Below is an article I thought you might enjoy. It's from one of our National Publicity Summit alumni who got on Fox News Channel's national morning show after meeting the producer at my event.
HOW I GOT ON NATIONAL TV AND WHAT I LEARNED GETTING THERE
By Mahesh Grossman, author of Write a Book Without Lifting a Finger
A while back, I decided it was time to get some publicity on national TV to promote my book and ghostwriting services.
Shortly after setting that goal, I accomplished it by appearing on Fox & Friends, the national morning show on Fox News Channel that reaches millions of people across the country!
Today, I've got almost more business than I can handle and the Fox appearance has led to appearances on five other TV shows across the country. Here's how it all happened, and what I learned in the process:
1. Relationships are the name of the media game.
When I made it my goal to get on national TV, I took the plunge and went to the most expensive conference I've ever attended: Steve Harrison's National Publicity Summit, where I got to personally meet producers and reporters from major media outlets like CNN, Fox News, The View, 48 Hours, O the Oprah magazine and Forbes. It's like speed dating with the country's top media. I got brief personal meetings with each arranged and agreed to beforehand. No cold calls. No voice mails.
It was during one of those meetings at the Summit I spoke with the producer for Fox & Friends. I also made a great contact at Time magazine, and a former Oprah producer.
I've kept in touch with all of them and most have helped me to one degree or another. In fact without those relationships, I probably never would have gotten on national TV.
2. You need to be your own publicist.
I don't care if you've hired the best publicist or PR firm in the world -- nobody is going to do a better job promoting you than you are simply because no one cares about what you're promoting as much as you do. Plus, even if you have a publicist -- and I'm using one now to save me some time -- being able to come up with good angles yourself is essential to getting the most out of them.
3. Try to tie-in with the news
Before we had our personal meetings with the producers and reporters at the Summit, their staff trained me to come up with the kind of angles and ideas the media loves. For example, I learned one of the best strategies is to figure out how to tie-it into what's happening in the news.
When I was invited to appear on Fox, it was to rate the presidential candidates in terms of how honest they were about using a ghostwriter for their biographies-- since it was primary season, all the news channels were looking for some angle that hadn't already been used to discuss the election. If you can find a story a producer is already interested in doing (and most are always looking for new angles on stories that are already in the news), you're more than 90% of the way there.
4. Milk your appearance for all it's worth.
I can now say the Fox News Channel refers to me as "The Ghostwriting Guru." That's publicity you simply can't buy at ANY price. It wasn't more than a few days after my appearance I started plastering all of my promotional materials with that phrase. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, the fact I was on Fox makes it much easier to land segments on other shows.
Author of Write a Book Without Lifting a Finger: How to Hire a Ghostwriter Even if You're on a Shoestring Budget. He is also President of The Authors Team, a company that turns credible experts into Incredible Authors through ghostwriting, coaching, editing and custom publishing.
Mahesh Grossman
If you still need to apply to attend the National Publicity Summit, April 25-28 in New York, go here now: https://natpubsum2.wpengine.com/