Be The Media Creating And Accelerating Your Message
In February of 2009 Michelle Tennant Nicholson of Wasabi Publicity
, Inc., sat down to speak with David Mathison author of Be the Media the ultimate guide on how to create and accelerate your message your way. From self-published authors, bloggers to community owned TV, film producers and musicians, there has never been such a comprehensive guide. Phil Donahue said this book, "Takes publishing and broadcasting power away from industrial titans and hands it to you."
Heres the transcript:
Michelle Tennant:Hi everyone. It is February 19th and Im Michelle Tennant. I am known to most as Story Teller to the Media and you can actually read my blog at storytellertothemedia.com. I co-own Wasabi Publicity, Incorporated and also a technology company that is best known for presskit247.com. And what I want to do today is talk to you and everybody on the call about David Mathison, who Im going to introduce in just a minute. But lets do a little bit of housekeeping first.
This is what we generally have been doing for years and years and years, something called the Wasabi Club, so its a very informal meeting where we get to talk about a compelling topic in the area of PR and marketing. And rather than just having a bunch of talking heads at you, we actually open up the forum so that its more like a club atmosphere, like we would just be sitting around having drinks somewhere and shooting I almost said a little blue word there (laughs) thats how casual we are, I almost said a cuss word but they are just like talking about different things that we would in our trade anyway, and we just kinda open it up to business owners in case they wanna find out publicists and marketing professionals and all of us who are getting the buzz out there, what we actually talk about.
And so, if youre with us and you want to just put us on the speaker and you want to mute yourself, you wanna hit *6, to mute yourself and to unmute yourself and you wanna actually ask a question or talk with us, you hit *7. And Ill actually remind you about that in the future. So, but anyway, without any further adieux, I want to talk about this great, great guy that we have today for the Wasabi Club. His name is David Mathison. So, not only did he just write this op Be The Media, which you can, if youre in front of your computer, which most of us are, you can just go right to Bethemedia.com and look at it. But he is also just somebody who used to be a [skip] let me just do the bio, some of the accolades I have right here in front of me, cause he is a pretty big deal. Im very excited to have him here. So, David, you got a lot of stuff here. Im just gonna go for it. Okay?
David Mathison:Sure.
Michelle Tennant:From 1998 to 2002, he was the founder and CEO of Kinecta, a syndication services provider for you know, they do Reuters, the Financial Times, The Economist, Dow Investments and Yahoo. I mean you get the picture of how big deal this guy is. So, as CEO, Mathison raised $30 million in venture in strategic funding in less than two years. And now, Kinecta is actually part of Oracle, which most of us know. And before that, Mathison was the Vice President for Reuters, the worlds largest news agency where he pioneered standard base online syndication.
So, if youre in the PR industry, Reuters is like big, big deal, in the line with all the other big syndicaters like the Associate Press and so forth, so you get a Reuters hit as a publicist, then you got that hanging that up on your wall as something that youre really proud of. And the other thing that he does, is that he really is, he serves on the board [beep] Media Freedom Foundation, The Mountain Play and webhood.org and served on the board of Conveners of Marin Community Media Center. So some of the people from California might actually be on and be really excited to hear from David today, too. And he has a Masters Degree in International Affairs from Columbia University.
And so, all that expert in every area and were really excited. If you havent already gotten a copy of Be the Media, youve got to, cause this is one of those books that is really gonna be a bible for many of us for the future, especially when it comes to doing it yourself and doing it your way, rather than actually being pushed or really forced into a particular way of doing something that doesnt really fit with your own integrity. So, it really is an honor and a privilege to speak to you today, David. Welcome.
David Mathison:Thanks so much Michelle. Hi everybody from the Wasabi Club and others who have joined the call from some of my tweets maybe, and some of my Facebook status, Im glad youre all here.
Michelle Tennant:Yeah, and so heres how it goes, okay? On the Wasabi Club first of all, we do sort of a little reality sort of check in with what Im dealing with, at Wasabi Publicity and our campaigns, and then we kind of open it up to other people who are on the phone to really talk about whats on their minds with regards to well this particular talk were gonna talk about Twitter. So, Im gonna give you an opportunity to talk about that in just a minute, but let me first pose a question. So if we go through the call, what we all like to do, cause the miracle of the Wasabi Club from the past is we [skip] pose in our club and then somebody will find a solution that benefits all of us, and Ive gotten emails that theyre like, my god, you know?
I took the suggestion of what other people on the Wasabi Club said and I completely revamped my business and doing really well and so forth. So, Ive been pretty amazed at some of the brainstorming and the creative energy that comes out of these calls. So, I would also like to leave the call today with something fresh for all of us. I mean, a lot of us are already using Twitter. Were already using social networking sites [skip] gonna tell us today, David, about the do it your self way and how we can actually all be the media. But Im really interested in whats relevant and on our minds today.
