What you can learn from Richard Branson's one-track mind
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Richard Branson is only ever thinking about one thing
Richard Branson won't wear a tie. This major news story was broken by Vanessa Wong in Bloomberg Businessweek's travel section under the modest headline Why Richard Branson Won't Wear a Tie. I won't wear a tie either, but that's not the point of this post about ebook promotion.
The point is Richard Branson's one-track mind.
Wong asked Branson whether travel for him involves any guilty pleasures. He said:
"I live on a tiny little island in the Caribbean, Necker Island. When I am there, I keep fit. I kite surf, I surf, I play tennis, I swim. I am really active. When I am traveling, I am horribly inactive and working ridiculous hours. I definitely need to spend time on Necker to recuperate from all the traveling. I am fortunate that Virgin planes now fly all around the world, so at least I can fly in comfort. But the food is pretty good, so that's not so good [for diet]. [When I travel] I like sticky, jiggly puddings and apple crumbles and lots of unhealthy, nice things. But then my fitness regime is back at home."
Do you see what he did there? He gave a charming answer, even managing to make his ownership of a Caribbean island sound no different from you and me owning a house (after all, it's only a "tiny" island).
But it wasn't the charm that would have made his public relations team's hearts sing with joy.
He could have said, "I like to eat when I'm travelling" but he didn't. He reminded everyone that it's easy to travel with Virgin because they fly to lots of places; that they're comfortable; and the food its good, too.
The beautiful thing from a PR point of view was…
Shameless plug #1
I am fortunate that Virgin planes now fly all around the world, so at least I can fly in comfort."
Shameless plug #2:
But the food is pretty good, so that's not so good [for diet].
All Wong had asked Branson was if he had any guilty pleasures when travelling. He answered the question but not without slipping in two blatant plugs in nine sentences.
When Branson is talking to a journalist he's got his mind on one thing: promoting the brand. Every question he's asked is an opportunity to reinforce the Virgin brand.
Do you have a one-track mind?
If I asked you about your guilty pleasures when travelling could you shoehorn in some ebook promotion?
If you want to be good at media relations, you need to be good with "key messages".
When you're promoting your book, your business, yourself, you need to decide on your "key messages" — the pieces of information that are most crucial you get across. If you're interacting with someone in a promotional context, you need to ask yourself:
What do I most want this person to know about me or my service?
There should be no more than three things on that list. You can't expect in a brief interaction to convey too much detail in promotion of yourself or your business or your ebook, so you have to keep it to what is most important.
If I'm asked about Taleist, for instance, I say that it's a site that helps writers become self-published authors; and that:
I am a professional writer and ghostwriter;
I offer training in self-publishing, social media and online marketing.
In a media interview you might have to repeat those things more than seems natural, working the promotion into the conversation.
"Interesting you should ask that, Vanessa. In five years of running social media seminars in Australia, I've learned…"
It might well sound unnatural, but you don't know which snippets the journalist is going to use to illustrate her story. For all we know Branson spoke to Wong for half an hour. If he did, you can bet he found 15 different ways to talk about how many flights Virgin has and how comfortable they are.
You can't slip your ebook promotion into the first five minutes then relax for the next 25. Finding a balance between answering a question and getting across a key message takes practice so don't start talking to the media until you've nailed it.
There's no point seeing an article about yourself in a newspaper if it doesn't do anything for you.
You, too, can be a media star with How to Write Perfect Press Releases
A key message of my own
There's a whole lot more information about how to get media attention for yourself in my book How to Write Perfect Press Releases. If you work through the steps in the book for putting together a media release, you'll identify your key messages along the way and learn how to have a mutually beneficial exchange with the media.
For the next three days only you can get a free review copy of How to Write Perfect Press Releases. Click the link to find out how.
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