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67: Pitching Strategies for Creatives | Featuring Susie Moore

See the show notes for this Episode here.

This transcript has been automatically generated.

Transcript:

Susie Moore [00:00:00]:

If I worked all day and night, nonstop for the rest of my life, like, building my own blog, like, I could never get that level of traffic. But the best news is I don't even have to because I can tap right into it. The audience and brand that's been built for, in some cases, over a hundred years with hundreds of millions of dollars and incredible teams and talented people, it already exists. I just have to, like, put my name for it, right? Put my hat in the ring to share my own story.

Bonnie Christine [00:00:28]:

I'm Bonnie Christine, and this is where all things creativity, design, business, and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today. I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional creative podcast. Hello, everyone. Welcome. Our guest today, Ms. Susie Moore.

Susie Moore [00:01:41]:

Bonnie, I am so happy to be with you. Thank you so much having me on your very fancy special podcast.

Bonnie Christine [00:01:47]:

Susie, thank you for hopping over from your very fancy, awesome podcast. I love your podcast. I love it for so many reasons. It's called? Let it be easy. And so that in and of itself is all I need to know and.

Susie Moore [00:02:02]:

Hear let it be easy. I just feel soothed whenever I hear it, I'll say it. So thank you.

Bonnie Christine [00:02:07]:

Let's just let it be easy. So that's what we're going to do today. We're going to let it be easy. I'm so excited about the topic that we are discussing today. Susie, I got to hear this from you for the first time, I believe in the fall of last year, 2022, and you blew my mind with this topic that we're going to discuss today. And so Susie is a media expert, and the way that you came into our room, right, was really presented because all of us, we were in a mastermind, right? And all of us are really working on more visibility, more traffic. How do we find our people? How do we get in front of the right person? And obviously, we know different ways to do that, but they're getting more and more saturated. They're getting more and more complicated. So we're talking about maybe Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and all of those things. And here you come in with your brilliance and talk about driving traffic via media, meaning articles and written word, which I think maybe we forgot about for a minute.

Susie Moore [00:03:25]:

Oh, my gosh, Bonnie, I love this method. I could talk about it for three days straight. I am obsessed with it because it brings so much to your business. I mean, as you know, I started writing articles when I was still side hustling as a life coach. I had my full time tech corporate career going strong, but I knew that if I wanted to really go all in as a life coach and thrive, I didn't want to just get by month to month. I had a very nice corporate paying job. I knew that there had to be a way. There had to be a way that wasn't extremely complex, that wasn't expensive, that wasn't really hard to navigate, where I could allow the right people to find me, where I could just share my stories. I could be visible to those who maybe I could help, whose problems I could help alleviate. And really, I mean, one of my mantras is underthink it, right? Whatever it is that you feel could work or you're curious about, I would love to consume media places like Marie Claire, MINDBODY Green, Tiny Buddha, Cosmo, business Insider. I would waste many hours in my cubicle waiting for 05:00 p.m., just like online, checking out different media outlets as a consumer. And then the more I paid attention, kind of having this entrepreneurial brain start to kick in, I thought, what if I wrote something? Or what if they had my picture and my story and my advice and my tips? And so one afternoon, I submitted just 600 words to MINDBODY Green without overthinking it. I was waiting to meet a friend for drinks, so I sent it from my tablet from a bar in Manhattan, and two weeks later, I had my very first guest post, and it was shared nearly 4000 times. And as soon as that happened, I was like, this is it. This is how I'm going to grow my business. The universe supports me. I have this dream. I know I have a method now. And it gave me so much confidence, Bonnie, because I didn't know any other way. I'm like, am I going to ask for referrals? Am I going to have to go to networking events with business cards? I didn't want to do any of those things, but I was willing to show up and be generous and just share advice for free. And that, my friend, when you do it in front of large enough audiences, people notice and the right people who connect with your message want to work with you.

Bonnie Christine [00:05:44]:

There's something I heard a long time ago that always stuck with me is that if you don't have the audience size that you want, if you don't have the amount of traffic that you want, someone else does. And so is there any way that you can kind of slip stream into their traffic and complement it. Yes, take advantage of their traffic in a complimentary way. But my mind immediately went to, okay, so maybe you put, like, a YouTube ad on someone else who's got the audience that you want or something like that. But this, again, is just something that I didn't even consider. And it's that perfect match where there are these huge media outlets that have everyone's target audience and they need content, and so why not your content?

