to say that the pitch response isn’t important because a lot of people that are still [00:27:00] spamming these platforms are going to go into chat GPT and write, when is the best time to plant tomato seeds?
And then they’re all going to get the same answer. And the journalist is going to smell that from a mile away because journalists are professional writers, so they can, they can sniff AI, like they just, they just know it’s there. Okay. So. You need to make sure that your pitches are first of all, answering the question and adhering to all the requirements that journalist is specifying.
Then you need to make sure that your answer, um, is both correct and accurate, informative, but also add a quotable element. So time and time again, we see that some of the links that we went, cause don’t forget we’re, we’re running this for, to say multiple clients in the same niche. So sometimes we’ll be answering the same query from two, three, four clients.
And. If we happen to win the link, you’ll, you’ll see that the context of the pitches across, let’s say the three or four clients that we’ve sent the pitch on behalf of four is, you know, kind of the same. There’s some differences, but the one that’s one is the one that’s got that really [00:28:00] interesting flurry of, of, of English language with within, uh, making this the same point, but it’s just added a real.
Unique piece or a very quotable. I remember as an example, the one that I won for myself years back for our personal finance site, um, was just, uh, asking about things that you’d done for, I think, a Christmas, um, a Christmas party, uh, as like a business owner for, for staff and I didn’t. I mean, I’d done the same sort of idea as anyone else.
I think we’d gone go karting. Other people had said, you know, different things, but I’d used the line because this was for the US publication. I was in the UK and I said, uh, as somebody over, uh, just to hop over the pond, um, which is obviously, you know, to explain that I’m from the other side, uh, They use that exact line.
So that was just a really interesting, just slightly, uh, unique phrasing, turn a phrase that the journalist, um, it resonated with the journalist and that’s why they wanted to include that. So I would say 90 percent of the, of the, of the effort is going to be in your pitch [00:29:00] template, but don’t. Don’t forget that’s like a one time setup.
If you’re a gardening expert and you’re answering gardening queries, then just get your about page down, put loads of effort, get some unique pictures. Journalists want to see not this. I mean, I do, I’m actually guilty of this. I’ve got the same stupid headshot on, on all of my social and, but what they want to see is like at least two or three pictures, because that instantly proves AI generated image.
Um, And this is a one off setup, get that done, get your accolades, expertise, credentials on your about page, and then reflect that through across two or three social platforms. Then that’s, that’s, and get your pitch template done. And that’s a, hello, explain who you are, what website you operate, what your position is, you know, your CEO, founder, uh, explain what you have expertise in, you know, hello, I’m Jared.
I am a gardening expert. I’ve been gardening for 25 years. Um, I’ve won best. Uh, pumpkin at the last four pumpkin growing festivals. Um, you can find some other places I’ve been [00:30:00] featured here and here, uh, and then answer the query and add that linguistic flurry, that interesting use of English and adhere to the requirements.
Uh, and you’re gonna have a real high shot of winning 90 percent of the queries that you’re answering. Truth be told, I have
Jared: much better success with tomatoes than I do with pumpkins. I’ve tried both. Probably where I live though. Okay.
Whether where I am good tomato or tomato, depending on how you want to say it. Hey, let’s spend a couple minutes on connectively. For example, I feel like, uh, the old adage with Harrow was like, get those responses. When the email comes in, get those responses back to the queries. As quickly as possible, I think you talked about this quite a bit in your last interview, like, you don’t need to trip over yourself, you don’t need to like, get it back within the minutes, but at the same time, um, you said that speed is a factor, now they’ve moved to this connectively platform where it’s almost happening in real time, that’s one thing that’s [00:31:00] Changed in the strategy like what’s the best strategy now for connectively as opposed to maybe strategies that used to be, uh, something that you would follow for for the more traditional hero route.
