Get Press Every Month – Brian Dean

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How To Get Press Coverage On Major Media Outlets & Industry-Leading Blogs… Every Month

Even if… you’re in a “boring” niche.

Even if… you don’t have connections with journalists.

Even if… you have zero experience with public relations.

Hi, I’m Brian Dean, founder and CEO of Backlinko.

Today, I get covered in the national media all the time, including Inc, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, U.S. News & World Report, Success Magazine, Vox, Forbe, The Next Web, HuffPost, TechCrunch, and dozens more.

Plus, industry-leading blogs, like Intercom, Salesforce and HubSpot.

This press coverage generates targeted traffic, authority backlinks, high-converting leads, and paying customers. Every single month like clockwork.

Which drives the growth of my growing, multi-million dollar business.

But if you rewind to just a few years ago, I didn’t have any of that.

Back then, public relations was a huge struggle for me. I didn’t have an audience. I didn’t have relationships with influential journalists. And I definitely didn’t have a system for getting news sites to cover my business month after month.

In fact…

My First Attempt at PR Was a Complete Disaster

A few years ago, I realized that PR could help take my business to the next level.

At that point, most of my links and mentions came from small to medium sized SEO blogs.

These links and mentions were OK. In fact, they helped Backlinko get some early traction.

The thing was, I was a brand new player in the insanely competitive digital marketing space. And I knew that I needed to step my game up if I was going to have a chance in this cutthroat industry.

Otherwise, my traffic (and business as a whole) was going to hit a growth ceiling.

In fact, I could already see my growth start to stall a little bit.

When I first started Backlinko, my traffic doubled every other month. But once I started to rub up against competing sites with hundreds (or even thousands) of employees, my traffic growth suddenly stopped.

Like many people, I knew that getting press coverage could help me break through this invisible barrier. Give me an edge over my entrenched competitors. And bring in targeted traffic, leads and customers.

(Plus, I could finally put those cool “Featured On” logos on my homepage )

In short: I needed to get press. And lots of it.

Unfortunately, everything I tried DIDN’T WORK.

Why Most “PR Best Practices” Fail

Once I realized that PR could accelerate the growth of my business, I got to work.

Specifically, I tried a handful of “public relations best practices”.

And literally none of them worked.

I’m sure you’ve tried some of these “best practices” yourself:

• “You need to have relationships with journalists”

You don’t. Seriously… you don’t. Back in the day when I saw someone get press coverage I’d think: “they probably had an existing relationship with that journalist”. Well, as it turns out, I was wrong.

Sure, relationships can definitely help. But they’re 100% not required to succeed with PR.

Which makes sense if you think about it: reporters have a job to do. They need to write interesting stories that bring in clicks. Otherwise, they’re out of the job. So a reporter’s goal isn’t to write about their buddies. It’s to publish content that gets clicked on.

In fact, of the thousands of press mentions that I’ve received, I’d say that maybe 10 were due to a relationship I had with the person that wrote the story. The other 99.9% were directly thanks to the proven PR system that I use today.

• “You need to grind it out on Help a Reporter Out (HARO)”

HARO might have worked back in the day. But in 2021 it’s insanely hit or miss.

In fact, I signed for HARO when it first came out. Back then, it actually worked pretty well. But since then, the journalist/marketer ratio on HARO has completely flipped. The typical reporter gets HUNDREDS of pitches per source request.

So even if you send the PERFECT reply, you’ve literally got a <1% chance of getting coverage.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to play the press coverage lottery. I prefer to use proven strategies that work consistently. And HARO is FAR from consistent. In fact, it’s a huge time suck that usually provides little (if any) return. Especially when you compare HARO to more advanced PR strategies that I’m going to cover in a minute.

• “You should try a crazy publicity stunt!”

This is yet another piece of horrible PR advice that I see all the time on marketing blogs. And if you look at the author, it’s usually a random freelance writer that’s never actually done PR themselves. They also tend to cherry pick the 1 out of 10,000 stunts that actually got coverage. And ignore the vast majority that fell completely flat.

Sure, a publicity stunt like “we made the world’s biggest ham sandwich!” can work. Sometimes. But it’s extremely unlikely. And if getting press is important for your business (which it should be), then you want to focus your time and effort on strategies that are PROVEN to work. Not random publicity stunts that usually fail.

• “Hiring a PR firm can really help”

Most PR firms promise the moon. But deliver next to nothing.

