In this episode of EPIC Begins with 1 Step Forward, host Zander Sprague welcomes Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases, to dive into the art of mastering PR. Mickie reveals how small businesses can craft impactful press releases, maximize earned media, and integrate AI tools to create way more effective PR campaigns. He also shares expert storytelling techniques, strategic planning tips, and valuable advice for authors and entrepreneurs looking to expand their reach. Whether you are launching a product, promoting a book, or strengthening your brand, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you stand out in today’s vast media landscape.
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Mastering PR On A Budget: Mickie Kennedy Shares Insider Tips
Hello, EPIC people. I am honored to be joined by Mickie Kennedy. Mickie, tell us who you are and what you do.
eReleases: A Press Release Distribution Platform
I am the Founder and President of eReleases, which is a press release distribution platform. I help people get their releases out to the media over a large PR Newswire, paying about 1/3 of what you would if you went directly through them. In addition to that, I am a writer and have a creative writing background. That has helped me quite a bit in the education side of things, telling my customers ideas and being strategic in what types of releases they should be issuing rather than the typical press releases that most people see that are out there that unfortunately are probably ineffective.
Thank you for the work you do for small businesses. As an entrepreneur, there are times when I want to let the world know about what I’m doing. PR can be an incredibly expensive endeavor with, sadly, sometimes poor ROI on it. You’re like, “This is great,” and they’re crickets. Here’s a question I have for you. What are some of the rules about repurposing? Let’s say you got an article printed on MSN, USA Today, or something like that. Can you then take that, modify it a little, and do your own release on it?
You can’t take the exact article but you could certainly take the concept of the article and draft it in a press release format for the media. The thing is that when a journalist writes something, it’s called earned media. They own the copyright behind it. You couldn’t copy and paste an article that was very favorable of you and send that out to the media. What you could do is take the idea of what that article focused on, re-draft that in a press release format in your own language, send it out, and then hopefully have other people write it into an article that is not dissimilar to what the other one was.
For example, you’re putting a press release out about your book and someone writes something nice but you’re like, “That’s great but I’d like more people to know about it.” You’re going to be writing about your book. You’re like, “It’s my book. I can talk about it.” I was interested.
You can also take that one person who wrote about your book favorably and share it with your social media, share it with your newsletters, get that out there, and put the language on your website. You can do that. That’s completely appropriate and a great way.
As long as you’re giving credit like, “As seen in USA Today,” or whatever and the author credit. How did you come to be doing eReleases?
I started many years ago by finishing a creative writing degree and transitioned into a job at a telecom research startup as employee number three. Since you have to wear a lot of hats in a startup, they had me do their press releases because I had the writing background. I had a lot of failures at first but then I got good at it. I realized that what we were publishing was data. I knew that was gold because the media loves data but we weren’t telling the stories behind the data. I have to flesh that out a little bit.
We had published the Caribbean telecom traffic, which is not very sexy, but one country stood out as having way more traffic to and from the United States than all the others. The reason was it was the call center for 1-900 numbers, which were popular at the time. For those who don’t know what that is, you could call 1-900 and a series of numbers and get your horoscope prerecorded. That might cost $0.50 a minute. For $3 or $4 a minute, you could speak to a live psychic and get your horoscope. There were all different types of it. There were dating party lines. You name it. If you want pet advice because you have an unruly pet, you could talk to someone who’s a pet expert and pay a fee per minute and it would go onto your landline phone bill. This was the pre-cell phone era.
When we talked about the story behind it, it got picked up by the Financial Times, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and several trade publications in the telecom industry. That showed me that the journalists are looking for things to build a story arc. Journalists, even when it’s a small article, like to follow a story format. There’s nothing rocket science about a story format. It’s the same thing when you read a story to a kid at night. It goes up to a climax and then comes down. A good joke follows the same format. It leads up, there’s the punchline, and then there’s the follow-up after that.
Make sure you have enough information in the press release for a journalist to write in a story arc. We get a lot of product launch press releases that are like, “Here’s the product. Here’s the list of features. Here’s the page to learn more and buy it.” That’s not enough information to write a story. Take a use case study, someone who used your product, beta tested it, or had trialed it and what their experience was.
Make sure you have enough information in the press release for a journalist to write in a story arc.
The Importance Of Story Arcs In Press Releases
You have a company that was losing 7% a year. They put your logistics software solution in and it gave them better proposals and estimates. As a result, they’re on track after 90 days to make a net of 5%, which is a huge turnaround for a company that was losing money. You can then maybe have a quote from them. That’s more of a story arc. Journalists can say, “There’s this new product. Here’s someone who used it before and after. Here’s a quote by them.” Maybe they’ll list a feature or two. That much more satisfies what a journalist is looking to write about. Keep that in mind.
