Become a podcast media maven. How? In this episode, host Tracy Hazzard interviews media maven and publicist Christina Nicholson. Christina is a TV host who helps bloggers and business owners grow by reaching thousands, even millions, of their ideal customers or clients in minutes rather than months through the power of traditional and new media without spending big bucks on advertising. Tune in to today’s show to know more about what it’s like to book people, to pitch people, to get booked, and to have them on your show.

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Being A Center Of Influence Podcast Media Maven With Christina Nicholson

I’m excited to bring you a media maven, Christina Nicholson. Become A Media Maven is their podcast and she is a publicist. She helps clients get media and she helps media train. She’s got a ton of things under her belt and she’s got a lot of TV experience too. Her business is called Media Maven. She’s a TV host who helps bloggers and business owners grow by reaching thousands, even millions of their ideal customers or clients in minutes rather than months through the power of traditional and new media without spending big bucks on advertising. You can see her in front of the camera as a host on Lifetime TV and national commercials and read her work online and having to post Thrive Global, Inc. Magazine and Fast Company.

I was excited to have her. This got pushed back a couple of times because she had a baby. I’m super excited to have her on though because she’s got a great perspective of what it’s like to book people, to pitch people, to get booked, to have them on her show. She’s personally doing this. The other reason I’m excited to have her on is she’s a student of Pat Flynn. We consider him the Godfather of Podcasting along with John Lee Dumas. She learned directly from him as well. We love to share what she has to say and how you can become a media maven through podcasting.

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Christina, thank you so much for joining me. I’m excited to talk Media Maven.

Thank you. I’m so excited to chat with you.

How long have you been podcasting now?

I’ve been podcasting for a few years.

It seems like you’ve been doing it for quite some time.

I’ve been a guest on podcasts for years and I started my own a few years ago.

I understand you are a student, a fan and friend of Pat Flynn, who we talk about a lot on our show. Is he why you got started?

One of the best ways to build your brand and build your thought leadership is by being a guest on other people's podcasts. Click To Tweet

His podcast was the first one I was a guest on. I didn’t even have a public relations agency then. I actually listened to him because I started a lifestyle blog after I left TV news. I was like, “This Pat guy, he’s so cool. I want to be on his podcast.” Fast forward a couple more years, I had a PR agency. I started working with him in his mastermind. I took his podcasting course and launched my podcast. I had him as a guest on my show for helping me get it all set up. I figured I should have him on. I was on his show again, Smart Passive Income, around the same time as well. He came back on my show a second time, so he’s been on my show twice and I’ve been on his show twice.

I listened to his episode on his book, Superfans, which I read and it’s a great book. I love the process of it. In some ways though, that super fan model of you promoting him, him promoting you, you’ve got a little drafting going on for the launch of your show.

It was good. There’s no buddy better to learn from than Pat when it comes to podcasting, building super fans, the whole thing. I remember when he came on my podcast the second time, I thought, “No pressure. The man who taught me everything about podcasting is on my show.” He was like, “Christina, don’t mess up.”

“Don’t scare me, please. Make it easy on me.” I love that, that’s great. Did you find when you started though that there were things that you expected would be easy and then they weren’t or things you thought were going to be hard and then they were so easy?

Something that comes easier to me is the actual process of editing. This is for a couple of reasons. I come from a TV news background where we are on tight deadlines and I was editing audio and video in no time to make the 5:00 news. I can edit a podcast quickly. The other reason I can do it so fast is because I don’t cut out. There are people who they will cut out breaths and they will cut out likes and uhms. I’m like, “That’s how you talk and you breathe.” Everybody breathes. You don’t need to cut that stuff out.

It doesn’t get cut on TV.

That’s how I think of it. I still edit my own podcast and people are surprised to hear that. I’m like, “I do it watching the real Housewives. It’s mindless busywork to me.” Something that is hard, I would say, and this goes into my PR world a little bit, is being consistent with pitching yourself to be a guest on other people’s podcasts. It’s the best way to grow your own podcast because podcasts listeners, they don’t just listen to one, they listen to multiple podcasts. It’s so important to be making the podcast rounds and looking at all of the different categories. Maybe you have an angle that works with parenting, the entrepreneurship category, the marketing category.

