Brett Farmiloe on Brand-Boosting Media Mentions: Using Featured.com & HARO for Visibility

Learn how to get media mentions, boost SEO, and build authority without hiring a PR firm. Leah Frazier chats with Brett Farmiloe, founder of Featured.com, on how entrepreneurs, startups, and small business owners can use Featured.com and HARO to land press coverage, drive brand awareness, and stand out as industry experts. Brett also gives listeners the scoop on new features for Featured.com and HARO that help with aggregating content, AI, and so much more that can help you secure more mentions efficiently and effectively.

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Transcript

Leah Frazier (Speaker 1):

All right, welcome back to another episode of PR Yourself with Leah Frazier. I am so excited because I have just like the guy that has been helping us out behind the scenes and keeping all of the publicists employed, and you probably didn't even know that Brett <laugh>, he is currently the founder of Featured and the CEO of Harrow help a reporter out for many of you that use that service, welcome Brett Farlow to the show.

Brett Farmiloe (Speaker 2):

Leah, thank you for having me, <laugh>.

Speaker 1:

I am so excited to talk to you and I, I truly mean it. When I say that your services, and we'll talk a little bit about how you got into it and what you provide, but just being able to get little quotes and mentions and interviews from major outlets and magazines through the services you provide really does help keep your publicist employed. It helps to keep the monkey off our back and helps us with our mental health and stress. <Laugh>.

Speaker 2:

Listen, that's that's great. I'm, I'm happy that we could be helpful.

Speaker 1:

So tell me a little bit, first off, how did you get into this world of media pr? Like how did you find yourself here,

Speaker 2:

<Laugh>? Yeah, for sure. So, I long story short, I ended up launching a coffee company or helping launch a coffee company with the actor Hugh Jackman. And that was ultimately acquired by Keurig and decided that I should like, do marketing. And so I started to do freelance marketing for a variety of clients. I got our website to rank on page one of Google for the term digital marketing company, and then actually started to get inbound calls from all these different people saying, tell me about your company. It was just me and my dog hanging out and decided to actually launch a company. And so spent 10 years building a marketing agency, and the hardest thing for us to do is get our clients featured in the media. So when you're saying, Hey, like it's difficult out there and, you know, how do we get these mentions and articles and how do we, you know, I was there and I did that and, and experienced that pain firsthand and decided to actually launch a platform that allowed us and allowed our clients to answer questions that pertain to their expertise, and then use that knowledge in helpful ways.

Speaker 2:

And that was mutually beneficial for publishers and for, and for them. And so the, the platform started to scale fast in the agency, sold the agency and then have been doing featured.com for the last three and a half years. And what featured does is we connect subject matter experts with publishers to create question and answer content. And then we recently acquired and revived Help Reporter out or Hero and that connects sources with journalists for stories. And between both, we've got about 175,000 experts who are answering questions and sharing their knowledge, and more than probably 3000 different publishers who are looking to feature expert voices in, in the media. So it's a, it's a mutually beneficial connection that we're facilitating

Speaker 1:

When you were building these platforms, because obviously, and I always love to hear when people are like, and I just kind of fell into marketing, you know, and did it naturally because you just have a knack for, for marketing. So I love hearing stories like that. But when did you know in building, you know, featured and Harrow that, Hey, I've got something on my hands. What, did you hear responses from the journalist side, or was it from the expert side that told you, Hey, we should really keep going with this?

Speaker 2:

I think it actually goes back 20 years. When I was just graduating school, I was a financial auditor and decided that was like, I don't know if corporate auditing is really gonna be the career path for me. And so I bought an RV and cruised around the country with a couple friends, interviewing people about their career paths, and documented all those stories on a career education website for other people to, to learn from. And the thing that I learned from over 300 interviews went to 38 states, 16,000 miles and four months on the road, was that everyone needs an outlet to share their expertise. And so what we're doing today is just giving people an outlet to share their knowledge. And so in terms of, you know, when we, when I knew that we started to have some good traction and some good fit, it really just goes back 20 years when I was just showing up at people's workplaces and asking 'em how they got to where they're at. And people love to be able to share their life's accumulations and, and expertise. And the fact is that not everyone gets to be on a podcast like this. Not everyone gets to, you know, have a reporter show up and say, Hey, like, let me get your insights on this story. And so I think that that's the true thing that we're solving is everyone's an expert in something and people just need an outlet to share that expertise in a meaningful way.

