Tribefit Interview - Chris Lynton Interviews Brittany Bennett On PR For Fitness Experts
- Hey guys Chris here from TribeFit and today I'm blessed to have a very special guest, Brittany Bennett from Bennett PR. How are you today?
- Yeah good, how are you?
- Yeah really good really good. Guys we had a bit a tech as always happens, We had a couple of techs things before this so, tech hopefully is on our side from here on in but, what I want to do is have a bit of an interview with Brittany. She is an absolute super star in all things PR. In numerous industries, numerous spaces but has done a lot of stuff in fitness as well. Brittany obviously I want try and tell your life story but I guess anyone listening in on this, could you give us a little bit of a background about you know, what type of work you do, in where and I guess how that could be relevant to health and fitness experts so on.
- Absolutely, so basically I've been in PR for almost 10 years and three years ago I started my own company, Bennett PR. And we specialise exclusively in health, fitness, wellness, and lifestyle publicity. So some of the clients that I work on currently are 28 by Sam Wood. I have Jessica Sepel, Nuzest, Ausfit Torsion Bars, Zoe Bingley-Pullin, Flow Athletic. I just did the launch of Zadi Training which is a new high intensity idea for women which is backed by Fernwood. So I essentially specialise in this and as a result of making friends with the journalists just because I've got fairly good experts on my team. I've actually recently created something called the FITTopia Media Hub which is ironically a tech business which as you can see I'm not awesome at tech. But how it kind of works is its for experts who wanna be featured in the media but they don't wanna pay full PR rates. So instead they pay 25 dollars a week and then they can put up their own story ideas that are based on their business and the approved journalists on the platform can come and take the story ideas and run them exclusively to help build an experts brand recognition and reputation. And additionally to that I also have an online course for PR and marketing on a shoestring budget for health, fitness, wellness and lifestyle experts.
- Beautiful, beautiful.
- So that's where I specialise.
- Awesome, awesome. There's obviously a couple of different avenues that would suit people probably listening in on this but I guess that's fantastic. In terms of I guess someone that is listening to this and wanting to, you know, potentially haven't done much in the PR space before or haven't had much exist in the PR space before and are thinking about looking in to it and wanting to try and grow their brand, their business beyond that marketing avenue. Do you have any kind of tips that you'd give as, obviously in your course it goes through all the specifics in detail, but do you have any sort of starting tips or advice for those type of people?
- Yeah absolutely. So the main thing that you need to keep in mind is every time some one comes across you. Regardless whether its in the media or on Instagram or on Facebook, this may be the first time they are ever seeing you. So you need to make an impact and you need to memorable. And one of the main ways to do this is to just make sure you give good information. So if you're going to give a story to media like, say you're a personal trainer and you specialise in high intensity training. You might do a story around the one workout you can do that will keep you burning fat for 38 hours post workout and your whole story will be about that. Now if the story is just like you know, do high intensity training, drink water, get some sleep, something like that it's not really interesting. It's kind of obvious like people are not gunna read that and come away with anything. Whereas if you get like, even if your tips and information is simple it can be simple. If you've got something unique that's even better but if its simple back it up with like a study or some research or something like that just so it positions you as a thought leader in the industry. The objective is you want to be seen as better than everyone else like, I'm not actually kidding you I actually had a girl send me back five health tips the other day. We had to do a 600 word article for a publication, she gave me five words. They were literally drink water, eat your greens, exercise. I'm like what reader is gonna read this and then think of you next time they're thinking of you, you know? So the main thing is make sure your tips and advice are interesting like that's the first thing. They can be simple but like if you're telling someone to drink water its obvious but give me a reason why maybe with some research or maybe like a good way of me like, getting more in to my day, whatever it is. The next thing is to make sure when you're pitching yourself to a journalist I'm a big fan of glance information and that is that if someone can't read your email in five seconds don't send it. So even if your email is big break it up with headings, put in dot points, make it really really easy to digest. The third thing is when I pitch a client in to media I usually send about five story ideas. So the first two or three will be unique. They'll be interesting, they'll be the ones I wanna talk about and the bottom two will be topical. Because at the end of the day you've gotta think of what people will type in to Google. So if someone looking for you is going to type in how to lose weight which I know you probably all hate that but the truth of the matter is that's what we're gonna type in to Google. Have it as one of your last two tips because odds are the journalists will go for that. And last of all when a journalists asks you to provide content, get it to them within two days if you can. If it's not gonna be two days write to them and tell them when you're gonna have it. It's better to be transparent than to say I'm gonna do this and then don't get back to them in two months 'cause that's how you damage reputations. The main thing to keep in mind the journalist is very very important because they might be there for 20 years. So if you annoy the journalist at Women's Health or Men's Health you may be out for quite a while so behave yourself. And finally editorial is not an ad. So weave your brand in, put in a hyperlink because the objective especially if you're online, when someone types your name in to Google you want a whole bunch of credible sources to show up under your name but you also want to boost your SEO by having links back to your website. So have your hyperlink in there. Don't do too many brand mentions because if it looks like an ad they're not gonna run it. The idea is that a key opinion leader is endorsing you.