There are so many different categories and so many different things that you can speak to regarding your industry and your expertise. There are so many podcasts out there that you should be making the rounds and pitching yourself and being a guest on other people’s podcasts. That is something that I’m going to focus on more in 2020. I was pretty good at pitching myself on a regular basis. Other things get in the way and you don’t make it a priority after you’re on a few podcasts. That’s probably the hardest part, is just being consistent with pitching yourself to be a guest on other podcasts.

It’s interesting because those in the marketing PR world are the least consistent with podcasting I found over time. Out of all of our 300-plus clients that we have here, our marketing people are the worst producing regular shows. They get busy, things shift on them and they stop for a while and then they lose interest. They were like, “I have to pick it back up again.” It’s so interesting because you’ve been pretty consistent with your show.

My show, it does come out once a week, every Tuesday. I think I’ve only missed an episode twice. The first time was I was at Podcast Movement and I didn’t plan ahead. I was like, “I’m at Podcast Movement right now. I can miss a podcast episode for that reason.” The other time was through the birth of my third child. I was pretty good. I planned in advance for that one. I planned to skip on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. I figured it’s the holidays, I’ll take a break. I’m pretty consistent with launching my own episodes. I stopped pitching myself because with my PR agency, we had a lot of growth and we brought on a lot of new team members and created some new SOPs. I was working a little bit more in my business than on my business. Now, it’s back to working on the business and that is me treating myself as a client.

FYB 100 | Podcast Media Maven

Christina Nicholson

One of the best ways to build your brand and build your thought leadership is by being a guest on other people’s podcasts. I do the traditional media thing still. That is more something that comes to me from my background being a TV news reporter and contributing to different online outlets. Pitching myself as a guest to podcasts, it’s definitely a priority. The goal is four podcast interviews a month and quality podcasts. I want to be on good ones. I want to talk to people that I like about topics that people care about.

That’s one of my favorite things that you talk about. You talk about the statistics that people get, all your vanity metrics, as you refer to them. This is so true. All I get is requests from PR firms who don’t understand podcasting. They say, “We want any of your shows that are a million downloads or more.” I’d be like, “Are you sure you want those shows? They’re not converting. I’ve got some great shows that do 10,000 a month. They’re amazing. The conversion rates are off the charts. Wouldn’t you rather be on those?” “No, our client insists on this.” I was like, “I don’t think your client understands.”

You try to explain it and they don’t care. They don’t want to understand. They like the vanity metrics. That’s annoying.

We’re about to do this big event. It’s the pre-Super Bowl event. It’s marketing and sports, obviously athletes. I was able to convince them, because we’re in charge of podcast row, that I was not going to follow any of the rules that I was going to select those shows that had the most relevance, and they let me. We’re excited about that. I was like, “Finally, somebody gets it.”

I feel like maybe more people are going to be getting it as time goes on because podcasting is getting bigger and more popular. The media industry in general is changing. I hope that people understand the value of who is listening and not numbers. I’d like to hear your opinion on this. I go back and forth on the fact that download numbers are not easy to find and you have to ask the host to share a screen grab of their dashboard to see how many episodes are downloaded every time they release a new episode. You have to look for other signs like their social media or their rating or the reviews. Sometimes I’m like, “It would be nice to know, but then it’s a number and you don’t know who’s behind that number.”

Here’s what we do. Over here, we have our podcast statistics on our website statistics side by side. If your website’s not growing, then you’re doing something wrong. If it’s not driving traffic back to your website from your podcasts, then you’re not doing it right. Your organic growth on your website is apparent. Anyone can check SEMrush. I know you mentioned that, I don’t know if they’re sponsored, but you’ve mentioned them before on your show. That’s what we use here. There are lots of other ones you can check in. Anyone can check on a site, it doesn’t matter. That’s what I do. I look at that and say, “Are the blog pages growing? Are their podcast pages growing? Is their Google ranking growing at the end of the day?” If those things aren’t happening, then they’re not the right fit for us or for our clients in terms of guesting. That’s how we look at it.

My very first podcast is on 3D printing. It’s called the WTFFF?!. It’s really geeky. We were reached out to by HP and they asked us to do a special season with them, like a series. I said, “We haven’t published any in ten months or something because we stopped the show.” They said, “It doesn’t matter. Your Google ranking dominates the first ten pages of Google for 3D print podcasts. There’s no unseating you, so we might as well work with you,” even though we weren’t currently publishing. That’s how we look at it because that is a publicly available information. I’ve seen it and you can ask for screen grabs. At the end of the day, what you don’t know is, are the audience doing something? Are they going to buy it? Are they going to listen? Are they going to convert? You don’t know that even from the downloads.

