Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug show. My name is Doug Cunnington and today I’m talking to Chris Pantelli. He’s the co founder of Linkifi, a leading digital PR link building agency with a focus on e commerce, authority, health, and real estate websites. He helps clients vastly improve their domain rating, traffic, EEAT, and SERP positioning by securing the best links on the web.
He’s been featured in Forbes, the New York times, and appeared on leading podcasts in the SEO space, including niche pursuits, this podcast. He was on it. Uh, I can’t remember when, but we’ll link to it. He’s been on Craig Campbell show and Charles floats as well. So Chris, what’s going on? How are you doing today?
Chris: I’m good. Thank you, Doug. Thanks for having me again. I think he’s probably been over a year, maybe since I was last on time flies. Yeah. Yeah. A lot has changed in that 12 months. Definitely. Yeah.
Doug: Yeah. So we’ll, like I said, we’ll link up to the old episode cause you have a very interesting backstory and I think we spent quite a lot of time on that and I encourage people to check it out after they listened to this one.
Bear in mind, A lot of changes have taken place in our space in general and SEO. And we have a big one Haro has changed its name. So we’re going to jump into the details of that kind of stuff. We’re going to talk about the Google leak a little bit and some other AI topics as well. But just before that Linkifi, I mentioned what you guys do.
Can you break it down a little bit and. Sort of what’s the elevator pitch. What do you do at Linkifi?
Chris: Yeah. So we, we do, and we only do one thing and that’s digital PR link building. So we don’t offer like any other SEO services. We just do editorially earned media links. So it’s paying for links, but not really.
You pay us to earn the links for you, if that makes sense. And we do like, inbound. Digital PR link building, which is like expert quote commentary. The most popular platform for that would have been HARO now connectively. And then we also do outbound. So that’s where we create a story and we take that to the journalists directly.
So two sorts of types of link building under the umbrella of digital PR and media link building. Perfect.
Doug: And if I remember right, did you guys do a little campaign for me? Very small.
Chris: Uh, we did, didn’t we? I think. Yeah. Yes, we did.
Doug: Yeah, it’s been a year, so it took me a second.
Chris: Your memories were as bad as mine.
Doug: So, you guys landed two kick ass links for me. Uh, maybe more, but one is nasdaq. com, which is ridiculous. I have a podcast in the personal finance space, so for me to put that in, huge credibility. No one reads the story, right? It was, You know, generic, but I’m an authority. So they, they put it on there and another Another spot, I think it was probably syndicated, but it was on Yahoo finance.
So two of the like biggest spaces in the personal finance area. And you guys landed the links and I literally did nothing. I think I answered your questionnaire and then went through it. So yeah, just the power. And you guys only did a very small campaign just so I could get a feel for what was going on.
And I think if it kept going, I’d probably have like a couple dozen. So kick ass. All right, let’s move to HARO and talk about the changes. So it’s called Connectively now. Can you explain the transition? And if people don’t know what HARO was, like what it looks like now and just kind of lay it out for us?
Chris: Okay. Yeah. I mean, it’s the whole landscape has changed immensely. So it’s pretty, Probably all been bought on by the onset of, of AI. And the fact that HARO was like a free platform, which meant that it was open to abuse. So for those that don’t know, HARO is, or was originally created by a guy called Peter Shankman as a way to connect journalists with sources.
And. That’s an industry as, as old as the age of time itself. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s nothing new there. There’s, there’s all, you know, there’s been journalism for a long time and there’s, and journalists have, you know, Looked for experts to quote within their pieces in order to bolster the credibility and authority of the piece that they’re writing.
But as SEOs and online marketeers, we spotted this as an opportunity to not only get our personal brands and business brands named and featured within these high authority journalistic articles, but also hopefully to win a link back to our website. So HARO traditionally was the d the default place to go in order to win these sorts of inbound expert commentary requests from journalists.
So we use HARO as like an umbrella term to describe this sort of inbound journalistic link building, because the journalists use. Platforms like HARO, which is the biggest, they’ll also use platforms like Twitter and now X. There’s other ones like press plugs quoted. And what they’re doing is they’re working on an article.
So they already know the topic of the article. And it might, let’s say it’s about personal finance. Let’s say it’s about paying off, uh, improving your credit score. Okay. And what the journalists will do is they’ll, they’ll have like an idea of the outline of the article, the, the. The elements of the article that they want to include, but they’d be looking for one or two quotes from experts in order to back up a particular point within the article.
You’d have seen this hundreds of times before if you’ve ever, you know, gone onto a news page on a news website, and you’ll see that such and such will have been said by, and they’ll name the source, and they’ll often link back to that source’s website. So, HARO was the, like the, the place to go. It was totally free for those that remember, used to get three emails a day, Monday to Friday, and you’d scour through all of these opportunities, either as like a an independent blogger, or maybe you had a couple of websites and you, you were looking to build your own personal brand, you’d scour these opportunities, you’d look for something that was suitable, you’d hit reply.
Try and do a really good pitch and hope that the journalist would pick you. And this worked great for about 15 years. Let’s say then AI comes onto the scene. And as an agency, we actually got to experience maybe like that six month honeymoon period where we would like testing with AppSumo AI writing tools.
I don’t know if you remember those. Like pre, pre open AI chat GPT. They were terrible, but in a way they, they did sort of speed things up and you could have a play with them. And so yeah, we, there was like a six month honeymoon period where maybe us and a handful of other people were the only ones doing it.
And then obviously when chat GPT came out. It meant that people could just blast HARO queries with AI garbage, AI nonsense. And the journalists inboxes were just getting flooded. So, what the owners of HARO Sissian decided to do was move away from that completely free email based model over to a a pay to play like dashboard experience.
You can still get five free pitches per month. But after that it’s you’re paying per pitch, which I believe is around a dollar per pitch. And just having that barrier, that, that cost barrier has significantly reduced the amount of spam. I mean, some of these tools that were set up were just like Scraping the queries using like an API, putting it through another API with AI.
And no one was even looking at the responses. It was just all getting done. So you can imagine the journalist’s inbox were getting bombarded with garbage. So it’s not a good user experience for the journalists. And Yeah, so that’s the reason that Sissian decided to move away to this pay to play model.