Unfortunately, this is another lesson I had to learn the hard way. Like I mentioned earlier, my first go at PR was a complete disaster. That was frustrating enough. But to make matters worse, I didn’t know WHY my PR efforts weren’t working. And one day I thought to myself: “I’ll hire an agency. They’ll know what to do!”.

I quickly found a PR firm that promised me “news coverage and features” thanks to their “Rolodex of top-tier journalists”. They even said they could get me interviewed on TV. TV! I was so excited that I sent them their first monthly retainer payment that day.

And we immediately got to work on all of the PR stuff you’re “supposed” to do: press kits, “communications plans” and other outdated approaches.

How many press mentions did that firm get me? Zero. Literally nothing. It was a complete waste of time.

And after following all of this terrible advice for about a year, and getting nowhere, I realized something:

Most of the advice that you read out there on PR is well-meaning… but severely outdated.

That’s because most PR “experts” got started over 10 years ago. Back then, press kits, corporate communications plans and other old school PR tactics used to work. But the PR world has completely changed since then. In a VERY big way.

And to get press coverage for your business today, you need to tap into a completely different approach. Speaking of…

That’s When I Decided to Try a Completely NEW Approach

After about a year of banging my head against a wall, I decided to switch things up.

Instead of blindly following outdated PR “best practices”, I would take matters into my own hands.

Specifically, I reversed engineered how other businesses in my space were getting press. As it turned out, their press mentions were NOT due to a fancy press kit. Or existing relationships with reporters.

In fact, almost all of their coverage was thanks to one thing: data.

Companies that published data got press on a regular basis. Including features (not just mentions) on major media outlets and industry-leading blogs.

I wanted to see if this approach would work also for me: someone that struggled with PR. Was in a boring niche. And had zero relationships with journalists.

So instead of publishing a list post or guide like I usually did, I published a post that contained data. The exact type of data that journalists that cover the digital marketing space were interested in.

And it worked!

For the first time ever, I got featured on major news sites, like Techcrunch, Entrepreneur, and The Next Web.

All of which brought in a massive spike in traffic.

In fact, my traffic increased by 32.38% compared to the month before. That’s the power of PR done right.

Here’s the best part:

That traffic spike didn’t ever really die down.

Obviously, my site’s overall traffic dipped a little bit once the buzz started to fade.

But, as you can see, this single PR campaign set a new baseline for my traffic moving forward.

Before my little DIY PR campaign, I was getting 163,697 visitors per month. After it? My site was bringing in an average of 238,301 monthly visitors.

(Today, my site brings in 477,248 visitors every month. More on that later)

How is this possible?

As I learned from this experience, coverage on a popular news site can lead to lots of features and mentions on OTHER websites.

(I call this “The PR Chain Reaction”)

For example, one of my first PR successful campaigns got me a nice feature on Entrepreneur.

Which directly led to coverage on a bunch of other authoritative blogs and news sites.

I quickly realized that PR can directly lead to increased brand awareness, authority backlinks, and hundreds of social shares for my business. Which ended up driving a consistent stream of targeted visitors to my site from social media, SEO and blogs. Month after month.

Here’s What Happened Next…

Needless to say, I was PUMPED that I finally found something that actually worked.

But I had this nagging thought in the back of my mind: “Was this the type of approach that could work consistently? Or was it just a fluke?”.

As they say, “Once you’re lucky. Twice you’re good”.

And I needed to find out if this strategy was something that I could scale. Or just a lucky break.

So over the next 18 months, I tried out this same strategy several more times.

And just like the first time, I found myself getting more press coverage than I ever thought was possible.

Which helped increase my site’s traffic by 64.72% over that timespan.

It felt like I discovered some sort of PR cheat code.

Before, I struggled to get journalists to even reply to my emails. And out of nowhere my business was getting press every single month. Practically on autopilot.

To be clear: Not every campaign is a blockbuster hit. Some do better than others. But even our worst-performing campaigns bring in significant amounts of traffic and press coverage. And most important of all, a GREAT ROI.

All in all, PR has been one of the key drivers of my online business. In fact, PR has directly helped Backlinko grow from a complete unknown into one of the most popular marketing blogs on the planet.

That said, PR isn’t just for getting more traffic (although it’s great for that too). In fact, this experience made me realize that PR has a bunch of little-known benefits that I didn’t expect.