Something else too is, is this being shared not only on the podcast host side but on the guest side? Because I find this struggle with clients no matter how many times I tell them like, “Whether you’re a guest on a podcast or you were featured in an online article, you need to be sharing that on social media. Tag the podcast host and the writer. Share it multiple times. Send an email out to your list, put it on your marketing materials.” I feel like so many people jump on these podcasts as a guest and then they do nothing with it. They assume that they’re going to be the next big thing and everybody heard it, and that is not the case. This is podcasting, especially when you’re a host and you bring somebody on as a guest and vice versa. It is a two-way street. You need to support each other and help build each other up and give each other publicity.

You talk about it because your show is called Become a Media Maven. Being a media maven isn’t about getting the media placement. It’s about what you do with it after.

You need to start small and work your way up. Click To Tweet

I feel like that’s where you turn the publicity into profit and so many people don’t understand that. I also think many people are impatient because it’s getting harder and harder to stand out and build a brand because we have so many messages in our face all the time. They want to go straight to being a big deal. There are stepping stones to get there. You need to start small and work your way up. People don’t have the patience for it and they don’t want to take the time to be strategic. It’s a shame because the people who do take the time say it’ll take them five years to become a household name. They’re still five years ahead of that person who wants everything to fall into place and happen magically or go viral right away.

Early on, I did twelve guest placements on some shows to test out the marketplace before we even started. If you look at that, even back then, I still made about $1,000 an hour for my consulting time. $12,000 worth of my time, twelve hours. It turned in by the end of the year because I wasn’t pushy about it. I didn’t even care if the show had a lot of downloads. I only cared that they fit the audience and I screened them myself. At the end of the year, I discovered that I had done $120,000 worth of business. Amazing 10x-ing of those guest placements. That’s what people don’t consider. They’re so impatient. They want to have an immediate gratification, needs an immediate boost, sell some books, whatever that is. If you trace it back over time, it has a residual effect.

There are different ways you can track that with opt-ins and things like that, but it’s also sometimes hard to put an ROI on building a brand. Everybody asks like, “What’s my ROI going to be? How much money am I going to make for this?” This isn’t a pay-per-click thing where you can see the numbers and the analytics like that. This is building a brand and being a household name and being top of mind when people talk about you and your expertise. I feel like everybody needs to take a deep breath and remember patience. It takes patience to build things that are worthwhile and not everything can be tracked with analytics. This is a reputation. This is a word of mouth type of business.

I was working with a marketing firm and I was training them on what the podcasts are about, how to look at them, how to consider them and they said, “We have clients who come to us and say they want to do a podcast test of ten episodes.” I say, “That’s the reason we have so much podfading because people are going in and saying, “I want to test it,” which will be about eleven episodes, which is where the podfading’s lowest cutoff is. Most people quit at 11 or 23. At first, I looked at them and I was like, “You said it was okay? Why would you say yes to that?” The time, the money and setting up a show and doing all that for you to only do ten is a waste of time and money. Why wouldn’t you at least say do at least 25? At least it will get a return on investment. It’s a full catalog worth. It’d be like all the chapters in a book. It’d be like only writing half a book.

That’s like those people who start a blog or they open up a new Instagram account and they’re like, “I have a blog. I can start charging people and making money.” No, it doesn’t work that way. You have to give people a reason to pay you. Let people find you and listen to you and then pay you. It’s crazy. They only see what happens on the outside to other people who are hosting podcasts, but they don’t see the behind the scenes of the ten years it took to be an overnight success.

There’s something you’re an expert in that I’d love to have you talk to our audience about. That is the difference between a paid PR, which is what we see a lot of going on in certain brands and bigger companies and what you’ve earned and owned.

This is something that’s changing a lot. Things are becoming more pay-to-play in the industry for sure. It’s very frustrating because a lot of these outlets are getting clever, for lack of a better word, at hiding that some of these things are advertisements. You still need earned media. You still need something that’s like you deserve to be here. When I see something or I hear something and I know that person or that business is paying to be there, they lose all credibility with me. It’s like, “You’re there because you’re paying for it. You’re not actually an expert because if you were, you wouldn’t have to pay for it.” That’s honestly what I think.