Chris: Yeah, um, that that is that’s interesting. And that is something which, um, I think you need to. It was almost a lot easier in the, in the days of Harry, because you knew everybody else was receiving the queries at the same time. Um, although they did have like a paid option, actually, even back then where you could receive early access.
But I think most journalists would sort of wait, wait for the big email to be released and then they’d start seeing the responses come in and obviously pre AI days, then, um, you know, a fast response would be someone who was at the computer and could legitimately and expertly write a query. Good pitch quickly.
Um, and the reason for doing it fast back then would be, you know, if there’s two or three other experts that have, you know, that are perfectly qualified to answer that query, um, oftentimes the journalists are only going to, uh, quote one or two people maybe. So, you know, [00:32:00] you want it to be fast because you were real, real expert.
You could write a good pitch, but you may get beaten out by the other handful of experts that are also. Um, good enough to be featured. So you’d want to answer it quickly, uh, to, to get it, to get it in front of the journalist. I think now speed is somewhat of, um, an element which the journalists are cautious of.
Because I was going to
Jared: ask, okay, you’re kind of going on
Chris: the route.
Jared: Cause I’m curious with AI, if speed’s actually almost a negative nowadays.
Chris: Possibly. Yeah. I think it’s going to ring an alarm bell, but again, you also, as you quite rightly said, these queries, these queries are getting. Uh, like drip fed throughout, throughout the day.
So, um, you don’t want to sort of see a query ping onto the system. Um, and then answer it with AI and send it in 30 seconds because the journalist is just instantly going to notice it’s been produced by spam. Also, you need to think about legitimately how you are. Going to manage your own time, um, in doing this as a [00:33:00] link building, uh, strategy for yourself and your business.
So there’s, there’s no way you can monitor a system, you know, people have lives. So you need to, in my opinion, if you’re going to do this independently as a, as a website owner, um, then I would just set aside a chosen period of time, a day, maybe have a look, uh, one hour in the morning, one hour in the afternoon, um, and scour through.
Um, see the queries, um, see if any ones have come in recently, prioritize the most recent ones, um, because you still need to put your pitch together. And, you know, hopefully you’re, you’re only using AI as an aid because obviously a completely AI written pitch isn’t going to go anywhere. Um, so I would manage, think about how you’re going to manage your time and, and work it that way.
I would also suggest that if you see a query, let’s say you come on in the evening and you see a query that Was two pages back. You can see it was posted, um, you know, many hours ago. Um, we speak to a lot of journalists and we know a lot of journalists that source for these sorts of requests, they’re looking for the best, [00:34:00] uh, the best pitch.
They’re looking for the best expert. And even though they. They’re often only going to sort of quote one or two people, but that’s not to say that, you know, there’s no rule on that, that they haven’t, you know, they can quote as many people or no people as they want within their article. And the journalists that we speak to that they’ll, they’ll tell us often that, um, they’ll, they’ll sort of look at the first batch that come in and whatever the deadline that they’ve set, we still have deadlines on hero and connectively.
There’s, there’s still firm deadlines for when, you know, all pitches must be in. The journalists will always come back and have a look at what what’s been sent at the end. Because they don’t want to miss out on, you know, they’ve done a query for planting tomato seeds. They don’t want to have picked their three sources that they’re going to quote and then find out at the end of the day, the world’s single best tomato planter in the history of the universe has sent in a pitch because this guy’s going to add way more credibility to their article than anyone else.
So definitely, um, I wouldn’t worry about it anywhere near as much as, as we used to have [00:35:00] to.
Jared: Okay. That makes a lot of sense. It sounds like perhaps outside of an edge case, the best scenario is to not worry about when pitches are getting pitched and put in there, just get on there in your own routine and your own schedule and reply as long as the deadline hasn’t passed.
Um, and obviously there will always be edge cases, but, um, okay. So question for you kind of on the psychology of this now, and I’m speaking specifically to connectively and I’m thinking about some examples of my own, in my own time when I will get. You know, when you sit down to do hero responses and the psychology, I’m just thinking through is very different now because you have to pay outside of your first five.