Many people write press releases in the, “What’s in it for me?” You have to think about what’s in it for the journalist and what’s in it for their audience. You’re like, “What would make their audience want to read this and care about it?” There are ways to take and satisfy all three people or all three sides of this, which are the audience, the journalist, and you. It is a matter of balancing enough information so that you’re providing something that would be interesting and relevant for that audience.
You’re right. It is a bit of an art. Here’s a question that gets lots of talk and stuff. What are your feelings about ChatGPT and AI and how you can put in an idea and get something generated? It’s cool technology but it’s dangerous for what you do.
I don’t think it’s dangerous at all. I am very hesitant about using AI on my website. I know that so far, Google is not punishing AI content. Google is smart and they know what’s written by a human and what’s written by AI. They’re going to wait and see what the user experience is long-term before they decide. For me, for my comfort level, everything that I put on my website, I want it to be written by a human. Everything that bonafide news outlets run is written by humans as well.
The one thing is the press release isn’t the end product. I feel that when it comes to a press release, having AI help you write it or draft it, I don’t have a problem with that. The problem is if you approach AI and say, “Write a press release on this company,” it’s going to be garbage because AI has been trained on the bulk of press releases out there. The sad reality is that 97% of press releases that get issued over wire do not generate earned media. That’s what we call it when a journalist writes about you. It’s earned media because you’ve earned it. You want to make sure you approach AI with an idea in mind, hopefully, a strategic and important idea that’s newsworthy.
My best approach is to not go to AI and say, “Write a 600-word press release on this idea. Here’s information on the company.” A better approach is, “Here’s a company. Here’s what they do.” I know that the more advanced AI is ChatGPT and it does have a recency on the internet, so it could have spidered and learned a little bit about you. Also, provide what you want the release to be about and then say, “How would you structure such a press release?” It will give you a format.
You can then break it down element by element. Say, “What’s a headline you would write for this press release you organized and structured?” It then gives you one. If you like it, you can go with it or say, “We are missing the point here. Remember, the press release is about XYZ.” Once you’re happy with what they’ve come up with a headline, say, “Give me five variations of this successful headline.” You’ll have a little more variety to choose from.
You can then say, “How would you open this press release? Write the opening paragraph.” If you feel all the important elements are there in that opening paragraph, you can take that and accept it or you can ask, “I would like you to write three variations of this opening paragraph containing all these important elements, but between each iteration, pause, think, and consider, “What can I do in this next version that will make it stronger or more unique?” Whenever you ask AI to stop, slow down, and ponder, it does, and it yields better results.
If you said, “Give me 25 ideas to write for a blog,” you’ll get 25 soft ideas. Some of them are going to be gold but most of them won’t be. If you approach it, “Give me five ideas for a blog post,” and then say, “Give me five but think what could be more strategic or important,” you’ll get better results. At the end of it, you’ll have 25 better ideas than if you just said, “Give me 25 raw ideas.”
How To Use ChatGPT For Research
I’ve been starting to use a little ChatGPT because there was some research I wanted to do. I was interested to learn about monetizing my YouTube channel but I had no idea how that works and stuff. The ability to get an answer and then further refine and go, “Now that you’ve given me that information, can you expand on this or explain this?” I have to say that in five minutes, I got good information. I’m keeping in mind that I will accept it as pretty valid. I’m not going to say it’s 100% because it may not be exactly the way it is, but honestly, for me, what would’ve probably taken me weeks of trying to find sources, I got in five minutes. That’s amazing.
I find that my approach to the AI and breaking it down takes about 8 minutes. The most it has ever taken is 22 minutes. That one was a little more difficult because we had three founders of a company and they were all very unique and from completely different worlds. One was a surgeon. One was a juggler or a clown. You had to devote a paragraph to each, so it was a much longer piece of copy. At the end of it, it was very well-written.
The areas to watch out for are the quote. AI can write a quote that’s usually a good quote but not a great quote. Make sure you get a great headline, a great opening paragraph, and an amazing quote. You want that quote to sing because if a journalist writes an article about the subject that you’re talking about, there’s always the chance that you could be cut from the article. It happens.
AI can usually write a good quote, but is not a great quote.
The managing editors look and they’ll say, “This is an interesting subject matter but why are they mentioning this little company I’ve never heard of?” They’ll cross it out. If there’s an amazing quote in there by you, the managing editor’s going to probably put a checkmark beside it saying, “This is an amazing quote. I don’t know who this is but this is a great quote.” It’s a way for you to survive on the editing and cutting floor. Even though you inspired the article, you can be cut from it, which is very unfortunate.