And I can tell you it is a golden era for link building. We are winning more links than ever before. I can get onto that after you ask me more questions. But yeah, it’s an exciting time.
Doug: That’s pretty cool. And I do remember, I mean, people were abusing like marketers do you, I mean, you prefaced really well with that statement.
Marketers find something to exploit and then they do it over and over again. Like the incentives just line up that way and I. I remember hearing about Haro probably when I first got started online in like 2013 or so, and it has continued to be like a good source for links, but also the effectiveness has gone down.
I’ve chatted with some people via email who did set up. A, you know, completely hands off AI operated pitch machine. And I think they actually, you know, they got some decent links, but I feel like people can see through like the reporters are smart, right? So if someone, if someone is spending time. Actually reading the the responses then they’ll know and of course the cost that impacts it, which I think is a brilliant I mean, it doesn’t you don’t have to charge too much You just have to like turn down the volume and then you end up with a huge amount of quality All right.
So We understand why They sort of rebranded, they sort of changed the overall operating, which is great. Any other details with the operation? I mean, there’s a dashboard now, anything notable before we kind of move on to some other stuff, which we’ll come back to the nuts and bolts and let people know exactly how they can try to do this on their own as well.
But any, any other details with the dashboard that you want to throw in?
Chris: Yeah, sure. There are, yeah, it is, it’s really interesting actually. So what they’ve now done is created this rather like basic UI UX experience. I mean, it functions perfectly well and it, and it completely does the job. And in fairness, like, I don’t know what else I would expect them to do or You know, I’m not me and other users, you know, it functions perfectly well, although it is a bit uh, it’s a bit on the basic side, but you do get keyword filters now.
So you can filter for keyword searches. And then that will bring up any query that contains the keywords that you input into that search bar. Now you could have done this with the old email system, just using like control F on the. or we pulled stuff into like our tools that we were using.
And then we could do some keyword filtering that way. But you have got that ability to do a keyword search now which is useful. They’ve also added a character count restriction, which you could see as A hindrance because it’s a max character count on the amount of input you can put for a query response.
I, and actually see that as a positive because you want to keep these pitches short and concise and you’re paying per pitch as well. And the journalists give you all the information. That they want to receive back as part of their pitch response. So they will tell you, I’m looking for two to three sentence quote, or they will say, I’m looking for a couple of paragraphs about so that coupled with the fact that you’re being forced to be restrictive in the amount of content that you’re going to send back to the journalists actually all goes toward you sending off better pitches and having a higher chance of winning.
I mean, I remember when I first started doing HARO thinking that the journalist wanted like a blog post and I’d sent, you know, like 15 paragraphs of content, which is just not what they’re after. So those are the sort of the main changes. And you do also get to track any, any pitches that have been accepted by the journalist.
And you can go back and look at all historically, all the pitches that you that you’ve sent as well, which actually can be quite useful for people that want to really up their game when it comes to this sort of link building because the relationship side of link building is super important, and this gives you a better user experience and ability to start building and maintaining and utilizing those relationships with individual journalists and keep in mind that these journalists They don’t just write for NASDAQ or Yahoo or New York Times.
They often write for multiple publications and they’re often covering the same broad topics. So if you’re a finance expert that wins a link from a journalist, um, at the NASDAQ, then you want to engage with that journalist, keep in touch, see what else they’re sourcing for and start winning yourself more links on more of their products.
Publications. And, and a final point to that in terms of the actual rebrand and user experience the original creator of HARO, Peter Peter Shankman, who then sold HARO to Sisson and then Cisson 15 years later, has transitioned it over to Connectively. He, as a response to some people not being overwhelmed, let’s say by the connectivity experience he’s now released a new.
platform which originally was called hero. So not help our reporter out, help every reporter out. He’s consequently, I think with nudges from Sissian, rebranded that to HARO, uh, not HARO, Sue, uh, SOS. Sorry. Let’s say maybe that was going to get him in a bit of hot water if he kept that name. Yeah.
And now that is a completely free. Email based system exactly in the same format that originally HARO was. So that’s emails daily. You can reply to directly to an email. It’s totally free. There’s some really nice domains on there. Really, really nice, really high authority publications with fantastic You know, renowned journalist sourcing for expert commentary.
And also he’s doing an integration with muck rack, which is one of the leading sort of PR journalist database tools, which actually gives us as people pitching a bit of protection where we can verify the journalists that are sourcing. So as opposed to them verifying us, we get a little bit of protection where we can actually check that these guys that are asking us to, you know, use our time and put a pitch together.
They’re actually real journalists, right. In for the publications that they say they are.
Doug: Interesting. Great information. And I wonder why he was still hungry. Is he in the like journalism space or something like that? Like, why was he so interested to create another free platform? Do you have any insight on that or theories?
Chris: Yeah, we spoke to him. He’s a really nice guy. He’s just, he’s a smart guy. He’s like a serial entrepreneur, I think. I think he had a nice exit with HARO 15 years ago. And then I think he had a lot of people respect him and like what he made, you know, all that, all those years ago. And I think they were sort of.
pestering him, say, Oh, it’s, you know, it’s changed. We don’t like it anymore. You know, people get stuck in their ways. It took us a long time to get used to not getting the emails three times a day. And I think he just wanted to see if he could just do it again and create something free that gave value.
And I think he, yeah, he’s already grown a big list. So
Doug: yeah,
Chris: he’s done well.
Doug: Yeah. I was going to say, it’s interesting because he knows the nuts and bolts and what, what worked and didn’t work before. So he could probably emulate it, fix a couple of things. Exit again. Very interesting. Cause it’s like, you know what I’ve worked on stuff personally after a few years, you’re like, ah, it’s ready to just like put it to bed and, and do something else.
But I guess after 15 years, like maybe he’s like, okay, I could pick this back up. All right. That’s interesting. Yeah. It’s a remake, isn’t it? He’s rebooting it. He’s like, all right, now we have better technology, but we’re going old school email when it makes sense. Cause I mean, Haro. In the past, the interface did look dated.
Things worked pretty well. Most of the time, very straightforward. I can’t understand why Connectively wanted to keep it simple and maybe there’s a lack in features, but I think that’s preferred over either confusion or complexity with a dashboard. They can make it complicated later. If it’s something that’s like really essential, but I like the workflow and all the things you described.
