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and we're live okay welcome back to another mind meld pr vlog and i am super excited today we have a fun topic how to build a relationship with a reporter what could be more fun exactly exactly um oh i forgot to introduce myself i am jonathan narvey the uh founder of my melt pr and the host of the show uh today with me i have douglas soltas the editor-in-chief and publisher of beta kid and we have a we have a long-standing relationship uh yeah so this is kind of the perfect topic for us uh how to build a relationship with a reporter but before we get into our main chat um douglas maybe you could take a minute or two and just uh let the audience know what's your deal what's your origin story how did you how did you get to be the expert in this go ahead yeah i i would say um it's honestly sometimes these origin stories are pretty freaking useless but i think this one this time it's gonna apply uh directly because some of the advice that we're gonna talk about isn't just coming from me being a tech journalist but from being on the other side because for the last 15 years i've either been working for tech companies in some sort of marketing or communications capacity or writing about tech companies as a journalist in canada so hopefully today i can kind of speak to to both and give some context that will be helpful people to understand the dynamics and the relationships in a way that they probably don't have access to uh prior to this wonderful video series you've been putting on fantastic fantastic um yeah i think you know just to to be you know lay it out uh full disclosure uh i used to work with beta kit yes i was uh if i recall correctly uh i was either a senior editor or a senior west coast editor something like that yeah like i think we called you our west coast desk editor the second the second john that we had in the role working in silicon valley north that is vancouver uh talking about the at the time somewhat underreported um tech scene and uh it has grown since then um so of course uh yeah you were my boss uh uh yes yeah i i was more like we had a very friendly relationship and then sometimes you wrote things for us yeah that's right which is a great it was a great uh report i have with a writer especially working remotely yeah and i i look back fondly on those days i had a i had a blast uh you know writing for beta kit and uh in fact that uh you know writing about the tech sector and and interviewing ceos learning about the leading edge technologies that were out there certainly it's it's not a coincidence that i'm doing tech pr today so uh and you you uh are directly responsible for one of our most popular articles of all time which got picked up around the world and was even referenced on uh brazilian cnn and i only know this because i had a friend in the country at the time who messaged me to say hey i think they just mentioned beta kit on tv in portuguese i was like this is awesome uh when you uh interviewed and covered uh the former uber ceo travis kalanick speaking at i believe launch academy and that that sucker blew up around the world so uh just for you know uh folks at home watching this who might not know the the power that uh narvi welds has a long history of uh demonstrated experience in the space yeah well um that that was a it was an extraordinary um i want to say an extraordinary story an extraordinary unveiling by that particular ceo uh i didn't actually have the one-on-one interview he was speaking to a crowd and i was recording his statements yeah uh and i couldn't believe he blurted out yeah we're just losing a billion dollars a year in china every year and i'm what uh which is particularly interesting because i'm sure you were probably the tallest man in the room at the time so it's not like he didn't notice you right um but yeah yeah yeah um so yeah i i think you know we've established number one we have a relationship going back years number two i've talked about in these vlog casts um a you know about the phenomenon that that people think that a um a relationship will open all doors uh instantly unlock all possible opportunities for companies to tell their story if you've got a relationship with a reporter if you are a friend with them it will you your your pitch will land 100 percent of the time yeah so that's not true not at all in fact i i love that we started off just talking about our relationship and then we can now transfer into talking about how often you pitch us things that we never write about which is a lot this is a lot or or you know a relatively understandable amount for for most pr uh commerce firms but for um people watching this might be incredibly surprised to hear that not everything pitched gets written about um or and the majority of things pitch don't get written about yeah and so yeah so just you know as a purely defensive measure i'm gonna say um yes i agree with those stats it's not just a low percentage from my particular agency uh no this is i've often said that a pre-existing relationship with a reporter who's covering your niche and uh they've seen your stuff they might recognize your email uh when use when you pitch them and it's 99 percent of the time you're pitching it's via email or at least that's what we we do it initially when you pitch them a relationship gives you an extra five seconds they will scan that subject line just a little bit harder they will maybe read an extra paragraph into your intro just to be sure hey you know yeah i trust this guy he wouldn't send me junk let's see what let's see what the story actually is but of course the story has to be a good fit for that day for that time well why don't you talk about that like yeah i would say i say you're right the relationship you know um recognizing your name one and then having a familiar association with that name goes far in terms of anyone prioritizing their inboxes um we it also might give us a little bit more time i'm not sure if it's more time reading your content or it's a commitment to read that in in priority versus other random people where maybe the sentence the subject line doesn't catch but i i even think just stepping back to this idea of the assumption of the value of the