Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Mickie Kennedy, Founder of eReleases

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

Mickie Kennedy founded eReleases 26 years ago to help small businesses, authors, and startups increase their visibility and credibility through press release distribution.He lives in the Baltimore area.Learn more: https://www.ereleases.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-mickie-kennedy-founder-of-ereleases

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us, Mickey Kennedy, who's the founder of E-Releases. Mickey, welcome to the program. Well, thanks for having me. Hey, you're welcome. So I'm excited to learn what your impression of the industry is. I've actually followed your work for many years. I've run some releases through your company. So I know that you focus on PR. So I'm excited to hear your perspectives on the industry. But get us started first with a little bit of your story and background. And how did you decide on getting into the public relations industry?

Right. So I graduated from my. graduate degree, which was a master's of fine arts and creative writing, specializing in poetry, like 27, 28 years ago. And my game plan was the wait tables of write poetry. And I had always waited tables. I liked it. But after I graduated, I spent a summer working full time. And for full time waiting tables is like probably closer to 50, 60 hours a week.

And I just felt exhausted. I was not productive. My back hurt, my knees hurt. Being on your feet for these long shifts is just, it takes a toll. And so I decided I wanted to pivot to a safe office job. I got hired at a telecom research startup in D.C. I was employee number three. They said, hey, you have a writing background.

So write press releases for us. The owner who was a telecom attorney had always just been doing that himself. And so I inherited a roller decks and just started, you know, sending out releases and not much happened. And the owner said, yeah, I've never really had much happen either. And I'm like, whoa, I spending a whole day programming fax numbers into a fax machine. So I'm like, we got to get a return on investment here. So I kind of looked around, did some research. Largely, I looked at articles.

And what I noticed is we had a lot of data points. And, you know, our assumption was that data is important. And it is. Data is a really great thing to have and gives you an edge with press releases. But we were just publishing data tables and we weren't putting them in context. So I, you know, had just published a press release on Caribbean telecom traffic. And I just said, hey, you know, I noticed that one country has more traffic than all of the others. And I asked everybody know.

office and they didn't really know and went back to the owner. And he's like, oh, yeah, he goes, that country is the call center for all 1-900 numbers. They get routed to and from the United States. So that's why they have more inbound and outbound telecom traffic than everyone else. And I'm like, well, that's cool. And so I wrote an article about that, included the data numbers, but, you know, it was talking about 1,900 numbers and this whole phenomenon and growth of that and how it's really just, you know, made this one country blossom as a result of it. And so we sent that out. And I got picked up by the Financial Times, the economist, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and three telecom trade publications.

And I was just like, am I lucky or can I do it again? And I continue to do releases like that and continue to have really good successes. And so I just felt like this is really empowering. And I would love to help others. At the same time, I was getting calls from these journalists that I was fact. and saying, hey, could you email this in the future? And so I was like, oh, email is so much easier than programming a fax machine. So I started by emailing releases.

And when I launched, he releases. I had spent a year just networking with journalists, mostly on bulletin boards and other places online, and getting their email address and just being a matchmaker for my clients. And it has changed over the years. All our releases now go out nationally. through PR Newswire. In the U.S., we basically have a duopoly of press releases that actually reach journalists and its business wire and PR Newswire. And so we go through them. They charge their customers like $1,700 to move a press release nationally through us. You can do that

for about a quarter of the price, maybe a third of the price. So it's a huge cost savings. The caveat is that we work with small businesses and entrepreneurs and authors and people like that and startups, but generally the companies that are so small that the salespeople at Pyrenees Wire are not interested in them. They're not, they don't have a budget of 20,000 a year. So I sort of feel that role. And as a result, I'm able to buy these releases in bulk, and I'm doing like 10,000 releases a year. And, you know, that's been really great because that, you know, I'd mentioned that I started with email. Emails now probably one of the worst ways to reach journalists. Media databases have come into the game over the last

a couple of decades, and a lot of people are paying as little as $5,000 as much as $20,000 a year to get a license to a media database. And, you know, if you're a golf club company and you just spent, you know, a big bulk of your money on that, and you choose all the journalists who are interested in golf and you hit send on a release and it's like, oh, we reach 3,800 people. How many people are in this database? It's like, oh, 1.2 million. And so all of a sudden they're like, hey, bankers like to play golf and, you know, business people. So let's send this to financial analyst and banking reporters.

