915: Press Jockey: Targeted Press Requests, Publicity, and Get More Brand Exposure With Cahill Camden

Robert Plank 0:00 Hey, and welcome back to the show. We are here with Cahill Camden. He is a Forbes contributor, he is a best selling author. He's the CEO of digital vision Media Group. They are an agency that helps web three and technology companies optimize for growth. And his latest startup is called press jockey, which is a tool that sorts 1000s of press requests each week to help businesses get up to five times more press with 90%. less effort. So hey, ho glad to be talking to you.

Unknown Speaker 0:29 Yeah. Thanks for having me on, Robert. Appreciate it.

Robert Plank 0:31 I appreciate you and you and so this idea I have over the years I hear about it. I hear people talk about it in theory, but I very rarely hear anyone do it. And I'm just like, I need to find someone who actually does this, this whole idea of like, what is it like Help a Reporter Out, and there's all these kinds of services where there are my limited understanding is that there are like these journalists out there who need these quick, you know, 50, word 100 Word blocks for their articles. And then my limited understanding, again, is like, if you're quick, and you see these kind of press requests come in, you can respond and be kind of the authority figure and be featured in some of these, like high profile publications. So is that completely off base? Or is on the right track? Is that similar to what you do? Tell me some things?

Speaker 2 1:17 Yeah, no, that's That's exactly it. So like I said, there are, there are resources, like Help a Reporter Out, and others. And then there's also a number of hashtags on Twitter that you can follow. So there's really like 1000s of press requests, or media requests, we might say, because there's podcasts, YouTubers, bloggers, and traditional media. But there's 1000s of these requests happening every day. And so you can go on to some of these platforms for free, some of them are paid. But it just takes a lot of work to filter things down by yourself, or you got to hire someone to do that. And so what we've done a press jockey is, you know, because we run an agency, digital vision Media Group, we built this tool for ourselves. And so we run press, we know, we know what it's like. And so what we do is, like I said, we filter 1000s of these requests down, we make it extremely easy to reply with a couple of quick, so two quick reply. You can use pre written templates that you write yourself, or we can help you write templates. And you're off to the races. It's it's really fast, it's really easy to get going.

Robert Plank 2:24 Well, great, unlike your because you're kind of bringing up some of the problems that that that I have come across when trying to go this route. And I'm sure I'm not alone, where like you said, there's all these requests, and there's that need to filter out exactly what what you need, because so many times a request comes in. And it's all it's like, I'm almost perfect for this. But I feel like I need to like do some writing, do some research. And by that time two days have passed, they want their reply within a couple of hours. So like, my wife narrates audiobooks, and someone came along saying like, can you talk about, like artificial intelligence narrating audiobooks. And I was like, oh, that's like, here's her area of expertise. And what they want is just like the next door over and it's like, oh, it'd be great if there would be kind of the shortcutting and the ideal fit, and the templates to be able to just do it in in a couple of clicks. And so what we're talking about so far is kind of the frustrating the before picture aspect of it. So what is it like when someone uses press jockey? Like you mentioned some of the steps there, but do you have a fun, kind of like, start to finish quick story of like, do you have like, in your experience, or do you have a customer or someone who uses this and they're in like this niche, this request came in, they did these clicks, and they got published any kind of cool start to finish story like that.

Speaker 2 3:39 Yeah. So we so Yeah, great question. So we use this for ourselves, right? Like I said, we built I built this because I needed a tool for our agency, right? Like we do press for clients. And so we were on Hara, we were we were strolling Twitter for, you know, dozens of of press requests that we're going through on Twitter, like we have staff who that was their full time job, like they were actually looking for this all the time, every day, responding every day. And so we built a tool to help us first and then I thought, you know, we can help other other brands tell their story. And, you know, this is a great tool for any brand that really wants to get some more exposure and some brand awareness, credibility, that type of thing. So yeah, we use it for ourselves. We have templates that we have in, like we have our own personal templates that we have for our clients. There's, there's obviously an agency version of breast jockey. So we've got our own templates. We we go into press jockey every day, we check out the the matches that we've got for various clients. We customized the responses because we've got pre written templates, we customize them a little bit. And then we press send, and we fire them off. And yeah, we've gotten opportunities from this. Like for for clients and for ourselves as well. So yeah, definitely, definitely works helps save a ton of time.