relationship versus all the other things that you need to do to make sure that uh you're forming the right relationships with reporters um because just because you have a relationship with a journalist doesn't mean it's the right journalist for your outcomes um so who should you be forming relationships with how um what what should you be presenting them with i think are all important things that we can kind of dig into in this conversation and maybe draw clear lines of demarcation between the value and the expectations of each that's i'm so glad you brought that up because that leads me to something that i love about what you've done in the past and some other reporters have done who who know where i'm coming from um and they will say look jonathan uh actually i i see this story has legs but it's not quite right for what i'm working on this week or this month but let me tell you i'm friends with this other reporter and he was just talking about this very thing you should uh reach out to uh this person who may actually be someone else involved with that particular publication or may actually be in a completely uh working for for another um publication but reporters know reporters yep well and i think that is the perfect indication of the value of a relationship saving a scenario where the actual work that um pr companies should be doing or maybe the expectations that the the client has have have um failed in some way right um and it's only through the value of that relationship whereby you are getting uh a pivot a repositioning to actually get you where you want to be which is to the reporter the publication that is actively interested in the information and wants to write about it and i think the probably the easiest way for people not in the calm space uh who are watching this to kind of understand what we're talking about it is to think about it as um customer profiling think about it like like sales is that you need to profile um not only the reporters but the publications and the audiences you want to reach in exactly the same way you do your target customer and and your pricing tiers or your product offerings uh and if you fail to do that you are kind of just stumbling around flying in the dark or maybe hiring a communications professional and hoping that they can somehow stumble around in the dark slightly better on your behalf because you haven't done the work to figure out what moves the needle whether that is are you trying to reach uh are you trying to get news out that appeals to your target customer are you trying to get news out that actually appeals to your investors are you trying to get information out that will look really cool from a recruiting standpoint get your um you know your first hire and things we hear that all the time related to baby kids stories okay given that what publications do those people read given that what do those publications write about who is the reporter that will be interested in your company in relation to that um i think oftentimes and i know john you could probably speak this more than anyone you got a lot of people coming to you assuming that you can solve all of those problems on their behalf as long as they pay you money and and that really isn't the case you can solve some of them yeah yeah i i will at least say that much uh and and you know there's the old saying uh actually i don't know how old it is but i i've recently started using it a lot money solves all problems and uh you know take that as as you will uh certainly it buys more effort and more effort can maybe get results um but yeah i love what you were saying about um you know making sure you're targeting the right person in the right publication and how much how akin this is to a sales process and that's what i'm i'm thinking about when i'm uh working with uh when i'm pitching reporters whether i know them or not is i'm looking for a win-win uh or even a win-win-win uh so uh is this is the story something that's uh uh interesting to the reporter is it interesting to their uh their audience that's that's reading their stuff and of course is the story that's going to be produced is is my client going to be happy that that is the story that got out there uh and and it's not about spoon feeding journalists you know exactly the exact messaging and treating them like a stenographer it's it's uh really getting a a feel for what do they care about what are they interested in um you know a lot of journalists let's face it um are in this uh business because they have certain things that that they are super passionate about and and they want to write about their and their they have stories that they they want to tell they're just looking for okay well what what is the vehicle through which i can channel the kind of message i actually kind of want to get out as a writer and a journalist um and you know so this i i think yeah i i'm what i'm getting at is again like you were saying it's it's about targeting uh someone who uh and you're targeting them in a sales oriented manner which is not to say like a used car salesman but more like trying to get that win win yeah and and i i would think that most journalists and most comms professionals would probably look at me saying that with disgust because they don't consider their work that way um journalists might say what you we've been articulating in a different way uh not in terms of win-win wins they're more like hey man i don't write about this stuff i wrote out this is what i care about or this is what my readers care about why are you pitching me when someone else in the publication writes about this don't waste my time we don't don't email all of us don't spam us you know uh presented in this way but i want to kind of like ladder out from the journalists perspective and communicate in a way that people these companies might be a little bit more familiar with and that is like this is inbound marketing like getting coverage for to a certain extent like if you're a publicly traded company if you're an uber if words come out of the ceo's mouth that's news if you're not at that level you need to work for coverage until you get to the point where your company is justifying its own coverage because it's big enough successful enough