Susie Moore [00:06:41]:

Exactly. I mean, I actually did a breakdown recently of different audience sizes. So to just reference Business Insider, which you and I were chatting about just a few minutes ago before we started recording, they have 90 million readers a month. Good Housekeeping, 40 million readers a month. Right. Cosmo, 51 million. I mean, if I worked all day and night, nonstop for the rest of my life, like building my own blog, I could never get that level of traffic. But the best news is I don't even have to, because I can tap right into it. The audience and brand that's been built for, in some cases, over 100 years with hundreds of millions of dollars and incredible teams and talented people, it already exists. I just have to put my name for it, right? Put my hat in the ring to share my own story or to share some advice or some tips, something that could be useful to their readers that doesn't have to be madly profound or madly original, just useful and timely. And I just think it's like the ultimate score. Because your editor wins because they need content. My editors have to put up multiple pieces per day. You win because you access these huge audiences, and you get to be generous by sharing your advice and what it is that you know. But most importantly, the audience wins, right? They get something out of this with a five minute read, ten minute read, whatever it may be. They leave with something often actionable sometimes. I mean, I don't know about you, Bonnie, but I grew up reading all sorts of magazines, and they taught me how to save money. They told me how to have boyfriends. They taught me all sorts of things. And I take advice from lots of different trusted media outlets. And as someone who creates content, if you want to be a contributor, you change the lives of other people. And why do we all go into business in the first place? We know it's to make an impact. So this is how I know that we can be the most impactful on mass with large audiences that are, frankly, unlimited. Even if you spent your whole life pitching, you couldn't touch even a percentage of the media outlets that could potentially host you and your advice.

Bonnie Christine [00:08:38]:

My audience is, most of them, very familiar with the idea of pitching, because many, many of us pitch our artwork to creative directors of companies for licensing, also sometimes magazines for artwork for the magazine. So what we're talking about here is similar but different. So can you just give us the very simple what we're talking about here is yes, exactly.

Susie Moore [00:09:08]:

So any media outlet has either an editor or producer that curates the content that appears. So if you go to any website that you love, maybe you went to Glamour or, I don't know, Men's Health or even anything in the home space or design space. There are editors who decide what's featured and what's not featured. So what makes the cut? Essentially same with any television show, the morning shows, right, the guests don't just magically appear. There's someone who's choosing them, who's hearing their stories and putting together a great morning show, for example. So if you want to put your hat in the ring, essentially, if you want yourself to be featured as a contributor or an expert, you simply have to get in touch with the decision makers, which are editors or producers, share an idea that could be valuable to their audience. And I'm yet to meet a single person who wants to do this, who hasn't got potentially a million or 100, at least 200 ideas within them. You present your idea in the form of a pitch saying, hey, I think your audience essentially would benefit from me sharing about this, whether it's a personal story or some advice. And then that gets approved or rejected. And once it's approved, you have a deadline to meet to create your content, especially if it's written content. Often you get a couple of weeks to do it, and then you have a publish date, and then you get a link. It's like exciting news. Your piece is live in the Wall Street Journal, like your pieces live in Refinery 29, like whatever it may be. And there, my friend, you have your media win. You take that logo, you take that published piece, you share it with your audience who love to brag about you. No one is prouder of you than the people who work with you. You share it on your social channels. And as soon as you get one win, your next win is even so much easier because you're veted. And then it becomes like this flywheel. And you get obsessed because in your pieces you include links to your content, links to your book, links to whatever sign up is most suitable for you at that time. And you can change it. I constantly change my links. It's called like a call to action in a two sentence bio. I change all the time based on what I'm promoting or sharing in the moment, right?

Bonnie Christine [00:11:12]:

So we're talking about this article on a topic, and then at the very bottom it says, this article was by Susie Moore. Learn more here. You get a link right there, and that drives traffic to whatever it is that you want traffic to in the moment.

Susie Moore [00:11:29]:

Yes. So I love to drive to Evergreen Funnels. Often I even just drive to my site's, opt in. So my email list is always just growing organically. And the best thing, too, bonie, is your content is always out there, right? So of course you get a big spike as soon as it's released. But as soon as when someone's googling, you like, what's coming up? Is it a website and social handles, that's cool, but that's also what everyone else has. But if you're coming up in these really respectable, cool media outlets that your audience already love and follow, then to that audience, you are that media outlet and they love and trust you immediately because of that correlation. Like the the power of context is very important. And then you build a relationship with a couple of your favorite media outlets, you do it consistently and then you're like, this was available all along. This audience already live here. I've got something that's of use to them, so let's go. And I think that the more you do it, the more fun it becomes even, and the easier it gets for you.