And all of a sudden, all of these people are receiving off-targeted press releases. A financial analyst is never going to write about golf clubs. But these people talk themselves into it and they just spam. And it's really a nightmare. You know, a lot of PR firms that used to pitch predominantly over the phone, move to email, and now they've moved back to the phone because even when they send an email, they have to call and say, hey, I just gave you a pitch. And they're like, oh, I don't know where it is.

Let me walk you through my domain name or some way to pull up the release in all your spam. And so that is one of the unfortunate side effects and changes I've seen. in the industry. But the great thing about PR and press releases is, you know, when you get media pickup and a journalist actually writes about you, it's like social proof. It's like third-party corroboration. It gives you so much credibility. And that's the real power of it. You know, it's not to get your press release replicated on a bunch of websites. That's called syndication. And that happens. And there are probably about 40 players out there that specialize in that. And they give you the impression you're reaching journalists, but they usually say somewhere on the website,

it doesn't reach any journalists. It just gets put on a few websites on locations that no one ever looks at. And so, you know, it happens even on the newswire, the syndication, but the real goal is to get a journalist to actually look at the release, consider it, and then write an article based off of it. And that only happens if you're going over a wire that actually reaches journalists. You know, it seems to me, like, you know, Like there would be a stair step tiered approach that you would recommend to a business to say, okay, ultimately, we would love to see you here, you know, where a journalist are, you know, writing this and you're getting in multiple. But to start with, we need to start with doing this approach and then moving up. And then when a journalist sees you've got a little momentum, then they might, you know, listen to the pitch a little bit better.

Do you find that that might be the case where a little bit of success breeds more success? I think that it can certainly help. I always tell people that, hey, when you're starting out, you know, start with local news. Even if you do business nationally, you know, you're part of the local community, try to get some local news. And you're the best person for that. You know, don't pay me or someone or a publicist to get you local media. If you break it down, I tell you, I haven't met anybody for whom the people that would write about them or cover. them, even with TV and radio, it's probably less than a dozen people. And for a lot of people,

it's five or six people. And so, you know, just look at your local paper. Who covers your industry? You know, who puts the spotlight on local businesses and also covers your industry? Find that one person that appears more than others or, you know, break, you know, maybe if it's two people, just reach out to them. And you don't have to write a press release. You just send an email and introduce yourself. The good news is with most local people, their inbox is, it's probably a little chaotic, but it's not as bad as like a lot of these national reporters

and things like that. And, you know, send them an email, do a pitch. You know, we're talking, you know, three to maybe six sentences. Maybe put a great quote in there of what you're pitching. You know, what is it that you're doing right now that you feel would be a good, local story for them to cover. You could look at trends that are going on in your industry or like a dry cleaner and you've gone green to get rid of all the harmful chemicals and things like that.

So you can talk about that and include a couple of photos. They don't have to be professional. The photos that work best for online websites and all these places are unlikely to use your photo in print. Some may, but very few. But most of them will use it when they do. the online story. And they know if they have a really nice engaging photo, that it's going to draw more interest online. And so they will really appreciate that. And, you know, candid shots of

maybe, you know, someone using your product or service, someone in your store, maybe a picture of you. Don't waste your time and energy on a logo. You know, logo is not going to be very engaging or anything like that. So, you know, be creative. If you have, if you sell something, really unusual or cool or you're a baker and you make really cool cakes. You could showcase one of those and maybe share a story around it, you know, a really odd request that you got. That could really be a great lead-in to a story about a local business that really draws people in. And so, you know, sort of cultivate that, you know, look beyond the local paper, look at, you know, neighborhood papers, look at business newspapers or magazines if you're lucky enough to have those.