and so on and the way that you um get earned media is by earning it and you got to do work to make that happen because you are relying upon others to tell your story for you to certain extent now one component about marketing is telling your own story and creating a bunch of momentum to create inbound leads and things like that and you shouldn't see the communications or pr processes um very much outside that there are different particulars but it should kind of fit into that that funnel approach if you're writing blog posts every week and doing stuff on social media and really doing work with like influencers to make sure you're targeting the right individuals you can apply the same or similar methodologies to contacting journalists publications and the like um let's talk a little bit about cultivating the relationship so how is that done um i was reading a funny uh linkedin complaint from a it was some tech reporter in silicon valley and and he was like look if i said yes to every single pr person who invited me to come out for coffee uh to just to discuss what kind of stories uh they want to put out i would be spending all my time uh just drinking coffee in cafes like and i wouldn't get any work done so yeah um i i feel like you know that that's not a hard and fast rule like it's just it's again about picking your moments like i've taken out journalists for for coffee or lunch because or adult beverages from time to time indeed indeed uh and you know it's not like it's just like you know treating them like a human being and um you know trying to and and very often you know or actually all of these relationships should not be you know just some bs uh uh you know sort of scheming way of of getting into the headspace of a reporter like i i want to you know work with people uh in a collaborative way uh in a human way you know these are these are people they have needs uh and and also journalists are often some of the most interesting uh quirky uh um you know doing all kinds of neat things uh in their off time they're just interesting people to to talk to they want to talk about big ideas uh so i i love listening to reporters uh yeah while your background preparation process can be as heavily researched and technical as you as you want it to be or the time that you want to put in if it's missing that human element you're going to fall short if i receive a a forum email that i know you've sent to 20 other journalists which i can obviously recognize because who can't then then you've you've kind of dropped the ball at the one yard line but we you know when i do uh workshops with various innovation pubs across canada because we feel like talking to early stage companies through that format is a great way to kind of put good back out into the community but then also help us down the line when they're ready avenues we tell them to not be weird to not be stupid and to not be entitled and really that's just being a good person and human in your interactions but i want to go back to something you were saying about um building the relationship and why why would that be a component generally it's a given that as we said at the top if you have a relationship with a journalist you're going to get more time and space with them but you're also going to have a better understanding of what it is they want to write about what their focus is what they're interested on all those quirky ideas that if you have something you can t up maybe it's not news in the specific sense of an announcement but like hey we have a we have a really great expert who could speak to you about um x y and z because we know you've been reporting on a lot or you've been you've been publicly stating that you're looking for people to talk about this um if you have a relationship that goes a long way as opposed to um you know a cold email being like my ceo is available for comments on the global news that everyone else wants to comment on um [Music] developing that relationship as you so perfectly put it for um senior experienced journalists is difficult because they already have the relationships that they feel that they need um and if they're looking to develop new ones they're probably proactively doing that themselves i think the approach is okay i can't get senior journalist x to sit down for coffee for 30 minutes so that i can extract a lot of value and learn what they want or interested in but there's a bunch of junior reporters who start every semester graduating who don't have a network who would love to get um inundated into that world have contacts learn that you can be targeting and they're also people more likely to write about your company and it's and its story versus the high profile um name right i think a lot of times people look at the name on the byline or the publication and value that more than the impact of like which publication is writing a story or uh who it's who it's reaching but again this is a really simple way to say you know think about it if you're a startup with a freemium model are you are you starting trying to get them to pay you the 100 a month are you starting them off at the low level that you can kind of work them up to um and kind of close down the line and i think that communication approach um should reflect that yes yes very much so um there's another uh aspect i wanted to get into um sorry this is a bit of a uh weird segue but do it it's your podcast buddy let's go take it out i i want to talk about protecting the relationship uh and and so and this is from the pr side because the client may make certain demands again again thinking that hey this you're the the pr flack that i'm i'm paying big bucks to make things happen make things happen so the the worst i maybe it's not the worst thing but just a an example of where a client may be asking for things that you know is going to sabotage this relationship yeah this this is great i'm glad i'm glad we're getting here because this is an ex this i don't even think this is a segue i think this is the extension of what we were just talking about right because we know and you know when saying don't be weird stupid or entitled that if there is a pr and comms team involved or a third party agency that there's there's pressure and that