Bonnie Christine [00:12:32]:

So not only is it driving traffic to whatever it is that you're wanting more eyes on, but it's also building your authority and your credibility and your ability to get verified on different platforms.

Susie Moore [00:12:46]:

It's a requirement. Yeah, the blue tick. It's like, where's your media coverage? You have to send examples, right?

Bonnie Christine [00:12:52]:

And then it also makes it easier to get more and more articles once you've been into a reputable media site.

Susie Moore [00:13:01]:

And for those of you who are interested in getting brand deals or speaking opportunities or a book deal, a third of a book proposal is your visibility, like your platform. And if you've got links to your cool features or I've been here, I've been there, it's so much easier for someone who's booking or booking talent or saying yes to an author first time especially, it feels so much more safe for them to choose someone who's been vetted by the media.

Bonnie Christine [00:13:28]:

Yeah. So let's talk about visibility and.

Susie Moore [00:13:34]:

How.

Bonnie Christine [00:13:34]:

Come it seems some people have it, some people don't have it? Why? Is it really important?

Susie Moore [00:13:39]:

Yes. If you've ever scratched your head going, why is that person on like, you know, in that cool publication? Or, hey, wait, why? Why do I keep seeing her name? I used to I used to question that. I go, why is it always these same few people who just seem to be in circulation, who seem to be the go to in their field? The very good news here, Bonnie, is that they're not special. They haven't even got insider connections. In most cases, they are simply just pitching. There are people who pitch and there are people who don't pitch. It's not one's more talented, one's more educated, one's more interesting. It's like one is more willing to give their voice a microphone, give their work a microphone and take the steps that get you there. And the best news is, like, anybody can do that, right? It's available to anybody. The media loves stories from regular people, especially now, like in 2023. People love regular stories from just regular human beings, just like us. And whenever you think, gosh, Why is it him? Or why is it her? It's like, well, they're taking actions that you're not taking right now. But it's just a simple system and process that you can put in place and do it as frequently as you want. You could do it consistently, or you can do it around maybe bigger pushes or during more important times in your business, but the differentiator is the action, nothing else. And that, I think, is, like, the coolest, because it's good news. Yes. If you haven't done it yet, well, great. What a wonderful time to begin, because it's also never been less crowded.

Bonnie Christine [00:15:12]:

So I just know people are feeling like, I'm not a writer. I don't have credentials in writing. Even if they feel like they have a story or article ideas, they don't feel like they've got the credentials to submit. So talk to us about that, and then I kind of want to talk to the people who feel like they don't have a story, but we'll come back to that.

Susie Moore [00:15:35]:

Yes. Well, if you don't have any formal qualifications and you're not a writer, I'm right there with you. Like, welcome to the club, my friend. My background is in software, right? So working in the tech industry in Silicon Valley, completely unrelated to the media world. And I remember when I got started, what I'd put together, it was pretty basic, but it was good enough, right? It was just enough to get a message across. I'm no. Ernest hemingway. That's not my job. It's not my job to be some perfect prose writer. But if I can communicate in words, so in speech, something that's helpful for somebody else, that means that I can put it on a page. I mean, I love the Seth Godin advice. I come back to it again and again. He says that if you can speak, you can write. And he says writer's block is endemic because we think that it's something else. We almost have visions of, like, a high school head mistress with a red pen saying, no, that's not the perfect grammar, or that's not the perfect you're not using the right punctuation. No one cares about that. I mean, use grammarly. It's free. If you want to run something just for a spell check or what have you, or sentence composition, if you care. But I just use my own natural voice. Like, even if you Google any of my stuff, you'll just see it's very casual, very simple. I like to write in short sentences. There's also data that shows that we love to read at, like, if an eleven or ten year old could read your writing. It does really well with adults, so we like to keep it really simple. And if you think, gosh, I haven't been in business that long, or maybe I need a certain qualification, it's not true. If you have something that could be of value to a reader, of all value to a viewer, that's enough. That's all the media cares about, is my audience going to get something out of this? And if you've got something to share that could be useful or helpful or entertaining or informative, that's enough.

Bonnie Christine [00:17:26]:

So when you pitch, you're not being asked to also include your college degree.