And so, you know, to your point, like, in the past, I might look at something that was sent yesterday via email and say, well, you know, At this point, it’s a day or two old, but it’s so perfectly aligned with something I could comment on. I’ll reply. I would oftentimes also, if I didn’t have a lot of [00:36:00] replies that day, look back several days worth and just figure, well, it’s free.
It can’t hurt, you know, and kind of play that game. Nowadays, you’ve got to make a judgment because every response costs you a dollar. Uh, not that that’s a lot of money, but the psychology of it is, it’ll start to add up. Like do you have any guidance for people to navigate this new, new world? Pay to play?
Is it, um, you know, is it about making a database of the good ones? The good journalists? Is it about trying to only apply to ones that or reply to ones that are in your specific niche? I just am trying to think about the person who’s now going in with a budget and trying to figure out how to maximize that budget every month.
Chris: Um, so definitely do the first thing that I suggested in terms of picking that handful of domains that you, that you know, are, first of all, have journalists that are sourcing experts for that particular publication. So to use the gardening example, if you are, have a gardening website, um, homes and gardens is, [00:37:00] is quite prolific across most expert commentary platforms connectively, um, Quoted, they’re always sourcing.
And if you are a gardening expert with the gardening blog and you don’t have a link from homes and gardens, then that’s going to be one of the domains on your list. Okay. And the way that I would do it is I would stick with one domain and keep sending your pitches to, uh, the one or two or three journalists that are sourcing for that domain.
Um, and just keep. Keep doing your pitches to, to that publication until you land the link. Um, because the journalist is then going to start recognizing your name. And if you’re sending good quality pitches, um, it just because they haven’t chosen you for the previous one or the one before that, the one before that, as long as you’re still delivering quality and value, then at some point they’re gonna, they’re gonna include you in, um, in their article.
Um, now in terms of managing the budget. Uh, I think if what you might be saying is like, let’s say you’ve sent your five [00:38:00] free in the first few days, they’ve all gone to homes and gardens and you think, well, I might have won one. If I keep pitching on my paid ones and then I win another one, it’s going to be a waste.
Well, first of all, there is nothing wrong with getting two, three, four, five links from homes and gardens. If you’re a gardening website. Okay. That is a super authoritative, um, website, high DR, loads of organic traffic, and that is going to be sending. Really good signals to Google. If you’re getting linked, they’re not once, not twice, thrice, four times.
That’s big, big authority signal alerts to Google. Why is this huge authority site link into this small garden site? Multiple times. It’s good stuff. Okay. Um, and. You know, you’ve gone strong and you’ve achieved your goal. You’ve got the homes and gardens. You’ve not, not got it once, twice. Let’s say you’ve got it three times.
That’s fantastic. Okay. That’s going to be absolutely great for your SEO, your domain authority, um, it’s all good stuff. And once you’ve ticked that off the box, then move on to the, to the next domain. I would also throw a caveat into that. Um, I would also. [00:39:00] pitch the ones that you genuinely resonate with and feel like you have a good shot at.
So, uh, when I was operating and doing this, you know, myself for my finance site, uh, you know, I have a degree in economics and some other like loosely, uh, base. I mean, it was a bit easier in those days. Now they want genuine, genuine finance experts like CPAs, qualified accountants. But, um, you know, I had some, some, you know, Reasonable expertise, but occasionally I’d see a query where maybe it was asking for, um, I know, uh, personal finance advice from someone who’s got type one diabetes, let’s say.
So I’m someone who can offer personal finance advice and I’ve got type one diabetes. I not, I don’t just tick one box. I tick both boxes. I’m exactly what they’re after. Spend your money on that one because you know, even if you don’t get it, you’ve, you’ve really picked, you’ve really increased your, your chances and your it’s like a gamble, but it’s like an educated.