- Cool, cool. Okay well I've done very small things in the past from TV to magazines and so on in the PR space myself and one thing that I kind of, going in to it, obviously the reason why you're going to do PR is like you talked about is to grow your, why you gonna give up your time is to grow your business or get more traffic or get more credibility or whatever it might be. And pretty much the first thing that I kind of think you know, if you put yourself in the shoes of someone like that. The first thing is well how can I use this to plug myself, my brand, or whatever it might be and what you just touched on there is obviously its not, they're not going to publish it if its just you know, a big sales script or whatever it might be. So what's the kind of etiquette around you know, where can you plug yourself a little bit and what's the best way to, I guess approach that won't offend the journo? Absolutely so basically what my specialty is, is called content marketing. And in content marketing what the idea is, is that you want to attract your audience and educate them on what you do through telling them a story around what you do. So for example if you are, if you own an F45 you'll do five ways to do HIIT Training. You'll do how to lose weight during the Christmas season or whatever it is that you want to do. You'll do something like that. In the top what you'd kind of do is say you know, you can do a workout such as F45 Training and you'd do a link. Another thing you can do, sorry if you can hear my dog in the background. Someone very rudely rang my door buzzer. So another thing you can do is I did the PR for Fiona Tuck and she's now one of the publicised nutritionists. She's on TV probably every single week.
- Beautiful.
- The thing about her is her angle is that, she's an excellent researcher and she's very well versed in what's going on in the nutrition world. So every single week she checks. She checks all the studies, she has a look at what people are talking about overseas and she would send me five new angles. Like is charcoal really that good for you? Or is coconut water making you fat? And or things like that like, she's tapping in to things that are topical that people are talking about,
- Yep
- And kind of myth busting them. And as a result because her information was so well researched everyone calls her the forensic nutritionist 'cause she's the researcher of nutrition. And they're so happy to do that because she's so credible that it looks really good for the publication to mention her name.
- Yeah
- So I would always say add your service in. So if you're doing a story and you have five tips make one of the tips about you.
- Yeah cool.
- So if you're talking about your boxing class it might be five ways to stay motivated to work out all year round. And one thing might be join a boxing class such as Smash Boxing at Flow Athletic because you know, boxing is with two people, its social, its good for strength like, whatever it is that you wanna say. Always make sure one tip is about you and always make sure you have a byline with a hyperlink in it that mentions your name. Always hyperlink just in case they forget to do it.
- Beautiful cool. Now that's awesome and I guess in terms of. So if you send through document to you know, lets just say someone's engaged you. That's obviously gonna be quite straight forward you're gonna kind of walk them through it. But if someone's kind of doing it you know, from scratch they're just starting out they're not looking to engage anyone or they're not looking to take on a course or whatever it might be just as of yet. What's the rules of thumbs on lets just say they, reach out to a journo and they start communicating, they send through some documents or they have a phone interview or whatever. How do they follow up to not annoy the journo but then at the same time to make sure that you know, I'll the best chance possible that it actually gets publicised?
- Yeah definitely. Okay so rule number one is never call a journalist. That is how you get blacklisted. 'Cause when people are trying to write and you interrupt them they are not happy people. So what I would do is you do up the pitch first thing and the pitch is basically when you come in, its got to introduce yourself but don't expect them to respond. So if you introduce yourself it's actually the follow up pitch that is gonna be more interesting to them. What I would usually open with is my story angle. So my story angle might be I have some new research on rose hip vital which helps with arthritis and I have this fitness expert that is gonna help talk you through why fitness people should be using it post workout to reduce inflammation. So that's my hook. I've got research, I've got a study, I've got an expert. So I'd go straight in at the top with what my angle is, who I've got and what I'm after. Do you want an interview or do you want me to provide content? The I would go into information with a headline and dot points, headline dot points, again glance information five second rule, if you don't know what's going on delete it. Most journalists don't really read press releases so if I do a press release its just about the product so its just so they can get more product information whereas my pitch will be more about the angle and the story 'cause I want to tell them about something awesome they can talk about.