Susie Moore [00:17:34]:

Or your if it's really relevant, if you're like, oh, maybe you're a professor, you can absolutely reference your background. But the most important thing is the idea that you have and communicating why it's good for that audience.

Bonnie Christine [00:17:50]:

That's it.

Susie Moore [00:17:51]:

I mean, people say to me too, they're like, oh, I don't have like a big TikTok following, or some people don't even have a website yet. And I'm like, that's okay, it's okay, let's just use what you have. When I first got started, I had nothing. Just a Twitter account. Nothing. And that was enough to get me going. And then when I got my business materials in place, I had logos, I had content, I felt like out of the gate I entered pretty strong because I had some media wins under my belt. So if you think no one's going to ask you for your big career history, in fact, that's a bit of a pitching mistake. Sometimes people go, well, I did this and then I went here. And we don't need all of the context. We just need to know what your idea is, why it's going to be valuable for this audience, and how you best want to communicate it.

Bonnie Christine [00:18:40]:

Are you tired of spending hours crafting the perfect email only to be met with crickets in your inbox? Or worse, having your emails end up in your subscribers spam folders? I know that feeling. Which is why I switched to ConvertKit as my email service provider many years ago. ConvertKit is the email marketing platform built by creators for creators. With ConvertKit, you can easily create and send beautiful personalized emails that your subscribers are not only going to open, but also love. They have a drag and drop email editor that makes it easy to design emails that look and feel professional without any coding. Plus, their powerful automation tools make it easy to send the right message to the right person at the right time. But that's really not all. Convertkit's tagging and segmenting tools make it so easy to send targeted messages to your subscribers based on their interests and behaviors. So, for example, you can imagine that on my email list I have people who are interested in buying my fabric to use in their projects, and then also people who want to learn how to design their own fabric. And so through Convertkit's tagging system, I can communicate to those two different groups of people so that I don't ever have to worry if I'm bugging the other group with something that they're not interested in. You can also use ConvertKit to actually build out a page and a form so that you can easily grow your email list and turn subscribers into customers. So you know that we always want you to be growing your email list. And I can tell you that if you dive into ConvertKit, you can start adding subscribers to your email list within a day of focused effort. It's not that difficult. It's super easy to set up, build a landing page, put an opt in, and then start getting people on your list. So if you are ready to take your email marketing to the next level, I want you to head on over to Bonniecristine.com Resources and sign up for a free trial on ConvertKit today. You can go ahead and dive in and get familiar with the program. Their support is amazing and see what you think. This is truly an email service provider who can grow with you from one subscriber to 500,000. So again, head on over to Bonniecristine.com Resources and check out ConvertKit today. So, Susie, I know you have this saying that your life is cred, and so I want you to unpack that because I think I felt this way the first time I heard you speak as well, until my mind was opened to all the possibilities. But your first instinct is, I don't have anything. Like, I don't have a story. My story doesn't matter. I am not even sure what I would write about. So unpack that a little bit.

Susie Moore [00:21:48]:

Yes. Bonnie most people don't realize even for a second how interesting they are and don't even allow themselves, I think, to celebrate how far they've already come and how much they know. So I can give you a couple of examples of stories that have just been successful in my experience and with stories that I've seen. So I've written about being divorced in my was one of my hottest articles ever because I had a pretty optimistic take on the gift of contrast with being married to someone who's not right for you. Anyone who's been divorced, you've got a story. Anyone who's had any type of struggle, like maybe academically you had struggles, or maybe you had some struggles growing up. Maybe you've got struggles even with your toddlers if they're really picky eaters. Maybe you've got struggles if it comes to coming out of debt and you figured out a method that works for you. When you look at your life and what it is like, the wisdom that you've acquired just from being here, your life, being your cred. Have you ever been bullied, right? Have you ever been someone who has figured out a really good health hack are you someone who used to think that you couldn't make a living as an artist, and now you have. Do you know how many people need to hear this stuff? The people are waiting for the stories. And I've seen stories over people who've overcome health journeys, fertility journeys. Even if you're focusing on selling your products and services, leaning into personal stories still gets people to know about you. It still lends itself to the work that you do. You can still tie that all in, but if you're willing to share, maybe you never used to run, and now you run. Maybe you had to have a difficult conversation with a friend, right? Female friendships, they're complicated. I just read something about that. Whatever it is that you're experiencing now or what you've learned along the way, and it doesn't have to be really deep or sad sounding. It can be funny things, like, funny things that you've got. Maybe you traveled alone to Asia and there are some really funny stories that you had. I mean, I read about this guy who was like, he couldn't communicate that he wanted eggs, so he had to pretend that he was a chicken laying an egg. And he was like, these are my top tips if you want to travel to Southeast Asia. And he's like, these are the phrases that you need. I mean, it's a candy store body. I mean, seriously, if I sit down with someone with wine in 20 minutes, we've got 20 pieces, right?