An educated bet. Um, and yeah, I think [00:40:00] the, the other part of the psychology aspect is, especially to any of your listeners that have never done this before, is don’t expect to win one. straight away. And, but keep going because you will eventually get one. And when you do, it is, it’s, it’s such a good feeling.
It re I mean, I still feel like this for, for like our clients now, especially on, you know, you think, well, no one who’s going to feature me in the New York times, you know, Forbes, it’s no way they’re going to feature little old me in, you know, this huge publication. They’re going to be, they do, you know, if, as long as you, Meet the criteria at least well enough.
You know, I’m not saying you have to be 100 percent on the mark. You know, you can even broaden yourself a bit, you know, not make stuff up, but you know, definitely push the boundaries a little bit. Um, and if you’ve got a good quote, a good pitch, you know, good story, good idea, and you’ve, you’ve demonstrated all of the, the, the relevant expertise and stuff, you will eventually win one.
And when you do, it’s, it’s a real buzz. Um, and it’ll give [00:41:00] you confidence to, to carry on.
Jared: I. several times in my career where I’ve had to cold call all the way back to when I was 19 years old. I had an internship actually at a financial, uh, at a financial firm and I had to cold call and as a 19 year old cold calling man, it was, um, it was tough, it was tough sledding, but I learned a lot and I mean, this whole process is not cold calling, but to some degree.
I’ll piggyback on what you said. Like you definitely have to be okay hearing no and knowing or not hearing it all.
Chris: Yeah.
Jared: Knowing that it’s, it’s a bit of a law of averages. And if you keep submitting good pitches, you will get them. And once you get them, it’s so much sweeter because of. How hard you’ve worked to get them.
Chris: I’ll also add another thing as well. Um, especially if you’re just starting out two really important aspects. One, I think you touched on it earlier about not hearing back from journalists, especially from Harrow, but I have seen a shift actually on connectively where, um, I think it’s like a lot easier to do.
I think they just press a button. Um, [00:42:00] so you do actually, um, hear back far more frequently than you used to. It’ll just say pitch accepted and you’ll get a little email. It won’t tell you when it’s going, where. Well, you can find out where it’s going because you know who you’ve pitched and the publication, but you won’t get any more information other than it’s like been accepted.
And even then, sometimes the journalist may have, you know, it may get removed on, on the editorial, um, like, you know, flow, but you know, 99 percent of the time, if you see a pitch accepted email, that means it’s, it’s been accepted and you’re going to appear at some point. And some of these publications have huge.
Lead times from when the journalist is certain to publication. We want to link for someone on, um, TripAdvisor, huge website, you know, do follow link. And this was, I think, seven and a half months after we pitched it. So my other piece of piece of advice, especially in order to manage your time and manage your budget and manage the psychology of doing the process is set up Google alerts for your name and your brand, and also use another platform, which is free called Talkwalker.
So between the two, they pretty much pick up everything because what you [00:43:00] don’t want to do is. Pitch Connectively and Harrow, uh, and all these experts request platforms and go weeks and months without winning only to find out you had actually won, but you weren’t told by the journalist and you never saw, you know, you never, you didn’t Ahrefs doesn’t find 50 percent of the links that we win.
So set yourself a Google alert and a Talkwalker alert and make sure you’re using, um, commas on either side. So use your name that you’ve pitched as, so for me, Chris Pantelli, it’d be open comma, Chris space, Pantelli, close brackets, and then use the, um, the company name that, so, um, so for example, uh, niche pursuits, I would have open brackets, niche space pursuits, close brackets, and then I’d have open brackets, niche, no space pursuits, close brackets.
So you’re covering, uh, you know, space, no space on, on the company name and your, your name. And also obviously if you’re someone like me, Chris or Christopher put both in as well. Um, and that way it’s going to. Pretty much pick up everything. Uh, and that way when you do win a link and it’ll come [00:44:00] through on the alerts and that’s when you can go, okay, let’s do some more.