So, Ill pose the first challenge, if you will. So, one of the things that I do everyday, David, is Im out talking to the media and pitching them story ideas on my clients. And I oftentimes struggle between knowing, do I use Twitter for that or should I use personalized emails? It used to be, because Ive been doing this for 20 years, [beep] pretty clear. You pick up the phone. You send some mail. You actually maybe you know, well it used to be just fax, you couldnt even send an email. Today youve got the email factor. How do you know when its the best to actually send it via a social networking site or send it through an email?
I think what Im doing right now, just to give you kind of an insight, is if I know my person that Im targeting doesnt really like email, and Im trying to get her attention? Like I did this today, actually, cause I knew that she actually pays more attention to her social networking site, so I sent her a message through linked-in and I got a message right away back. I was like Oh, awesome, you know? So, but I knew that if I sent her an email, sometimes her emails get lost. So, how would you advise the rest of us on how to prioritize whether were using Twitter, linked-in, and the rest and [beep] you actually give advice on which one, maybe give us a little one liner on what it is, a little definition in case there actually is somebody on the line who might not know what were talking about.
David Mathison:You really have to establish relationships. I mean, thats exactly the point of my call today, which is a lot of people are joining the call because they heard that I sold 5,004 books on Twitter through one connection and theyre kinda like Oh my god. I wanna know how that happened. And to be honest, just like you said, its really understanding -. Its just basic follow up and follow through on understanding whos listening and what way they prefer to have their information.
You know, its funny. I sent out a tweet, a direct message yesterday. I was announcing my book launch and the person said No, not interested. And then I followed up with an email on Facebook and said Do you mind if we have a phone call? and I gave her a little bit more information. And we followed up on a phone call today and sure enough, now shes in the plan. So, you know, sometimes it really, I think especially for those high end journalists and those people who are really busy everyday, some of them prefer email, some of them prefer linked-in, some of them prefer telephones, but it really is a requirement of everybody out there to get to know the audience.
And just if we speak specifically to Twitter, youd be surprised at how quickly giant news organizations, like I have a lot of journalists following my Twitter feed and the New York Times, CNN, even Rick Sanchez and others at CNN have Twitter feeds and theyre watching it. And even with Reuters, you know, Biz Stone, the founder of Twitter was interviewed by Roy OConnor and Biz said that Reuters began watching Twitter for trends and found out that it worked really well and the Twitter folks even gave [skip] to the Reuters lab people so that they could use it more effectively. So, its interesting.
Sometimes Twitter is used especially for breaking events. The recent earthquake in California, it was announced nine minutes before the first Associated Press alert came out. The earthquake was already being used in Twitter. So, like journalists are actually watching Twitter for breaking news. Now how bizarre is that? Usually Reuters and Associated Press are fighting each other to basically be the lead on the story, to be the first news organization to announce these stories, and now some of these news organizations are watching Twitter feeds to find out breaking news. Its fascinating.
Michelle Tennant:And dont you remember also, years ago, before we really started using social networking, the news sources were really watching bloggers. So, its interesting to see the entire environment on the internet evolve and grow, dont you think?
David Mathison:Absolutely and thats interesting, too, because now weve had a saddle search engines like Google for websites, and now weve got Technorati for blogs and recently, Twitter just bought a search engine Sumize I think its called, and so that, again is critical for journalists because now imagine if you could search the real Twitter stream. It was great to, you know, Google search on websites can be days or even weeks old. But a Technorati search on a blog can be the same day. Well, if you could get almost instantaneous news by searching the Twitter stream, thats a really powerful tool. So Twitter has got some really interesting applications happening as we speak.
Michelle Tennant:So to your advice to someone like me, a publicist whos pitching people like I mean, right before the call I got off helping Good Morning America with something, yet another segment. And so, you know, Ive got regular producers and reporters to rely on me to connect them with families, to connect them with reliable, credible sources. You know, Ive got different tools that Ive created with my IT team. Like weve got a, like I was talking about with our online press kits.
We just launched something last week called pitchrate.com and if youre in front of your computer you can actually take a look at it. Pitchrate.com is a free service where were connecting the media with experts and people who want to serve the media, so the media in a closed manner so they dont actually have to share their email address, they can go on there and say This is the need that I have. And then all the experts and all the publicists can pitch them and its rated based on the star system, one to five stars. And then the experts can then be rated in the future. So Ive got those tools and then Ive got Im just getting -.