Bonnie Christine [00:24:03]:

And I just know I know that so many people listening have perhaps had a day job that sucked the life out of them, and they started a side hustle of their creative passion, and they were able to leave their day job and do their creative passion full time. Like, tell that story, right?

Susie Moore [00:24:21]:

We can't get enough of this, right? In fact, those stories, like, slightly counterintuitive because there are all these kind of old ideas out there, right, that artists starve and oh, must be nice if you mess around with a paintbrush or something, but I've got a real J-O-B right? That's like a mentality for a lot of people. So if you're working in a creative space on your own, tell us. Show us the light. There are people who've got big dreams, and they will never actualize them because they don't see real life role models. So do you see how generous it is? You start sharing a story, people go, oh, follow. Sign up for the ten things, the ten mistakes that people are making. Go to that opt in page. Oh, check out this. Check out their gallery. Even if you wanted to give advice, when I work with more, say, fine artists, for example, they'll create stories around, like, how to make your bathroom a sanctuary, how to transform your bedroom into a more intimate hotel, vibe that welcomes whatever. They then speak about artwork. They speak out their own pieces. They link to them. So I feel like it's a red carpet. The media is a red carpet leading.

Bonnie Christine [00:25:32]:

To you, especially when what you do is beautiful. Like, I'm thinking about all of our wallpaper designers, and we don't just sell wallpaper. Right. We sell a feeling that you get when you walk into a space and what that opens up for you. And there's so many stories that could be told there that's also directly related to the work that you're creating.

Susie Moore [00:25:53]:

Exactly. And we want to know what are some trends? Even if you're looking if someone's looking for a specific vibe, even think about a place like Architectural Digest. What could you share that could be interesting to that audience? That audience are obsessed with design. They're vogue living. Think about it. What could you share that's interesting or different or that's coming up? Or do you have an interesting take or a bold perspective? Is something dead? Is there, like, a design rule that your mother taught you that we no longer agree with? What are they like? Not your grandmother's design advice. What can you share with us? Your creative ideas. You can share your personal story. Absolutely. These all belong in different media outlets. And the good news is you don't have to limit yourself to even, like, a particular field or industry. It can be in female focused publications, business publications. Absolutely. Creative design, spiritual publications. I love how creatives speak about their own internal practices, how they remain in flow, how they manage even their relationship with social media, how they remain in a place of creating, not just consuming. Like, what rules do they follow? I mean, it's unlimited money. How long have you got?

Bonnie Christine [00:27:07]:

I just heard someone speak about something in one line. She said in this speech was, you should unfollow everyone in your industry. And I'm like, oh, what a great article that would be.

Susie Moore [00:27:19]:

Yes. Unfollowing is your superpower.

Bonnie Christine [00:27:23]:

Yeah. Okay. So my brain just goes on fire every time you start spitting out these ideas. They come so naturally to you. And I'm like, yes. What if I let's go one thing that I thought was counterintuitive that I believe is true? Right.

Susie Moore [00:27:41]:

Susie?

Bonnie Christine [00:27:41]:

That you don't actually have to write the article until it gets approved. You just have to have the idea. So I think that that kind of alleviates some pressure. Do you typically pitch, like, a couple of ideas to the same place and then you don't actually write it until you get a thumbs up? Is that right?

Susie Moore [00:28:02]:

Yes. The best part is that you need to get your pitch approved. So once you get a yes, that's when you create your content. Right. That's when you put together your 650 words. That's the sweet spot for content. So think about that. That's a Google Doc and a little bit that's not a 3000 word essay. That is not the longest blog post with all the. SEO requirements. That can essentially be a long email. It's not that big. It's a hook to get people interested in you and to get them to leave with something interesting or helpful for them. So, yeah, you submit your pitch. Once your pitch is accepted, you're then given a deadline, in some cases to your paid. They'll say, this is how much our budget for this, and can you get it to us? And typically you have they give you between two to three weeks to create it's, around 14 to 21 days. That's how long they give you. And then that's when you write your story, or you create your tips or your list or whatever it is, that whatever it was that was accepted.