By amazing quote, I mean a wordsmith like me with a creative background, but I also recognize most people don’t have that. Be powerful. Paraphrase something so strong that if they were to paraphrase it back into their own language, it would be soft and dull compared to yours. You would ache a little bit for, “It was so much better worded before.” Spend some extra time on that quote. It’s an amazing way to stand out.
Also, if a journalist is looking at two stories of equal newsworthiness but one has an amazing quote, they know that their article is going to read better with an amazing quote and they could write the same article for both, they’re going to gravitate towards that one. Spend a little time with the quote. That being said, I have no problem with AI writing the press release. It’s not the end product. It is the building block for a journalist.
I’m a talker, not a typer. In the three books I wrote, I dictated it. I had some clay to work with to then say, “I have something on the paper that I can now go and fix.” I view AI as it gives me something good to start off with. I’ll then put my own touches but I have something to work with. That’s cool. What do you like best about what you do?
It’s the successes that we have for small businesses where we make a meaningful impact on their business as a result of them getting earned media. It’s always exciting. It makes you feel good that something that you’ve done has helped and given them an edge.
In my book, Epic Begins, one of the things I talk about is that failure is part of the journey. We don’t get it all right. I wanted to know since you’ve been doing PR for twenty-plus years, what are one or two good learning opportunities that you had or ideas you had that didn’t quite go the way you thought?
Learning From Failures In PR
I felt that if you wrote the best press release, you had a much stronger chance of success. The reason for that is when I came into the PR world and started issuing releases over the PR Newswire, they had a strong adherence to AP style. It had to be perfect and extremely well-crafted. I felt like that was the secret to getting good PR. I wrote a book about that and sent it out into the world. I saw good press releases come through that generated no earned media, so I changed.
If you can write the best press release, you will have a much stronger chance to succeed.
To be honest, there’s been a lot of relaxing of the standards and adherences. The Newswire cares less about how strongly you adhere to the AP style and journalists care less as well. They’re more interested in the meat of what it is you’re announcing. What’s the story? What’s the angle? What’s the real sizzle in this press release? What are you getting out there? That opened my eyes as to what people should focus on and shifted my education from writing a great press release to you can look at other press releases and you can look at their structure. The important things are the quote, the opening paragraph, and the headline.
To be honest, almost anyone can write a good press release. It doesn’t have to be a great press release but it has to be about an amazing or great newsworthy subject. That’s where I’ve been spending a lot of my time and energy. It is having people focus on what is a strategic press release and what makes it different. I am always open with the story and the importance of the story. Having the elements for a journalist to build out a story is one of the first things that you have to learn but there are other little things that you can do. Based on the types of releases that are getting picked up, what are the 3% of releases that journalists are gravitating to and turning into articles?
There’s a fundamental shift in the last twenty years where when you started and when I started, most of the internet was in its infancy. It was harder to get an article written because it was going into a physical publication. There was only so much space. Now that’s relaxing, I would hypothesize it is because it’s all online. They’re looking for content. There isn’t “You don’t make it because we didn’t have room for you.” It’s now infinite. Would you agree with that?
I do. The opportunities are expanding. Many people, when they think about press releases, think the media is dying, but the media is expanding. Many people have access to the wire that doesn’t fit the traditional mode of the media. We have influencers. For example, there are Instagram influencers who have access to the wire to look at fashion feeds and get to stuff as soon as it hits because then they can take the photos, put them on Instagram, and share them with their followers. It makes them feel like, “This person has an edge because this hasn’t been released yet.” It’s almost like, “It was released this morning at 9:00 AM and this person is already posting it within hours.” It does give someone a different aspect.
Media is not dying. It is actually expanding and now offering a lot of new opportunities.
We are getting a lot more of our news from non-traditional news sources. I love that the Wire is so accepting of these people. I follow somebody on TikTok called @Snackolator. He does a weekly roundup of new snacks hitting grocery store shelves. He pulls all the photos down from press releases and has cited them several times.
It is great to see how adaptive social media and these new forms of media are. They still need data. They still need content. The newswire is a great way to do it. We’re fortunate in the US that we have a duopoly of newswires. It’s Business Wire and PR Newswire. There are other wires. You’ve probably heard of Reuters, Associated Press, and all of this. They work on a different business model. They don’t issue press releases. They issue articles they wrote and they license those to people so that you can see the feeds and stuff like that.
Sometimes in your local paper, you’ll see AP in front of a story. Rather than have their editor and writers who were overwhelmed write that article, they pulled it down and paid the licensing fee to the Associated Press. In the US, it’s the duopoly. You don’t have to go to both. You have to go to one because journalists will check out both places to make sure that they’re covering their industry properly. As a result, it makes it easier for you. The downside of a duopoly is it’s going to cost more and it’s so expensive. Utilizing eReleases is a huge cost savings for going over PR Newswire.
