Frank Jossi, Owner of Jossi + Associates Inc.
They say the average person has 6 or more careers in a lifetime. Frank Jossi is a CoCo member who has had exactly one career for at least 25 years. Frank is a freelance journalist who covers business and economics, among other topics.
For this DreamCast, we thought it would be interesting to ask Frank about about his craft. What makes for a good story? What kinds of stories catch his attention as he’s surveying the landscape?
I was impressed by Frank’s experience and confidence — something that can only come from doing and being good at what you love for a long time. Give it a listen and enjoy!
Show notes: selected links from the episode:
Connect with Frank:
Website: www.jossi.biz
Linkedin: Frank Jossi
Twitter: fjjazz
Links and People Mentioned
List of select articles written by Frank
Finance and Commerce
Midwest Energy News
Politics in Minnesota
Article on Coworking: Progress MN: CoCo Coworking and Collaborative Space
Fred Haberman – Modern Storytellers
The ‘Buy local’ Movement
Book: Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin
Deepinder Singh – 75 Fahrenheit
Aeon: Affordable Housing in Minnesota
Colin Hirdman and Josh Becerra – H2OPro
Article about the Green Wall – Uptown
Examples of press release template
Recommended Book: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker
Recommended Blog: Talking Points Memo
Interview Transcript
Don Ball [D]: Welcome to another CoCo Dreamcast. This is a good one. We’ve got Frank Jossi, journalist extraordinaire, here today.
Is that how you would describe yourself – a freelance journalist?
Frank Jossi [F]: Freelance journalist – and I do some corporate work, too. I write blogs, papers, case studies; for corporate clients, often in technology, but other fields, too.
D: You’ve been independent for how many years?
F: I have been independent since 1994. So 20 years now, with sporadic employment in between; fill-ins in various areas – somebody went on vacation, or had cancer, in one case. I filled in at government agencies and universities, but usually on very short-term contracts.
Now you’re back to the game?
F: Yes.
D: And you’ve written for a bunch of publications around town, right?
F: I have. I’ve written for more than 60 or 70 publications, nationally and internationally. In town – I’ve been published by almost all of them; maybe not the real estate journal, but all the others. The Business Journal; I write frequently for Finance and Commerce. I’m the Minnesota correspondent for Midwest Energy News, which is interesting and exciting. It’s an emerging new category of journalism. It reminds me of the Internet of the 1990s: things are happening so quickly in that field. I write for Insignia (?), a University of Minnesota publication that is an international platform for energy, and a variety of other media outlets – including my neighborhood newspaper, The Villager.
D: You just can’t stop.
F: I just can’t stop; it gets me out of the house.
D: You’ve even written about Coco.
F: I have over the years – and about coworking spots. I did a few last year that covered ten of ‘em.
D: That’s Finance and Commerce.
F: Right. I write a monthly building column, a monthly sustainability column, and then sporadic pieces throughout the year.
D: So you and I have a history.
F: Yeah.
D: Which is what makes us so delectable.
F: Yeah.
D: Years ago, when I had my little writing shop in Downtown Minneapolis, I remember hiring you for some stuff for Valspot (?), I think it was.
F: Oh, yeah.
D: You went over and interviewed – the president, the vice president – some big whig there.
F: Totally forgot about that.
D: What’s so funny is– My handler was the head of HR. For whatever reason, he was the communications guy; they’re too cheap to hire an actual communications person. I remember him calling one time and saying, “Who is this guy you sent over? He came and interviewed the president and he was wearin’ a T-shirt.” [laughs] I said, “I don’t know, I hired this guy and I didn’t tell him how to dress.”
F: I don’t think I wore a T-shirt, but maybe not a tie.
D: They might have been ultrasensitive. They were all, like, MBAs – I seem to recall they were kind of buttoned-down.
F: Buttoned-up, yeah.
D: Anyway, I thought it was kind of funny.
F: That is interesting; totally forgot about Valspar.
D: Yeah.
F: Back in the day, yeah.
