In this episode of "Kickstart the Conversation," Catharine engages in an enlightening conversation with Angel, a skilled public relations specialist. Together, they delve into the world of public relations strategies tailored for small businesses. Angel shares valuable insights on maintaining a positive brand image, getting organized, and initiating PR efforts. They explore the importance of visibility and marketing strategies for businesses, emphasizing the need to have fun in the process. The discussion also highlights social media targeting, community visibility strategies, and the potential of a publicity quiz for business growth. Catharine and Angel also explore the potential of a quiz to benefit Angel's business. They discuss the idea of categorizing businesses based on their level of publicity and offering tips for improvement.

Tune in to discover innovative ways to enhance your business's visibility and connect with your ideal clients.

About the Guest:

Angel is a Public Relations Specialist and Business Organizer. She has a Master of Arts in Public Relations. Angel knows that small business owners wear many hats, and she believes publicist should be one of them. She works with small businesses to help them increase visibility of their brand, and get organized. She is the Founder of The Modest Company, host of The Mod Co Podcast, and a blogger.

https://www.themodcosc.com/podcast

@themodcosc

https://www.facebook.com/themodcosc

What is the Best Quiz for Your Biz?

Take this FREE 60-second Quiz to Find Out: quizformybiz.com.

About the Host:

Catharine O'Leary is a dynamic speaker, author, and entrepreneur with a wealth of experience in market research, consumer insights, and innovative marketing strategies. She's known as the "quiz queen" and is an expert at asking the right questions to connect with ideal clients and boost business growth. With over three decades of corporate experience, Catharine is passionate about helping entrepreneurs have better conversations with their ideal clients and grow their business with cutting-edge marketing strategies.

https://catharineoleary.com/

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Catharine O'Leary: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to kickstart the conversation. I'm your host, Catharine Leary and today I am excited to share with you a colleague of mine we met actually on her podcast a few months ago and he graciously accepted the invitation to come and talk to us about all things publicity and PR related. So Angel Wilborn Welcome to kick started the conversation.

Thank you so much, Catharine, for having me. So excited to be here. And of course, talk to my fellow Griffin Dora once again. Well, yes, yes. Yes, Harry Potter. So yeah, I'm super excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me on. kickstart the conversation. bellowed

Catharine O'Leary: Griffin door. Yes, I forgotten about that. Okay. So other than being a fellow Griffin door, Angel is a public relations specialist in business organizer, she has a Masters of Arts and public relations. Angel knows that small business owners wear many hats, and she believes publicists should be one of them. She works with small businesses to help them increase visibility of their brand. And get organized. She's the founder of the modest company host of the mod co podcast and a blogger. So, Angel, tell us a little bit about who you work with and how you serve.

So I work with female small business owners or entrepreneurs. And I just helped educate them on public relations. Because I know public relations is like one of those things. You know what it is, but you don't know what it is. It's like, okay, I've heard that term before, but I'm not actually sure what it is, or water is my business needed. And I always explain to people that, you know, it's like, when the hourly events like the BP oil spill happened, like years and years ago, like when the BP oil spill, and everybody's like, what are they gonna do? I was like, that's when the public says no public relation comes in and like, Okay, let me help y'all clean this up and make it look nice for the media. And I was like, also, you know, just keeping a positive brand image for yourself. So that's what I do is just try to like, educate, help you keep a positive brand image, and then also help you get your business organized, like doing an audit, looking at what it is that you have going on, if you're saying that, Oh, I don't have enough time in the day. Okay, let's take a step back. Let's look at your schedule and see where we can find lots of time in your schedule for you to be able to have that time, let's see where you're wasting time, or where you're just sitting around and you can incorporate something else into that time.

Catharine O'Leary: Perfect. Well, I and small business owners never have enough time, there was always so many hats being worn. And I think publicity or publicist, as you say, is one of those hats. That's not hard to wear, because you're doing the stuff anyways, usually, like you're, you're doing the marketing, you're creating the content. And now it's just really having a bit more of a plan to get it out there. Is that fair?

