I recently enjoyed a profitable month.

Why? Because I scored not one but two pieces of free publicity:

Those two pieces of free publicity were worth a combined $1,050, according to PR superstar Dave Platter, who’s scored more than $1 billion of free publicity for his clients.

Dave’s calculations are based on a formula used by Meltwater (media monitoring software), which takes into account the publication’s audience and how much you’d have to pay to advertise in that publication.

Do you want free publicity for your small business? If so, let me explain how to get it.

How I got my first piece of free publicity

I got the first bit of free publicity by doing two things.

First, I wrote a guest column and media release relevant to small business owners.

Second, I pitched my content by sending a cold email to the editors of Inside Small Business and a rival publication. (The other publication didn’t reply.) 

This was my email:

Subject line 

Media release / guest column – consumers are crying out for quality content right now

Text

Hi [Name],

I’m the head of content at Hunter & Scribe, a content marketing agency.

Australians desperately want SMEs to show leadership right now by publishing helpful information.

I’ve shared my thoughts in both a media release and guest column – you can publish whichever best suits your publishing needs.

Feel free to call me on [phone number] if you need to ask any follow-up questions. I know you work on tight deadlines, so if you get my voicemail, I’ll call you back ASAP.

Nick

The email was concise yet informative, with every word carefully chosen:

  • The subject line grabbed the editors’ attention
  • Paragraph 1 established my credentials
  • Paragraph 2 raised an issue relevant to the editors’ audience
  • Paragraph 3 proved I was on the editors’ side
  • Paragraph 4 highlighted I would be easy to work with

Make it easy for them to give you free publicity

The editor of Inside Small Business is a nice guy, but he didn’t publish my guest column as an act of charity. He published it because it provided valuable information to his audience.

In other words, the editor was looking out for his readers’ interests, not mine, which is what a good editor does.

So if you want to get free publicity for your small business, you need to provide content that the gatekeepers (i.e. editors) would consider interesting and relevant for their audience. 

You also need to be easy to work with, because editors are busy people and are often under pressure.

Oh, and you also need luck, because editors receive numerous media releases and guest columns every day, and there are only so many they can publish.

How I got my second piece of free publicity

While I hustled to get the first bit of free publicity, the second fell into my lap.

I was chatting to the editor of Travel Weekly, an old friend, about an unrelated matter, when he raised the idea of a guest column.

So that was clearly a lucky break. However, he wouldn’t have made the offer if he wasn’t confident I would deliver him content that would be interesting and relevant to his audience.

The lesson here is that relationships and reputations matter. The more relationships you have and the stronger your reputation, the more opportunities will fall into your lap.

How you can get free publicity

Do you want free publicity for your small business? If so, follow this three-step formula:

  1. Identify a target publication
  2. Write content that would be interesting and relevant to that publication’s audience
  3. Pitch this content with an email that appeals to the editor’s interests (not yours)

You also need luck, because even if you write the greatest media releases and the greatest email pitches, your submissions are more likely to be rejected than accepted.

A 10% success rate would be good. A 50% success rate would be extraordinary.

So while quality is important, so is quantity. If you want free media coverage, you need to keep writing media releases and guest columns, month after month after month. Keep pitching and – eventually – you’ll succeed.