So I think we’re ready to move on and I know the google leak had potentially some impact and again, there have been so many changes but The google leak was a couple months ago at the time. We’re recording Can you talk about any impact to digital pr and how you operate as an agency? Just to give us some background.
Chris: Yeah. So the, the leak itself it didn’t impact us in, in a sense. It it, it validated the sort of link building that we do. So the Google update did impact like a sector of our clients. So the helpful content update, I think we’re, we’re past a year now. I think many people are waiting on tenterhooks for the, the.
The pending update, as you know, these SEO sort of updates tend to move in like, waves. If you’re decimated from one update, you’re not going to see whether or not all the work that you’ve done to fix it is validated until the next update. So the, the helpful content update and the, you know, the number of Google updates has decimated sort of affiliate sites.
Which one could argue is legitimate. You know, some sites reviewing products they’ve never used before a way for Google to reduce this index and, and kick the crap out of, out of its search results, fair enough, but also many sort of very high quality travel blog blogs of, of suffered. And these guys are people that have been running travel websites for over a decade.
They’ve been to every single destination that they’ve written about. They’ve got photos. So there’s a swathe of people within that group that many people would say would say it’s unfair for them to have not just taken a drop in traffic, but been obliterated down to zero. So a big portion of our clients were affiliate within that space.
They took a hit. Many of our clients aren’t in that space, you know, quote unquote, real business clients. So, you know, real estate agencies health clinics econ websites, huge. sectors that are functioning very, very well. Still in Google, taking huge amounts of free organic traffic. But what I think that the leak did was there was, and obviously this is unconfirmed and Google, although it confirmed the leak, it didn’t it, it told us to keep in mind that nothing was was, was.
In context. So, although we got a bunch of these variables taken from the API and I, and Ricky Kessler talked about this as well, I think a podcast a few weeks ago we can’t, we can’t single out any given part of that leak and say, well, that means that, or this means that, but we can. Maybe infer to a sense.
And one thing that we think holds true is, is the way that they describe, um, that is the way that the portion of that leak talks about links being from tier one publications and on fresh pages, having more weight within the algorithm. And what, and what that means to us is digital PR links. So. Tier one publications being the sorts of links that you when you win them or when you get them, the logo from that website, you recognize and you want to put it on your homepage and then fresh pages.
That means it’s not been inserted in an article. From, you know, a website from a year ago or two years ago, it’s on a brand new published piece of you know, a brand new article on one of these large websites. So for us, that validates completely this sort of link building and why wouldn’t it? I mean, if you’re going to get a link from a brand new New York Times article, you know, how much better than that than that could you get in terms of like quality?
But it is a really interesting time for this sort of link building, I think as well because of, it doesn’t just have that algorithmic SEO value. So it’s not just the juice that you’re getting from the link. It’s also building your brand and we are in the era of brand building. Obviously Google’s going to have dropped some market share to these AI models, but we want to stay relevant, a multi platform.
And where are the large language models going to get their information? They’re going to get their information from trusted sources on the internet. So, you know, if you want to build your brand, your business, you need to be featured and quoted in high tier one reputable publications. So it also goes to build your EEAT.
Uh, there’s just so many benefits to it that it’s, it’s like a golden era to be doing it. And we’re seeing like huge amounts of success with clients that have real businesses and are taking a focus on their brand. Perfect.
Doug: I, and I think you cut through all the bullshit and when you’re like, if you get a link or mention in one of the brands, even if you don’t get a link, you could put the logo on your site and say, Hey, I was quoted at New York times or now stack.
com or whatever, and people will know what it is. Perfect. Now you mentioned the golden era of link building and brand building. I think you’ve, you’ve probably answered some of this stuff, but I do want to open it up to hear if you have other. Contacts or other details to mention with this space, right?
Cause you know, some people frown upon link building. There’s a lot of rebranding with digital PR, which sounds a little bit more palatable for some people and you can’t argue with that. So golden arrow, what are we talking about here?
Chris: Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, links still work. We know that you can see that out.
If you’re testing, you can see that. First of all, it depends on your appetite for risk and it depends what niche you’re in, whether or not you’re gonna build lit. I mean, I know guys that have, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, casino businesses, and if they stopped building links, they’d lose their business.
So, you know, it’s, it’s part of their monthly budget to spend money on links because all of their competitors are doing it. If they stopped doing it, then they’re dead in the water. So, I mean, these guys have got a risk appetite, but it’s also a necessity for the niche that they’re operating in. For us, digital PR link building, there’s, it’s no risk because this is how real businesses operate.
If me and you Doug launched the new podcast tomorrow called the Chris and Doug show, we’re going to want to promote it, get out there and get featured. That’s what real businesses do. Do that’s pr and if you get a link at the same time, then that’s the SEO value of the link, plus the, the PR value of the, of the coverage.
The reason that I think it’s a golden era is two twofold. So firstly, because of the mass onset of AI content the journalists are being mandated. The publications that they write for to produce, you know, absolute supremely a high quality content. And the way that they can do that is by sourcing for expert commentary within their articles.
So going above and beyond just writing, they want to source experts in order to enhance the, the credibility of the piece that they’ve written. So we’re seeing. more domains than ever. Having their writers and journalists sourcing for expert commentary. And I’m talking some absolutely stunning domains.
Recently, we’ve won links on like Time magazine, Pure VPN, AP News, absolute behemoths in the, you know, these are dr nineties plus with with millions of monthly organic traffic. So it’s a golden era. On that side on the fact that the opportunities are more so than ever before. And then the reason it’s a golden opportunity on the side of the, of the publisher, of the content producer is because it allows you to Do engage in a single activity that is, has many benefits.
So if you are engaged in PR or digital PR link building, firstly, you are able to get yourself in front of the you know, the biggest websites, the biggest domains and publications in the world. You’re able to get yourself featured. You can then leverage that feature as you actively continue in that PR engagement.
So if somebody. You reach out to someone to say, Hey, look, I was just recently featured in time magazine and AP news. I’d love to provide you commentary on X, Y, and Z. That gives you as somebody who is engaging in this activity, more credibility. You also are then able to instill trust and credibility with people.