Yes that is very fair. That's exactly what it is, like you're already doing some type of promises public relations type work in your business every day, you just don't necessarily realize that. That's what it is, like when you're interacting with a customer or client, like, that's part of your brand image. You know, when you're posting something online, whether you're posting as yourself or as your business, that's a part of your brand image because you're no longer just Catharine a lyric, you are Catharine on the quiz point. And so what you do is now associated with your business,

Catharine O'Leary: and what are some of the low hanging fruit or the easy ways to kind of get your your public relations system or engine going.

So an easy way is one is just connecting with your clients like small business or connecting with your community, I share more so say, because a lot of people want to support small businesses like there are so many groups out there, support your local small business. So join those groups so that you can post them there. You can tell people about your business, when people when you're meeting with a client or if you have a brick and mortar and you have customers coming in, talk to them, get to know them, especially if it's somebody that's coming in every day, you should know them, you should be able to call them out by name and be like, Hey, Catharine, how's it going today? You know, how's your kids doing? Or how's this going? So that's something easy that you can do. It's just making those connections and making genuine connections like don't. People can tell when you're being fake. People can tell when you're being phony. So just making genuine connections if there's opportunities out in the community, show your face out in the community and wear a shirt or something that has your business logo on it. If you're going to you know if you're like my son play soccer, you can wear one of your shirts or a hat or something like that with your business name on it to the soccer game you're going out to target you can wear something with your business name on it to target because people are going to see that and they may or may not say anything to you But they've seen it. And now they can recognize that and some people are gonna get curious. And they're gonna be like, Oh, what's that? I've never heard of it, and they're gonna head to Google to look it up.

Catharine O'Leary: Okay, awesome. And then on Google, you can do Google My Business and create that, which a lot of people don't know about. So do you help people with the profile, or you just kind of drive them to that to say, go, go get that

done? Yeah, more. So go, go get that done. And you know, these are the places where you should be putting yourself out there for people to find you.

Catharine O'Leary: Okay, there's a million ways that people can find you. And, and one of the things we touched on just before we got on the call was really finding where your ideal clients are hanging out, like, whether that's target or maybe it's Facebook, or maybe it's LinkedIn, or maybe it's a networking groups, or at summits, or giveaways or something like that, but finding where your ideal clients are, and, and also stepping into those places that you have fun in. Because I know for me, I'm not a post, like a social media post, or like I don't, I don't live on social media, people don't find me there. That's not where my ideal clients are. But it's also not where I love to be. Right. So it's not something that I go on every day and just have fun in and post, it would be a job for me to have to do that. And that's not the point of marketing. Really, I think the point of marketing is having fun and connecting and making those, you know, those authentic relationships, start not making them but having them start and but doing it in a place that you have fun to. Because if it doesn't want you up, you're not going to do it. Exactly. Like

