Internet PR – A Tip for Landing Interviews

Jul 12, 2010 by mandeewidrick

Online PR goes beyond just the use of social media. When you’re looking to build your personal brand, you should think of every possible way to publicize. Here’s a quick tip to help you land interviews that will place you in front of many potential readers!

Several people have been asking me lately how I land so many interviews. While I have yet to land something really big (meaning a talk show interview or something of the like), these smaller PR opportunities surely help when it comes to building my brand. One of my favorite ways to gain exposure is to reach out to bloggers or other online media sites who interview entrepreneurs and business owners like myself. While that may sound like I’m trying to “blow my own horn” – well, that’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I want and NEED to get my brand in front of large quantities of people.

Here’s one way I go about doing this. I recently started searching the term “interview entrepreneurs” on Twitter. This has given me several solid leads and really boosted my online publicity. When I find someone who is asking for entrepreneurs to interview, I send them an @ reply or email, sharing with them some information about myself and my businesses. If they are interested in an interview (and most of them are) they usually set something up with me right away.

Most recently, I did an interview with Take the Leap blog, whom I discovered on Twitter. I also have two more interviews pending right now as I type (I’ll share the links later). This is great for publicity, it’s free, and it undoubtedly boosts my website traffic and rankings.

The key in landing interviews is to become your own PR manager. Celebrities hire people to do their PR for them, but if you’ve got some extra time on your hands, you can keep your money and do it yourself. You must maintain a confident air about you, and expect that not everyone is going to grab at the opportunity to interview you. If you don’t hear back from a blogger or website immediately, send them another message. Sometimes people miss emails, tweets, comments, press releases and whatnot just because they’re busy, so it doesn’t mean they aren’t interested if you don’t receive an immediate response.

To see a partial list of my interviews and media mentions, click here. Feel free to leave me a comment if you have any questions about online publicity!

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Photo credit: Jayanta Behera