Your customers. So we work with a lot of e com stores. So one thing that is a great thing to have for your customers hitting the, the, the storefront as a customer is to trust you as a business. And if they can see that you’re a gardening e com store selling spades and buckets, and you’ve been featured in homes and gardens, better homes and gardens, BBC, it’s an instant trust signal to your customer, higher conversions, you know, more sales It all just goes hand in hand.
And then finally you get to build these relationships with the, the, the journalists as you’re engaging in this like PR activity and then get even more opportunities and we’re finding opportunities for things like podcasts, TV shows, radio interviews, and all this is coming as we’re, Doing this activity for our clients.
The, the, the number of available opportunities is outside of just like getting quoted in a high tier article. So it’s, it’s a really interesting time. And that’s a great point to leverage the recent feature in a big spot to then you could go to, you know, lesser tiers. We’ll call it where it’s like, maybe, maybe it’s, you know, something obscure, but it’s like the leading four podcast in the space.
Doug: You could go to them and say, Hey, I would love to talk about this. Obviously I was featured in this bigger article, but we could get into the nitty gritty. Because you’re a, you know, a very specific obscure podcast where it’s obsessive people that listen to it. Very cool. Yeah.
Chris: And, and just a final point on that as well is we’re noticing with as we’re winning links on a bigger and better domains as well.
They are actively publicizing the articles that they produce. So as a journalist, as, as an editorial platform, let’s say that the New York Times writes a piece and they quote Doug Cunningham in that piece, that piece is getting pushed on their social push to email list is getting pushed as much as possible.
And so we’re seeing significant referral traffic to the links included in these pieces. And as we know, another element of the Google leak is Google is measuring click And, you know, all of this metric data inside of Chrome. And if, you know, hundreds or thousands of people are hitting your website via these PR articles, Google is seeing the, you know, X visitor has come from, Oh, wow, this huge publication, they’re landing on your website.
And if you’ve got a good website and these people are engaging and clicking around on the website as well, it’s even more good signals. Like I said, above and beyond just the intrinsic SEO value of the link itself.
Doug: Before we move on from the golden era and into maybe some of the relationship building and why you would want to keep the lines of communication open, is there anything else around this golden era of link building that you want to mention?
Chris: No, just don’t, don’t if you’re going to do this, like on your own, then just start, just start doing it, start practicing and like, Give yourself time for rejection and to not land anything because it doesn’t happen overnight and you can do it on your own. I’ve given loads of free stuff, YouTube, I can teach everything how to do it.
It is time. It’s a time suck. So, you know, if you, if your budget poor, but you’ve got time, this is 100 percent something you can do on your own. And my other like golden nugget tip is just if you’re going to use like a platform like Connectively and you’ve got five free pitches a month, utilize those five free pitches per month, only pitch those five free pitches don’t, you know, you don’t need to go and spend any additional money, but what you want to do is go to your five or six competitors within your niche.
Websites that you’re aspiring to go and look at their homepage, find two or three of your competitors that have got logos on their homepage. Chances are those logos, 99. 9 percent guarantee those logos. They’ve earned those those, those links via. Connectively or expert quote pitching and make a list four or five of those domains.
And then when you’re pitching those five free pitches per month, only pitch those four or five domains until you win those links. And that’s how you can get your first handful super powerful links that, that, you know, you can get because your competitors have got.
Doug: Perfect. And we’ll, we’ll come back. I’m going to jump around and do a poor interview, but we’ll we’ll come back to some of the step by steps, but those, Those are awesome tips and we’ll get into why whenever we hit that section.
So for the relationship building and nurturing, why is that so important? And how should someone take that on if they were operating on their own?
Chris: Yeah, it’s, I think it’s becoming even more of of, of a feasible option. Because the journalists themselves I don’t want to say lazy, that’s the wrong word.
They like to find the path of least resistance. So, for them, it’s much easier to, like, source an expert that they’ve used previously and have had like success with a successful engagement. You know, they’ve sourced some expert commentary. You as an expert have provided good commentary. They’ve included that commentary in their article.
Their editors have been pleased with the article. Therefore, that journalist is going to be very inclined to, rather than sourcing, you know, and having to look through hundreds of responses again, it’s much easier for them to come back to you as an expert they previously used and say, Hello. I used you a few months ago for some expert commentary.
I’m working on an, on a new article. So that happens. Okay. So that’s why we always want to give good good commentary non plagiarized, non AI, or at least passes the sniff test and some of the tools tests, but we can get onto that in a bit. That’s why you want to be giving these guys good stuff because the chances are, they’ll come back to you to use you again.
Now we can do a couple of things with that. One we can leverage our existing network to maximize those relationships and those opportunities. So if I owned a gardening website, let’s say, and I got three or four links from homesandgardens. com and the journalist from homesandgardens. com, Came to me again and said, Hey, I’m sourcing for an expert.
I’d like to use you again. I’ve already done it already got four or five links. Not to say you don’t want a hundred links from this publication, but let’s say you’re trying to diverse your backlink profile a little bit and you want to get a different link, or you want to explore another opportunity.
You can tap into your network. So other gardening clients that you know other gardening. website operators that you know, you could go back to the journalist and say, Hey, I’m actually a bit busy this weekend. I’m at my sister’s wedding, let’s say. But I’ve got a friend who is, you know, absolutely perfect for this.
Would you mind if I forward him the questions and I’ll get you his answers back you know, as early as possible. We do this all the time. The journalists, 99 percent of the time, I’ve got no issue with that. And then you can go to your network, your fellow gardening website operators and say, Hey, look, I’ve got this easy opportunity for you.
I can even write the pitch for you. And just get you to check it and sign off on it. And then you’ve got something that you’ve been able to give them. If they are also in this. activity of digital PR. They may save an opportunity for you and pay it forward or you can explore other opportunities.
Maybe they’ve got a particularly great website that you’d like to do a guest post on, or maybe they’ve got a podcast that you’d like to make an appearance on. As you can see, there’s many ways you can utilize it. And then outside of waiting for these opportunities, we can proactively engage with the journalists.
and look for these opportunities so we can build a simple tracking system where we track the journalists that we’ve written for and then do some simple google searches to find out what other publications they write for and that’s as easy as just googling the journalist’s name and seeing you know, oh this journalist that I want to quote for, you know, Right.