D: What interests me is – besides this being “Reminiscences with Don,” which is not what the podcast [laughs] is meant to be – I think there’s something interesting about the work you’ve done through all these years. There’s some stuff that you know instinctively that is harder for the rest of us to learn, use, and adapt; yet it’s really critical. That, in my estimation, is the telling of a good story. Or what is a good story? – Not sitting around a campfire and telling a story – I don’t mean that. I mean the things that catch our attention that we decide: I must have that car – that thing called Tesla – ‘cause the story’s amazing. We don’t need to say that the story’s amazing, but yet there is an amazing story there and we’re drawn to it. It’s the same thing: I must have that iPod, that’s amazing. There’s storytelling behind that, and what people invest in. Maybe you have a startup and you’re not even to the point where you’re thinkin’ about customers; you’re just thinkin’ about getting somebody to fund it so you can build the damn thing. Investors are also investing in stories; they’re investing in you sitting across the table. But they’re also investing in the story of the potential story. I want to ask you this, Frank, from the perspective of a journalist, you’re thinkin’ about: Do I want to write about X or Y? What’s more interesting to me and to my readers? What can you tell us about storytelling?
What seems to make up a compelling story?
F: That’s a really good point. To piggyback on what you’ve said: I think now, more than at any time in my career, the idea for companies to tell stories about individuals who work for the company – that seems to be a strong trend. I think people want to know behind the product; they want to know the story. How did the guy come up with the product? Am I gonna like this guy? or this woman? Do I like the story? – It’s interesting to me. Fred Haberman and others that picked up on this, too – the idea of telling the stories of the product, and the inventors of those products, to make them more compelling than just: Here’s a product. Like it, it’s good. People want to hear stories. The whole “buy local” is part of this trend, because often you walk into a small retailer store and you end up talking to the owner if it’s locally-owned. They have a story about how they started a story, and you end up buying something because you like the guy so much, or the woman. I think the whole idea of the story and stories of products or services is really important, and people are compelled by that. When it gets to journalism, it often comes down to a news pay; is there something really novel and interesting about the product that would interest an editor and the audience of a publication? That’s what makes it hard, because a lot of people have interesting products and interesting stories, but not all of ‘em are gonna get a journalist’s, or editors, interested – they might get me interested, but I still have to get this other person interested: the editor. Often, they’re not as interested in what I’m interested in, [laughs] so you have to go through these iterations. What’s good about today is that there’s a platform that people can use – blogs, websites, etc. – to tell their own story. So, the intermedia of the journalists being there, they don’t absolutely need that anymore; there’s a whole ‘nother new cycle, self-created –through Facebook, LinkedIn – that can create excitement about some of these products and services. People can make themselves experts, so you don’t need this journalistic intermediary to make you popular.
D: No, yet there’s a lot of noise out there. You can have your Facebook and you can be using various channels, really adding to the noise. I experienced this personally, years ago; I was part of a web development shop. I remember, I was talkin’ to John Reinan (?), who, at the time, was at the Trib and he – at Strib here, sorry, that’s a Chicagoism. He was at the Strib and he was covering the advertising and marketing beat. I had a friend who knew him and said, “Hey, I’ll get ya a sit-down with him.” So we met for lunch – nicest guy in the world. He said, “Look, there’s nothing interesting about what you’re doing.” We were one of dozens and dozens and dozens of people doing the same thing; there wasn’t a story there. I remember feeling really frustrated with that, because he was right, and I knew he was right – that there was just nothing differentiated about what we were doing. So I could talk about that; I could have a blog and talk about it all I want – it still isn’t interesting, ‘cause the product that serves itself is not inherently interesting or distinct. I don’t know if you know Seth Godin, the marketing writer–
F: Yeah. He’s very entertaining.
D: So he’s got this book, it’s an older book, Purple Cow.
F: Yeah.
D: If you know nothing else about it, you get the takeaway: your greatest form of marketing is not marketing, it’s actually a remarkable product – something that people want to remark on.
F: Right.
D: It takes care of it. In some ways with CoCo, we experience that. When we started, there wasn’t much of this thing goin’ on, and we had reporters battering down our doors. It was bizarre. I remember thinkin’, Wow, what a difference between that last thing I was doing and this thing. I was not out looking for journalistic coverage – it was coming. Having experienced both sides of that coin, and knowing how much it sucks when you’re doing something normal, than when you’re doing something that’s kind of remarkable. When you’re lookin’ for some lead that you’re gonna maybe turn around and present to an editor and say, “Hey, you want me to chase after this?”
What kinds of things do you tend to sniff out?
F: I’ll give you a couple recent examples; one technological, one a developer. So, there’s a gentleman: Deepender Singh. He has a new company called, 75 F.
D: Yeah, we know him because he won the Steve Case, the–
F: Exactly.
D: …The Rise of the Rest.