Robert Plank 5:02 And do you have any, like, kind of, like big wins or, or like, you know, successes, you want to brag about what this because I imagine that maybe some of your clients have gotten on like such and like, you know, like New York Times, or Forbes or something like that, just from kind of being on the spot with

Speaker 2 5:18 this. We just launched in middle of January. So it's very, very early days. And that, you know, the first couple of weeks of launch was was, was interesting. And we had to wait to figure out a couple of, of challenges, but we just launched so we know that those stories are going to happen very soon, with our with our clients. And also with more people that come on, we've already heard great feedback from some of the people that have been using the platform. And they've said, hey, look, I've gotten opportunities, I'm progressing forward, you know, ultimately, it's up to them to close the final deal. But we can really help you get get those opportunities going. Very, very quickly.

Robert Plank 5:59 Well, fair enough. And so in this process, are were there any surprises? Are there things that if someone just hears about this in theory land versus actually doing it? Is there anything that that we should know? Because like, for example, like if I'm, if I'm prospecting in general, right, or I'm responding to requests in general, I always have to do like 10 times the amount of work for a thing, right? Like, if you're trying to get on podcast, you're like, Oh, I'll contact 20 shows you need to contact like 200 shows. So as far as this whole, like, like press jockey experience getting press coverage is, are there any, like kind of aha, or surprises such as that with this process?

Speaker 2 6:38 Yeah, there's a good question. There's, there's a number of them that that have come up over the last, you know, six months, seven months of working on this, you know, what, what we've realized is that finding relevant matches is really important. Like, it's one thing to it's one thing to have a lot of volume of press opportunities. But it's another thing to find relevant matches. And so this is something that we've been constantly tweaking and adjusting on press jockey, you know, and we're actually, you know, between you and I, we're integrating AI into this as well. So where we are, you mentioned AI before, we just wanted to bring up so we're integrating that into it as well to help with that sentiment analysis, until we really get even more refined matches. So finding great matches, that was one of the things that in the very early days, when we had this idea, it wasn't, it didn't really get the matches we wanted. And so we've been refining that over time. So that's one. Two is that when you when you are responding, it's it's really imperative, it's really important to have a good template, and, you know, you can custom respond to every single, every single question that does work, it is gonna take a bit more time, you know, but having a really solid template, where you can bend it quite easily to the pitch that you're responding to you or to the press requests that you're responding to. That's super important. And so, as an agency, we've had to refine our own pitches and our own templates, you know, over over the over the past few weeks, while we're actually starting to push this out of the door. And we've we've realized, like, Okay, well, like some pitches, obviously get more traction than others. But it's really great, when you really gotta have a good, a good template that you can work with and bend to, to that press request that's coming through the door. So those would be two, I think.

Robert Plank 8:30 And that's just a that's a good, like writing and business, like tool in general, just to be able to, to know how to manage your own templates, and to say, well, I shouldn't be writing these things from scratch every time. And I mean, that applies in so many scenarios, like, I mean, you think like a customer support helpdesk, right, you got all these customer requests. And if you were to just paste the same old cookie cutter message to say, like your your customer Help Desk, that wouldn't be helpful. But if you were to like completely start from scratch every time that that wouldn't be helpful. And so if you can kind of blend the two, and it pays off in so many different scenarios, right, when you're looking for joint ventures, marketing, on LinkedIn, this whole thing with the press coverage, like it's a transferable skill, as far as saying, well, here's what I want to write. And I don't want it doesn't make any sense to start over. And then I kind of figure out the template. And then you alluded a little bit to of like, sort of tweaking and testing the template and saying, Well, let me try, like long or short or saying this or saying that. And so are there any, like sort of like universal truths that you found? Like as as far as these these press requests are? They're like do's and don'ts that apply to any industry?