Jared: It’s true. I can’t tell you how many times you just don’t hear back about a link going live. And if you think you’re going to hear back about a link going live, sometimes they do respond, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you just have to figure it out via your, your other methods. Um, Hey, so you’ve danced and touched on this in so many different ways so far, but I wanted to ask a pointed question about it, especially as we start to kind of get to the end of this.
I didn’t want it to go by. Um, and again, you’ve answered this in many different ways. So maybe additional tips or, um, even bringing it all together in terms of one answer, I wrote this question down and, and what does a journalist want in this era of AI? Again, I know we’ve talked about how to make your answer stand out.
Quotable, you know, be quotable, uh, be an expert, don’t regurgitate a chat GPT answer. Uh, we talked all about the profile that you need to have to substantiate your answer. But what. Like, as I’m sitting there thinking about as an expert talking to people right now who are listening, who are experts in their fields, and sometimes you’re so far in your own head, you’re like, how do I make my [00:45:00] answer stand out when I answered it and I answered it accurately?
What are additional tips that journalists are looking for, especially little things they’re looking for to make sure that they’re getting a real, Uh, answer that’s not some sort of kind of chat GPT spun answer.
Chris: Yeah. Well, 90 percent of the queries are going to be exactly what you just said. So all that we’ve talked about, correct profile, wide web visibility, demonstrating those expertise, a good pitch template, explaining who you are.
Demonstrating your credibility to the journalist, a good, well written pitch, quotable line, linguistic flurry, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, that’s gonna, that’s gonna be, um, everything that you need for the bulk of, of query type. So that’s when, um, a journalist is looking to, uh, quote an expert in order to, uh, enhance their article.
Um, and these queries are quite easy to spot. So like I said, with the tomato seed one, best time to plant tomato seeds, the journalist isn’t looking for a revolutionary new expert opinion on Plant tomatoes, they just [00:46:00] want to make their article better by they’ve already written it or most of it. And they’re just going to, uh, pepper in these quotes to make the article that the rest of the queries will fall into one or two other brackets.
So. Firstly, uh, they are looking for answers to questions that they genuinely don’t know the answer to. And that’s when they are looking for an expert in order to answer something that they don’t know. Um, my advice there is be an expert, um, and give them a great answer. Um, I don’t really need to say much more than that.
I mean, if you are an expert or you’ve got an opinion, it doesn’t even need to be, you know, it can be controversial. It doesn’t need to be substantiated if it’s, if it’s an opinions based piece. But if you are someone who really has an opinion and you, you know, you’ve done it and you know, um, then to just go for it because that’s what they’re looking for, you know, and they’ll tell you that within the query.
Um, and then the other type will be personal experience. So this one is interesting because first of all, um, There’s slightly [00:47:00] less chance of getting linked in personal opinion pieces, depending on the publication and the journalist. Um, but you can often get that link added, um, after the fact. Um, and that’s just by emailing the editor and saying, Hey, look, you included my opinion in this piece.
Could you link to my website? I gave this, uh, commentary on behalf of my, of my business, but you haven’t linked. That’ll work. Maybe 60 percent of the time. So I’d still go for these because even if you don’t get the link in this sort of opinion based, um, piece, then, then you can get it added either, you know, Respond to the journalist even after if you’ve had direct communication with the journalist and just, just ask them politely, give them some reason why they should add your link.
And oftentimes they’ll add that in. Um, but outside of that, uh, if they’re looking for, um, an opinion from an expert, so sort of a, a cross between expert commentary and an opinion piece, um, then you just want to sort of be as, as honest and creative as possible. Am I [00:48:00] saying to add, um, comments Poetic license to your stories and enhance them.
If you’re comfortable to do that, um, then, you know, it’s up to you. Uh, for us, it’s, it’s, it’s an SEO play. It’s, it’s the link. Um, if you’re, if it’s more of a brand play, um, then, you know, you want to try and keep your brand as on point as possible. I’ll give an example. I did a piece in the, the new, well, I won a link in the New York post when I was doing a personal outreach, my personal finance site doing Harrow.