Rights for homes and gardens. com, but also rights for the New York times. Wow. Maybe you want to email them follow them on LinkedIn, follow them on Twitter. Like share the article that they recently featured in with you and then just ask them, Hey, look, if you were ever sourcing for one of the other publications you write for, please let me know.
Um, is it takes a bit. Management, you know, you need to track these engagements and be proactive in making the connections and talking to these people. But if you put the effort in, I guarantee the, the results are outstanding.
Doug: That’s pretty amazing, especially passing along the opportunities where it sounds like you’ve read, influence the Chialdini book?
Chris: I have not, although I do need a new book. So I’m telling me that at the end, cause I’m doing the 75 harder than the minute. I don’t know if you know that.
Doug: Yeah.
Chris: It’s like, yeah, it’s killing me. But yeah, I’ve got to read 10 pages of a physical real book, which I have not done in a long time, but I’ve nearly finished it.
So I need a new one. All right,
Doug: cool. Yeah. That’s a great one. And I mean, there’s a lot of stuff you already know, so that’s the rule of reciprocity. I’m sure you’ve, Run across it. But yeah, Chialdini, I’ll send you the link later, but great book. And I, I referenced it all the time. Like it comes up when you’re thinking about incentives or you’re looking, especially in our space of like marketing.
But yeah, yeah. You do something nice for folks in your network. And when an opportunity comes up or like there’s a speaking opportunity at a conference or something, like you’ll be top of mind versus some random other person that is always just asking for a link or some other thing. Right. That’s great.
So you have the relationship and you just kind of nurture it. You don’t have to be out there like looking for something all the time. You help the journalists out, help your friends and your network out. I’m going to lay out a scenario this question might not go anywhere, but I heard about this when I First started blogging and I thought oh, maybe I would check that out So i’ll lay out what I think was the scenario and then i’ll tell you what maybe I have and how you might approach it for either a I’ll just put it under the umbrella of digital PR.
So I heard that someone, a blogger pitched, I’ll say like the New York times. They said, Hey, I am going to put together an interview with, um, Seth Godin. Pat Flynn Mark Manson, and someone else, Tim Ferris. All right. So big, huge names. And the person’s like, Hey, I’m going to do this interview. I would love to feature it.
Would you guys take it? And from the story I heard, the little anecdote, the person landed it, maybe not New York times, but something huge. And the person was essentially a nobody, but they were the hub who happened to be able to put together the interview and the information. And that’s pretty cool. I thought, Oh, like that’s something that I might be able to pull off.
Sad fact. I never did it. Never, never did. It takes a lot of effort to do that. But what I have done is. My podcast, I have been able to pull together people that have been featured in New York times Netflix specials, like different stuff like that. So I actually have like in person interviews with like a lot of people like that.
And I wonder if I could pull together a story. Maybe I had a couple of Netflix people, a couple other big podcasters in the same space. And I’m like, Hey, I have this interview. Maybe we could pull this together. And I could supply you with the information is out there available, but I would love to be like referenced somehow in there.
Like, how would you deal with that? Cause I have, you know, probably say a dozen at least of those sort of tier one guests essentially a nobody. But I could probably go to a reporter that does not have access to text these people and say, Hey, I’ll do an interview. They would just, they would ignore them.
So what do you think of someone that has like a catalog of maybe some information that is not available to reporters?
Chris: Yeah, I, I heard about this a while ago as a, as like a technique, the, the issue with it is, and, and, and it, and it could work but I think it would be for more industry specific publications tier one news publications are very much operating on on like a business model of Each reporter is covering their own beat.
And stuff needs to be like newsworthy. So whether or not we’re doing like reactives where we’re reacting to the news in order to try and like shoehorn a story into the, into the news cycle and then get the client quoted. That way, whether or not we’re doing a data piece on something that is like newsworthy at that time or if we’re answering expert commentary quest by connectively, the journalist is already actively working on their articles, which has, you know, come from above them now.
Something like that could fit really nicely in a more industry specific tier one publication. So I’m thinking like it is something that maybe like entrepreneur could be interested in business dot com. Maybe if you rounded up like a handful of guys that had made a lot of money via like a tool, let’s say like a tier one sass publication maybe.
But in terms of like Rounding up these experts, it is definitely something you could do, but it’s got to have like a newsworthy narrative. But again, that is dependent on the publication that you’re targeting. So I don’t think something like that would, would go viral. So if But then again, it does depend on who you’ve got on.
I mean, if you’ve had like on your show, 10 people that were famous on Netflix from one series, and then you never heard from them again, so that could, that could go viral because that’s like a new story, isn’t it? 10 people that will fight famous on next Netflix for five minutes and you never heard from them again.
Absolutely. That, that, that would blow up. But like the Seth Godin and you know, the marketeers guys, It’s got to have like some newsworthy thing. But I don’t know. I never say never. Also, you never know. You can test these things and something that you think won’t work goes crazy. And then you, we’ve built data campaigns before it’s taken months and we think it’s the best, most ingenious thing we’ve ever come up with.
And it just, you know, it flops. I mean, you could do something for five seconds where, you know, the Olympics is happening and you say, Oh, you should, um, never, you know, Never take this to a tennis match when watching tennis at the Olympics and it blows up. It’s like you have, sometimes you just don’t know.
So don’t listen to it.
Doug: Well, it will come down to me being lazy at the end of the day, cause I’m sure I won’t do anything. But like the, idea that I, like the, one of the interviews was for a development that got pretty big press and it’s like a car free like little community. And that, you know, hit some newsworthy things.
And I had, you know, a handful of people that were, you know, very well known in their spaces so that it’s maybe on the edge, but an environmentally focused or a green sort of publication would fit really well there. The other, you know, Kind of stuff that I’m, I’m thinking is like, I always revert back to like podcast or other content that’s long form just because it’s what I know, but it could fit for a blog post too, where essentially to your point, it’s very niche specific.
So the podcaster would be very familiar with any one of the, you know, big names on there. So they would love to have like, an opportunity to have the discussion, like, even if it was just with me, have the discussion about what we talked about because they weren’t there. They didn’t have the opportunity to ask questions and all that stuff.