Bonnie Christine [00:29:00]:

And how often do you suggest, if you really want to do this, that.

Susie Moore [00:29:05]:

You pitch everyone's a little different? So some people will go like, really gung ho when they've got a big launch coming up, or if they're releasing something special, or maybe at the start of the year, if they've got a big revenue goal, they're like, I'm just going to crank out some media, get my list going in January. February, right? That can be a goal. But some people like to do it. Maybe every month. You could set aside 1 hour a month, send five to six pitches, say Friday morning at 10:00. That could be a really nice routine. You could do it weekly, depending how quickly you want to ramp this up. I have to say, this is like a bit of a warning. Once you start. You might get obsessed once you submit it. And then, okay, this is the best part, right? So if you submit your pitch, it gets accepted, your pieces live. Say it's like say it's an l.com. You share that on social media. Everyone freaks out because you're now famous, right? Your mum and dad freak out, your kids freak out, your clients freak out. You're like, how can I get more? And then often your editor is like, have you got anything else? Anything else you want to pitch? And then you're like, well, yes, I do. And then once my pitch is accepted and I submit my piece, they say, thank you, and then I go, Actually, here's my next idea. So you just keep the momentum going. I mean, I find that once you get rolling and I give a very specific formula for how to create a really nice guest post that editors love, that readers love. It allows me to create posts in 45 minutes or less. And once you follow that formula, essentially, it really breaks it down. It makes it much simpler for how to structure a piece. And then you know what it's like. The more you're kind of creatively in tune, the more ideas just keep coming to you. When you're in that creative mode, you're like, oh. And then you notice your friends start talking, you're like, that's an idea. Oh, wait, that could be a piece.

Bonnie Christine [00:30:52]:

What I did, Susie, after I heard this from you the first time, I just started a new note in my Notes app and it's titled Stories to Tell. And so anytime I'm moving around my life and I think, oh, that was good, there's a story there. I just pop it in there and I think I'll pull from it for media pitches and articles. And anytime I'm working on a speech or a book idea, I have this list of stories that I can pull from. And I had never done that before I met you.

Susie Moore [00:31:27]:

I love it. And that's the thing. When you have an idea, capture it, right? Because you go oh, I'll remember. But we don't always so notes on your phone. I do that too. Or sometimes I'll eavesdrop. I'll hear a couple of women in Starbucks and I'm like, they'll be talking about something, and I go, oh, I've got something to say about that. And then I'll say in my article, I'll go, I was in Starbucks and two women were talking about how guilty they felt about something to do with childcare or something to do with food. And I'm like, I want to talk to you about guilt for a minute. And I'll just speak about guilt from the perspective of a life coach. And inspiration is everywhere. Stories are everywhere. I swear, once you get started with this, it really also helps and boost all aspects of your business because you're in this zone of just seeing things differently. The reticular activating system that we talk about, the more stories you see and are tuned into, the more it's just like it's almost like you're bombarded wherever. You have a chat with your mother in law and you'll go, oh yeah, conversation sparked an idea. You'll walk through a new city, ideas your best friend will call you. The problem. Oh, you got advice for that.

Bonnie Christine [00:32:35]:

The reason this is so exciting, too, is that it doesn't feel saturated. I can't name anyone in my close business arena that's even doing this. Also, editors are in constant need of content. They want it. They want your pitch, which is just such a beautiful match. And then I know you've used this to grow your email list, which we've talked about a lot. So can you just give listeners an idea of what this could mean for your email list?

Susie Moore [00:33:10]:

Oh my gosh, yes. So I knew when I started my business, after having read some of the business books and attended a couple of conferences, like the email list. The email list, the email list. I'm like, I've got it. The email list, got it. And I was adding people on LinkedIn. And that's great. I feel like any way you grow your list, it's a thumbs up, right? Especially if it's easy for you. But when I got started doing this so sharing my content, including my two sentence bio, Susie Morris and X, who helps y sign up for her Z here. Like, that's how simple it is. My email list was grown to over 29,000 people in nine months.

Bonnie Christine [00:33:46]:

Wow.