F: Rise of the Rest, yeah. In essence, his product, to most people, it’s not that interesting – but it’s revolutionary in its field. It could be a game changer, and journalists did pick up on that; he got plenty of press. I looked at that and I thought, The sustainability column I write – this guy’s perfect. We write for an audience that’s heavily involved in real estate and development. I think what people have to understand: some publications are not interested in technology, are not interested in development. You have to understand the media landscape and who’s writing about these things.
D: When you say “publications,” you can also mean blogs, and–
F: Blogs and things like that. But I think too many people make the mistake of just saying, “I want to get in the New York Times,” or wherever – sending a press release to somebody who, a) doesn’t write about the topic; b) could care less about the pitch, or about the information, and it immediately gets tossed. It destroys your validity with the publication and with the
journalist – Hey, I don’t cover this stuff, why would this person bother me with it? If I were instructing people on how to get press: know who covers this, what’s the reporter’s name – get the e-mail – look at what they wrote in the past. People are open to compliment, once in awhile; you might send them a note and say, “I liked your last column, “I liked your last piece on X, and guess what? I’ve got Y, and I think it’s pretty interesting for you to take a look at.” Even standard press releases still work, as long as you have something interesting, something novel. If it’s a service that isn’t that different than anybody else’s, but, let’s say, you won an award – like the Steve Case – there’s something, some news value; or you have a new thing that you’re adding to it – a new service or feature – that might get somebody interested in writing about it. The other thing I’d say is that – especially with the web now – there’s a lot of space to be filled. So, if you don’t get in the printed product, there’s all this other space that journalists have to fill; or editor’s bloggers have to fill for their readers. So there’s ways to get in that way. There’s times when I’m writing blogs for different people, where [laughs] I’ll take something off the transom that might – you know, it’s not ever gonna be that interesting to anybody else, but for that readership it’s perfect, and I need to fill space–
D: It can be worth a blog post–
F: It could be worth a blog post.
D: …but you wouldn’t commit it to print, necessarily.
F: Exactly. Or it’s just right for that particular audience, and that’s it. But you have to really think – Who’s covering it? What appeal would they have? The other example I’ll give you: an organization, Aon – they do affordable housing; Aon, in Minneapolis – very distinguished, good group of people. They decided to build this new uber-efficient building, in South Minneapolis, that’s beyond LEED certification and leads a gold standard of building efficiency. This is called the Living Building Challenge. Well, that, to me: a) this is the biggest building in the world seeking this certification, and it’s right in our back yard – it’s perfect for my sustainability column. Now, I pitched to another editor at Midwest Energy News, and they weren’t interested [laughs] in it. Often, when you’re a freelance journalist, you take that idea and you just pitch it around to different people. But if it’s good enough, you’ll find it. That one was so unique that I think I can resell it two or three more times – because it’s such a unique project, and there’s nothing like it in the entire world.
D: Yeah. When I think about somebody who’s starting out; they want to take some germ of an idea, or maybe germ of technology. They say, “I think this has got legs, there’s something I can do with this.” How you get from I have this idea to you’ve got the idea is catching the attention of people like you, or potential investors, or (Inaudible) (14:12), or the various people, the various groups, that you tend to need it to appeal to to get something in traction – The difference between having that germ of an idea, and then having people saying things like: “There’s nothing like this”–
F: Yes.
D: “This is unique.” Those are qualities that, if you can actually bake right into your thing that you’re doing–
F: Exactly.
D: …your project, your service – you’re suddenly in a different realm, aren’t you?
F: You are. And you have to make sure that you don’t lie, or that you don’t build it up to be more than it is. Don’t make any claims for it that aren’t true, because most journalists can sniff that out. [laughs]
D: You guys are kind of jaded, actually, right? [laughs]
F: Yeah, we’re jaded. Because everybody’s telling us that they’re the best blank; they’re the greatest ever; they’re the first in the world. I actually checked that, and that person is the largest that I’ve found in this building challenge that’s international. The first thing is be honest. The second thing is pick the right person who’s gonna be interested in it. Even address the idea of audience. If you can tell them – everybody knows how to write, or should know how to write a standard press release. They often don’t deal with audiences there, but in your pitch – your e-mail pitch or your verbal pitch – you can say, “I think this product is really good for people who live in the suburbs and are wondering what bus to take” – whatever it is. You might say, “Boy, there’s half a million people who take mass transit every day in the Twin Cities,” – it’s not that high, it’s more like 150 – but, “they could use this product.” “And it’s downloadable, it’s easy to use.” The other thing I’d say is a lot of journalists are on their deadline. I don’t want to say lazy, but [give them] as much information as you can give them, so that if you get to them and they’re willing to do a story on you all those statistics, facts, data, are already on your website, or in your news release. At that point, you can speak more freely because you don’t have to remember all these facts in your head, and they’re really looking for quotes – something articulate from you, not all the factual data.