PR is important. People won’t buy what they don’t know exists. You have to try and get people to write about whatever your product is or who you are as a person doing what you’re doing because it’s important. Can you take a moment and explain how eReleases works, how you work with someone, how long it takes, etc.?
How eReleases Works
If you have a finished press release, it’s in the proper format, and you’re ready to go, you can place an order and have it go out for the next business day. If you’re in a hurry and don’t mind paying a fee, you can have it go out the same day. If you’re not sure and you want us to take a look at the release, you can send it along to us and give us 1 to 2 business days to look it over and get back to you with tips and maybe ways in which to strengthen the press release.
If you’re completely starting and you don’t have a release, and you’re not sure what you should be writing about, that could take a little bit longer because we need to get some information from you and then have someone check out your website, draft a release, and get back to you. That might take a week or so. We do work a la carte so it’s a per press release basis. The commitment is low. You can buy packages once you’ve tried this and you’re comfortable moving forward to save a little bit of money.
There’s no reason that even using AI and your own talents you can’t come up with a great press release or a great PR campaign. That’s the one thing I tell people. Never judge PR with one press release. You need to do an entire PR campaign of 6 to 8 releases, testing and trying different approaches and seeing which one resonates with the media. The truth is, you only need one press release to go large to make a huge and meaningful difference to your business. Doing a campaign allows you 6 to 8 of those opportunities.
I also have free training when it comes to what strategic types of releases you should focus on. I built this out during the pandemic. I was looking at the 3% of releases that do get picked up and saw a lot of patterns. For anyone interested in that, it’s available at eReleases.com/Plan. It’s a very small commitment of less than an hour but it’ll give you a huge lesson in the types of releases that journalists are responding to and find meaningful. I’m shocked at the number of PR firms that still issue the same types of releases that don’t get picked up when there are so many strategic types of press releases they could be focusing on that are going to have a much higher chance of media success.
That is great. People can find you at eReleases.com. An important part of any epic journey is the two words, not yet, the concept that I’m working on something. If you’re writing a book and people are like, “Has your book come out?” You’re like, “Not yet.” If you say no, it makes it sound like it will never come out. I’ve got to imagine from what you’ve shared and from my own experience that “not yet” is an important part of your PR campaign. People are like, “Has it been picked up?” You’re like, “Not yet,” or, “That wasn’t but the next one got picked up,” or whatever. In your own life, what’s 1 or 2 of your not-yets, things that you’re like, “I want to do this,” or “I’d like to achieve that.”
Developing A Service For Non-Fiction Authors
The first one is rolling out a service directly for nonfiction authors. We get a lot of authors, even those that are published with major publishers, who are coming to us and saying, “We’re lost. The publisher doesn’t market anymore and it’s on us. What can you do for us?” I know that there are things that we could do but they go beyond what we normally do at eReleases.
A more tailored offering for these types of authors in which we go in and build out a campaign that coincides with the launch before and after could be a lot more successful. There are types of releases that we can do that will generate earned media 100%. I feel like it’s a lot more involved and a lot more of a commitment but something like that would be well-received in the industry.
That’s awesome. That would be very helpful. I can say as an author and trying to promote my book, it’s challenging. That’s great. People can get ahold of you by going to eReleases.com.
All my social media is on the lower right of the website, including my personal LinkedIn. That’s a great way to reach out to me personally. The masterclass is at eReleases.com/Plan. It’s completely free. It’s less than an hour long. It’s perfect for someone who’s either tried it and it didn’t work or they’ve never tried PR so that they can build out a campaign from the beginning that will be strategic and have a much higher chance of success.
That’s awesome. I’m going to be checking that out. I want to thank you so much for joining us. To my audience, if you’re ready to begin your epic journey, go to EpicBegins.com. As always, remember that epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
Important Links
- Mickie Kennedy
- Free Master Class: How to Build a PR Campaign Designed to Get Massive Media Coverage
- Mickie Kennedy on LinkedIn
- @Snackolator on TikTok
- Epic Begins
About Mickie Kennedy
Mickie Kennedy is an expert at helping small businesses, authors, and startups increase their visibility and credibility through tier-1 press release distribution.
Mickie founded eReleases 25+ years ago after realizing that small businesses desperately need a press release service they can actually afford, giving them access to the media and to a national newswire – all with a personal touch.
Mickie lives in Baltimore County with his family and two feuding cats. He enjoys British science fiction and acknowledges an unhealthy addiction to diet soda.
Mickie holds an MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry from George Mason University. He still writes poetry most Monday nights (virtually) with a group of fellow misfits