How a successful PR campaign helps your online business grow

Needless to say, growing an online business to 7-figures (and beyond) takes work.

But when you get press on a regular basis, the entire process is MUCH easier.

PR sends targeted traffic to your site. For example, Backlinko was featured on a leading industry blog a few years ago. And that feature brought in over 1,000 laser targeted visits.

Once you get a little bit of press, coverage opportunities start to come to you. Like here when an editor at a major news site reached out to me for a quote.

Those “featured on” logos add instant credibility to you, your website and your business.

PR is one of the best ways to increase brand awareness. In fact, more than 37,000 thousand people search for “Backlinko” every quarter. Largely thanks to my successful PR efforts.

When it comes to link building, PR gives you the best of both worlds: quality AND quantity. You get high-quality, authoritative links from major news sites. Plus, hundreds of links from industry blogs.

It Wasn’t Easy (And It Took Over 5 Years), But I’ve Developed a PR System That Gets Results

I’m Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko.

As you’re about to see, I developed a step-by-step process for getting press in ANY industry.

Like I mentioned earlier, I used this system to get mentions and features on major media outlets, like Fast Company, Inc, U.S. News & World Report, TechCrunch, The Today Show, and lots more.

This same process helped grow Backlinko’s traffic to 477,284 visitors per month.

In short, PR fuels my online business (and helps my business grow by leaps and bounds year after year).

The question is: how did I do it? And how can you do the same thing?

Once I started to get regularly mentioned in major publications, people would ask me: “Brian, I just saw your feature on TechCrunch? How did you do it?”

I had to laugh. Like I showed you before, my first few attempts at PR were complete disasters. I really only finally started to figure things out relatively recently.

Then, out of nowhere, people saw me getting featured on major media outlets, influencers sharing my site on social media, and Forbes using my business as an example of a “one-person seven-figure business” unicorn.

But they didn’t see the proven approach that I used behind the scenes to pull it off.

I’m not sharing this with you to brag…

In fact, it’s the complete opposite. Like I mentioned to you before, I really struggled with PR at first. So I’m definitely not “a natural” at public relations. Far from it.

Instead, I’m someone that’s spent much of the last 5 years testing out different PR strategies, approaches and tactics.

Over that time I’ve learned what works. What doesn’t. And exactly what levers to pull to get journalists to cover your business.

And I can teach you how to do it too. Because once you have the right system in place, ANYONE can get consistent press coverage for their business. Even if you have zero experience with PR.

And now it’s time for me to cover the 3 key secrets that I learned about getting press every month. These lessons are the foundation of the advanced PR machine that I use today.

Secret #1: Use Proven “Source Magnets” to Flood Your Business With Press Coverage

One of the biggest myths in PR is that your business needs to be super interesting to get press coverage.

In other words:

People think that their business needs to send rockets into space. Or invent the next great social network. Otherwise, the press won’t be interested in covering them.

Fortunately, this isn’t remotely true.

Take it from me: I run a digital marketing education company. Needless to say, Backlinko isn’t the type of company that journalists are tripping over themselves to cover.

Not even close.

Despite being in a “boring” niche, my business still gets dozens of premiere press mentions every month like clockwork.

The question is: HOW?

Well I don’t follow the advice that many so-called “experts” recommend: doing a silly publicity stunt.

(Like building a skyscraper out of Cheetos)

Sure, publicity stunts can sometimes work… literally 1 out of 10,000 times. And even then, do you think that press coverage is going to bring in targeted (buyer) traffic? Probably not.

Instead of lame publicity stunts, the secret to getting consistent press in 2021 is something that I call a “Source Magnet”.

A Source Magnet is a specific content archetype specifically engineered for getting journalists and industry bloggers to write about your business.

On the surface, a Source Magnet looks like an industry study.

But if you look under the hood, there’s MUCH more going on. Specifically, the entire campaign is designed from start to finish to maximize press coverage.

In fact, Source Magnets are the foundation of my advanced PR system. Unlike crazy publicity stunts. Or hit-or-miss approaches like HARO. The Source Magnet reliability gets me press coverage and mentions like clockwork.

In fact, when it comes to my digital PR today, I ONLY use Source Magnets.

And once you learn how to create a Source Magnet, you’ll finally have a reliable approach that you can use to get press for your business. (I’ll show you how. Keep reading…)

Secret #2: Get Press By Giving Journalists What They Want In 2021

In the past, I’d try to get the press to cover my business with tactics like “press kits” and “corporate messaging plans”.