Uh, they were looking for an, you know, Someone who had lost money in crypto. So, you know, as a finance quote unquote expert, it matched my relevancy. Um, it was going to be about, you know, crypto and I had lost some money in crypto. I’d lost 500 in like some scam coin or something. I told the journalist it was 5, 000 cause I thought that was more interesting and I won the link.
So. A bit of poetic enhancement and like license within your, your opinion or your personal touch. Um, you know, we all do this. If you’re telling a story around having a beer with a barbecue and something [00:49:00] happened that was interesting and you can make it slightly more interesting. Now that’s down to your own personal preference.
Um, But yeah, I would definitely say that outside of that 90 percent of the bulk of the queries, um, where you’ve just got to get all those core elements, right? Then these opinion pieces or these genuine, um, expert pieces, uh, for the genuine expert ones, just go for it. If you are an expert, then have an opinion, be brash about it, be bold.
Um, put your opinion out there to the journalist and you know, they’re going to read it and either they’ll like it or they won’t. Um, and then for the opinion pieces, uh, go for it. Be as creative as you feel free to be. Um, and then if you don’t get the link after the fact, reach out to the editor of the publication, reach out to the editorial corrections department of the publication, reach out to the original journalist and try and find some form of like high level editor and just say, Hey, look, you know, you quoted my opinion in this piece.
It’d be really nice if you could just add a link to my website. So your readers can find me, let’s say. Um, and 60 percent of the time they’ll, they’ll just add that in. So
Jared: I’m glad you touched on [00:50:00] that because, you know, at the end of the day, I’ll go back to your original point, like The link isn’t guaranteed.
They’re there to source experts to bolster their articles and whether they don’t know that the link is valuable to you or whether that’s on purpose. Um, sometimes you, you don’t get the link, but good tip. Um, Hey, as we’re coming to an end, that was all very good, by the way. Thank you for sharing all that.
Cause I think those are probably questions. A lot of people are thinking about, but maybe didn’t address. Uh, and you got kind of got to the core of that. Um, you touched on it briefly. Let’s kind of wrap it up with this question. The difference between pitching. For PR links versus running a digital PR campaign.
Obviously at your business, linkify, um, you have a lot of experience, understand the nuances here and the differences, maybe walk people through that. So we do put a fine point on it and people do understand the differences there.
Chris: Okay. Yeah. Um, it’s really interesting, actually, especially when we have like calls with clients, because, uh, as a company ourselves, we’ve been learning to what the best way to, um, communicate the [00:51:00] difference.
Um, and it, and. I think it depends on like what it is that you want out of, of it. And actually that is what it boils down to, I suppose, in, in many respects. So with expert commentary, the journalist is working on an article that’s been commissioned from, you know, the place of work or, you know, as a freelancer from a publication, um, and.
Within that article, they are looking for an expert that they are going to quote. And like we’ve said, there’s no guarantee of a link, but the journalist will clearly identify what the article is that they’re writing, you know, at least the title or the broad topic, the publication that they’re writing the article for, uh, and the sort of expert that they’re looking for and the question that they want you to answer.
So that allows you then to. Cherry pick quote unquote, the domains that you want to win links from by just answering the journalist requests from the journalists that are writing an article [00:52:00] on a publication that you want to link from and where your expertise align. Um, and there are some fantastic publications that are continually sourcing expert commentary, or at least the journalists that are writing for them are sourcing expert commentary, um, via this, this route.
So. Absolutely great way to get some huge links, Forbes, New York times, New York posts, some great UK publications as well. And many of these publications, in fact, this is the only way, um, that you can win a link. So there, many of the publications that we see where. The journalists are sourcing expert commentary for them.