As far as your own media, you should constantly be sharing content. You should constantly be adding value sharing those media hits. Paid, ads are nice. It’s a way you can guarantee coverage, but ads should come last and ads should come if you have a big budget for ads. I think that people go the advertising route because they want something quick and they want to guarantee and they want to control the message. It’s a lot easier to pay for an ad than it is to spend all day every day pitching yourself to be a guest on podcast, to have a segment on TV, to write an article for Inc. Magazine. It takes time and it takes strategy and people don’t want to do that. When it lands, it means so much more than any ad that you can pay for.

It always shocked me when I would write a great profile of a company or I do something in my Inc. column how few of them used it as ads. It’s not you saying that about you. I was always shocked at that. I was like, “Why aren’t they doing that? They’re spending ad dollars. Why aren’t they doing it with that?”

FYB 100 | Podcast Media Maven

Become a Media Maven

 

My frustration comes from me telling them to do it. After they get this amazing publicity, I’m like, “Take this, turn it into an ad or take this and share it,” and they don’t. They do nothing with it. I’m like, “You’re defeating the purposes of paying for my services if you’re not listening to me because I’m telling you how you can turn this publicity into profit. All I can do is keep on telling you. You do you.” That’s definitely how that works.

I so appreciate you giving your perspective here. Let’s go back to a little bit more about podcasting. Do you have some advice for someone who wants to start out and start one right now?

Just do it. I feel like there’s so much overthinking that happens. People will say things like, “I don’t like hearing my voice.” I was a TV reporter for over ten years. I didn’t like hearing my voice either. It’s my voice. If I want to be a TV reporter, I’m going to have to hear it every once in a while. Stop over-analyzing and do it. It’s not about you. People do this stuff with video too. I know a lot of people, they incorporate video with their podcasts as well and they say, “I don’t like the way I look on video.” It’s not about you, it’s about the person watching or it’s about the person listening. Not everybody’s going to love you. Also, good news, not everybody’s going to hate you either.

I think if you are thinking about starting a podcast, do it but you have to commit to it. You can’t be one of those people that has a podcast and they launched 11 or 23 episodes, however many it is, and they’re going to be like, “Not enough downloads. I don’t have any sponsors. I’m going to quit.” You have to change your mindset and know this is a long-term strategy. If you’re willing to commit to it, then you should totally go ahead and start. I would also suggest hiring some help. Tracy, I know you help people in this industry. You don’t want to go into it blind because then you’re going to waste a bunch of time soaking up a whole bunch of free content and doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that. You need a roadmap, “First do this, then do this.” You are super-organized and you’re doing it the right way. Get rid of all the trial and error. Get rid of all that frustration and have fun with it. If it’s not fun and you’re not enjoying the process, then you shouldn’t do it.

I so agree about the fun too. A lot of the free information out there is old. That’s what my clients find. They’ve made mistakes or they have issues and they were following old rules that worked three years ago that don’t work now. That is another reason to get someone to help you, get someone who’s currently doing it day-after-day. Now and tomorrow they will still be there and doing it because they’ll have support to keep you going because the rules change. Let’s touch on some of the other tips that we do with everyone who we bring on the Center of Influence. Share lessons, experiences, stories, anything about the best ways to do these things, the best ways to book great guests.

I would say first, don’t make it about yourself. This applies to all forms of media, podcasting included. Many people when they pitch to be a guest, they only pitch to promote themselves. It’s not my job as a podcast host to give you a free commercial. I can give you a quick story of somebody who I think was a publicist actually and she was pitching her client who had a book coming out. I like the pitch. It was a good pitch. I was like, “Let’s book this person to talk about this topic.” Between that conversation and the actual date we were going to record, this publicist probably sent me three emails talking about her client’s book and, “Make sure you talk about this book and the book is released on this day. Can you release a podcast interview on this day?” That would work for me if I knew you personally or if you were less pushy about your request. I’m talking multiple emails from a stranger. She made it very clear we were only going to talk about the book and we were going to promote the book and this and that. I said, “On my podcast, I don’t do book promotions. I’d be happy to talk about what is in the book by default. I’m sure she’s going to mention she’s got a book and where we could get it and whatever else. You’re coming on a little too strong,” and I canceled the interview.

Your listeners don’t want that. That’s what you’re so right. It’s not about you as a host. It’s about those listeners.