Speaker 1:

And I will say, and this is, I did not get paid to say this shameless plug. I'm just saying the ease of signing up for these platforms. So, so many times on this show we've talked about folks with personal brands or maybe you're a business owner and you're trying to get into thought leadership and how platforms like featured in Harrow are perfect for that because you're sharing your subject matter expertise. Talk to us a little bit, Brett, once folks get on these platforms, like how can we make this a win? Because I know from the journalist side, 'cause I'm still in it myself, the amount of pitches <laugh> that they get a day and you're the subject matter expert is close to their baby. So they're thinking, this is a win-win. I am the one for this. And then maybe you don't hear back for months what is happening. Like where, where are we going wrong here?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Let me, let me explain a little bit about what Harrow is and what featured is and, and what goes behind the scenes in terms of how we're making that connection. So really, really, really easy to sign up for Harrow. You go to helper reporter.com, you put in your email address, and then you start to receive three emails a day with a summary of different requests from journalists that are looking to get connected with sources. And so how Harrow works is you could reply directly back to that, to that reporter with your pitch and they could take it and then, you know, get in contact with you or whatever it takes to, you know, put that story across the finish line. So Harrow is very much just an email based service three times a day featured. You have publishers and journalists who are asking questions, and then you could answer and search through all those different questions, share your expertise.

Speaker 2:

And you know, basically what happens is, you know, it goes through the platform. We'll pass the best responses over to those publishers and journalists. We're scanning for things like ai the usefulness in terms of how on point that pitch is with what someone requested. So there's a lot of analysis that feature does to make sure that the journalist inbox does get spared. And only the best insights go to that. So in terms of what makes a good pitch, I use the Harrow acronym as a way to help keep people on track, which harrow helpful, authentic, relevant, and on time. And so if you think about what's helpful from a pitch perspective, you're right. There's a lot of people who are seeing this query and saying, I'm perfect for this, and I and I'm gonna shoot, I'm gonna spend 10 minutes, 20 minutes writing the perfect pitch and I'm gonna send it on and things are gonna be great.

Speaker 2:

The the reality is, is that sometimes, you know, the journalist needs something that is helpful for their story and they might have a particular angle that you're not aware of and, and things like that. So don't take it personally, but put yourself in the, in the journalist's shoes and try to be as helpful as possible for, for them. And what is usually helpful is given something that they could copy, paste, put in their story because you don't know how quickly they are on deadline. They may may never even talk to you, they may never even tell you that you, they use your quote, they're, it's copy paste, put in and, and, and get it across the finish line. So helpful authentic is basically just don't use AI like a hundred percent. So we, we have seen this from even some of the world's leading PR firms that they're generating a hundred percent AI submissions.

Speaker 2:

And so what we've done is we've established a partnership with a company called pangram. It's an AI detection company that actually works every single hero pitch. Every single featured answer goes through pangram. If it's a hundred percent ai, then journalists and publishers have a one click option to hide those responses altogether. And so a lot of people will do that. Otherwise we display an AI detection score on every single submission so that a journalist or publisher has that transparency when they go to select. So if you're going to use ai, make sure that you're adding your own personal spin to it. You're adding your own expertise experience so that it's not a hundred percent. Now with that said, you know, some journalists don't really care if it's AI or not because they're gonna get in touch with you anyway. And they're gonna say like, okay, ai got me connected with the right source, now I'm gonna do the additional legwork to actually get connected with that person, get what I need.

Speaker 2:

And put that story across. Relevant is focused on what you're an expert in and on time is sometimes with harrow, speed is of the essence and someone a journalist is looking to get connected with someone as quickly as possible to put that story across. So on time is just replying very quickly. If it's tar. With featured a lot more leniency, we display a deadline where maybe something is due in seven days, six hours. You've got the opportunity to go back to your client, go back to your boss, think of the right answer for yourself, and then submit that. And then when that deadline hits featured, we'll do an analysis, pass that on to the publisher and that's when it ultimately gets, you know, featured. So harrow helpful, authentic, relevant on time.