Or I’d cold email reporters with a quote they could use in one of their articles.

And whenever I’d send this kind of stuff to journalists?

Crickets.

After a few months of getting ignored, I signed up for a piece of “enterprise PR software”. For whatever reason, I thought that this fancy tool would finally get me the press coverage that I wanted.

Spoiler alert: that didn’t work either.

It was super frustrating.

Today, I know why. No journalist in their right mind is going to cover your business because of a press kit. Or the fact that you found their contact info in some tool.

Instead of outdated tactics, to get press today, you need to give journalists what they want.

In fact, I just saw the results of a survey that asked journalists at major media outlets about the pitches they receive. Specifically, the survey asked them about the type of pitches that actually lead to news coverage.

And 93% said that they happily cover pitches that include “relevant content”. 93%!

And the #2 thing that journalists wanted to see? “Exclusive research”.

(Note that 0% said “publicity stunts” or “fancy press kits”. That’s because those things DON’T MATTER)

Which is where Source Magnets comes into play. Source Magnets are designed from the ground up to be the type of “relevant content” that journalists want to see. In fact, you’re actually creating your Source Magnet FOR journalists.

Plus, Source Magnets include lots and lots of exclusive research that journalists can use in their stories.

In short: Source Magnets are EXACTLY what journalists want to cover. So when you send your pitch, you’ll find that journalists are suddenly super receptive to it.

In fact, once I started pitching Source Magnets, everything changed.

Instead of getting ignored, I got friendly replies from top-tier journalists.

And my pitches directly led to coverage in major media outlets, including Vox, Entrepreneur, Inc, The Globe and Mail, Forbes, and Success Magazine.

Secret #3: Turn Source Magnet Production Into a Scalable System

Like I mentioned earlier, my first few Source Magnets were blockbuster hits.

And for the first time, I started to get mentions and features on major publications, like Fast Company and The Next Web.

There was only one problem:

I didn’t know how to scale this approach.

Heck, I didn’t even know if it was POSSIBLE to scale.

At the time, my team and I would spend literally months on a single Source Magnet: Brainstorming topic ideas. Collecting data. Analyzing data. Writing up reports. Making charts. Crafting pitches. And more.

In fact, at one point, we literally went an entire year between Source Magnets. That’s how much time and effort they used to take.

One day, I decided to switch things up. Instead of spending months on one Source Magnet (and getting super stressed out), we’d try a smaller, simpler version.

And it worked! That “simple” version was wrapped up within a few weeks. And led to literally hundreds of mentions and links on industry blogs and news sites.

Since then, my approach to Source Magnets has completely changed.

Instead of working my fingers to the bone for months, I now work smarter, not harder. And I’ve slowly-but-surely uncovered the real levers that lead to press coverage. Now that I’ve found those levers, I can reliably ship winning Source Magnets with a fraction of the effort that I was using before.

And I’ve scaled this whole thing up. Instead of one Source Magnet per year, we put out at least seven. And I’m aiming to ramp that up to 12-15 source magnets this year.

Because once you know how to create Source Magnets — and scale them — you have a repeatable system that you can use to get press every single month. On demand.

Cracking the code on successful PR

Over the last 5 years, I’ve run dozens of successful PR campaigns.

Each one of those campaigns taught me a lot. On each one I’d test something new — a new format, a new outreach tactic, a new internal process.

And after dozens of launches under my belt, the breakthroughs start to add up.

Today, I’ve boiled our PR campaigns down to a super simple, reliable, tested, scalable system. One that anyone can use to get press coverage for their business.

This is how getting press coverage SHOULD work

When I was starting out, I would have killed for a course that showed me how to reliably get press coverage for my business.

One that gave me:

#1: A Proven System

A street-tested approach for getting press mentions and features on top-tier news sites and industry blogs. A system that got results no matter what kind of business I was in. And one that held my hand through every single step of the process.

#2: Actionable Techniques and Strategies

Proven strategies that I could use to get “quick wins” within days. Strategies that were detailed and easy to follow.

That way, all I needed to do to get press coverage was execute the steps laid out in front of me.

#3: Expert Guidance

Answers to all my questions before I had to ask them. How do I create something that will get news sites to write about my business? How do I find journalists that will cover me? What do I include (and not include) in my pitch? How do I outsource this system… and scale it up?

Case studies, real-