if you feel like it's a chore or like you said it doesn't line up, then you're not going to do it. And so, like you said, getting out in the community and making those connections, okay? You're not a social media person. But that doesn't mean that you're not going to connect with somebody who is a social media person. So okay, you're not a social media person. But you go out and you go to a networking event, or you go someplace else, and you connect with somebody else. And you all exchange information. Well, now that person, they can be on the internet, somewhere on Facebook, or Instagram or LinkedIn and seeing somebody saying, Hey, I'm trying to create a lead magnet. You know, I'm interested in doing quizzes, or I'm interested in getting my business organ off. Oh, hey, now they're on there. They're like, Oh, I know this person, you know, here's the website, check out their website, get in contact with them. Now, they've put you out there because they are a social media person. So that helps to bridge that gap of not being on social media. And then another thing with social media is there's so much of it out there. Like I feel like every day, there's a new social media site popping up or you have to learn how to do this social media site, you have to, it's overwhelming, and it's tiring. And then it's, oh, well, the content that you create for Instagram isn't the same content that you can put on Facebook, and it's definitely not the same content that you can put on Tik Tok. So now, on top of having 15 different social media sites, you want me to come up with the same but different content for all of those sites? No, nobody has time for that. Like, it's just not enough time in the year to even try to do that. So what I suggest is doing a social media pros and cons like you need to find out where your ideal client is hanging out. So for instance, something that I just recently did was for my podcast, I didn't have a Facebook page. At first, like my business at first, all I had was, I started off with just an Instagram, and then somebody was like, well, you need to be on LinkedIn. So I was like, okay, so I joined LinkedIn was like, Oh, you also need to get on Pinterest. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I can't take this. So I got off Pinterest. And I'm still not seeing like a lot of movement with it. And a couple of weeks ago, I finally like I sat down I already knew about like, you know, finding your ideal will finding out where your ideal client hangs out at. I just wasn't putting it to use, you know, one of those things that I can give advice, but I need to take my own advice sometimes. And it's not. So let me really look at my analytics for my podcast. And so I look, I saw that there's no majority female, which I already knew. I saw what their age ranges were. I said, Okay, well, I think the age range is like 35 to 44. That was not How often were women who are ages 35 to 44 hanging out it. They're not hanging out on Instagram. They're not hanging out on LinkedIn. They're not on Tik Tok. They're hanging out on Facebook. That's where they spend majority of their time that Guess who's not on Facebook? I'm not. So now I'm not sorry. I'm out here, creating all this content and creating all this stuff. Yes, people are seeing it, but those are not the people that I need to reach. So I need to be on the platform of the people. that I need to reach. So that's what you just need to do with your social medias don't try to be on all of the sites, you need to figure out who your ideal audience is. And then where they hang out at. And

Catharine O'Leary: the cool thing is, is that if they're your ideal audience, you're gonna love talking to them. I mean, by definition, and therefore, where they're hanging out is probably where you're hanging out to, usually, or at least, it's a place where you can get behind, you know, like actually posting and, and getting out there on it, if you know you're talking to your tribe or your people,

right, because you're familiar with it, you're comfortable with it, it doesn't seem like a headache, you know, you're not trying to be like, Oh, I posted the wrong thing. This is actually meant for tick tock or this was meant for, you know, Instagram or something like that. You're comfortable with it. So you're like, Okay, this is cool. And you're enjoying creating content for perfect,

Catharine O'Leary: and just so for people that small businesses and entrepreneurs that are looking for more visibility and looking to, you know, PR, or, you know, publicity for that, are there, like bucket like, like, like, are there certain things that you should be doing for low hanging fruit? Or like, if you're really engaged in, in publicity, like you're going for, like, the magazines like Forbes or entrepreneur or something like that? Or are like, is there a system or something? Like what, like, how do people kind of engage and get involved? So

