A favourite read of mine is the regular Susbtack email from Ariel Stalling. You might know her name from a little blog called Offbeat Bride.
In this week’s mailout, Ariel tells the story of how someone a little bit like her was covered in the New York Times.
Before I actually read the words in the piece I thought Ariel was telling the story about how she was covered in the New York Times which would’ve been kind of cool, but then when you sit down and read it you realise that someone slightly similar to her with a really good publicist was covered in the Times instead.
Why?
Whenever you see something like this published, always ask “Why?”
At first read you might think that the other person had a great publicist who was owed a favour at the newspaper maybe, or that the person’s story was actually interesting enough to feature on its own merit.
But the real reason why is far simpler and easier to understand.
Newspapers like the NYTimes, or Australian websites like 10Daily or news.com.au all want one single thing: clicks.
Clicks!
Clicks means views on articles, views on articles means views on ads, views on ads means money, money means we’re not dining out at the homeless shelter this week.
If you want to be featured in a website like that you need to have, or be, a story that when published will gather all the clicks.
How to do this is a whole other conversation.
Know what moves us
If you wanted to be published on the Celebrant Institute you should know that clicks don’t interest Sarah and I. If an article goes “viral” and gets more views than we have members, then that is lovely, but its not our goal.
Our goal is to continue to make our membership viable and valuable to our members, so members remain members, and hopefully the membership might even grow!
So if you really wanted to get our attention, become a member.
Know what moves others
But if you want to get the attention of other people, know what moves them.
If you want a vendor to refer you, find out what makes them tick. Do they need help with something in their business, or maybe babysitting?
If you want to be featured on a local wedding blog, magazine, podcast, social media page, bring them a story that will get their readerships talking and commenting.
If you want your own posts to get the likes and the comments, publish stories that light up peoples eyes. Say things that matter, converse about topics that help people.
And if you want to be featured in the New York Times, apparently writing a book, running a successful business, and building a massive and passionate community doesn’t matter, clicks do, so bring them a story that brings all the clicks.
Be able to be remarked on
Be remarkable, that is, be someone that is able to be remarked on. Be someone doing something that people would want to talk about without you asking for it.
Know this one thing
That no-one owes you a feature or a referral, so do something that matters to them, help them.