D: Yeah. You’re supplyin’ it (?) for ‘em, actually – then it’d be all the better, right?
F: Yeah. The other thing is that a lot of people don’t get their facts right. [laughs] You’ll find – this happened twice last week – where the statistics on the website – totally different. But the interviewee was off a little bit. So, I’m gonna believe what was written on the website or in the news release, rather than what they say in the interview for accuracy’s sake. People are really big about accuracy now, because on the web you can change things. So you can go, “I didn’t really want to say that, can you go back and change that?” It drives journalists crazy, but we’ve had to do it a few times just to appease them. I suggest that you have your ducks in a row, ‘cause that doesn’t make you look good if you accidentally make an error, and it ends up in print, or on the web. Then it has to be corrected, and that journalist that has to do that is not gonna [laughs] be too friendly to you. It’s a pain to have to do that. The other thing I would say: I like to see a narrative; I like to see backgrounds of people, the founders; I want to know that when I go in. Sometimes it’s just an icebreaker; if they went to the school you went to. As a journalist, you can say, “Hey, we went to the University of Wisconsin, and I noticed you did.” Often, that relaxes sources. As people talk to investors and go to market with their products, I would say: build out the content on that website; tell us who you are; give us the backgrounds of all the founders; give us a pitch on the product that’s good; but also tell us how it improves things in whatever field that you’re working in. One of the CoCo members I wrote about, and I think was just a wonderful piece, was Water Meter Solutions.
D: Yeah, Josh Posera (?), and Colin Erdman (?).
F: Yeah. And they didn’t really pitch me very hard. But, again, for a particular audience that I write for, it was perfect. The real estate community and the development community – water is a big deal; and they are speaking to the right people. I felt like that piece – they found the right journalist to write about it, and there’ll be more. The Star Tribune will certainly cover these guys at some point. But that one – it was just perfect for what I was doing, and they knew it, in a way, and water is a big issue. If I were them – anybody who writes about water – there’s all kinds of water journals around the country; trade pubs – I would go to them. Second thing I would do: the Star Tribune, and people like that, might not be your audience. Your audience might be a trade publication. For years, I’ve written for trade publications, too; for their blogs. I think that that’s often overlooked by people. They all want to make this big splash in just general media, but 99 percent of that audience – if it really doesn’t care about your product in the end…they might read it and find it–
D: It feels good to see it in there.
F: It feels good–
D: ‘Cause your mom’s gonna see it.
F: It feels great. Everybody you know is gonna potentially read it or view it. We haven’t talked about visual media, but those are in there, too. The bottom line is: that might not be your audience. Your audience might be the trade publication in the field that you’re trying to sell your product or service to. One other little tidbit about the trade field is that they often like free content. Or, they will let you buy a page and they will frame it as journalism, but you will get to write about a topic in your field–
D: Interesting.
F: …as the subject matter expert. Then, at the end, that’s where your plug comes in for your product. You usually can’t totally promote your product from within the piece, but you can have–
D: You can’t be too gross. [laughs]
F: Yeah, exactly.
D: Isn’t there a business pub in town that does that?
F: Yeah, who does that?
D: Hanneman (?) Business. I think they’ve actually been doing actual repoirtage (?), but there’s somebody else. It seemed like the whole magazine consists of – it’s a monthly – basically columns written by people who are there to plug their own thing.
F: Plug their own thing, yeah.
D: Yeah, I found that that’s not a tight trade pub – like you’re talkin’ about somethin’ that really specializes in–
F: No, that’s more of a broad–
D: …apartment management, or something like that.
F: Yes, yes.
D: A broader one.
F: A broader one. And, again: it’s better to come in with your product being written about by a journalist. It validates it a lot more. But, on the other hand, if you’re looking for something you can distribute to clients and potential clients that’s been published, do they really care if you paid for it, or not? They’re not gonna ask you 90 percent of the time, it looks valid. In fact, if your opinions are valid, it’s just good writing in the end; it’s just good opinion making. So the fact that you might have bought it, on the one hand: [laughs] it doesn’t look so good. On the other hand: is anybody gonna ask?