I wouldn't necessarily say that there's a system, you do want to, you know, put yourself out there. And one thing that I will say is that it doesn't have to cost you like you people think, oh, public relations publicist, oh, my gosh, that's gonna break the bank. No, it's not going to break the bank. So again, some low hanging fruit, things that you can do to get yourself out there. Let's say you're a small business, you just started off, you know, or either you've been in business for a year, and a lot of people don't really know who you are. Okay. Again, like I said earlier, get out there in the community, wear your shirt, talk to people in the community. A lot of communities have like YMCA or RECs or something like that. I know, the local YMCA here. They're always looking for sponsors for like the team sports and stuff like that I can't speak for like anyplace else. But I think their sponsorship for a team sport, I want to say is maybe $100 for like one sport, and maybe like 175 If you want to do two sports or something like that. Okay, that sounds like a lot of money. But if you have that 100 of that $135 sponsor a team, because guess what, every Saturday morning, a parent has to put their kids jersey on with your name with your business name, plastered on the back of it. Every Saturday, there are literally hundreds of people looking at your business name on the back of that jersey, not only do you put your business name on the back of that jersey, you go out there to those games, and you support your team, and you're wearing a shirt so that now people can say, okay, they didn't just sponsor the team, they're actually out here supporting the team, as well. Again, have on like a meet the owner type of day or something like that, if you're a brick and mortar type place, do a meet the owner type of day, have people come into a drop in for a certain amount of time, people can come in and meet the owner and pick your brain, do a Facebook, do a Facebook Live or an Instagram Live or wherever your people are, do alive with them. Connect with other small business owners and see if you all can come together and do something small together to put your names out there in the community. Again, depending on what type of business you are, if you're an online business, it can be a little bit hard, but you can still use those social media outlets, you can still sponsor a local team in your business area, you can still go out in public and where your search you know, if you have a customer or client that's always coming in, ask me like, hey, if I if you have like merchandise and somebody shirt, hey, if I give you a shirt, you know, will you wear, will you wear the shirt out, take a picture of the shirt, tag me in a start. So just small things like that, that you can do to put yourself out there and to maintain a positive image without having to spend hundreds or 1000s of dollars on stuff. So that's the before then because if nobody knows that you're there, then you're not going to be able to build on that. So you have to start putting yourself out there and I know me personally like I'm a big introvert and so it's hard for me sometimes to like put myself out there and talk about my and talk about myself. But if you're not willing to talk about your business and why you start it, you can't expect somebody else to be willing to talk about it and to put you out there for and I mean another thing I'm not a fan of them but a lot of people do it. Like how the real estate agent just have like the magnets and stuff on the side of the car, put the magnet on the side of your car, if you own one of the moms at my son's school, she has a she bakes, she bakes, the cutest cookies are cookies looks so cute. Like, she's so great at decorating them. But every holiday every other day in the school, what does she do, she gives the cookies to the teachers with different little things on like she decorates them with like pencils, like you name it, she can decorate, she's giving wrong the cookie, she's putting it out there. And I think the news or something like that came to the school one day, and she made cookies for them, as well. So it's just little things like that if you have a business and you have a child and you can like incorporate yourself and your business somehow, in a gift or something like that, do it if there's a like a raffle or something like that, like if a local school, for the band or to raise money or something, if they're doing something like that, donate something, donate a service, donate a product to it, because again, that's getting your name out there, and people are going to get to know you like that.

Catharine O'Leary: This is there's so many golden nuggets in that. But what I love about that is it's great for bricks and mortar. So great, great PR tips for bricks and mortar that you know in your community, building up your community, you know, outreach, and so on. But don't like just because you're an online service or you know, your your online, don't forget that you still live in a community, you can still do all these things in the community, because the people that you're talking to can, like you said, be the people that say, Oh, you need this, I know this person, right. And that's just a way to grow your network. And it doesn't always have to be on Zoom and online, I think we forget that, you know, post COVID that it doesn't like, you know, you can still have that community spirit and that community connection and be a global business or be a North American business, be an online business. But you can still have like those out not out of the box, because they're actually old school, the old school kind of PR where you're wearing the shirt or the cap or you know, you know, sponsoring the the baseball team, those are all great ideas. So perfect. So what I wanted to do, Angel is just, you know, as you were talking through, I was kind of coming up with some ideas for your quiz that you might be able to do for your business. And I was thinking of something along the lines of because you did say about you know, people that maybe are starting up or less than a year, and then people who maybe have, you know, a little bit more exposure, but not everyone knows who they are. And then for the people that are well established, and they just want more visibility, you can have a quiz at something around there, their publicity score, like what's your publicity score, or, you know, what's your publicity or PR relationship, quotient or score, like score again, and you could have the outcomes be, you know, just starting out, you know, known in my area, but wants to be bigger, and then, you know, well known but want to go deeper or something like that. And you can have like, just like you did with us tips around, okay, you're not well known, like, you know, like, you can go local, you can go you know this, these are like some easy ways that are not going to break the bank to get your name out there. Or if you're more of a, you know, in that medium bucket, where people are, you know, yeah, I'm kind of known, but not as well known as I'd like to be what else could they be doing? So they've maybe done some of the starter things. But what can be layered on top of that. And then for people who have, you know, exposure and are quote unquote, well known in there, or they think they're well known. How can you amp that up? Like, how did you go to? So you can Yeah, you can have a fun quiz. But I also liked, you can also flip it around and do something different and be like publicity for introverts. Right? Okay. She Yeah, you like that? I love that. Yeah, see, it's not all about being on Facebook Lives yourself. And it's not all about being like the face of your business, there are lots of ways that you can do publicity that you actually don't have to be in front of the camera for. So things like you were saying the magnets or the the car wraps, that just maybe have the logo on it, like those are all business deductions to do. So you don't have to necessarily be the face. You can have just a an image on a zoom screen or something and you'd be talking in the background. They call it a talking head, but you don't actually have to have your face on there. You could just have like the, you know, a really cool image that you're talking to, or, you know, kind of talking and that's totally fine for some videos in some, you know, in some audiences so, I think that you can actually do something fun for, you know, what's your public Relations type. And you know, maybe introverts is one of them. And, and you have like a whole, like lead magnet and like a report just for introverts, you know, and maybe one for extroverts and one for. I'm not sure. I think I'm both.

