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Publicity 101 is knowing who your target market is. Publicity 102 is knowing where your target market is. Regardless of whether your target market is stay-at-home parents with young children and aging parents, or entrepreneurs who built their businesses up to mid-sized regional powerhouses, there is a magazine they’re reading in print or online. You can get your expertise in front of them by placing articles in those magazines.

As an expert, one of the fastest ways to get your content, your unique position, your controversial stance in front of your target audience is through article placements. It doesn’t matter if you are a wine expert, a management consultant, or biblically-based financial planner, there is a magazine, newsletter, e-zine, or some form of communication, either in print or online, aimed at your target market.

For the sake of this book, the examples used will be for professional speakers, consultants, or nonfiction authors simply because those are the niche markets served by my company, PR/PR Public Relations. Our media relations lie in the trade, industry, and business association publications situated to benefit experts looking for name recognition in front of business decision makers looking to hire for conventions, conferences, and corporate events.

For the wine expert, there are local neighborhood magazines around your shop; for the biblically-based financial planner there are magazines and websites targeted towards single parents and seniors. There are magazines for women and parenting, there are magazines for men’s interests; there is a magazine for any subject you can think of— especially online.

Just because you are not a management consultant or sales trainer, don’t think you won’t benefit from the principles in this book—you will! The principles are the same, just change the topic/title/website of the publications I reference into the ones relating to your expertise.

Studies have shown that business owners, executives, entrepreneurs, and C-suite-level decision makers read their industry publications and association magazines cover-to-cover every month—more often than they read an entire edition of the The Wall Street Journal or an entire issue of Entrepreneur.

Plus, in a trade, industry, or business association publication you are more likely to get an entire article of your content placed, with a bio paragraph at the end. Newsstand magazines and daily newspapers use writers, reporters, freelancers, and columnists who will quote you as an expert, but rarely take unsolicited articles from outside sources.

Many speakers and consultants think they’ll achieve instant fame and build their career if only they were quoted in a major magazine or daily newspaper, such as USA Today. While that would be great, and sounds fantastic when being introduced at the podium, what will most likely get you invited to that podium in the first place is an article placed directly in front of meeting planners in their association publication.

After all, to reach your target market from a quote in USA Today, you have to hope that your target is staying in a hotel (because that’s where most people read USA Today), and you have to hope that they don’t just step over that day’s edition on their way out the door. If they finally decide to thumb through the paper you have to hope they read the section you’re quoted in, the article you’re quoted in, and you have to hope that they read down to the paragraph you’re quoted in. Those are too many variables.

The same can be said for high-profile online outlets, such as HuffPost. You have to hope your target market checks the website on the day your article is posted. You have to hope they go to the category where your article is posted. You have to hope you’re still at the top of the page, or that they scroll down far enough to find your article. Once again, too many variables.

Experts of all kinds often seek the “celebrity” status of TV or radio. While this works to feed the ego, it does not help build your business. There’s a phrase in the broadcast industry called, “ten and done!” This means that if a viewer or listener does not respond to your message within ten minutes of hearing it, chances are they never will. How often have you, yourself, been listening to the radio, hear a great author or expert giving advice, but by the time you’ve gotten home or to the office, you’ve been hit with hundreds of other messages and have forgotten the name of the book and the expert?

When your expertise—in the form of an article—is in print or online, the reader can save the magazines, tear out the page, bookmark the URL, download a copy, or e-mail a link to a friend. This gives them the ability to react to your message the next week, the next month, or even the next year. Think of the executive who reads an article in the August issue of his trade magazine, likes the advice given and decides to give copies of the author’s book to his staff for Christmas. We hear all the time from meeting planners that they look to their industry and association publications for speakers for their next event. If your expertise is deemed applicable to their readership, you’ll be a safe speaker for their audience.