Speaker 2 9:43 Yes, certainly. You're asking, you're asking the the big bucks questions. Yeah, so, so about, about to answer the question about tweaking press requests. You know, again, one of the things that we are starting to do right now is we're experiment thing with AI GPT. For this reason, as well, I talked about already, you know, the sentiment matching and getting getting better results on the actual filtering of requests. But also we're looking at how can we really make requests or responses to the media requests? How can we make them really personal and really, really unique for that one request that that you're doing. And so instead of you having to write it out, this is where we're gonna, we're already starting to experiment with things like AI to help accelerate that process again, and just make it super easy for you. And so, we're training, obviously, we've got to train the AI and get without getting into too many details about that, you know, some of the things that we've noticed in terms of universal truths about pitches, and again, this is regardless of whether you, you do it on, you go to press jockey.com, and you work with our tool, or whether you do it on your own. There are some universal truths. And so, here are a few, one, keep it short, like the media is getting a ton of a ton of responses all the time. And so even on tools like harrow quoted, get response, like there's a whole bunch of them. You know, even on those tools, if you're gonna use them, feel free to pay for them. You got to keep your message short, every, every media person is getting a lot of inbound responses to their request. And they're also getting cold emails and cold requests, like, Hey, do you want to feature me and my company? Hey, do you want to talk about this? They're just getting a ton of a ton of attention. So keep it short. I always say, and, you know, we do we do webinars in this and we teach this, you've got to answer the question. And it's very direct, but you got to answer the question. So what? Why should I care? And you've got to answer that question from the journalist or from the media's perspective, I get it. We all have interesting companies, we all want to change the world, we want to make an impact want to grow our businesses, it doesn't matter whether you are in a service based business, software, e commerce, etc. At the end of the day, no one really cares about you. They care about themselves, to a certain to a very strong degree, as you've got to answer that question from their perspective. So what why should I care as the podcaster? Why should I care as the journalist, and if you can address that question and tie in your company, and the interesting aspects of your story and your expertise, then you will get great results. So that's number two. So what why should I care? Answer that question. And then number three, we always make it easy for the media to connect with us. So we include, you know, we often include links, or a little bit of extra, you know, LinkedIn profiles, a little, maybe a document media kit, that type of thing, to, to enhance, you know, the opportunity, or the chance of us getting that opportunity. And so that gives the journalist or the podcast or the blogger, an opportunity to dig a little deeper before reaching out to us. And, you know, we can kind of separate ourselves a little bit from that. So those would be three that I would say, keep it short, answer the question. So what why should I care. And if you can include a tiny bit of extra information for the journalist or media to do their own research, that's really helpful.

Robert Plank 13:19 Those are some great ideas. You're reminding me that, um, I worked with this, this guy like 20 years ago, and he like some, some journalists, I can't remember what the topic was, or the reason was, but some journalist was like reaching out to all these business owners. And he was the only one that ended up in the news story, because he had like one of these like, kind of media kit press kit type of pages with some of his photos. And then he was the only one that had a phone number on his website for whatever the heck this whatever the heck, this, you know, project that journalists was working on. And so he was like, easily accessible and had some of those things online, like you mentioned, and then also, you're reminding me of, I knew this guy once, who spoke at high schools, and and like everyone else's mistake was marketing to like the faceless organization, the high school and he was saying, Well, let me market to like the principles of these high schools specifically, because what is the principals problem, were they stuck, they're looking for, like some kind of content to fill the, the, the students gathering, you know, assembly, and they need something that's kind of fun and entertaining for the students. So he was with the mindset of solving the high school principals problem. And that's what I'm hearing from you too, is like, you're not just bringing this news story to like some local news station, the journalist has a problem of they need to fill up time but they also kind of want to ride the wave of whatever people are talking about right now, but also have like an expert and also have something that's concise and fun. So that's kind of an interesting mindset to to get into of like kind of forming a like a relationship with these journalists, and you're solving their problem of how they need an expert to present about this thing. They're not looking and saying, what are some fun new companies out there, they want someone to talk about something that's kind of newsworthy and timely. So this is all kind of fun stuff to think about and talk about. And so I want to in a moment, talk about press jockeys, specifically. But one last quick question. If it didn't, there is, what are sort of the pre requisites go? Someone says, you know, this seems like a good idea, contacting these kind of, you know, journalists and contacting the press. But if someone might say, well, do I need like one of these press kit pages? Or do I need like a book or a bio? Like, what does somebody need to be prepared to use press jockey?