weird stupid and entitled rolls downhill yeah and then it falls upon the journalists so a lot of the times ruining a relationship can come from the stress and the pressure of getting covered that's coming from the company which is actually probably stressed uh and pressured to make money raise a new round do all these other things so they're venting all this out on if we could just get some coverage that would solve all the problems yeah it's not going to but that's where the pressure is going right and then they're looking at this comms team to say if you guys could just do your job and get this done and they write about it then all this will be resolved and then you have this journalist who's just sitting at a desk probably drinking too much coffee having all of this presented onto them and they have two options they can engage with it try to solve other people's problems or they can archive that email and move on to the other things that they have to do um so when you're looking at you know protecting a relationship if you're a comms person in the position of you are getting weird requests from whoever decides um you know let's be honest it's usually the ceo it's usually like a young white male ceo is not used to being told no uh or who assumes that communications in pr is very similar to like pitch meetings with vcs which is a very different format um there's a couple things you can do especially if you value the relationship if you've communicated expectations to your ceo that like being weird stupid or entitled isn't gonna work and they still want you to do it you have a relationship with a journalist you can say hey i've got a pitch i know you're not interested in it i'm required to send this to you as part of a check mark of hey this is the outreach that we've done and this happens with significantly larger agencies as well where they're working for a major global client and they're just like not only how many people um covered it how many people they reached out to is a reflection of the work that they're doing they're just sending stuff off knowing that we're we might not even look at it like we don't write about new laptops being released on beta kit it doesn't stop those agencies from sending it to us because they have that pressure to send it out and justify their work the the um calms people that we really value that work with us are ones like hey i don't think you're interested in this wanted to maybe flag it past it your way uh or i'm gonna say that i sent it but just double check you would be interested in this right and we would say no thank you appreciate you saving my inbox not wasting my time or making me feel weird about you know you know we know we know that you know we know that you know that we know that you know so calling us four times about the email that you sent that you know we were never going to cover in the first place isn't doing any of us any good uh you can you can manage that relationship in a way where they're going to appreciate you being a human being yeah which is much better than just continuing to send it to her like three or four times in a week as a follow-up that doesn't get anyone anywhere it's wasting your time as well totally totally i think that was those are some excellent examples the the one example i would add to this uh actually didn't have to do with the original pitch it was we actually got coverage uh and i i think it was uh it might have been actually a story that would appear in beta kit and um after we um got confirmation from the reporter oh yeah this is going to be in the uh on online uh tomorrow or the next day um the um i remember the the it was the ceo or maybe the the vp of marketing internally um and this was years ago um she came back to me oh i'd like um um i'd like them to include these eight changes uh in you know in in the story oh yeah so actually yeah that that's sorry that's what happened is the story came out and they were like and it ranged from uh taking out a comma where it was perfectly optional to have a comma in the in the in the center's choice we rewrite or die for the oxford com my beta kit so yeah keep that in mind uh and it ranged from that to including some boilerplate uh that had been in the about section of the that goes at the bottom of every release uh that the reporter had chosen not to include in the story and it's like well i know the reporter saw it and if they didn't decided not to include it well that's that's on them and and um i i think so i there were eight requests and a lengthy email that uh that they wanted and i'm like well i'm not gonna just forward on this email to the reporter because um yeah it's it's gonna annoy it's not gonna go well uh so i picked out there there were actually two things that i thought were fair in in in the request that actually would have made for a better story and uh actually and one of those also uh was just a link back to the company which isn't required in it in any every story but uh for this particular publication it it was on it was quite common to link back to the company that's mentioned so i didn't think that was like a big thing to ask for um yeah okay this is great so um i think everyone should recognize watching this uh what a delicate job narvey did in not naming names which i think is appreciated because he could totally put company on blasts and i would have fully supported that um but i think you know what we're talking about here is really expectation setting on both sides so for the communications people listening to this it's about setting expectations of actually what this process looks like how it's going to happen not just the lead up to the publication of a story if it happens but what happens afterwards uh and then if you are on the executive side working with communications professionals before you hire them and you're like i want to get something published understanding what it means to have something published and what that process looks like and what happens after the fact and what is acceptable to ask for or expect because at the end of the day and this is journalist hat we don't work for you we have no obligation to you at all other than getting the facts straight um and if ever there's an email that we receive