D: If everybody knows and makes its point–
F: Yes – makes its point, and everybody knows the game. When it gets to trades like that, they’re probably gonna assume that there might have been an arrangement of some sort; you bought an ad and you got a little press. But the key is that if it comes out as a nice PDF, and you can [laughs] take it to people. It shows that you’re involved, and you’re knowledgeable about your field. That’s the other way I would frame it for people at CoCo: if you have a service – if you can just get on the Rolodex, so to speak, of journalists…the Rolodexes aren’t probably valid anymore; but the list of sources that they can call if they’re writing about a certain piece, and will have a cogent, interesting opinion – that’s a big deal. I mean, a) if you can get on that list, and you can call ‘em back in a timely way – don’t wait two days, don’t wait even 10 minutes – call ‘em right back, because often they’re under deadline. Say, “Great of you to call, I have looked at that new technology that you’re writing about (or that new product), and here’s what I think about it.” You’ve been quoted a lot as an expert on coworking, right?
D: Yeah. I mean, by national pubs, even, yeah.
F: Yeah.
D: Part of the reason is – it’s what you said – I have one thing in which everybody else on my team knows, I will suddenly become unavailable. ‘Cause if a journalist contacts me, I will drop everything and go and get on the phone – for that very reason, that they may be on their deadline. If what they learn out of the process of talking to me – let’s say I don’t even give ‘em any amazing quote or anything–
F: Right.
D: …But just the fact that I’m responsive means that they’re that much more likely to call me next time.
F: Exactly.
D: Because they just go, “Don gets back to me.” If they’re really in a pinch, then even more so. This speaks to something I wanted to ask you about. My philosophy that developed after now, in the past five years, giving the journalists more than I ever did before – it’s something that I learned when I was a young buck. I got out of college, and I was writing a little – it was on the side for the Skyway News; Dale Mayberry (?) was my editor.
F: [laughs]
D: Do you remember him?
F: I didn’t know him, but I’ve heard many things about him, yes.
D: He was a really neat guy, and he told me something. He had a food writer, who was a bit of a super star, who he had writing for him; and he had little old me. He just said, “I spent the whole weekend editing her shit.”
F: Carla. Sorry. Ahhh–
D: Oops, I don’t know. But he said, “I just spent the whole weekend editing her stuff, and you gave me something that I changed two words on.” Then he said, “You made my life easier.” He said, “I don’t need Shakespeare, I just don’t need to spend my weekend doing this.” I pair that with what I’m doing now, and I was like, “Journalists are human beings.” They’re people, they have their own set of standards in their industry, and some ethics that they try to adhere to; but they also have kids and spouses, vacation schedules, and various things; and they’re under pressure from bosses and management, and there are various things that are pressures in their life – same as the rest of us. So, if you understand that, then you understand that your job is to basically make their life easier.
F: Correct.
D: A story that they feel real good about publishing because of that effect – she’s got meat. And it’s actually interesting, and it’s easy. Just as an example: I write my press releases, I try to keep the self-ag– aggred–
F: Aggrandizement.
D: Thank you– I try to keep that bluster out of the press releases, and I try to make it almost as if it was a piece I was writing. I bake the quotes in there; I’ll put a list of facts at the bottom.
F: We love that.
D: Yeah. Just saying about CoCo, about coworking. I give ‘em the bigger picture, too; here’s the global context, here is us. I don’t want to say lazy, but just under duress like everybody. If you are trustworthy and you give me this stuff without me asking for it, thank you – that’s what I figure is their mindset.
F: It’s absolutely true. The easier you can make it, the better. A couple simple things, too, about websites: one thing that drives me crazy is when there’s not a phone number and I have to fill out some web form to contact the person. Then, I’ve gotta go out of my way and I’m thinking, Wow, is this the only source? These people don’t care – they don’t even have a phone number I can call?
D: Maybe I’ll call their competitor. [laughs]
F: Yeah. Or just even a media line. If it’s the same media line as your regular line, who cares? – Make it easy for us to call, because in the end, it’s not all about e-mail; we have to quote somebody, and we hate canned quotes. A lot of people love sending out canned quotes ‘cause there so controlled. I personally will only take them in a pinch, and I think most people will only take them in a pinch.
D: Ah. So they’re gonna want to talk to you, and–
F: Yeah.
D: …have that conversation.