Speaker 1:

I love that. And thank you so much for just leading into the discussion on ai. I've had that question. I know it helps a lot of small business owners 'cause they're doing 50 million things at the same time, but they do need that reality check as well that a lot of journalists, to your point, either they like it or they won't. So you're taking a risk and I think it's very interesting that you guys are using detection. I I had no idea.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, I mean, we're doing detection, but then we're also really pushing the envelope. We recently came out with a, a product called Featured AI and featured ai. Basically here's the challenge time. Like no one has the amount of time to go monitor all these different media opportunities to think of, you know, that the right angle, the right answer, you got a business to run. Like, yeah, there's, there's a definite benefit to being featured in the media 'cause it build builds visibility with your customers. But so we, we came out with featured AI that identifies relevant media opportunities for you and then drafts an initial response that you could add your own personal spin to it, take across the finish line, and then submit directly to that journalist. And how it works is you create a knowledge base for yourself so you're able to upload articles that you've written, answers that you've already submitted FAQs from your website, whatever the heck the podcast like this, upload it all. We'll use that information to identify the right media opportunities for you based off of your previous experiences and, and your expertise. And so how it works is you kind of set it up, you kick back, you get an email when when there's a relevant media opportunity with that initial draft you can click on make edits, and then boom, put it in, takes a couple, couple seconds and you're, you're on your way.

Speaker 1:

Listen Brett, you are the ultimate entrepreneur. Like, you see a problem and you're like, solution. No hesitation. You see a opening in the market and you just go after it. I'm, I'm loving all of the things that you guys are, have come up with.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's just frustrating. Like look, I I I, I've talked, spoken with thousands of business owners, it's not seeing a problem. It's hearing the problem over and over, over and over again. Yes, absolutely. You know, so it's you gotta do something to, to make it better and right. And tweak it and, and make sure that you're getting closer and closer to product market fit. So the thing that I do as a founder is I'm probably 10, 20 times a week I'm hopping on a Zoom call to speak with prospective customers, with existing customers. And with, with our business, it's like double because you got publishers on one side and then you got sources on on the other. And so you gotta develop a product that meets both. So it's like quadruple hard.

Speaker 1:

I have a question for you. There's kind of been, I I won't say lately, it's always a topic of discussion in pr particularly amongst clients where they'll say something to the effect of, oh, these tiny little mentions don't do anything. Or, you know what I mean? Or they want other, they're associating it automatically, like with sales or some other sort of conversion where it's like, okay, that that's a blend between PR, marketing and sales. It's not always your, you know, you're not gonna get that one mention in New York Times to just blow up. You know, maybe you do, I don't know. But what do you have to say to those that really don't see the value or their internal ROIs Yeah. Or being a source like this.

Speaker 2:

We're, we're seeing the opposite right now. There's a, like I said, we've been doing this for three and a half years. Initially a lot of the value was, you know, getting placed and the value was like, okay, now I can have a, as featured on New York Times on my about page, I could put that in my sales collateral, I could put that in my email signature. And you're getting these good logos. It's adding up, you're also, you know, building up like your backlink profile. And oftentimes these, these mentions will come with a link over to your website. And so more and more of these mentions rises, you know, your visibility in search now it's like really different. And it's really different because of AI visibility. Now what we're hearing from customers is it's not a search search aspect. It's how do I make sure that my product and services are getting mentioned when my customers are going to these LLMs and saying, what's the best, you know, company for this? And so now all of these mentions, all of these citations are becoming really important from a, a holistic perspective of where you're being mentioned, how you're being mentioned, who's being mentioned. And so we're seeing a huge just, you know, wave of people who are coming to platforms like ours to score these mentions because they need to be visible in whatever the new world looks like from a marketing perspective. Your, your new customer that you're marketing to is AI. And, and so like, that's basically what is happening in the space

Speaker 1:

That, look, that's, that's the tweetable quote right there. That is the soundbite your new customer's ai and you ain't never lied. When we were go, when some of us were going out on Google and we were recognizing that AI overview on Google, a lot of the publicists freaked out. 'cause We're like, we don't know how is AI determining what links or what search engine results are going in that AI overview? But to your point it's getting those high profile mentions. It's getting, you know, quoted and those sources and things like that to be able to get pulled up in that AI overview. And when it was first happening, we were like, oh my gosh, we have a whole nother mountain we have to climb now <laugh> to get to come up and search results.