where hey there's um some information that's incorrect here or uh as you're saying hey there's something that you may have missed that might be useful like we always appreciate that because we one don't want to get things wrong we want to correct errors and we want to have the best possible story out there there's been i think multiple times where we've written a story and then new information has come to light and it's been presented to us we're like hey we appreciate you sending that because it just makes the story more detailed and informative and valuable great um saying that there are factual errors when they're in fact we just you just don't like the way that we wrote about your company or it's not to your boilerplate marketing messaging which we are under no obligation to use isn't the way that any human thinks of a company and um probably isn't the way that you should be marketing your company if you want to get to like that other uh podcast episode um those are not factual inaccuracies that we have you know any time or interest responding to uh and you are putting various relationships and access to publications at risk if you are can i swear on this yes please do an asshat if you're an asshat you might be burning bridges and so but i think a lot of this comes from you know again you were saying this the request came from the head of marketing not someone on the communications side if they're seeing the outcome of this as an extension of their marketing machine of course they would expect to request changes and they're just going to write it the way that we want um we had a company today where a junior marketing manager reached out to us about a press release and they were under the assumption that they would publish that we would publish that for them that we would publish their press release so obviously just a person not understanding this world being asked to do a task and having the wrong set of assumptions um so and that can be difficult when i'm talking beforehand about approaching your targeting as you would with your marketing and sales machine because those are great tactics to identify who you want to be reaching out to what they're interested in and the message of the story that would work and assuming that we work for you in some way and that you have ownership over your own story which you know at a certain point you don't you might be a private company uh you might have no interest in talking to the press but particularly if you're reaching out to press for coverage once you've kind of broached that there's very little recourse for you to say well we don't we don't like the way that we're covered right please do it another way um and i think anyone on the non-com side hearing this should internalize that work to understand and listen to communications professionals when they say in probably a very polite way like jonathan did this is a bad idea um and then communications professionals i think you save headaches down the road by setting expectations up front so it doesn't happen when ceo or someone wakes up monday morning at 8 am to see the story that they're excited about and then they spit out their coffee because it didn't include all the things that they wanted to see which also happens um so yeah i think it's that all of that deals to comes down to expectations excellent excellent i one last thing just to uh build on that um we you you were talking about um you know basically if you don't want a story to get out num i mean number one uh you know don't be talking to journalists if you don't want your story if you don't if you don't want any chance that your story is going to be you know go in a way that that you don't like well don't talk to the journalist but that then there's you know there's the old rule which um you know i was taught back in journalism school around um you know reaching out to reporters and let's say so you you know you've got a friendly relationship with reporter and you want to give them a heads up about something but it's not totally official yet uh and you you don't so you don't want that news to come out right away but you want to give they're a friend and and you want to let them know uh so simple trick and it i don't know that i maybe it's not a trick it's just a simple tactic i i guess yeah it's a tactic to navigate the gray area of expectations which i'm glad you're really digging into yeah is is uh you you tell them look what i'm about to tell you this is off the record and i'm going to tell and i'm going to tell you when we're back on the record uh but right now i'm speaking off the record so please stop recording and then you just you tell them what is this this thing that is eating you up inside that you have to share with them and and you don't you don't tell them until they consent to it being off the record um because i think you know going back to the context for this for people are unfamiliar i think you know they might be familiar with their company's storytelling because especially early stage companies you're telling your company story all the time you're trying to get people aware you're trying to raise funding internally you're building your story figuring out uh your values what you believe in pitching it all the time a very different circumstance to be pitching your story in a boardroom or a pitch competition and in engaging with a journalist because that is a conversation that you don't control and recognizing that you don't control it going in will save you from making horrible mistakes because the assumption i think in more private closed scenarios is that you can share that information say after the fact hey withhold that and given the context of that um you know we've we've been to pitch competitions where we've been invited to where the company pitching knowing that we're there sitting in like the third row would share private internal numbers and then ask the room no one uh share that that's private as if they were just through some sort of magical fairy dust there was a there was a take back that could happen in our brains or that we would consent to that i think going in with understanding that you don't control um that context is really important and that there are tactics like saying hey this