F: Yeah, and often, it’s only 10 minutes. A lot of people think, OMG, I gotta talk to this guy, it’s probably gonna take an hour; and everybody’s busy, as you mentioned. I often say, “I need 10 or 15 minutes; I need three quotes, four quotes, at the most.” Now, with the water meter guys it was more like 45 minutes, because you want to really understand what they’re doing. If it’s a feature story, then you should set up the time to make sure that they understand who you are, how you came to the product or service, and you want to make sure that the whole story is there; so spend the time with ‘em so they get it right. And tell them, “Hey, you can call me back if you want to fact check the piece.” Often people say, “You can send me the piece before it’s published.” Well, most editors and most journalists don’t want to do that. But, a fair number would be willing to call back and say, “Here’s how I framed it, here’s the six facts I want to double-check to make sure–
D: Yeah.
F: ‘cause they weren’t on your fact sheet, as you mentioned.” The second thing: make sure your website’s up to date. When I see a website that says “2013 copyright” the bottom– are they still in business? Why haven’t they improved it? And, now, don’t talk about my website ‘cause it’s way out of date, but it’s horrible–
D: I’m thinking, like, Oh, but I better check the website and see what the copyright date is–
F: Yeah, but–
D: we’re in the New Year. [laughs]
F: …when you’re dealing with a small company and you’re not sure about it, that can be an issue. It doesn’t look legitimate. You might call ‘em, they might still be in business, but I just think when you’re dealin’ with the press, that’s: Red flag – wow, they don’t improve their website?
D: Yeah, I think that when I see they have a blog, but they didn’t touch it since 2013–
F: Yes, yeah.
D: Something’s happened, and they fell off the radar, and then you just go, Is the company defunct?
F: It’s almost better to take the blog down than to have it that old.
D: It tells a story, doesn’t it?
F: Yeah.
D: Talkin’ about a story, right – there’s something there.
F: There’s something there; why didn’t you continue with it? I’d almost just as soon have it gone, because I’m looking at it going, Well, what happened in the last year-and-a-half? The search terms are, as everybody knows, really important, too. I’ll give you a quick example of that: I did a story a couple weeks ago, and this would turn out to be a fascinating story. I was at a dinner party. We did three dinner parties over the weekend, and someone mentioned a green wall. I couldn’t remember who. [laughs] I emailed the people at that dinner party and said, “Did anybody tell me about a green wall – a wall of plants being put in?” It turned out it was St. Thomas, a professor there who’s a friend of mine. I thought, Well, there’s one source. I pitched this piece and the editor said, “Yes,” and then I realized I had no sources for it except this one guy. I went to the web, and I found a gentleman in St. Paul, who just happens to be one of the nation’s experts on green walls. He’s been the president, and past president of a number of organizations. It turned out to be a great interview. He had installed green walls around downtown, and in various venues around the Twin Cities including agriculture – which has a big one in Uptown – in walkway apartments. But, he came right up, right away, when I said Twin Cities Green Walls, first entry. If you can optimize that as much as possible – because, in the end, journalists often aren’t gonna rely on people who contacted them. We have to go find people that are experts in their field. So, [do] as much SEOing (?) as you can of your site. That will help you get press coverage, too, because we’re not always gonna buy a pitch off the transom like this – no one pitched me this story.
D: Yeah. You–
F: I just stumbled upon it. And, yet, I found the perfect source for it on page one of Google. As much as you can, do in that way. Remember, you might get a call out of the blue, or an e-mail out of the blue, from somebody reporting on a topic; they need a source, you could be that source. But you’ve gotta be high. Just like the restaurant, you have to be in that first page or two on the Google search. Whatever you’re good at, make sure those search terms– the more unique they are, for those of us who write for trade publications, the better off you are.
D: The more specialized–
F: The more specialized you are, that’s actually better not only finding clients, but for finding people who write about this. The general stuff, I’ll never find you; but I might have a specific need like this – green walls. I mean, that’s pretty specific. There are a bunch of vendors around the country; tell us where you are, and that’ll help, because that can generate some local coverage for you. Having both those – the search of green walls, Twin Cities. Of course, he works around the country, but the point is that I found him here. That at least generates some coverage there. If I was working for the New York Times, though, I would have probably called him, too, because after you look at the website, it’s clear – he’s got the background.
D: The real deal, yeah.
F: He’s the real deal.
D: Interesting.
F: That’s the other point I would make.
D: I wonder if there’s– and I wouldn’t expect you to know – but I wonder if there are there good examples of press releases that somebody could look at to say, “Here’s a more enlightened way to write one.” Or writing pitches to a publication.