Speaker 2:

And, you know, it's not that that it's pretty adjacent for, from like the existing activities. It's just getting a little more granular and, and deliberate about why you're doing it and, and how to measure it. And so I think that it's a lot of the same repetition. There's a lot of crossover between search engine optimization and answer engine optimization. Yeah. It's just how are you actually measuring these things? And so anyone can do this now, they could go to perplexity, they could go to chatt PT, they could go to Grok, they could go to all these different models and just say, what's featured? What's help reporter out? And you can test these LMS to figure out what, how is your brand being positioned? How is it being known for? And then you can make some branding adjustments from that. Like, why are you, why are you thinking that we do this?

Speaker 2:

Like we do that. And, and the reality is, is that kind of AI is right. They're your customer that you're marketing to. I love that. 'cause They're the ones that are referring your services, your products out to your existing customers. So then it's like, hey, gut check. Let me go to our our company website. Let me see what, how we're positioning ourselves. Let me go to the review sites and see how they're positioning us. Let me go to, you know, all these different places that my competitors are being mentioned that were being mentioned. And let's just do a positioning game. And now, now let's have a strategy to say, okay, we need to control the narrative. We need to be able to answer questions that are, are around our expertise. And, you know, get featured and, and mentioned by mention article by article. We're starting to better market, you know, to, to that in the customer.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Oh man, that's, that's so good. Like a great branding check. <Laugh>, you think your brand is communicating X AI will tell you that you're definitely right. Going right instead of left. So that, I'm gonna check that as soon as we get off this podcast. <Laugh>.

Speaker 2:

Definitely.

Speaker 1:

For, just for some folks who are very goal oriented, who may be tuning in as far as these mentions are concerned I guess it's a two folded question, what should they be aiming for as far as getting mentioned? Like what do you see really driving the needle and as far as how many times that they have to pitch on average to reach set goal, let's say you say it's once a month for 12 months so 12 times a year, how often should they be pitching in order to, to reach that based off of results that you've seen?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a really interesting question and I'm not sure, sure. I know totally the answer to it. And that what it reminds me of is back when we were doing our marketing agency, we did a lot of search engine optimization. And clients would come to us with a backlink goal of like, Hey, how many backlinks do I need to rank on page one for this certain search term? And what we would do is we would go to a different SEO software, we would look up that keyword, we would determine how many backlinks, all of the top 10, you know, websites had that allowed them to rank on page one. And then we would do the delta of how many backlinks go to this webpage that we wanna rank for? How many links go to the existing top 10? Okay, there's a difference of 58 backlinks.

Speaker 2:

You know, let's go like month by month if we wanna rank on page one and a year from now, let's go get five, you know, placements every single month. And so I think that it's doing some sort of initial analysis to figure out what your actual goal is, what are your, what, how far ahead are your, your competitors? And then making a determination how placements can support that goal. So I think that that's, that's like one quantitative way to go about it. And then the other thing is just a habit. Like it's the habit of getting into this and, and prioritizing this. So oftentimes like with helper reporter out we send out an email at 5:30 AM Eastern, 12:30 PM Eastern, and then 5:30 PM Eastern time. And we'll see user like subscribers actually set 15 minute calendar reminders at those times to get in the habit of, okay, I'm gonna look for that email, I'm gonna scan the contents. If there's one, I've got a 15 minute window, I'm gonna answer that. So I think it's a combination of being really quantitative and deliberate about what your goals are and then developing the, the muscle you know, through calendar blocking and things like that so that you can actually do the prioriti prioritization and then just measure it. Seeing, seeing if it works. If it doesn't, if it doesn't work for your business, then, you know, find a new tactic.

Speaker 1:

I love that. I love that. Make it a part of your business. You are gonna calendar and block off everything else. This is one of those ones. I used to have an intern that was her only job, was to get those Harold emails <laugh> and scan it to see which ones our clients qualify for. So I get it.