is off the record do you agree to it okay we're off the record now i'll share some stuff go back on the record or hey i have information i want to share but we don't want it to get out yet um would you accept an embargo where i can share some information with you and i agree upon publishing date so hey we have a big announcement but it's uh almost july 1st we don't want a story going up on canada day we're thinking of doing it second week of july is it would it be okay if uh you agree to not share this information until then perfect here's all the information but that comes with consent it is a two-way street um and it is not something that you can claw back or dictate certainly before the fact but um not after the fact hmm i have a question for you just on that tiny point of embargoes or maybe it's not a tiny point uh do you generally um um do you require exclusivity or uh or would you be okay with let's say um you know a company is putting out a press blast to a a very large number of reporters and saying uh in their in their just general pitch which uh yeah anyways they include look this won't actually be true until next year this is great um i love that you're asking this question because now we're getting like and darby for everyone watching here is doing a great thing where he's asking a journalist for his perspective on how beta kit prefers it so that going into future situations he is aware of that and will adjust accordingly his strategy and stuff i'm going to answer from the beta kit perspective and then agnostic from beta kit because you know the important thing is that our approach our beliefs are different from other publications right we have different conditions so i don't want people going into this being like oh yeah the guy in the tweed cap from beta kit said to do it this way and it didn't work with you know business in vancouver or toronto life or all these other places that are completely different publications with different audiences different um editorial standards things like that uh i will say for us and i would i would think for most publications if we could exclusively write all of the news we would and we would love that but we understand uh even in a small media market like in canada that that is difficult and if it's a situation where a company is coming to us with news even in a very small canadian tech media market as a subset there are a couple other publications that they might want to get coverage with so we hope for exclusives um but we understand that this might be a story that would go out in beta kit the globe tech crunch the next sweat and that we're reporting on it for our audience and that there are other audience of interest totally understand that um now that being said you're talking about the the embargo you're talking about two things you're talking about the exclusivity and the embargo if you are sending out a blast of news to a bunch of journalists and that email just says hey this is under embargo blah blah blah none of those journalists have accepted an agreement with you before receiving that it's kind of like when you get a email from someone on the legal team that's like hey this information is confidential you can't share it with anyone yeah you can you totally can you didn't they put it in your inbox like it's um it's a bunch of uh cya protection that doesn't really hold up particularly not um in the journalistic reporting sense so if you're going to put a bunch of information and send it out to a bunch of people saying hey go live at this time and place you either have better have a relationship with them beforehand where they know that hey there's a familiar relationship here they wouldn't send this they know that we would agree to this we're doing this coordination or fully expect that story to get published immediately as that publication's like we didn't agree with embargo thanks uh we're going to write about it now or hey you sent this to us but it's because we've been investigating this we reached out to you you can't just send it under embargo somehow and oh we're in a stasis field we no longer can write about it we've had companies try to do that to us where we're trying to interview them we have the information already we're going to run it like our exclusives kind of come from our reporting not from these relationships and they're like yeah well here's this thing under embargo you are now freeze raid we've got you and it's like no that's not it's not even even even an agreement to embargo and off the record those are um yeah mutually agreed to and not enforced by the rule of law right so what are you gonna do you're gonna build relationships and and and trust in them and if the relationship is broken maybe work to repair it or burn it as necessary right um so all of these particulars are super important and why you hire columns professionals like john r whose entire job is to navigate this minefield separate from the announcement the messaging the news um but i don't want to spend too much time in the little weeds of it only just to expose the audience to the idea that this world exists um so so that when they're talking to their college professionals when they're making announcement they have the the required amount of like fear and respect for the process in the same way that if it's like hey engineers we want to make everything on the in the app blue by tomorrow and they're like that's impossible and would take this many days and it might bring the server down you wouldn't be like yeah yeah yeah whatever i'll just i'm just gonna go into the interwebs and hack some code you'd be like okay engineer i trust you we hired you for a reason that when it comes to um marketing communications that you trust the professionals that you hired just as much because um you know think of every public scandal snafu that blows up in the media there's a reason why a lot of those things happen and it's because somebody didn't listen to their comps professionals saying no way in hell are we saying that that is the worst idea ever um so i wanted i wanted to get that out and then i'm always dig into the the itty bitty details i'm so glad you you brought that up and uh yeah trust you know relationships are built on trust and