You know, sometimes there's city papers. We have Baltimore magazine here. It's sort of a high-end consumer magazine. If that's appropriate, you could pitch them. And then, you know, look at radio and TV. Are there occasionally segments where they spotlight a local business, you know, find out that program, call and ask for the email address of the booker or producer of that show and say that you'd like to pitch them something? And this is the same thing with newspapers as well. You know, you just reach out to the journalist and ask for an email address.

They will generally give it. A lot of people are really shocked at that, but, you know, these aren't celebrities. They're members of the community and they're journalists, so they should be accessible. If you have a journalist who's completely sealed off, it's probably not a good journalist. So, you know, don't feel bad asking. And don't feel bad following up over the phone occasionally as well. I always tell people to try to pitch locally, at least quarterly. If you have more newsworthy events, you can do it more than that.

But I think that if you do it quarterly, it's like checking in and you're registering with them. And I've seen a lot of people that do this and say, I pitched for a year. I did it quarterly. Nothing happened. My second year, before I'd even pitched them, I got a phone call. And it was that journalist saying, hey, I'm working on a story. I wanted to put in a local business and I remember you pitched me a few times

so I reached out to you because I was wondering if I could get a quote or two about this thing I'm working on. And it happens. You know, just not being a pest, but just being persistent and continuing to test and try different approaches will eventually get you in there. And it just gets easier from there. Once someone's comfortable

and they know that you're someone that can reach out to in a pinch and get a good quote or talk to you and you're able to help them with the story. It really does set up some reciprocity where they feel they owe you a little bit in the future. And just continue to do that. And as you do that, you can sort of do that with your trade publications as well. But at that point, a lot of people feel like now it's beginning to feel like I've just taken on PR as my side job. and maybe I'd better use someone else.

And so that might be a good time to consider using a service like mine. We offer press release writing. But we also have a lot of schools on our website that teach you how to write a release. And you can certainly lean on AI to help you write a press release. And I have some approaches with that. But at the end of the day, the idea of what you were writing about probably shouldn't come from AI because AI has been trained on so many mediocre press releases. that it very rarely gives someone a great idea for a press release.

You know, there's a lot to unpack in what you just said there, which is awesome. And I want to go deeper on one thing because I feel like our society today is I want everything now in abundance instantly with very little work. And they want to send that blast whatever, right? Email, text message, instant message, social media post and just sit back and wait. But I have found in my personal business, in my world, that, you know, the most important and powerful, successful business development outreaches are building relationships. And that's what you said about, you know, reaching out to those local journalists, whether it's TV, radio, print. It doesn't matter. Start building relationships.

And it's going to take a minute. And it's going to take some effort. but I feel like the power of that and not looking for give me, give me, give me, but making, reaching out and going and almost being like real is rare, being transparent and going, look, I don't know what I'm doing, but I was just wondering if you could help me, what would you find attractive in a pitch? How could I put some things together? I'm local.

I'm not looking for a one and done. I'm looking to develop some things where you could, you know, whatever. And I really feel like that relationship approach is so key. And then guess what? You do what you just mentioned. You build off of that. Come to someone like yourself who can at the same time as you're building relationships, but can expand on that to some of those bigger newswires.

Yeah, absolutely. What do you feel about news jacking? So newsjacking is interesting because it became very popular probably over a decade ago. David Mirabin Scott. Yeah. Yes. And it's a bit overdone. A few years ago when there was a target credit card breach, I had a client come to me,

I guess a week or two after that. And yet another security consultancy, a little agency. And they wanted to do a press release on it. And I said, hold on, let me check. And so I went to BusinessWire and PR Newswire and did a search. And I said, right now there's over 1,400 press releases all by security consultants. with their little impression of what's going on with the Target Credit Cardboard breach. And I said, there are ways of which you can news jack successfully.