So in. We’ll move on but basically from a high level like one takeaway People can see how we just brainstorm this thing that maybe wouldn’t work But there’s something with like putting together information ahead of time and then like yeah shopping it around Maybe it’s a great story, but not for a big tier one publication Maybe it’s perfect for a YouTube channel, or maybe it’s perfect for some social media You like shorts or something like that.
You don’t cover it, but maybe you just give the information. You give the, the video, which you own the copyright for to the influencers, and then they put it together. So again, it’s one of those things where you may not see it. Immediate like ROI, but in the long run, like you’re building a really strong network by doing that kind of stuff.
Chris: Yeah. And, and, and as well, it’s something you should do Doug because like it’s Like it would be exceptionally high quality and that could live on your website and that is going to attract links and coverage naturally. So it might not be like, you know, a New York times breaking story, but if you have built your network by leveraging these opportunities available to you, and you’ve got some like nice, big, juicy names and you put together this really interesting piece, which has got like opinions from these five or 10 guys and girls, that’s just like, you know, absolutely.
Unique and really, really valuable piece of content. You’re going to attract natural links. You’re going to then share that with these people within your network and they’re going to share it and they’re going to share it and you know, it really could it’s like PR, but just like, uh, Within, within this, the sphere of the influencer group which is, I suppose, one notch down from like regular PR.
So yeah, you should, you should do it and let me know how you get on with it.
Doug: It’s okay. Maybe I’ll, I’ll forget this by the, by the time the day’s done, but I have a, a really cool and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll share it out there. I’m not sure when it’ll go live, but I, I, one of my friends. Mr. Money Mustache. Have you heard of this guy?
Yeah.
Chris: Yeah. Big finance blogger. Yeah.
Doug: So he lives in the same town and we were at a retreat in the financial independence space and I was doing a live show and I was, I went over, I was like, Hey Pete, you want to come up here? And he did a nice segment for us and there were multiple guests, but he was the, you know, He was the marquee name.
I could probably take that segment and shop it around to, and just make it available, say, Hey, I’m going to let you use this. If you want to put this either in your podcast, if you want to put this in your YouTube video or your blog or whatever, And then just give me credit, but you could do commentary, agree, disagree, whatever you want.
I’ll clear it with Pete to make sure he’s okay with that. But that’s the sort of thing where it’s like they didn’t have the opportunity to like invite him on the show or anything like that. But. I, like I said, I own the information and if I make it available, then they can, they could use it on their show, which is kind of cool.
So that’s a very low friction way for me to do it too. Cause I, I know a lot of the people and you know, they could say, I don’t want to do it, but he’s a big name. He’s one of the biggest names. Like you, you were familiar with them and it’s, it’s an obscure topic. And, and
Chris: actually. For that idea, I would say that that could get traction because anything finance, especially any sort of micro medium influencer in finance, it can go viral mainstream media.
So I would say that’s a really good idea. Yeah.
Doug: Okay. Yeah. I’ll text Pete and see, see what we could do. Cause it, I was like, Oh, it’ll be cool. Cause I always, um, you probably have the same thing in your network where you’re like, I want to respect that person’s time. They probably get pitched a lot and we’re friends.
So I don’t want to like, be like, Hey, can you please do this thing? But he, he, he was pumped to come up there. So, all right, cool. I’m glad we got to spend most of this segment. I’m just talking about my stuff, but. Let’s, let’s move on. All right. We, we covered so much. You did mention that if people want to do this on their own, they can do it on connectively, there’s five free pitches per month.
You did outline a bit of the process, but I’m going to turn it over to you to just kind of go step by step. Let’s say someone has either an e com brand or a fairly well established blog and website. How should they approach it? And I’ll be quiet and let, just let you describe the process.
Chris: Okay, right.
First thing first, then is you need to you need an expert. So this is like the fundamental shift that we’ve seen from like three or four years ago to now. Three or four years ago, you could own a website in anything you could And you could just like sort of answer generic like business queries and just say, I own a website.
Therefore, I’m a business owner. Therefore, I can answer this finance query or this like business query. We are not really seeing broad, vague queries anymore. And we are 100 percent not seeing journalists linked to broad, vague queries. We’ve been like non existent AI persona fake profiles, so you have to have an expert.
So if you are a website operator who is that expert, then this first section, your job is done. Okay. Just make sure that that expertise is clearly visible. Okay. From outside of just your about page. So you need a good about page, and this needs to talk about your awards, accolades, experiences multiple images.
Okay. Go above and beyond. Prove that you are who you say you are and be, you have the experience and the expertise that you’re talking about. You need to have more web visibility, web visibility than just your blog. This is super important. Almost de facto. Now the, First place that journalists go to, to check that you are who you say you are is LinkedIn.
So you need to have a LinkedIn profile. Now if you are the expert that you say you are, so you, if you are Doug and you own a gardening website and you, your LinkedIn profile says, you know, a picture of you holding a spade. And you have the first business on the top, right is your gardening website and your experience is gardening, gardening boom job done.
Okay. What you don’t want to do is present yourself as Doug, Doug, the gardening expert who owns. Doug’s gardening shop. com. And then your LinkedIn profile says that you’re an SEO expert or a marketing manager, or, you know, as soon as the journalist hits that LinkedIn, which they will, they are going to go, why is this guy a marketing manager?
And. Not a gardening expert and move on. Okay. So we have to have broad web visibility that tracks through, not just from your website, but multiple touch points across the web. So like I said, easy to do. If you are the person that you say you are, and you are the expert super easy because it should already be done.
And if it’s not already done, it’s easy to do because you’re not going outside of the truth. Okay. Now, if this is not the case, so if you own an e comm store that sells fitness equipment. Okay. You, you sell like joggers and tank tops and all that. Okay. Drinking bottles. And you want to start pitching these requests.
Okay. Then it is 100 percent possible and doable, but you need an expert. So first thing you need to do is identify your niche and then Pick the most highly like credentialed expert that matches that niche. So it makes sense and gives you as broad an opportunity as possible. That sounds like waffle, but just think about it.