When you do pitch to be a guest on a podcast or you are a host, keep the selling and the self-promotion to a minimum because people don’t want to hear about that. That’s one of my tips. Another tip is be conversational. You get on some podcasts and they sound like robots or it’s very clear they’re reading from a script. It’s okay to slip up every once in a while. You don’t have to sound perfect. Don’t worry about being perfect or sounding perfect. Don’t edit out your breaths. We all breathe.

Other publicists out there, please don’t over prep your clients because we don’t want people to say the same thing again and again.

It’s not conversational.

If it's not fun and you're not enjoying the process, then you shouldn't do it. Click To Tweet

What are some of the best ways to increase listeners?

I think the best way for podcast is to be a guest on other people’s podcasts. I don’t know what the stats are. You probably know more than me. They subscribe to more than one podcast.

Seven is the average.

If you are listening to one podcast and you hear a guest and they mentioned that they have their own podcast, you’re probably going to search it and subscribe. That’s the best way to grow your listener base. Also, mentioning it in Facebook groups is helpful. For example, Dirty John, popular podcast. It was a Bravo TV series based on a true story. I am going to interview Tara Newell. She was the daughter of the woman who married the Dirty John. He attacked her daughter and then she fought back and killed him in self-defense. Sorry if this is a spoiler, but it’s been out for years. You should already know this.

Anyway, I’m going to interview her on my podcast. I posted in a couple of Facebook groups that I’m in like, “I’m going to interview this person on my podcast. Do any of you have questions for her?” People in the comments are asking questions and saying, “I can’t wait to listen to this.” After I record this interview and I get the podcast episode up, I’m going to go back in that Facebook group and share it. Those people who maybe didn’t know about my podcast before would know about it now. Something else that I do in every episode, I always ask people to subscribe, leave a rating and leave a review. This can sound super repetitive, but if you don’t ask people to do that, then they’re probably not going to do that. You need to remind them.

I don’t think there’s any harm in asking people to subscribe or leave a rating or a review because if they like you and they like your content, they’re more than happy to do it. I also explain the ratings and reviews help move me up in the search in Apple podcast or Stitcher or wherever you find me. It shows that you’re liking what you’re hearing. I’m getting more downloads. I have a lot of reviews or I have good ratings. It influences my perception of how people are liking the show. If you see I have a lot of five-star reviews, you’re like, “It must be good. I’ll listen too.”

People forget to ask. Why are you not doing that? You mentioned before that you edit your own show, which is amazing. What else do you find helps you produce it in a professional way?

Something that I do like when I’m doing the interview, I am taking notes as we’re talking. This is something that I did in TV and it speeds up the process of editing. I like to find a tease, a quick little sound bite that I’ll put at the beginning or I’ll use for my media teases. As I’m talking to you, I’m writing down the timecodes. I can see that rolling. If you say something cool, I’ll note that timecode. If Amazon is ringing my doorbell or my baby starts crying, I’ll write down that timecode so I know exactly where to go to edit that out. I never listen to my entire show when I’m editing. Instead, I look at the notes that I’ve taken during the interview and I’ll go straight to that timecode to either cut something out or pull a sound bite. That speeds up the process.

You would be a dream client for us because our clients don’t tell us. We do have to go through the whole show and listen for them and find the doorbells and the dog barking and all those things for them. You would be a dream client if you put that down.

You should request that for them.

FYB 100 | Podcast Media Maven

Podcast Media Maven: Some interview shows do better than solo shows.

 

We have it. They just don’t use it. That’s why they hire us. How are some of the ways that you’ve encouraged engagement? You’ve got these listeners, you’ve got some people around. How are you encouraging them to engage with you?

It’s asking for that engagement. You’re going to have to tell me because I’m a newer podcast host. It’s having other podcast hosts on because we get the industry. Sometimes if I’m pitching myself to be on a podcast and I think this person’s got a cool story or my audience would like to hear from them, then I will also ask them to be a guest on my podcast. I don’t know if people call it podcast swapping or whatever it is. I don’t know what the etiquette is like, do I pitch myself and invite you on in the same email? Should I do it in different emails? I don’t know.

I have people who do that, “Let’s do a swap,” and then the whole thing feels a little weird. I’d rather invite the people that I’m interested in and like the most. If they ask me on, great. If they don’t, maybe it’s not a fit. If we didn’t establish a relationship and rapport, then I’m probably not going to establish a relationship and a rapport with their audience either.

After you have them on and be like, “I’d love to be on your show too,” I think that’s another good way to boost engagement. It’s a great way to build relationships with people. That’s for sure.