Speaker 2 15:38 You need to want to be in the press. Like that. Really? That really is what it comes down to? Sure. A media kit can help. But do you need to? Do you need to get started? No, you don't? Sure, if you have a really slick website, will that help? Yeah, can help. But do you need it? No. Do you need to have, you know, your ecommerce company or business doing millions of dollars a year? No. You know, again, to go back to your your previous point, wherever you can hit the nail on the head, the journalists, the bloggers, the podcasters, the people who are creating content are trying to solve a problem, right. And that problem is they're trying to produce content. So that they can get attention in the, on the internet in from their audience so that they can drive clicks, which will lead to revenue, right? This is what content is about. And so whether it's a huge publication, like the New York Times, or Forbes, or whether it's a tiny publication, like your local blogger, they're all shooting for the same thing, which is getting that attention so that they can get clicks so that they can drive revenue. And so how do you get clicks? Well, you've got to have an interesting story, you've got to have an interesting pitch, you've got to have an interesting or unconventional way of presenting information and knowledge that you already have. And so you need a bio, no, or get you need a bio. But do you need do you need immediate, excusing? No, you don't need a media kit, do you need a slick website, no, if you're an expert in your space, or you've got more experience than most people are some people in your space. And you can present that experience and insight in an interesting way. That's what they're looking for. That's what's going to help them get a unique angle on their story, get a unique perspective on their blog, get a unique piece of insight in in on their podcast or on their on their YouTube channel. And that's what they're looking for. So if you can present that, you're, you're good, you can then go out and build all the other things down the road. But don't let that hold you back. And I think that that's a really important point. If you want to be in the in the media, you want to be in the press, you've got to get started. Yeah, you're gonna have a bunch of mess ups. But you want to get started. And you want to present your knowledge in that unique way, so that people want to consume it. And so that's what I would say is super important.

Robert Plank 18:09 I love it, just get started. Start with the bare minimum and figure out those things along the way. You can always think all day long about all these obstacles you put in place to not take action. And there's also kind of the thought of there's the lag time, right? Like if you if you decided to start today, you won't be on TV today, it might be as a result of all this prospect and you're doing so it doesn't make sense to wait until the time is right? Because the time will never be just right. If you start today, then some of these results will pay off in the coming weeks. But if you don't start today, then you might never get started. So the if someone says, Okay, this sounds great. I need to be pursuing this whole press requests idea. I need to check out press jockey, where did they go? What do they do? What's it all about?

Speaker 2 18:52 They can go anyone can go to press jockey.com. So like, like a horse jockey press jockey.com is where you go and on press jockey.com You can sign up for free to see what to see if you've got keyword matches in the press in the media, that from the press requests that are going out there. So this is one of the things that, you know, I've heard a lot of our customers ask for is like, well, or they said, Well, I'm not sure if my niche or my niche is going to have press requests. Okay, you can sign up for free. And you can, you can see we'll filter through 1000s and 1000s of requests for you. I think last month it was close to 45,000 requests, we went through any 47,000. So we'll filter through 1000s of them for you. And you can see the matches that your keyboard will have, you will be able to respond to them. That's those are in the paid versions. But it's that simple. You can go and sign up for free. And if you want to sign up for the paid versions. Right now we are actually having a early bird beta launch, because we just launched a couple We'll have weeks ago. And so everything's 50% discounted right now. So you can get started for 40 $47 a month. And you can respond to two press requests with templates and get the ball rolling. And like you said, it is going to take, like, if you want to be on really large publications in New York Times, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, CNBC, etc, and we've gotten our clients on those publications, you are going to need to build your ability to present your knowledge and your information in a unique and insightful way. Right, and that's, you got to start today, you can't just turn it on in six months, say, hey, I want to be on New York Times. And all of a sudden, you know, be on the New York Times, it doesn't, it doesn't work like that. So start today and go to press jockey.com. Everything's 50% off until March 1. So it's just a great way to get started. And it just saves a ton of time. Like we've saved 15 hours a week, or per almost per client that we work with, because all of the filtering is done for you. We're going through 1000s and 1000s of requests from multiple sources around the web, from Twitter, etc. You don't have to waste your time, trolling and, and skimming through all of these different platforms, it's all done for you just go to press jockey.com. That's, that's the best way to get started.

Robert Plank 21:22 I love it. And that time saving aspect is huge. Because if it takes too much time, they might get discouraged and not continue, right. If it takes you two weeks, just a contact one publication, then you're like, well, that's it's so much time just for this little result. But if you can see some results, as you said in the beginning, it's more about quality, quality, not quantity. But if you can start seeing some of these things pay off, you can see some of these kind of like relevant keywords show up and say, Hmm, this and this would be a match for what I have to talk about, then that's encouraging. And in this day and age with the age of artificial intelligence, saving time is what it's all about. So as Cahill said, take that first step, begin that micro commitment, try out the free version so you can see what comes up. And then when it makes logical sense to them again, reaching out then graduate over to the kind of that beta version and the place to go is p r e s s jockey.com. Crash shocky.com. We'll see you there. And thank you, Cahill for showing up and giving us some cool ideas and pushing us to take action to this kind of endeavor we need to be pursuing which is contacting the press. I love it. Thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker 22:32 I appreciate it. Robert, thanks for me.