Logically, if you are an e comm store that’s selling fitness gear, then you want to have a fitness instructor or a personal trainer. Okay. So you need to source that person. Chances are you might have that person on your team. If you’re producing blog content, because you have an organic SEO strategy, then I would hope that that content is being produced not by an SEO manager, but by somebody that knows what they’re talking about in the fitness space, which should be a personal trainer or a fitness instructor.
If not, then you need to try and source that person. And you can find these people because they are often freelance writers. Yeah. More journalists themselves. And they’re always looking for extra work. They’re not going to turn you down, but you need to be upfront and honest what you want to do with them.
And what you want to do with them is source them for a little bit of content, two or three articles. Okay. And you want to explain to them that you’d like to put them on your about page as a contributor or a senior editor to your website, and then you need to tell them you’d like to pitch as them to try and win some links.
So you need to be honest with them. Say, look, I’m going to be pitching under your name. Everything’s good. to be above board. You know, I’m we know what we’re talking about, but also it gives them as a writer the chance to be featured in these these huge publications. But it links back to your website. It’s not the easiest cells.
It’s better to sort of try and take somebody from your your team. And like I said, if you if you’re operating an econ website in the sports space, then really you want some authoritative sport and fitness content. So I would recommend hiring that person. Developing a long term recovery. Relationship with them.
And then it becomes a much easier self and then two birds with one stone, you’re getting the correct content for your website. And you then have the ability to utilize this expert to win links. So that’s, that’s the, the, the, how I see those two options. You’re either an existing, uh, expert in which case, just make sure you are shouting from the rooftops all over the internet about your expertise, or you don’t have an expert because you’re an e com store or you, you, you know, you own a really fantastic gardening website.
You yourself are not a gardener or it’s not obvious on the internet you’re a gardening expert. Therefore you need to try and find someone. And when you’re picking that, marrying that expertise with the niche, just think logically. We work with a lot of websites or we’ve worked with a number of websites in the sort of sleep affiliate space.
So, you know, they’re doing mattress reviews and whatnot. We’ve sourced sleep doctors, you know, proper sleep doctors that are also doing, you know, freelance writing on the side. And then we get permission to and it’s an easy. The thing for the journalist to just go, Oh, okay, this guy’s a sleep doctor.
He’s right in for this affiliate mattress website. That makes sense. Perfectly makes sense that they’d hire a doctor and they’re going to quote the doctor because it’s a doctor. It’s not some guy who owns a mattress website. It’s a doctor and then they link to the mattress website. So just think logically, it’s relatively straightforward and easy to do.
And once it’s done, you’re off to the races. Then if you’re doing this on your own, you, you’re on a budget. What you want to do is get what I call your foundational links. The first handful of links that your competition has almost certainly got, especially if they’re your aspirational competition.
So if you own a fitness website and you’ve got like a couple of guys in your area that you know of, and they’re getting like, you know, decent traffic, go to their homepage, look at their homepage, try and see if they’ve got a featured in. You’ll see it on some websites or many websites. They’ll put the logos on like the banner at the top.
The chances are these links there, they’re not guest posts. They’re not niche edits. The chances are they’ve Well, almost certainly they’ve been earned by a pitching unless via connectively press plugs direct requests on Twitter. That means if they’ve done that. Then that means a that publication or a journalist from that publication is utilizing this method of getting expert commentary, i. the chances are they have historically made journalist requests via connectively and therefore are likely to still be doing that if not that specific journalist, then certainly, you know, a journalist from that publication and it Means if your competition has won that won that as a, as a quote and a link.
And as long as you’ve done everything that I said previously, and you are the expert and the journalist can verify that your expertise, chances are you can win that. So that means you can go onto the connectively platform with your five free pitches and just blast those domains only pitch those three, four, five domains that you’ve seen that all your competition’s got and just keep pitching them every month.
I guarantee if you, if you know, if you’re. gardening expert and your LinkedIn says you’re a gardening expert and you write a pitch that answers the question and provides real value and expertise around gardening. I guarantee at some point you will win your first link in the gardening space and then eventually you’ll get your first three, four, five links.
I promise you. And that’s the best way to approach it.
Doug: Perfect. It sounds like as long as you have, you know, the expertise that the journalist could check. or someone on your team and you give obviously a relevant response, the answers, it’s just a numbers game. Like eventually you’ll probably get picked up.
Chris: Okay. Yeah.
Doug: Very good. Oh,
Chris: and then just add to that because I can see we’re running out of time. Make sure that I would never say not to use AI. We live in an AI era. You’d be mental not to use it. Obviously it’s wonderful. There are many things you can do, but do not use vanilla AI. Like don’t just put a question into chat GPT copy and paste the answer.
The journalists are professional writers, so they can smell the AI like before they even look at the screen, they’ll just go, Oh my God, this stinks of AI. They’ll just see it. Okay, so you have to be just doing some basic like prompt engineering. You need to be doing some testing on the output. And you need to test on plagiarism checks.
I need to check on AI testing tools as well. So the journalists, you know, they’re still just normal, real people. So they’re just doing normal things that Journalists are doing. They’re just using some of the free tools. Probably GPT 00 GPT originality, the sorts of tools that you can use. Put the input in and these tools are useless anyway.
I mean, I’ve sat down and written, you know, three paragraphs of my own words and it’s been flagged as AI. But if the journalists have been mandated from, you know, from their publication higher ups to make sure it passes this tool, then they’re having to make sure it passed. So you need to make sure it passes not a hundred percent pass, but just not.
Screen AI. You know, if I put into chat GPT now, give me three sentences on how to improve credit score. And then it gives me an output and I just copy and paste that output. It’s going to be a hundred percent AI on every AI testing tool that exists. And when you read it, it’s going to, you’re going to just look at it and go, Oh my God, that looks like an AI robots were in it.
So just don’t do that to have systems and processes in place so that you are, you know, Not doing that as much as possible. And the, the more that you’re not doing that, does that make sense?
Doug: Yep.
Chris: The further away you can be from it, looking like AI coupled with the other factors of like authenticity of your expertise and that wider web visibility of, of yourself as a persona and your connection to your website, then all of that together, it’s just going to massively improve your chances and increase the speed and velocity at which you win these ultra premium links.
