PR Tips for Coaches with Lex (Minisode)

In this mini-episode, Lexie Smith offers a variety of tips and tricks for coaches looking to up their thought leadership and PR game. A PR pro, coach, and agency owner herself, Lexie reviews the top PR strategies coaches should enact if looking to increase their credibility, visibility, and revenue. 

Here’s what you’ll learn: 

• The definition of thought leadership
• Why developing a thought leadership strategy is important for coaches
• Examples of PR tactics Em and Lex have deployed for Ready Set Coach
• What types of media to pursue as a coach looking to increase visibility
• How your PR efforts can translate into clients
• And more

Follow Em & Lex on Instagram at @readysetcoachprogram

Learn more about the Ready Set Coach Program at Readysetcoachprogram.com

Learn more about Six Degrees Society and THEPRBAR inc.

Transcript

PR Tips for Coaches with Lex (Minisode) - Podcast Transcript

Lexie Smith 

Hello, hello, it is Lexie. I am recording a minisode for you guys today. So hopefully you are okay with just hearing my voice for a few minutes. Well, more than a few minutes today. So I wanted to record a minisode specifically talking to one of my unique areas of expertise. If you're a longtime listener, or if you listen to a couple of our first episodes, you might be aware of my background. But for new listeners or as a quick refresher, I kind of want to share where I'm coming from or why I have authority to talk about what I'm about to talk about. So I have been in the world of PR and marketing for going on. I guess going on 13 years now. I started my career working in agencies, I was a senior account director for a PR firm. I then went in house I was the director of PR and marketing for a Hospitality Group. I then moved into the world of tech and telecom became a vice president at the fastest growing Telecom in America. So big pivot from hospitality into tech. But all this to save these experiences led me up to launching my very first business which is called the PR bar Inc, which originally started as a PR coaching brand. It's now a peer coaching brand and agency through this launch into entrepreneurship is how I ended up meeting Emily, you know, the rest is history, we launched RSC, all this to say I happen to know a thing or two about the world of PR. And today I wanted to hop on here and just share some very specific PR tips for coaches. So first off, what is PR? Well, if you really want to dive into what is PR, I have a whole PR podcast, it's called pitching and sipping, you're more than welcome to hop on over and listen there. But high level, I want to talk about the press and media side of PR. That is just one arm of all that PR is but again, I could go into I would get far beyond the minisode if I went into all the intricacies but PR is establishing relationships and leveraging relationships to get your brand seen and heard. So from a perspective of coaching, we might utilize PR to spread brand awareness right to find more clients. So people come to us often RSE both in the sales process and the discovery process at our events in in our cohort asking all the time about what are the different ways or what should they be focusing on in terms of PR when it comes to coaching. So I'm going to streamline this today and give you one area I really suggest diving into. And that is thought leadership. Thought Leadership that's a new word for you basically means you're a leader of thoughts, or you have innovative thoughts and you've become someone that's highly sought after in regards to your opinions or your expertise in an area. So, for example, Emily and I could be seen or viewed as thought leaders in coaching or Emily can be seen as a thought leader in networking, I might be in PR fight to my own toot my own horn. So, thought leadership is very well aligned to coaching. Because coaches right are supposed to be experts in their own fields. So right away. What this means is this is going to put your activities or your tactics of what to focus on in PR in a very specific lane. So if you focus on thought leadership, you're going to be focusing a lot on platforms and opportunities that feature you as the expert. So this means going after writing an article for Forbes, as opposed to being just featured in Forbes. So being featured in Forbes would mean someone else is writing about you or they're writing an article and they include you in it, which is also really great. However, if we look at PR strategy from a thought leadership perspective, when you're the one writing the article, then you're the expert. And that's what we want to be in coaching, right? We want to be the expert. So rather than spending time trying to get other people to write about you, highly encourage you focus your efforts on finding opportunities where you can be the expert, where you can write the article, Emily and I did this an example we did a, we call these by lines, we did a byline for create and cultivate, we wrote an article on five numbers that you need to know when launching a coaching business. So again, instead of pitching cream cultivate to write that article about us, or including us, we pitch them to let us write it. And so when you go to that article, it's written by us, which is naturally positioning us as the experts on this authority, which is reinforcing the whole concept of coaching, right? This article has proved really, really beneficial for our business. It has brought us leads people read the article, they see our name, and the byline, they've clicked on our website, and they've booked sales calls with us. It's also a great tool that we leverage in our marketing. Hey, look, we're experts, we write for this, this given publication. So that's one category. If you want to talk about more traditional digital publications, I highly suggest you go after bylined. So finding opportunities where you are the author. Now, let's say you're not a writer, like everything I just said terrifies you or you hate it, or heck, no Alexei, that's realistically not going to happen. Fine. The other thing you can do is look for perhaps podcasts, right? So now we're flipping mediums of media, we just went from writing to podcast where you're speaking. So if you're someone who is more comfortable speaking, then you can consider going after podcasts. Now, there's two ways you can approach podcasts. One, you can create your own, or two, you can be a guest on other people's podcasts. My advice here short term start is being a guest. A lot less work to be frank, and you're getting to speak on a podcast or platform where other people have cultivated a community or an audience. So it's a quick way to be heard by people. So short term, I highly suggest guesting being featured as a guest on other people's podcasts, where you are the featured expert and you get to talk about something related to your line of coaching. Now, one term, it definitely is worth considering launching your own podcast where again, you are the host and you are the thought leader, you are the expert. The reason I suggest that as a secondary approach is honestly there's just a lot of work that goes into creating a podcast and it can take time to cultivate an audience by lines. We've talked about podcasts The last area I want to encourage you to focus on in regards to your PR thought leadership strategy is speaking engagements, specifically, where you are the speaker, you are the expert, you are the authority leading a workshop. Okay, so here would be an example Emily and I frequently self host and are asked to guest hosts or guests lead workshops for other communities. One of our signature topics is how to add a coaching revenue stream to your life. So Emily and I get to lead this workshop we're providing people value, we're giving them a taste of what it's like to work with us. Again, all these things are naturally positioning us as the experts. So the whole concept here again, when we talk about PRT is identifying or pursuing activities that allow us as a coach, to be in the seat of authority to be the leader to be the teacher, right? Because when someone hires us, that's what they're hiring us for, to teach them to guide them. They're hiring us for our unique expertise. So just a few quick tips PR is a topic that we definitely dive into in the ReadySet coach program more in depth, but there's a little bit of a place for you guys to get started. If you have any questions or you want to workshop through PR ideas, feel free to slide into m and I's DM if you want to learn more about my whole backstory again, I have a podcast called pitching and sipping, but also on one of the first episodes of this podcast we dive into our backstories so there's my minisode I hope it was helpful and In the next episode, don't worry Emily will be back.

Emily Merrell 

If you're enjoying the ReadySet coach podcast, please leave a review wherever you are listening. For more information about ReadySet coach, visit ReadySet coach program.com