F: There’s quite a number of free assets on the web, there’s classes in it, and there is kind of a standard way to write a press release; that you put at the top, on the left-hand side, your phone number, your e-mail –and a subhead that captures the attention, that tells us quickly what is–
D: Before you ever read the body, you’ve got the idea.
F: Yeah, you’ve got the idea from the headline. And the first paragraph should tell you we’ve made this arrangement with the city of St. Paul; maybe it’s a contract that you’ve signed, or it’s something interesting in there. Another one – I got a press release that was very effective. It was about the St. Paul Public Housing Authority signing a contract with a community solar garden – perfect for my audience. This press release was standard, old-style; here’s who you contact; first three paragraphs told you exactly why it was interesting and important; and it had quotes from different people. You can do that in a press release. Generally, the journalist should be calling these people. But to see those quotes was good, because then I knew who to call. In addition, another thing I think people don’t realize: you are unlikely to be the only source of a story. If a journalist is writing about your business, they’re gonna want to talk to clients. So you need to talk to your clients, and you need to say, “Would you be willing to talk to a journalist about what we’ve done for you?” – Not everybody is, but you’ll find one or two that are. Secondly, they may say, “I know you’re the expert in this field, but I need two more people” [laughs] “because my editor will require three or four sources per story.”
D: So you might want to be the star of the story, but your competitors are gonna be covered in the process.
F: Right, right. You will say, “I’m the only one that does this in the Twin Cities” or “I’m the only one that does this nationally.” Well, for one thing, that’s unlikely [laughs]. For another, it doesn’t sound real. I’ve had this numerous times where people have told me they are the only ones that do this, and I have told them, a) that can’t be true, and b) I need more than you in this piece. So who’s the closest one? I can go find him; you can make my life easy, or you can make it difficult, but you’re not gonna be the only source for this piece. And, usually, then they come around and say, “Okay, there’s this small company” or “This other person that does this.” In this green wall piece, I don’t think I ever did find anybody else that does it locally. There’s plenty of people that do it nationally, and who’s selling to hard market. But, located here, I didn’t actually find anybody else. Be prepared to help the journalist understand your topic; and that, yeah, you might be the market leader, but you need to be able to say there are other people doin’ this; and “Here are some people you can talk to.
D: You’re still gonna be the star, you know.
F: Yeah.
D: I would think with some startups, in particular, that you might have people that, as far as they know, they’re the only one here doing it. But there are national examples; it’s happening in other places, for sure.
F: Yes. Exactly. In your example – the coworking trend, that’s happening all over. I think it’s happening here in a very strong way, but you couldn’t say, “Boy, we’re the only one in the United States that does this,” because San Francisco’s got a ton of them. You have to be honest; you have to say, “Look, we’re part of a movement” or “We are one of the only ones that do this, but there’s this other company that does something very similar.”
D: It feels credible.
F: It feels credible–
D: Which increases the likelihood of being seen as a source to be worked with.
F: Yeah.
D: ‘Cause I would think it seems like somebody’s trying to get one passed you –like kryptonite.
F: Yeah.
D: I’m not gonna touch this.
F: Yeah. And you don’t want to find out after it’s published, if you’re the journalist – “OMG, I missed somebody.” “I can’t believe that I believed that.” Then somebody’ll call and they’ll say, “Why didn’t you call me? This guy told you he’s the only one? That’s not true.” So, it’s incumbent upon the journalist to figure this out; but the source is helpin’ him figure it out. And you can be honest with him and say, “Yes, there’s three other companies we admire in our sector, and here they are, and I suggest you call John at so-and-so, we’ve dealt with him.” That’s what I would say – I think even when I did that piece with you, you had known about Café, and some of the other ones.
D: Right.
F: You don’t have to do that, but it helps. It helps a journalist move a little faster on things.
D: Very good. Well, this is sage advice; I think we’ve hit our–
F: Yeah, we’ve hit our time. Yeah. [laughs] I hope I made some sense. I was trying to figure it out–
D: No – you did, you did. It all makes sense. It surely resonates for me, with what I’ve experienced. I actually once– I got fancy and I did an embargo; screwed it up. One of the writers I gave the wrong time to – so he respected the embargo. I said, “I’m giving you advance notice of this new item, you can’t say anything until 10:00 Friday.” I gave this guy 11:00 Friday by mistake. Well, everybody got to the press before him; he’s like, “What the hell – what did you do, here? Why did you do this to me?” And I was, like, “I just totally screwed up – I’m so sorry. I just made an amateur rookie mistake.” I had to make it up to him later. I said, “Alright, I’ll tell you what: next time, I’m giving you an exclusive and I’m just gonna give you a good lead on everybody.” So, you can get too fancy sometimes, where you’re suddenly playing with fire, because you could ruin a relationship.