I love that.

Catharine O'Leary: So something something along those lines, we could we could, you know, talk a little bit more about that another time, but I think that'd be fun, like publicity for introverts. You know, the number, what's your number one challenge to getting publicity when you don't want to be the face? Like, you don't want to be the person in front of the camera? So what are all the way because there's 100 ways there's like 100 million. Oh, yeah, definitely.

Yeah. And that's, that's why like public relations, because I can be behind the scenes. And I think that's why you know, I had a hard time because I will promote somebody else's business from now until eternity ago when it comes to mind. I'm like, out of that,

Catharine O'Leary: lawyers being their own lawyer or doctors being their own doctors, like coaches should not coach themselves. No. You know, business experts should not be their own expertise because I'm telling you like, when I do my own quizzes, it takes forever I can do everyone else's off the top my head but when it comes to sitting down doing my own, I come up with a roadblock like none other and it's just craziness so it's always good to also have that circle of people that you can kind of brainstorm with to

agree with like because he I definitely when it comes to myself, like you said, I get so distracted I'm off watching TV, taking it off, like every everything

Catharine O'Leary: else like doing the dishes, you know, cleaning the car off like because I can't wait, right? Like no, it's

like oh that spot that I you know, teeny tiny spot that no one can see but that needs to be cleaned.

Catharine O'Leary: That needs to be cleaned because I don't want to do this Facebook Live. Perfect. Well, I AngelList has been fantastic. Tell us again where people can reach you and I believe that you have a free gift where they can reach you.

Yes, I do. So if you head over to my website, it is the Moto sp.com. And on our website, there is a freebie which is a social media platform pros and cons what I talked about earlier, and then you can find me on Facebook. It's the Moto se or it might just be the Moto. It feels the Moto or the Moto se Yes. Instagram is the Moto SC and then I'm also on threads. And that's the Moto se so Facebook probably is the Moto se because I've tried to keep them consistent. And Pinterest is the same as well.

Catharine O'Leary: Perfect. So the mod co stands for the modern company. Yeah, it stands

for the modest company. So when I was trying to get my domain one the models company is very long. And also to it was not available. And so I was like okay, I was like I still want to stick with something that kind of you know they are and so they give you suggestions and stuff like that. And I was like these all suck and then the Mako just popped in my head and I was like, Oh, well that's that's perfect. So

Catharine O'Leary: we go and SC southern South Carolina, South Carolina was gonna say Southern California that was in South Carolina. Lanco SC the South Carolina. Okay, great. Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Angel. Thank you for joining us today. And thank everyone else out there for listening and we will be bringing you another episode next week. Talk to you soon

Thanks Catharine.