5 Steps To Leveraging LinkedIn For Major Media Exposure

When most people use LinkedIn it’s generally for recruitment or leads. But there’s a forgotten way to leverage the platform that could help you stand out from the crowd and grow your influence in your market significantly. That is media exposure.

Unless you’re a linkfluencer® member, it’s unlikely you’re using LinkedIn this way and we hate to say this so bluntly, but you’re missing out. So in this article we’re going to share with you some simple tips on how you can start using LinkedIn now to generate a tonne of media for your business. And the best part? You won’t have to spend a cent on PR or send out a single press release.

Before we do this though, we will tell you why and how media can help your business. The big thing is influence. Getting media coverage helps you build major influence for yourself or your business. Let’s explain, there’s a term in the online marketing space, which is:

The Moment Of Truth

Before a potential prospect is going to do business with you they check you out online, they check your LinkedIn profile, they google your name and do a bit of self-investigation. Now the kicker is if they see you have been interviewed in popular industry specific media publications automatically the potential client sees you in a different light – they want to do business with you.

So all of a sudden you have influence – you’re a thought leader. No longer do you get crunched on price, people will pay what you want to pay due to your credibility in your industry.

This is why we say getting media is one of the best and fastest ways to build your influence and credibility. Because let’s face it – you are who Google says you are… With that said, let’s move into a few simple steps you can take right now in order for you to start connecting with the right journalist within prominent publications.

Step 1: Identify the media publications

First step to getting media exposure is to understand what your target market is reading – what are those media publications? Write down a list of 3 media publications you would like to get featured in and that you think would build a lot of credibility for yourself if you were featured in them.

Step 2: Identify the journalists

Next you need to start reading articles within that publication that are written about topics that are relevant to you and your business. For example, if a journalist was writing LinkedIn articles on The Huffington Post we’d note those people down.

Step 3: Connect with them on LinkedIn

Once you have a list of potential targets start connecting with them on LinkedIn. The key here is to send them a personalised connection request rather than the default LinkedIn connection request, as we have spoken about in other articles using a personalised connection request – click here to read an article on getting your LinkedIn connection requests accepted.

We also touch on having a compelling LinkedIn profile in this article as well, which is another key to getting your connection requests accepted from the media. Here’s an example of a personalised connection request:

Step 4: Build a relationship

Once you have had your connection accepted it’s time to build a relationship with these journalists. Don’t go in cold asking for a media article written about you straight away – this comes across rude and will likely be ignored.

Instead have a few touch points via the messaging system that leads into you becoming their ‘expert’ of choice when they are writing articles. For example, you might send them a message saying you really enjoyed their articles and looking forward to reading more, as well as any other comments you think are applicable. This then builds up rapport and builds you as a subject matter expert.

Step 5: Solve their challenges

Once you have built a relationship you can then begin your approach for media attention. Now some of the biggest challenges journalists face is that they don’t have access to key experts, sick and tired of press releases and are very time poor.

Knowing these challenges your aim should never be to go in too direct… By the end of step 4 you should have already started to build a relationship with them through the various messages you have sent, now it’s a matter of letting them know that when they are writing articles related to your industry that you’d be happy to comment and if you can’t you can help introduce them to people who could.

This basically solves their challenge of finding key experts and saves them a lot of time looking around. And given you have already built a relationship and have a certain amount of rapport built over time, you are very likely to get a spot in their column at some point in time.

In saying that building your personal brand is something that takes time and consistency to achieve results. If you think you’re not going to have the time to stay consistent then you need to either find the time or find someone who can implement on your behalf so you can begin investing in your most important asset – you. So there we have it the 5 steps to getting media exposure on LinkedIn, start leveraging these steps today and we can guarantee you too will start seeing your media connections grow in a very short space of time.