- Yep.
- I'll follow up on it probably a few days later it just depends on how time sensitive it is. But I'll follow up on the exact same email and I'll make it way shorter 'cause remember glance information. Your first email is gonna be a bit longer 'cause you need to share the information. The second email because all the information is below in the thread will be shorter just give them the key information. Do you want this, this is the story, here's the research, here's the expert, that's it. And you follow up with that. If you don't hear back from them again odds are some of them do file your story and they'll come back to you in months. Like this will happen. They won't necessarily run you immediately but what I usually do is two weeks later I just come up with a new but similar angle and I just send it to them again and they're fine with it. Like you can absolutely do that. Just don't email them every single day. And then when you get a hook from them respond quickly. Like PR is not the same as what it use to be. Like when I started there was five beauty journalists, there was five fashion journalists. Now there's one beauty journalist across four publications.
- Okay. So you need to be quick and efficient and give them awesome information and if they like you they'll keep coming back to you. Like by the end of my campaign with Fiona Tuck and also I'm still working with Ben Lucas but even with Ben Lucas the journalist comes to me now because they know they're gonna get the best content and they know it will be well researched and they know it's gonna sound good.
- Beautiful.
- So there's nothing wrong with following up or anything. Another thing is on my media hub you can put up your story ideas and we've got over 53 journalists on there including Men's Health and Marie Claire, Sydney Morning Herald and News dot com and Body and Soul and they're literally on the platform to look for story ideas.
- Beautiful.
- So you can do it that way. But if you're pitching this is how you do it. And you can find their names in the mast head of the magazine or online and they pretty much all have the same formula. So first name dot last name at news dot com dot AU for example.
- Beautiful well probably we'll rap up in a second, I'm just gonna ask you one more question. Its something that's just top of mind for everything you're talking about just in case no one's, kind of picked up on this. Once again I've read many books and so on, on PR which obviously very junior in it in comparison to Brittany but the one thing that really stood out for me is that its more of head space aspect is that the journo's busy. They have a job and your job to be successful is to make their job easier and,
- Yes.
- And everything you're talking about is awesome headlines that have a hook you know, expert backgrounds, easy to read you know, coming back to them as fast as possible and not annoying them and all that sort of stuff. They've got a job and,
- Yeah.
- You can help them with awesome stories, fast turn around, et cetera. Everything that Brittany was talking about, they're going to come back to you back to you back to you because why would they wanna speak to 10 people to try to find one story when they know they've got this awesome source that they can go to at any time, get what they need and that way it makes it a bit of a win win. But you've got to be thinking,
- Absolutely.
- That you're there to serve and from that perspective you're going to get run more often so,
- Absolutely and also for health and fitness keep in mind case studies. Like if you've got an amazing client whose like middle aged she lost 15 kilos in a sustainable way that's an amazing exclusive story you can give to news or TV. And it looks so good for you because people love seeing real people succeed.
- Beautiful cool. Look we're gonna rap it up but I've got another interview just after this but look it was fantastic with lots of lots of gold nuggets from there too. To rap up two things, one question Brittany, any final I guess, one liner advice and then secondly if someone wants to find out more information about yourself and what you do where would they look.
- Yeah absolutely so I guess my main advice is come up with a really really good story idea. Be very like, well not necessarily precise but be very like to the point when you email someone. No one wants to read a massive email and then have like a little word at the bottom as to what you're actually talking about. They'll probably just delete it. And the whole objective is basically to get another key opinion leader to talk about you. Think of PR as word of mouth on a much larger scale. So you're basically trying to get other people to endorse you, that's basically how it works. To find out more information about me go to mediahub dot FITTopia, F I T T O P I A dot com dot A U and the information is there. Or Bennett PR dot com dot A U. I've about a million websites. (laughs)
- Fantastic well thank you very much for your time Brittany. Some really valuable information. I've actually never done a talk with anyone specifically just about PR for our community as of yet so this'll be the first and its a really massive arm of business marketing that probably gets, probably gets forgotten about or people kind of don't know how to approach it. So as a result then I get results for the work they do so they just kind of leave it behind. But its such a powerful avenue and from a credibility perspective its you know, top of the ranks so really appreciate your time. Brittany guys. Check out if you wanna find anymore information. Find out what Brittany what she does, what she was talking about check her out on those, the websites she mentioned and once again Brittany thanks for your time and no doubt we'll be speaking soon.
- Pleasure, thank you so much for having me.
- Always, see ya later.
- Bye.