if that seems like thin ice to be standing on well i guess that depends on the quality of your relationship and if you don't have full trust with a journalist if you're not um you know as you say if if uh you're you're only relationship if you're trying to freeze raise someone that's not a sign that you have a good relationship with them in the first place um and uh it was very very true in that circumstance yeah yeah and you know society's built on trust to like on a very fundamental level level we we sort of trust that when you cross the road there's not you know half the people in cars are going to try to run you down and uh so there's trust on a societal level and then trust on an individual level and you you've got to build relationships in a genuine way to to know who you're dealing with and i'm saying this as much as someone like you know the there's some journalists would be like don't tell them don't tell them this stuff let them screw up it'll make our jobs easier but and and that may be true in some instances in other instances it might create more of a headache i think as someone who has worked on the other side who knows how hard it is to build a company around an idea that i'm not suggesting that you don't work with media that you don't pursue coverage i'm suggesting that you really consider why you're doing it and go into it with an understanding of the risks it's not as simple as getting the um one person on your team with a liberal arts degree to write up something in a word doc and send it out to journalists you know what you're getting into respect the process and then you will mitigate your risk right uh i think we've covered that very very well and i i have one final question that uh we could probably have a whole other episode just devoted to this but i'm going to ask you to answer it fairly succinctly just because i gotta run in about five minutes um i will do my best or i will give you the tweet length answer yeah um sponsored content is very uh much part of most publications if not all of them uh whether you're uh you know newspaper magazine youtube what whatever uh you there's often options to pay for placement um so when you're trying to build a relationship with a reporter in a publication does using their sponsored content uh option at the start or i guess at any time the relationship is that horrible it's a really bad because here here's why right and here's where the weirdness is and the conflicting the streams and i'm in a unique position operating as kind of the publisher for better kid the enter in chief to speak to and see both sides if you're pitching a journalist saying hey we're thinking of doing some sponsored work and you're dangling that as a carrot out in front of covering their story one that journalist doesn't care about the sponsored stuff they're just gonna pass it to the person who's responsible it didn't help in any way if you are dealing with the at a higher level organization and trying to do that it's very easy to recognize it's like they're asking about sponsored stuff because they actually want coverage and then that puts you in a very specific bucket like you have you are not a person who's come up with this magical idea of like you know uh machiavellian um engineering your coverage in some way like don't don't do that stuff uh now sponsored content can is a valuable approach whenever we talk about um you know earn media we talked about inbound marketing things like that you can work to do sponsored activities bake it does a lot of sponsor activities we love it we love working with partners to give us money to do things to do content for our audience that we would love to put out there if you are trying to pay to get someone to write something that you would hope that they would write without paying consider how that aligns to your um overall objectives but then also consider the value of the publication you're talking to i think there's a lot of publications out there that don't have a certain set of journalistic integrity and we know because we get this because people will ask us about our prices versus some other publication where it's like okay so yeah we want you to write about us how much is it per article and we're like what what are you talking about we don't like and these are people in the ecosystem who read us every day who just assumed that some companies were paying for stuff and we're like no we choose what we read like what are you talking about so um if you're you know if you're working for one of those maybe like or talking to one of those daily sites that publish a lot of posts per city and and maybe there's a expectation there that might get you something it might be a useful marketing expense but that's not the kind of stuff that we're talking about here on this episode and right i would say knowing that you got to go if we want to come back and do another episode just on sponsored content and how that aligns to a broad marketing strategy i would be happy to do that but it really is a whole other subject well douglas i love you that way yeah i look forward to talking with you in future on another episode probably very very soon um yeah yeah um so before we go uh you have been listening to the my mail pr vlogcast i am jonathan narvey the host of the show and the founder of minemail pr i've been speaking with douglas soltis the editor-in-chief and publisher at beta kit and um douglas if someone wanted to find out more about use yourself or beta kit where would they find you uh i think the best way to reach out to me would be on twitter uh using the handle at tron tron uh which is the best way to reach me uh and if you do that i will actually tell you the nickname that we've had for john arby for many years that i've been trying not to scream out on this podcast because it's such a great nickname um so that's that's a little call to action for you all if you want to know the inside secrets off the record hit me up on twitter perfect all right thank you uh should we mention the patreon coming up or is that sort of sorry did i no i didn't say anything all right cut all right i'll have to cut that okay all right douglas uh thank you very much and uh uh yeah have a great afternoon bye-bye man i appreciate it