Speaker 2:

I I've heard that often. And you know what's cool now? We just launched a new product, I think like, what day is it? Friday? Tuesday. Tuesday. We came, came out with a new product called Aggregated Opportunities. So now what we heard problem if you, if you're loving the problem solution stuff, I problem is that you're hiring some poor intern to monitor X substack LinkedIn payroll. Yes. All of it. All of it. Five hours a day. These interns are sitting there, you know, combing through, you know, substack posts and trying to identify the thing that actually matters in those substack posts for prs, which is leads, like what, what's the opportunity here for my client? And so aggregated opportunities, combs through all of that, puts it in a centralized place, allows you to click view opportunity, go directly to that opportunity, whether that's in LinkedIn or Substack. And so for all the interns out there, shout out you got a new tool, <laugh>.

Speaker 1:

I'm okay looking that up today too, Brent. You can just have all of our money like <laugh>, you could have all the coins 'cause this is so extremely helpful. Wow, there's so much more, but we gotta, we'll, we'll do a follow up episode. So can you think of a success story before we wrap today of someone who is either or a business owner who's used, featured or Harrow and it's really changed the trajectory of their business?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, a lot of 'em you know, there's, there's a lot of people using both, both services. I think, you know, the one that stands out just 'cause I was closest to it was when when we were actually doing it ourselves at our agency and, and we had one client that I think like 25 xd their their organic search presence in the matter of 12 months. And they were able to, I think go from, you know, raise their series a big series A raise a really big series B dramatically kind of like put their company on a new new course. And a lot of it was because like they had, they were invisible online, they were pre, you know, you would Google their, their company name. That was the only way that, that you could get discovered. And then they started to do these mentions and, and, you know and actually put some muscle to it.

Speaker 2:

And then they started ranking and getting visibility for, for different terms that pertain to adjacent, you know, keywords that their customers are using to discover products and services. So I think that's the, the key here is like, we're, a lot of us are invisible online. And the thing is that a lot of the visibility is just like in here. It's, it's, yeah, you got the knowledge and the expertise about your business, what's the best way to get it out so that you're able to now be discovered by customers. So whether that's content creation where you're creating your own, you know, pieces of content and marketing those in different ways that's like the very overwhelming, confusing thing that exists because it's like, all right, well where do I create content today? Yeah. Like, do I create that on my website? Maybe our website's like gonna be relevant in five years.

Speaker 2:

I don't know. Like people are creating two versions of their website today, one for humans and one for ai and, and bots so that, you know, you're making that a little more digestible for the bots that are coming to, to your sites because 50% of all web traffic now is bots. So really crazy stuff. But I think at, at the end of the day, the problem remains the same is that building visibility online for your customers to reach customers is hard. And the solution is that you have an abundance of knowledge to share share it.

Speaker 1:

Wow. Thank you Brett for this fabulous discussion. I've got some things to sign up for <laugh> today that you've mentioned that you guys have launched. Is there anything else you want to tell our listeners before we wrap? Yeah. And then tell them how they can follow you as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, maybe just for clarity, just just add to the business model here, because you're like, all right, now gimme all the coins. <Laugh>, the reality is, is that that like hero is free, it's free for, for sources, it's free for journalists to use. It's fully supported by newsletter ads. So there's nothing stopping you from going to help reporter.com, inputting your email address, seeing what comes there with featured. It's a freemium business model. Everyone gets three answers a month at no cost. You're able to look at those aggregated opportunities for free. And the real time, you know, the, the cost is your time. Like you're gonna go in there and monitor things if you want us to help save you time. And if you want more submissions, then you have paid subscriptions to do that. And they're, they start at $19 a month, they go up to $99 a month. Really? Wow. Achievable price point. So that's what I would say is that like, yes, I would love all of your coins, but the thing is that we all have expertise, we all have knowledge to share. We want two platforms that make that really accessible. So feel free to, to try it out. And then I could be reached, you know, on LinkedIn via email@brettatfeature.com. I'm always open to feedback and would love to hear all of the problems so that we can offer better solutions.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you so much, Brett. This has been an extremely rich conversation. You're like a superstar in the PR world for what you guys have built to help us do our jobs more effectively. And now small business owners who are engaging in DIY pr. So thank you for continuously innovating and supporting our work, and I wish you nothing but the best in the future, <laugh>.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thanks for having me on. Appreciate you.

Speaker 1:

All right, we'll chat soon.

Speaker 2:

All right. Thanks.