Confessions of a PR Expert: An Interview

There’s one thing that I’ve embraced more recently that has had a massively positive effect on my business.

A benefit mindset.

It’s a mindset that expands on the idea that there is always more possibility…always more opportunity…and always more than enough to go around.

It's the idea of paying it forward.

So what’s this have to do with PR? I’m glad you asked…

Recently, I got to know Tara Bradford.

Outside of being an expert publicity strategist and reputation designer, Tara is a genuinely amazing human being. She’s introduced me to incredible contacts, given me invaluable feedback, and provided unwavering support…all with zero expectations.

She has a benefit mindset.

And it’s because of Tara’s genuine desire to help that I’d like to pay it forward.

I’d like to help you...and her.

How? By introducing you to Tara Bradford.

I sat down with Tara recently to learn more about her work, her approach, and her advice.

Trust me when I say….there is gold in this post. ??

Zach:

Hey Tara! I’m so happy to speak today!

Tell me…what’s the most important thing about your work, and what do you love most about it?

Tara:

I love doing PR. I didn't always love it though. I had this real resistance around having it be the core of my business.

When I was a critical care nurse, I'd wake up, turn on the news and see who got into a car accident, who got shot, who fell off a building…I was watching for it on the news, and then that was my first thought every day when I woke up!

I felt watching the news was super negative. And, the things that went viral were a little bit gossipy or just not things that I wanted to be around.

I was surrounded by all of this negativity and I was thinking, “I hope nobody dies today,” every single day. That really affects how you see your life, the world, and everything!

Once I stopped doing that, I felt awesome. I started coaching people and I ended up getting a lot of publicity for myself, which came naturally!

People were saying, "You need to start a PR agency. You're so good at it!"

Because of the negativity, I didn’t know if I really wanted to be a part of the industry. Then I realized I could combine all the things I do under one umbrella of public relations.

What I'm actually doing is improving how people interact with each other in their professional relationships. I'm helping individuals feel more understood in those relationships.

PR also solves the global epidemic of loneliness by helping people connect with an inspiring idea or message. My favorite thing is when my clients come to me to learn about PR, and then they say, “You know that thing that you taught me about communicating? I tried it on my husband and we get along so much better now!”

While I would never call myself a relationship therapist, and it’s not something I ever want to do, the fact that people are seeing the connection between what they're learning from me and how they interact with people in all their relationships? THAT's the ripple effect I want to create.

That’s how I built my brand around what’s most important to me. And that's probably my favorite thing that I do.

Zach

Conventional wisdom around publicity seems to be, “I have to do pitches and get on the phone and sell my idea.” And, you can find templates for a bunch of this stuff. But that's not terribly human. Would you say your approach to publicity is more human?

Tara

Yes. The traditional selling model is out. I don't think that works anymore.

Buyers are onto sales people.

Zach

Yeah…it’s not just in sales or marketing, but in publicity too…and truly anywhere you have a personal interaction.

Tara

It comes down to promotion. You need to promote yourself in a way that aligns with your core values. When you’re not in alignment with those values, that's when you scare people away.

That's when they get defensive.

That’s when they don't want to talk to you because you showed up as a different person. You weren’t first trying to create the connection…

Zach

Yeah. Create that connection and demonstrate that value first!

Tara

Right!

It's all about building trust!

Zach

So, what's the worst mistake you can make if you want to be seen as an expert?

Tara

I think a lot of people are good at a lot of different things. They want to talk about everything that they're good at all at once.

Most people have a hard time answering “What do you do?” with just one thing. If you want to be seen as an expert, you need to only talk about that one thing.

A lot of people can’t do this, and it confuses their audience. Makes their audience not know what they do.

They think, “Oh, Tara is a nice person, but she does all of these different things and I don't really know what she does!” That hurts referrals and word-of-mouth marketing. It hurts you when people talk about you behind your back.

And, with publicity, you want people to talk about you behind your back, even while you're sleeping! That way you're getting referrals without putting in any extra effort!

Now, don’t get me wrong. You can do more than one thing. You should be good at more than one thing!

For PR, if you want to be seen as an expert, it has to be one thing.

Zach

So what does conventional wisdom get wrong when it comes to getting publicity?

Tara

The old school saying we've all heard is, “All publicity is good publicity.”

But, this lacks the idea of measurement.

First, we have to define what good publicity is! If good publicity is being famous, then yeah, if something negative about you goes around…if it goes viral, and you're famous because of that, then it worked! And then I guess that was good.

As a business owner, you want ROI from your PR.

If you're a savvy business owner, you’re going to want to see measurable outcomes from your efforts…especially because PR is not easy. It's not like I just call up my buddy and ask, “Hey, can I be on Good Morning America?” There is a lot of work to this.

You have to pitch, send emails, follow up, write articles, come up with ideas, and do a ton of research. You definitely don't want to be spending all your time doing that so that you can earn media coverage that doesn't produce the results you define.

That's where people get burned out on it when they try to do it themselves.

They're like, “This didn't work. I got featured in Forbes and nothing happened! I feel the same. My Google analytics are the same. There's no more traffic to my website, and I didn't sell anything!”

This is where they get it wrong.

Good publicity has to produce either a visible or invisible ROI.

Visible ROI is showing up in your Google analytics, getting people on your email list. Anything that's measurable.

If you have a book, it's producing sales for your book.

If you have a digital product that people can access on your website, they're buying it and you see a spike in all of these metrics right after the article or the TV interview goes live.

There's really no point in you getting publicity if you don't have a strategy or measurable goal. Without these, there’s no visible ROI.

Invisible ROI is that idea of people talking about you behind your back. About growing your reputation without you taking on any extra effort.

It sounds like this:

“Oh, you to know Tara? Because I read about her on entrepreneur.com”

This is essentially saying if entrepreneur.com trusts her, then I trust her. And, you should trust her, too.

That's how you get a word of mouth referral.

And these days, that's scalable. Now we have the internet to build trust with people so that they want to refer all of their friends to us.

That's what good publicity does!

????????

— — —

Tara Bradford is a publicity expert and an all-around amazing person.

Follow her here on LinkedIn, and learn more about how she can help you get incredible publicity at tararaebradford (dot) com.

— — —

Zach Messler helps you know what to say and how to say it so you can create a bigger impact on the world...and your wallet.

Follow him here on LinkedIn, or learn more at zachmessler (dot) com.

He does not always type in the third person.