Business owners who have limited marketing budgets, but are social media savvy, have been creating fantastic promotional opportunities for themselves using SourceBottle.
I have secured TV appearances, national newspaper articles, radio interviews and local media attention for my clients via SourceBottle call outs – and you can do the same.
Starting in Australia and now operating nationally, SourceBottle is an introduction service for journalists, bloggers, PR companies and businesses. By this, I mean journalists and bloggers post call outs for sources on a particular topic and business owners (or their PR agents) respond, offering their stories.
It really is that easy to use. Go to www.sourcebottle.com.au and sign up for an account, register the areas your business operates in that you are likely to be able to provide good comment on and then wait for the call outs to drop into your inbox. SourceBottle Drink Up alerts are sent out at around 10am and 2pm every week day, but you can also log on to the site, or check the SourceBottle Twitter feed and Facebook page and respond directly if you don’t want to wait.
Once you find a call out you think you’d be right for, use these tips for a great SourceBottle response:
• Read Drink Up and reply as soon as you can, as journalists and bloggers often don’t wait for other responses once they have what they need
• Ensure you read the call out carefully so you know what you are responding to. You don’t want to start your relationship with the journalist or blogger badly by wasting their time
• Address the journalist or blogger by name if they have included it in the call out
• Outline why you would be suitable, addressing each of the points mentioned in the call out. You don’t need to write a novel, dot points covering the topic are often preferred
• Respond even if you’re not exactly the right fit, because you still may be the best option, or the journalist or blogger might change their story idea if they like what you send. However, keep in mind if your response is not relevant in any way it will not help your bid for publicity
• Include your website in the body of your response so the journalist or blogger can find out more about your business if they need to
• Add contact details at the bottom of your response, making it easy to get back to you
• Attach a photo or media release if it adds to your response
• Check your spelling and facts before pressing send
• Remember if you get no response, there’s always tomorrow’s SourceBottle alerts
Good luck uncovering some great opportunities for yourself and your business. Let me know how you go.
HI Johanna
Thank you for these valuable and easy to understand tips on how to respond to Source Bottle requests. I respond to many and have had a few connect back to me, so it is great to know a better protocol for answering.
Cheers and have a great day
Marney I’m so glad you found them to be valuable and I’ll be interested to hear about your results after using them.
Thanks for this – I LOVE LOVE LOVE Sourcebottle and it has created a number of opportunities for me too.
My advice for small businesses is to also attach a 1-pager that has your bio and photo – this enables the journalist to connect with you and put a face to a name. Powerful when wanting to be remembered.
Thanks Johanna.
Great advice Sal, thanks for your contribution.
Oh Joh, this is brilliant! You are spot on with every point you’ve made.
I’ve just spent the last 10 minutes racking my brain wondering if you’ve overlooked anything. Um. Nope. You’ve said it all. Thank you so much. Will share this post far and wide. (If that’s ok with you.)
Bec 🙂
Of course that’s OK with me Bec! The better the quality of the responses, the more raving fans for you 🙂