Susie Moore [00:33:47]:

And before that, it was 700 people that I largely grew using LinkedIn, which is also a great resource, but I don't even know how many times that growth is. It's a big percentage growth. I remember one piece got me like 750 opt ins. Sometimes it's 400, sometimes it's 30 people. It depends on the audience size, how well your piece connects, but I find that the more you do it, the more you're kind of in tune with what's really going to pay off email subscriber wise. And that's really where I lean in. I mean, even if you don't get a lot of email disc growth from a feature, that's also okay because it's still great to be featured in different media, to have different logos, to still even reference those wins that you've had in your upcoming media pitches. So I remember I pitched Rachel. Do you know Rachel? Zoe, the Fashion Lady? Her site is called the Zoe Report. And I pitched them. It was actually negotiation advice that I sent them, and they had a no linking policy, which is not my favorite, but I remember I was paid for the piece, and I submitted it, and even though it didn't link to me. So it didn't drive traffic. It was still the Zoe Report, which I used to then leverage to get more media in different publications. So, for example, somewhere like Group, it allows links, right? Somewhere like wellinggood, allows links. Even if The Zoe Report doesn't, that will still help you get feature in places. Yeah, and you can keep I call it like the laddering up strategy. Like no matter what media is media, like, media is good. Like more is more. So if someone doesn't link to me, I will still do it once for that kind of connection with that brand. But then I love to lean into the publications that just really celebrate you, allow you to link throughout the piece. Of course, have your bio available and you'll see like, the majority of publications do this, especially like, large news and information websites that have endless amounts of readers.

Bonnie Christine [00:35:42]:

So I know that you all who are listening are excited and also likely have some questions. So Susie and I have something super exciting coming up that we want to invite you to. Susie has offered to do a free Media Master class. So it's a 1 hour workshop plus some time for a little Q and A for you all, just you all who are listening, bonnie, Christine, my people. And so, Susie, first of all, thank you so much.

Susie Moore [00:36:20]:

I can't wait.

Bonnie Christine [00:36:21]:

Let me add it, I am so excited as well. This is going to be on July 26. That's a Wednesday at 03:00 P.m Eastern Standard Time. And we will put the link over in the show notes for today's episode, but it's also really easy to remember. It's going to be overnightrockstar.com. Bonnie, Susie, will you tell us a little bit more about what we're going to explore in this workshop?

Susie Moore [00:36:47]:

Yes. I mean, do you want to be an overnight rock star? This is what happens once you have your first guest post live. Whatever publication it's in, you have an author page like that. You're given that immediately. It links to you. It links to any articles that you've created. And the word author comes from a Latin origin authority. So, like, speaking about becoming an authority through creating a written comment like content. This is how your rock star status kicks in. I find that the world responds to you differently once you're featured in the media, even people in your circle, even people in your life. I remember being taken more seriously, even as a life coach, as I was getting started from people in my world. So I speak about how to get started. I share a bit about my journey and then maybe some of the roadblocks that are holding you back from thinking it could be possible for you and dealing with, I think some of the fears that come up when we think about becoming more visible and giving our voice a microphone, giving our business a microphone and then showing you, like, okay, where'd you from? Here. You've got ideas, you want this? Then let's see. Let's see how we can make it real and actionable for you. Coming up with your own ideas, sharing with you my framework for how to create the best piece for you, how to leverage the right media, too, because not all media is created equal. And then lots of other insider secrets.

Bonnie Christine [00:38:12]:

Bonnie so I have a few weeks before we do this workshop together, and so my commitment is to pitch in the meantime, and I'll be able to share with everyone what that looks like, what it has meant.

Susie Moore [00:38:30]:

Did it work?

Bonnie Christine [00:38:31]:

Did it not work on this workshop as well? I'm really excited about this, Susie, and I just love you. I love your energy. I love truly how easy you make it. You really lean into that and you take these complicated ideas and just make them so very easy and approachable and achievable, and I love that about you, Bonnie.

Susie Moore [00:38:55]:

I love you. I could keep talking to you for days. Should we do this again tomorrow? I'm so happy to spend time with you and to speak to your incredible people. I mean, wow, to be creative, to have this as your business, your life, I mean, that's so cool and impressive to me. And we want to know more about it. Like, tell the people more about you, what you can offer your stories. Like, I'm here to help with that piece.

Bonnie Christine [00:39:20]:

I love it. What a perfect match. Thank you so much for joining us today. And I will see you so very soon at our workshop again, that's overnightrockstar.com, Bon, you can join us for free. July 26 at 03:00 P.m. Eastern. We'll see you then.

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I'm Bonnie Christine.

ARTIST  //  PATTERN DESIGNER  //  TEACHER

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