Doug: And one tip on that, a great way to explain it, you can get some ideas from AI. Oh, yeah. Maybe you don’t ask for like the full answer, just get bullet points and then force yourself to put it in your own words. Sometimes I’ll like replace a sentence and just like put it in my own words or, I mean, like you said, we could kind of tell like the phrasing and the choice of words and most of the time I’d talk in a.
simpler way. So I could just take it and compress it, use words that I would actually use, not something that like AI obviously puts in. So, okay. Very
Chris: good. And you can You can use it for research. Just make sure you’re in, you’re injecting like one or two unique ideas, but also you need to match that with the query.
So if it’s looking for ways to improve credit score, you have to understand the query type. So a journalist will often be sourcing for expert commentary to bolster an article and like reaffirm or like consolidate an idea as opposed to have any sort of original thinking. Like there are only so many ways you can legitimately improve a credit score.
They’re not looking for someone to come up with something which they’d never thought of, like go and live on the moon for a year that will improve your credit score. Like, no, they’re not going to quote that. You have to just add some like unique, Like you just said then, Doug, like you have your own way of speaking.
So if you can portray, you know, a logical idea, but add like an interesting like turn of phrase or some like linguistic flurry around that, that sentence, then that’s what they’re looking for. If they are looking for unique ideas, then you do need to come up with a unique idea. So if they’re looking for like, unique packing tips, you know, Like going on a two week vacation, how to maximize the space in your 23 kilogram suitcase allowance.
If you just put that into chat GPT, like give me some interesting suitcase packing ideas, it’s going to give everybody the same answer. So you do need to. Put, you know, add one or two the other you think other people have said, but also try and come up with something original. Utilize other sources for that information other than Google, like TikTok, Reddit, sub sub subreddits X, like go onto social, find something, or maybe you’ve got your own unique idea.
And then my best tip is like put together all of this research in front of you, get a a voice note. app on your iPhone or whatever, and just speak in your own words into your phone. Don’t worry about the ums and ahs, just go, okay, so this tip is brilliant. Use your own, like terms of phrase, like this is a wonderfully unique idea.
But don’t worry about ums and ahs. You’re going to get a huge block of text, put that into AI and tell AI to maintain your unique style and tone and linguistic voice, but correct spelling, grammar flow and hit return and you’ll get. A perfectly formatted piece of copy and it all 100 percent past the AI tests.
Doug: That is a great tip. I think I’m going to do a video on that. Very good. So this has been amazing. Any other tips on, you know, usage or anything like that? You’ve given us so much and people could pretty much get rolling on their own, but I want to give you an opportunity if there’s any other tips or tricks or anything.
Chris: The final thing is, yeah, utilize though that relationship building is something which takes time. And everything we’ve discussed today is, is like inbound PR. So expert requests come in into you from the journalists. Hello, I’m a journalist. I’m writing an article on this piece. I’m looking for an expert.
And then you are responding to those tips. But as we start to build relationships with those journalists, then what we can do is we can start leveraging that. That network of relationships that we’re building and start doing outbound PR. So that’s where we’re going to come up with a story. So this is when you’re getting a bit more serious about your link building, about your PR coverage.
You want to start controlling the narrative a bit more about you and a brand. And that’s where you might then, let’s say you own a real estate company. Okay. And you’ve answered some. Inbound PR requests about real estate. You’ve been featured on realtor. com. You’ve given commentary to somebody from realhomes.
com, let’s say. And you’ve got to know a couple of those journalists. Then you could go back to those journalists and say, Hey, look, you know, I own a real estate company in Birmingham, in England, a real estate agency in Birmingham, England. We’ve put together this really interesting data campaign on average house prices in Birmingham over the past few years.
Is this something you’d be interested in looking at? And then if they are, which, you know. you know, often are, and they run with that story. You’ve then got a story going on their publication or other publications that pick it up. And you have much more of like a highlight within that feature, because these are the sort of articles you see where they say new study from X company reveals that.
And while that’s still, you know, PR as opposed to just being like. an academic voice within an article or an authoritative voice within an article about a general niche, which relates to your business. This is news where you, the business have like come up with this data and provided it as a story to, to the world.
So you can utilize those, those two channels to get even more links and more coverage.
Doug: Very good. Chris, this has been amazing. Where should people find you?
Chris: Yeah. The website Linkifi.io can email me chris@Linkifi.io or X Linkifi underscore and then I can’t remember what my LinkedIn handle is. I guess just Chris Elli.
That’s . Oh, Christopher, I’m not sure.
Doug: Yeah, , we’ll link it all up. So it’s really easy to find and I, I will mention I’m an affiliate for Linkifi, so I get a commission if you happen to sign up. But I think we have a discount code. We’ll put it in the description and, people have questions out there, you can reach out to Chris and Chris, who’s sort of like the ideal client that you find like most effective to work with.
Chris: Any, any real business client is good. Anyone who’s got that web visibility, credibility. I mean, this is becoming more important. We used to be very niche as an agency owner. I used to be very like niche dependent. So I’d be like, I’d love the guy. I’d love the clients that were more PR friendly. So like if you had a client in the gardening space or the home space, Hope services, space, the interior design, healthy sorts of things, which is constantly getting covered in the news.
I’d be like, Oh, that’s a good client. And then if you get something really niche specific and I’d be like, Oh, but what it boils down to now really is I cannot emphasize enough how important those expertise are. Like that’s really, you, you know, you could, if you’ve got a really good social. Following and profile like the journalists will link to the site because they’re more looking to leverage the expertise and the credibility of the person.
And just, just two more things. We do have a service where we can source that expert for you and do all of that for you. We call that our expert by service. And one other thing is we’re doing a, we’re co hosting a conference in Cyprus in October with white press. It’s like an SEO e com, a three day event in Cyprus.
So if anybody wants to meet me for a beer at that conference, get some tickets to that and come and meet me there. And I’ll chat, uh, PR request link building and PR link building all, all night.
Doug: That’s awesome. Yeah. We’ll link up to all that stuff and yeah, great tips. So people can check out all the links and connect with you out there.
And we’ll catch up soon. It’s been, it’s been too long, Chris. So I appreciate you emailing me and I’m glad we got to chat.
Chris: Thanks Doug. Thanks for having me.