The personal touch: How raising your profile can improve your PR

There’s plenty of advice about how to get PR and write press releases but the fact remains that it can be incredibly hard for small businesses to get press coverage. Try promoting yourself, advises Dee Blick, so you can use your profile to help you get exposure

I attended a seminar recently in which the speaker explained how to gain coverage in magazines and newspapers. He made it sound incredibly straightforward — an idiot’s guide to PR, no more than the process of finding a newsworthy story and targeting the right media before hey presto, you're in print.

In my experience, it's not quite this easy. You can have a compelling and newsworthy story but so can hundreds of other people in your sector. You are in a beauty parade, often with little to choose between you.

So what could make your story jump out? What about raising your profile so that your media contact is not only inspired by your story, they are inspired by you as a person? They're interested in what you have to say because it comes from you.

This is an approach that has worked for me on many occasions, although I hasten to add that I still get my share of rejections. That said, in the past five years, I’ve appeared on the BBC as a marketing entrepreneur, I've been interviewed by the Financial Times and The Mail on Sunday and my input, by way of interviews, articles and expertise continues to be sought by many trade and business magazines and good websites.

I'm not all that special and different from other marketing practitioners. I've just been adept at raising my profile in the following ways. I hope you find my approach useful.

1. Despite having a fear of public speaking, I volunteered to speak at many exhibitions, business networking events and seminars as a marketing expert in my early months of trading — when nobody knew about me. Why? Firstly, people admire anyone with the guts to stand up and speak so you are invited to bigger and better events. Secondly, your name, your business details and your expertise is included in every event communication, which in itself constitutes positive PR. What's more, with online communications, you start to build your name and profile on Google. When a journalist looks you up, hey presto your details appear, linked to the events that you have spoken at. You’re on your way to raising your positive profile. 
2. I've consistently responded to blogs and forums on websites that are visited by journalists on the lookout for an interesting person and an interesting story. If you can go down the route of sharing your advice freely and not attempting to sell, you’ll build your profile nicely. And of course you’re continuing to build your profile online. The BBC found me via a blog, as did the editor of a Royal Mail business magazine.
3. I wrote my own biography as soon as I began to raise my profile. A 200-word summary of my key professional achievements and qualifications and a summary of my public speaking activities plus a snapshot of how I contributed as an expert to blogs and forums. In my early months there was not an awful lot to say but it was better than sending an article on its own to a journalist. Read the author biographies on the back cover of business books if you want to know how to write your biography and if you email me I'll send you a copy of mine as a guide. Your biography gives a journalist an insight into you as a person and what makes you interesting and credible. It could make you stand out in that beauty parade. 

Dee Blick is a Chartered Marketer who cut her marketing teeth in large companies. However, a ‘eureka’ moment convinced her that her practical approach could help small firms get real results. Dee’s book, Powerful Marketing on a Shoestring Budget for Small Businesses, is a straight-talking marketing guide with five stars on Amazon. For more information about Dee, go to the Marketing Gym website.

Dee Blick on Marketing Donut:

Marketing on a shoestring

Dragon’s Den is bad PR for business, say experts

How small firms can get real results with CRM

More articles on PR:

Positive press

How to create press and media coverage