125: Get Free TV and Radio Publicity For Your Business Today with Sharon Bolt

What this episode covers

Sharon Bolt from Get Free Publicity Today, and author of the free report, "How To Write An Attention Grabbing Press Release" tells us how she was able to land a spot on BBC radio as well as a recurring segment where she appears on the radio regularly. She also tells us about press releases and what you may be missing from them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmgdHEY-9l4 [showhide type="transcript" more_text="Display Transcript" less_text="Hide Transcript"]Robert Plank: Sharon Bolt is a publicity expert and founder of Get Free Publicity Today. She has contributed to more than 40 different local and national newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, and has received over $1.5 million in free publicity. That sounds pretty cool. Welcome to the show, Sharon. Sharon Bolt: Thanks very much for having me, Robert. I'm really please to be here. Robert Plank: Cool. I'm pleased that you are here. I understand that you talk about press releases and publicity, is that right? Sharon Bolt: That's right. Robert Plank: Cool, so could you tell us a little bit about that and how you got started with that, and what makes you different, and unique, and special? Sharon Bolt: Yeah, sure. People are actually a little shocked when I tell them about my first media experience because what happened, Robert, was I got myself booked on BBC Radio 2, which is a national radio station in the UK. That was without any prior media exposure. Now people are a little bit shocked about that but what actually happened was that I was introduced as a dog-training expert, answering dog behavior questions, when I actually had a complimentary therapy business and not a dog-training business. Dog training was passion at the time and I went on to do for the next 9 years. What happened was I saw an opportunity, I believed I could make a difference so I went for it. It was the start of numerous media interviews. Robert Plank: That's cool. You said that you had a therapy business and BBC Radio 2, they were looking for experts to talk about dog training so you were able to fit that in, is that right? Sharon Bolt: Well that's right. I had recently got 2 puppies and had been told that it was the worst case scenario because they're brothers, litter mates. I was told that they would fight for the top dog position, and they'd take no notice of me, and that I would probably need to re-home one. I had been on a mission it had to be a natural way of communicating with them, and I looked at my 2 puppies and said, 'You two are not going anywhere." I had embarked on this mission to save my puppies and what had happened was is that I had started to introduce what I was discovering and what I was learning to my complimentary therapy clients who had dogs. We were all getting amazing results. When I heard the DJ say on the national radio station that he was going to get somebody from the TV, a dog-training expert, on the show the following week, I thought to myself, "You know what? I can do that." What I did, Robert, is I sat down at the computer and I wrote to the host. It was just the normal email address. I didn't have his direct email address, it was just the general email address, and I said everything about dogs. Now I didn't make it about me at all. It was nothing about me, it was all about what I could do for him and his listeners. Then at the end I said to him, "You've got to give me a call because I'll be a great guest on your show." Naturally I told him I was a dog expert and that he should call me. Well, nothing happened. I got no call back. A couple of days later he actually said that he was also going to include the following week on the show, and he called them podgy dogs. There I was, Robert, in the subject line now, of the email,

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