And I said, number one, is there something you would say that would be counter to what all these 1,400 other people said? Do you have a contrarian viewpoint? And he thought about it and came back with a few. And I said, okay, here's the second test. If you take that view, are you going to alienate your customers? And he said, oh, good point. I probably would. And I said, so I don't recommend that.

I said, the next thing we could do is break it down, really, really make it niche and different than everybody else's. And I said, who are your best customers? And I said, like, you know, you're looking for, like, targets and regional players. Like people, he goes, oh, no, no. He goes, most of our people are mom and pops. They, he goes, very rarely do we have someone who has more than one location. But occasionally we have someone who has, like, two or three. pizza shops or two dry cleaners or something.

And he goes, but a lot of them are just solo places. And he goes, they just have a credit card terminal next to their cash register. And I'm just like, okay, what do you do for them? And so we walked through it. And then I was just like, okay, one thing you could do is you could break this down and say, hey, if you're a small mom and pop retail store with a credit card terminal on your counter, are you at the same risk and are facing the same liabilities as a BMS-like target who faced this massive credit card breach? And so we did that.

We included a, I think it was a cheat sheet or a very small white paper or something that he had created to get people to sign up. And it was extremely effective. He didn't get a lot of press, but he did get some. I guarantee you that 1,300 other people got zero press because they were just, you know, the old-fashioned version of that, and it doesn't work anymore. So you really have to, you really have to sort of differentiate yourself because so many people are doing it. I mean, it's the same reason that, you know, his product helper reporter out folded recently

and is no longer around. It was a great thing when very few people knew about it. And, but they had the problem where they turned to paid to try to prevent so many people using it and people were so many people were still paying that the average journalist said I don't want to use that anymore. The last time I did help a reporter out,

I got 2,700 responses. And that's just too much for me to even filter and consider. And so it was a great thing, but it's not a scalable thing. And so the same thing with that concept

of, you know, just writing the coattels of what's trending. Contrarian still works very well with anything that's trending. And the reason for that is if a journalist is supposed to be fair and balance. And if everybody's saying, hey, electric cars are so great for the environment, you're the one person who raises their hand and gives a rational reason and logical reason for why they're bad, you know, right now to adopt, you know, the mining cost, the labor, often children in labor and those conditions. You know, what are we going to do with these batteries at the end of their life?

And the fact that sometimes it takes seven fire trucks to put out a car fire with these electric batteries, maybe we should put this on pause before we start mandating it and requiring them to be rolled out nationally. And that's something where you appear reasonable. And a journalist could plug that quote or your mention of it in any article that mentions electric cars going forward because you are the other side. And to a peer fair imbalance, they will likely plug you into lots of articles as a result of it. And so, you know, just keep that in mind. Well, Mickey, I think it's been really neat here in your perspectives. You've got vast experience in the industry.

If a business owner is interested in tapping into some of your expertise, helping them guide the way in getting some of their public relations underway and really out there with precision, what's the best way they can learn a little bit more about, e-releases and then also reach out and connect with you. Right. So the best way to reach me is my website, e-releases.com. I do have a free masterclass, which is a great place for anybody to start. It's less than an hour long, completely free, and it'll give you actionable, trending types of press releases that almost anyone could do. And these are the 3% of press releases that are getting picked up.

97% of press releases are not generating earned media. So I go through the 3% of those that I see consistently get picked up. And these are the types of things that sometimes might require a little creativity, might require a little bit more work than your average press release, but they generally yield lots of results. And that's available at eReleases.com slash plan, PLAN, and completely free, and it's not a huge commitment less than an hour long. Excellent. Well, Mickey, thank you so much for coming on. It was a real pleasure chatting with you today.

Well, it was great. Thank you. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com.