They’re actually not receptive to to digital PR, uh, at all. So you’ll never find, um, like a digital PR campaign that goes viral on multiple websites, these websites that they’re not interested. That’s, you know, that’s not what they do. They outsource their content or they have in house writers and they allow their writers to source for expert commentary.
So the downside of this, uh, part, especially, um, well, from a, from a, An [00:53:00] individual perspective, there really isn’t much downside. You are answering, um, these expert comment pieces, um, actually small downside. Um, the, the small downside is that you’re not, you don’t have any control over the story, um, on what, what they’re talking about.
You’re just trying to sort of shoehorn your credibility into a journalist’s article and showcase your credentials and your credibility via the comments that you give and by the quotes that they include. Um, So while this is a great SEO play and great for those brand features and huge links, um, you don’t have that, that narrative control, uh, to, to an extent.
And then obviously on a, on a client side, we need the ability to pitch creatively as that client so that, that we just need that permission from, from that side, the PR campaign. However, uh, we flip things. So we are actually controlling the narrative. So we are taking and creating a story and taking it to the journalists.
So that way we have total control over the narrative. [00:54:00] So that’s where we can really position the brand. Um, but again, to the extent that the story is going to be of interest, like we can’t just say, well, we’re writing a story about Jared Bowman being the host of niche pursuits and hope that it gets picked up by all the major publications in the world.
Cause no offense, it might not be the most interesting story. On the, uh, yeah. Um, although we have far more control than just seeing what the journalists are writing about and see whether or not we fit that, that particular narrative. So we do have far more control. We can come up with the, the, the idea. Um, let’s say you own, um.
Like a YNYL site in the health niche. Um, let’s say you’re really pushing a certain type of exercise or lifestyle that’s really good for, for weight loss or whatnot. We can put together something really interesting that will really align well with your brand. Um, that we know journalists have historically covered and are likely to cover again in the future.
Um, we can ideate multiple ideas. Um, and then we can, um, pick, uh, different, uh, cherry pick [00:55:00] journalists from publications that we know are receptive to interesting PR campaigns. And then we can send those, um, PR, um, PR campaigns out to those journalists. And we can see if they get picked up. If they don’t get picked up, we can tweak those stories.
We can tweak the email lists and, uh, we can keep going until hopefully it gets picked up, you know, either quite well or really well and goes viral. You’ve seen the ones that go viral. Uh, You’ll often see them in like your Google, um, discover feed or whatnot. So I’d say that’s the core difference. Um, controlling the narrative much more, much more on, on a PR campaign side, uh, less so on the expert quote side.
Um, and then you have a real mix of domains that are and aren’t available on both sides. So for example, on the, the sort of expert quote side. Uh, realtor. com, um, is a great publication for, you know, real estate clients, um, home improvement clients, interior design clients. Um, we, we win this domain many, many times on, on the expert quote [00:56:00] side, but, uh, it’s just not receptive at all to PR campaigns.
So you, and then, you know, vice versa as well. So you have the way that we suggest to people to do, um, is if you can always start with expert quote, that’s going to. you know, build your wishlist of domains that you can get via that method of, of link building. Um, and then, you know, once you’ve exhausted that, or you want to try and expand the scope of the publications that you’re on, um, then you could start looking at PR campaigns and a final tip I’ll leave your audience.
You can start trying this yourself as well. Um, there’s, um, There’s a, there’s a platform owned by, um, oh God, the, the names escape me. Now, uh, it’s owned by Semrush. Um, it’s like an all in one PR, uh, platform. The names escape me, um, message me on Twitter and I’ll tell you what it is. Um, it’s very inexpensive.
I think it’s like 99. Dollars a month, and you can build the PR campaigns in there. You can build the email lists. Obviously it’s not, you know, the greatest industry standard of tools, [00:57:00] but it really can get you started. Um, and especially if you can come with a good idea and with the use of AI today, you can ideate really quickly, really innovatively build on that yourselves.