I want you to mention here because you do an ask-me-anything style show. Is it once a month you do it?

Once a month, I do a solo show. I have no filter and I talk and say crazy things sometimes. I did do an ask-me-anything show and I’ve got so many questions that my episode was going at 45 minutes. I was like, “We’ve got to do a part two because this is taking too long.”

That’s what I want to know. How do you get questions? Because I get that from a lot of podcasters who asked me and they were like, “We got crickets. We didn’t get any questions. I don’t know what to do.” My answer is, “You said you were going to do one, so make the questions up and assign them to people,” because that’s how I did it in my very first show. You can’t start a show with an ask-me-anything model and expect people to have questions when they don’t even know you have a show yet. I had to find another way.

I did my first ask-me-anything a few months ago. I was already podcasting and I asked on social media and then I asked my email list and I asked more than once. I asked specifically for that podcast episode, but a lot of the other solo episodes that I do, it could literally be a question that a client asked me once and I’ll do a whole episode on it. I have an episode, 35 Things To Do AFTER You Earned Media Exposure. We talked about that. Even if it’s one question that somebody asked you three months ago, turn that into a whole episode because I’m sure you could find things to talk about. The way I plan those out is every episode, a folder in my Google Drive, I write bullet notes so I can stay on topic and have some organization to it. I don’t write a whole lot out. It’s like, “First point, talk about this. Second point, talk about this.”

Have you found that those solo shows do better than your interview shows?

The power of media is reaching so many people you don't even know. Click To Tweet

It depends. Some interview shows do better than solo shows. They go back and forth. I’m going to be completely honest to you. Honestly, I don’t look at my stats a whole lot. I don’t know the specifics of what are the best episodes, this and that. I do know one of my most popular episodes. I did have a guest on and it was about using social media in a way where you make money. I think that’s because everybody thinks they post one thing on Facebook and then their business is going to blow up. We set the record straight on that one. It’s more the topic and the headline of it than whether or not it’s a solo episode or there’s a guest on.

Any last tips that we do that are the best way to monetize your show? It could be alternative monetization. We’re not talking stats here.

There’s a sponsored ep, but you have to have a lot of listeners to do that. For me, I focus on long-term, so if I’m a guest on somebody’s podcast or if even if it’s my own and it’s relevant, I’ll tell people to go to PitchPublicityProfit.com. That’s my free three-day video media class. That is my highest quality lead magnet. I tell people to go there and then they get on my email list. If they want to buy something down the road, then cool. They could buy something down the road. I don’t do sponsors. Also, I don’t sell anything. I give away a whole bunch of free stuff and I don’t sell it to my email list a lot either. I want people to come into my orbit and then I want to give them a bunch of free value. If they want something from me, I feel like they’ll ask me and then I sell it. That’s usually how it’s been going for the last few years.

Do you find you have binge listeners?

I don’t know if I do or not. If people binge, nobody’s told me. I don’t know if I have binge listeners or not.

If someone’s looking for a lot of advice, I suspect you do. You’ll probably see it mostly on your solo episodes where you’ll see a whole bunch of spikes happening in a day on all of those episodes. You’ll have to check that out. I suspect that you do though, because you do have a lot of free things that you’re teaching and advice you’re giving. I would suspect and almost every podcast that has that educational side to it seems to have binge listeners in some way, shape or form. Interview episodes, just straight ones, don’t always have. You already were a person of high authority. You had a lot of TV spots and other things, but have you found the podcast leading to anything the unexpected, some authority boost that you’re like, “I didn’t know that podcast was in such demand.”

The only thing that I could think of is when people say, “I listen to your podcast.” I was speaking at the Mom 2.0 Summit in Austin, I was talking about how mom bloggers could get media exposure and somebody was like, “I listen to your podcast. I love your podcast.” Being recognized by people who you don’t know. The best thing, and this goes both with my podcast and my YouTube channel. I’ll get emails out of the blue from people. They’d be like, “I did exactly what you told me to do and I’m in this publication. I got featured here.” I’m like, “I don’t even know you and you’ve been listening to my stuff and not telling me and you’ve been doing what I’m telling you to do. You email me and be like, ‘I’m in the media.’” That’s cool because it’s like, “I didn’t know you existed and here you are telling me that you’ve been executing what I’ve been teaching and it’s working.”

