How to grow your business using PR

Baby Got Booked The Podcast

My guest today is personal security expert and identity theft speaker Robert Siciliano. His 30 years of experience and expertise in all aspects of security have gained him audiences across a wide variety of media. Mr. Siciliano’s credentials include hard-hitting and provocative contributions to TIME, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, Fortune, Business Week, Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Reader’s Digest and Consumers Digest. He is a regular contributor to Entrepreneur and has appeared as a guest commentator on The Anderson Cooper Show, John Stossel, The Steve Harvey Show, The Today Show, CBS Early Show, Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox News, Inside Edition and Extra among others. His clients include GMAC, The National Association of Realtors, Domino’s Pizza, United Bankers Bank, Exxon Mobile and many more. Siciliano’s goal is simple – to wake up and empower people throughout the world so they can avoid becoming victims.

Personal Security: Personal security includes the physical security of your person, your family and your home. It also includes information security which involves protecting your identity, data and devices.

Is this just paranoia? Paranoia is the opposite of what Robert does or teaches. Paranoia is a form of mental illness. People who are paranoid are out of control, disconnected and overwhelmed every moment of the day. What Robert teaches causes people to feel a tremendous amount of control. It allows them to feel grounded and connected to their world.

Once you understand personal security and how it works it’s like riding a bike. Once you achieve that balance you’ll know how to ride it forever effortlessly. It’s the same for personal security once you understand what your options are and put those systems into place.

SEO and SEM: SEO is search engine optimization. SEM is search engine marketing. They work hand in hand to get your brand front and center. It should be the goal of anyone selling anything to show up on the first page of the search engine.

Top three tips for pitching the media and getting their attention:

1. Pitch something relevant that’s current and timely. It’s not so much about you as it is what you can provide them. They are looking for something a little bit different. After the Ashley Madison breech a lot of data security experts got called. Robert is a data security expert too but he also talked to the victims and was able to share what they told him and the advice he gave them.

Whatever your pitching the media on especially if it’s a breaking news story see if you can find a layer to explore that would really be yours and set you apart from everybody else.

2. Speak to something that falls into the realm of your expertise. If you’re an egg decorator you’re not going to find many media opportunities except at Easter. Search for places that eggs might be relevant at other times. On Halloween when kids throw eggs at houses you can talk about how eggs damage the siding on houses and how to get that off.

Be an expert for crying out loud which means you devote a certain amount of time, energy and resources to learning around your core expertise so that you’re really an expert not just on your niche subject but outside of it as well.

3. Don’t spend even five minutes talking about something you’re not remotely an expert in or you’ll just come across as a fool. You’ll ruin your credibility and do more damage than good.

Be available: When the media calls if you don’t answer the phone they will call somebody else.

Tips for doing a brilliant interview: Get good at what you do, know your topic, become comfortable with your content and speak to the fundamentals. With every topic and issue there are fundamentals in regards to that particular topic. In episode 3 with Gerard Braud he talks about exactly how to do this step by step.

· Robert’s advice on how to get out of the baby pool and into the ocean:Answer the phone. Robert says he is the only person he knows that has spoken to every major media naked! That is because he answers the phone wherever he is and whatever he’s doing!

· You can visit Robert’s website at [www.robertsiciliano.com] or follow him on Twitter at @RobertSiciliano or @IDTheftExpert

· Write headlines no journalist can resist, with the 58-headline template pack [http://babygotbooked.com/headlines]