Um, you can use some really interesting ways to enhance those email lists. So, you know, look for. Recent news articles that have covered similar topic, find those journalists, find those journalists, emails, add them to, you know, a CA Excel, Excel file or whatever, and upload that. So there’s many creative things you can do, and there’s a real good entryway into that, um, arena for, for a very low monthly payment.
Um, and you can see how you can get on with that as well. So
Jared: many different ways to go about getting your brand out there. I hadn’t thought about the connection that you made between, there are just some domains that are unavailable in the traditional response style methodology that are only available to digital PR campaigns.
That’s interesting. You’re you’re that, that kind of opens up new doors when you think about which one to go after and when to go after them.
Chris: Yeah. And as well you can, um, you can leverage both sides of the coin to, [00:58:00] um, for opportunities against each other as well. So you may have answered a journalist request a couple of times and that journalist may come back to, you know, they met many journalists or freelance journalists, you know, they’re there.
They got contacted. They’re writing articles for some publications, and maybe they’re also man in the desk on, you know, a news publication as well. And they’ll say to you, Hey, look, or, you know, I’m maybe they’re running freelance PR campaigns for clients as well. And they’ll come to you and say, Hey, I quoted you in, you know, a couple of my previous articles.
I’m actually doing a PR campaign for a client now. Uh, we actually need your expertise in this piece. Can, can you provide some commentary here and then you may be able to get yourself into their PR campaign. And if that does well and gets picked up by 30 publications, you can see how it’s all about relationship building as well.
So, so keep that at the back of your mind, um, with any communication that you’re having with journalists on, on either side of the coin, build and develop and nurture those relationships because they can become really fruitful.
Jared: Whew, Chris, that hour absolutely flew by. You were right. So much has changed and is constantly changing.
I mean, you dropped several things that [00:59:00] have happened in the last 24 hours here. Yeah, I know. Yeah. I had to make a note of
Chris: the actual, um, the new name of it. So source of sources now that. com for the new,
Jared: I can’t even call it hero anymore. It’s all in our, in our agenda. It’s hero. And it, I couldn’t even say it again because I, I didn’t have the right name.
So. Wow. Uh, Hey, so really quickly, you are with linkify. Tell us where we can follow along with what you’re doing. Do you share stuff like this? Um, anywhere that we can kind of, that people can follow along with it. Um, maybe outline what services you guys offer at linkify as well.
Chris: Yeah. So, uh, we do both, uh, so we’ll, we’ll, we can do expert, um, quote, pitch, uh, expert quote for you on your behalf.
So that’s like our harrow packages. Um, and then we also do PR campaigns as well, uh, where we can, um, look at your brand, ideate the stories, put together the story and, um, you know, run with it and, uh, win links for you, uh, that way. So, uh, yeah, uh, you can find us at [01:00:00] linkify. io, um, on Twitter, I’m linkify underscore.
Uh, and then, uh, if you want to do any, I think, like I said, a great way to start is with the expert quotes. Um, I can give your audience 20 percent off as well. If they use niche pursuits, 20, I think is the code. Um, so they can just go to the website, check out and we’ll give them a 20 percent discount on any, any of our packages.
And if they want to talk about PR, then they can book a call as well. And we can look after them on that side as well.
Jared: Awesome. Chris, thank you for coming back on. I can see, I knew in advance, but I can see exactly why a part two is necessary. So much has changed since the first one. But if you haven’t listened to the first one, just a reminder, go back.
There’s still a ton of value, especially if you’re looking for kind of the foundational elements of why and how to build these because a lot hasn’t changed fundamentally. Journalists need people to quote. And so there’s a lot of value there too. But Chris, thanks so much for coming on board until next time.
Uh, with the changes coming so fast and thick, we might have you back again, um, relatively soon, but until next time, thanks so much for coming on. [01:01:00] Thanks Jared. It’s been
Chris: a pleasure. Thank you very much.
Jared: Cheers.