Often we think, especially people who are very concerned about, “Is this converting for me?” When they don’t hear back from people right away, they think, “It must not be working. They must not be listening.” All of a sudden, you meet someone who’s like, “I’ve been listening to you for months and I’ve done all this stuff you said to do and now I’m ready to be your client.”

That’s the power of media. You’re reaching so many people and you don’t even know it unless they tell you.

I have that happen to me with my column. Sometimes some people will say, “I did exactly what you asked and it got me into Best Buy. It got me into Walmart.” I would be like, “It did? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” It’s in my column. Unlike our podcast where we can say, “If you had a success story, I’d like to hear it,” where you could invite that in. With the column, you can’t. Have you had more fan interactions that surprised you?

FYB 100 | Podcast Media Maven

Podcast Media Maven: Being recognized by people who you don’t know is the best thing.

 

I probably got it more than usual because I did a lot of different events, whether I was speaking at one or attending one. Other than that, they come in through emails. Since having a baby, I’ve been laying low, not leaving my house. Thank goodness for Wi-Fi, I’m still connected to everybody. My fan interactions is like somebody will see me post something in a Facebook group. I posted something in a Facebook group and somebody commented, “Were you on John Lee Dumas’s EO Fire?” I was like, “Yes.” He was like, “I remember that episode. I remember you.” They recognize my name or something. I’m like, “That’s cool. I made an impression.”

We’re starting out the 2020 here and I would love to know what is on your media agenda for the year? What do you want to accomplish this year?

I’m not saying this because I’m talking to you, but it is podcast focus. I want to get on four podcasts or book four podcasts a month and work on my business and not in my business. Podcast is a big part of that. I’m bringing on publicists on my team to focus solely on podcast pitching, in addition to traditional media pitching, because I think it’s so important and it’s only getting bigger and more popular.

I’m so glad you are doing that. Become a Media Maven comes out on Tuesdays every week. Christina Nicholson, you are amazing and I’m so glad you came to talk to us about how we can all become a media maven.

Thank you so much for having me. It was nice chatting with you.

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Christina Nicholson is so amazing. What she has to say about the focus of media not being about you as the featured person but as the readers, the listeners, the viewers. That’s an amazing insight that you need to take to heart. We need to be focused on outside. What’s in it for the media that wants to cover us? What’s in it for our podcast listeners? Looking at it from that focus, I think that’s the most brilliant thing she said, and she said tons of different brilliant things and gave us great tips. I love that one though because that highlights her focus and how she trains and how she teaches and how she coaches and consults for her clients.

I love everything that she’s doing with that focus in mind because it’s shifting the way that media is shifting. It’s shifting the focus of how things get pitched and how people come on shows. When we start to think about that in a different way, that’s the publicists we want to work with. We want to work as a publicist who get what it’s like now, who deeply understand podcasting, who deeply understand TV and streaming and how all of these new media is working now. By doing, you have a deeper insight and that’s exactly what Christina Nicholson brings to the table. Don’t forget, Become a Media Maven, every Tuesday.

I’m excited to keep bringing you more Center of Influence features. What I have right now is not as many people applying. I’m going to ask my audience out there, those of you who are podcast hosts, you would need to apply to me. You need to let me know you want to be on. For those of you who are listening to podcasts, urge your podcast host, urge the person you’re listening to come and be on my show. To come and be featured in Authority Magazine and to be featured in Thrive Global and BuzzFeed. All of those things come from this. This is free media. This is not paid media here. I find it’s so interesting that people aren’t reaching out and they aren’t finding and asking.

It takes a lot for me to book up these shows. I want to make sure that I’m reaching out to as many people and listening to as many diverse voices as possible. Apply now. I’d love to feature you. Thanks everyone for reading. There’s going to be a lot of retooling to Feed Your Brand, so we appreciate it. We’d love your suggestions and you can do that at FeedYourBrand.co and everywhere at social, @FeedYourBrand. Thanks again.

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About Christina Nicholson

FYB 100 | Podcast Media MavenWith her business, Media Maven, and her podcast, Become a Media Maven, Christina Nicholson is a TV host who helps bloggers and business owners grow by reaching thousands, even millions, of their ideal customers or clients in minutes instead of months through the power of traditional and new media without spending big bucks on advertising.

You can see her in front of the camera as a host on Lifetime TV, in national commercials, and read her work online in Huff Post, Thrive Global, Inc. Magazine, and Fast Company.

 

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