Its like my crayon box is getting really full, David, right? So what crayon do I pull out? So then Ill play, you know, Im [skip] miracle Im like, Use pitch rate cause pitch rate is really one of those tools thats gonna be efficient use for all [skip] to really connect with the media in the background and stuff, but when Im actually driving for a relationship, you know, what is that? A phone call or -? Like how do you know? How do you know when youre actually using your social networking tools and when you pull out the crayon from the crayon box, what are you asking yourself?
David Mathison:Right, and it gets more and more challenging as you build out your base. So, Ive got 3,500 followers in Facebook and 2,500 followers on Twitter, like how do you really identify Well out of each of these followers, who are the most important people? You know, according to the story or according to topic and thats where I say, like the whole point of my being on this call today is to say that yes, Ive sold 5,004 books through a Twitter connection, but it was good old fashioned gumshoe. You know, it was good old fashioned finding out. I think a lot of people are on Twitter now or on Facebook and just basically aggregating followers or aggregating friends and not really taking the time to find out who those friends and followers are.
The whole point of my call today is to say You need to treat these followers as [beep] gold. You know, if youre not doing the hard work of finding out Okay, who is that person that just followed me? Let me go to their Twitter profile. Let me go to their -. On their Twitter profile, they have a link to a blog or to a website, lets go to their blog. Lets go to their website. Lets go search them on Facebook and see what they have on their info page in Facebook and befriend them and find out more and more about them. And I think the more that you find out about your leads, the better able youll be able to determine how they want to be followed up with.
And interestingly enough, this 5,004 book sale came from a Twitter follow up and then I followed up with them and then I went to their Facebook page and then I went to their homepage and then I went to their blog and really, it was just doing old fashioned detective work to find out how that person wanted to be approached and what the message should be that I would approach them with. And we can get into the details of that if you like because its kind of a fascinating story of -.
Michelle Tennant:No, I really do. Were gonna give you a chance to do that in just a minute, David. Usually right about 15 minutes after the Wasabi Club, I actually take a moment and say For those of you who want to ask questions, remember it *7 to unmute yourselves. If youre having lunch or making noise in the background, you want to mute yourself, just hit *6. I intentionally now I can mute all yall, but I actually want us to have a conversation. So this is the time were now gonna move into the next phase, where were actually gonna start doing some Q&A with David.
But lets just give him about five minute to really kind of round out the story of how it happened, because I know thats what were all really in here today. And then well actually move into questions and answers and so forth, so Ill let you know when were gonna open up for questions, but David, go ahead and I really wouldnt have -. What Im hearing you say today, is Look, Michelle, youre already doing a lot of work on the phone and with your email and maybe spend as much time developing those Twitter connections that you would in developing those relationships on the phone. Thats what Im hearing you say.
David Mathison:Everybody is an important, you know, anyone that comes and follows you in Twitter could be a critical lead for you, absolutely. And treat it just like you would treat any other relationship and really investigate that. Now maybe youll find that nine out ten, but you get the same thing at a trade conference, right? Nine of ten leads maybe not into anything at all, but there may be one golden lead in there and I think thats what I see a lot of going on, is that a lot of people are just treating them as just followers and not really treating them as leads and as human beings and people that they may have interesting partnership opportunities with.
Michelle Tennant:Well as youre talking about Twitter, if youre in front of your computer, lets all go to David and so that were following him, follow him, its Twitter.com/Bethemedia, so Im looking now. Of course, please follow me too. I dont have thousands and thousands like David does, by Im Twitter.com/michelletennant. But go ahead David, Im on here with you. Im lookin at there you are. Youve told everybody about the Wasabi Club today and take us back in time before you sold the 5,000. I wanna know.
David Mathison:Thats actually we should. Maybe well take a step back, I mean the big point I want to get across is somebody followed me on Twitter. In one day they bought I then had an auto response message. Whenever I get a follower, it automatically replies, Thank you for following me on Twitter. I like you already. You know, something silly, but then pointing them to my website. And its the result of that pointer to my website ended up that the follower bought four books. So, of course, whenever somebody buys a book, I jump for joy, but when someone buys five books Im ready to send roses.
So, I sent them a direct message saying Well thank you very much. And then that turned into ten days later, that within a couple of days, I was invited to speak at Baruch College in New York City, from this same connection on a symposium on sustainable journalism. And then that was basically the night after that, we shook hands on a 5,000 book deal and 20 days later, from initial contact, I had a wire transfer into my account for 5,000 books. So I sold 5,004 books. But its interesting, I think Im gonna go back a little bit because not everyones really on the same page with Twitter. Lets make sure everyone kind of understands what it is and how to use it.
Michelle Tennant:Yeah, please. Thats great.
David Mathison:Three years ago, when I heard of Twitter, I thought it was just a silly little toy, you know, youre limited to 140 characters and so you cant really tell a large story, but based on what happened to me over the last 20 days, I can say its definitely not a toy.
by: Michelle Tennant
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