F: You can ruin a relationship. I don’t do much embargo stuff; that’s really daily journalism. I don’t even practice that. But that’s good advice for this audience if they have that.
D: An example would be: you are gonna get an investment round – until the paperwork’s done you really can’t [legally] be talking about it.
F: That’s right, yeah.
D: So, but if you want to give the journalist a head start to say, “Look, if I tell you this two days ahead of time, you have time to write your story and you can trigger at the right
time.”
F: And then I trigger at 10:00, I’ll call ya – because we know the papers will be signed by noon, and–
D: Precisely.
F: And you’ll have a story.
D: If you’re somebody, you say, “I would prefer to have Julio at the Pioneer Press cover this,” let’s say, “because he just does such a good job.” You might want to up Julio and say, “I would love for you to get a head start on this so that you can be out of the gates.” That makes sense to me. Otherwise, say you release it – if he doesn’t have time that morning, you may not be getting that coverage.
F: It could be some young person who doesn’t know the field that well, unlike him, and – not that young journalists are bad or anything, but I just – you want people who really love the field, and maybe have a little experience in it.
D: You discover who– like in Julio’s case, if he’ll do the piece for print; the same piece, maybe, will go onto their actual Pioneer Press’s website. He has his personal tech column he does for the paper, and then he has his personal blog; and he’s a heavy social media user. I’ve seen it where you can get a love (?) from Julio – not guaranteed ever, ‘cause he’s a professional. If it stinks, he’s not covering’ it, but if it works for him, you can find that you’re getting the love on like five–
F: Five others.
D: …different channels, essentially. And that is suddenly really good.
F: Yeah, yeah. I have tried for years to get people to do more content on their websites; I love case studies, and part of the reason is for journalists. You look at a case study, and you go, Wow, here is a client who will talk, and prove the product. I mean, you can sit around and say the software is really good, but I can tell you that the people that use it are much better stories than the people who sell it.
D: Yeah, that makes sense.
F: And it’s much more interesting to readers, especially at trade pubs. Everybody’s trying to sell ‘em something; they don’t care about the vendor. They want to know; Okay, this clinic in Fargo – how did it work for them? If you’re the vendor, you run the risk of maybe every experience wasn’t that great. On the other hand, it’s pretty successful in the end, right? So the case study can do the positive and when the journalist calls – this has happened, where people say, “I love it, but I had this one thing and it didn’t really work out that way.” By the time you’re done hearing it, I often don’t use it because it’s so technical and nobody’s gonna read it. It’s not maybe so rah-rah. You might say, “Well, there were some problems with the installation, but overall they liked the experience.” You don’t get into the nitty gritty that much.
D: You’re more likely to retain and write about overall positive experience–
F: The overall positives, yeah.
D: …because the challenges are so detailed that they–
F: Yeah, exactly. They’re so obscure. Even for a trade publication, if you’re writin’ about information technology – healthcare IT – you might put in a few things about “why we struggled with these three interfaces,” ‘cause a reader might like that. But, you can’t get into that much detail, it’s too lengthy, you know, to–
D: Right, right.
F: …at some point, no one’s gonna want to read it – just give us the overall experience and why they liked it and how it improved their productivity. And you can have a little paragraph of drawbacks. My point is: you have a case study of these clients who have different verticals; they’re a different size; one’s big, one’s small, one’s in the middle – I think it really is effective for reaching out to the media. So it’s a twofer – you got this marketing thing where you can handle somebody, or have it up on your website – here’s our work for people that look just like your client, or whatever it is. And then you have this secondary market of media people who might be able to use it in a story in the future. They might not even have enough time to call anybody; they might just grab it and run with a paragraph of it.
D: Yeah, I’ve written my share of case studies in the past. They’re actually hard to write.
F: Yeah.
D: It’s hard to write that and feel like, Yeah, that’s a compelling piece. [laughs]
F: Right.
Might it make sense to actually hire a freelance journalist?
– And say, “Hey, would you write these case studies?” Because they’re gonna have more of the instinct to make it actually readable and passable.
F: Yeah. Absolutely, I think so. And not just ‘cause I’m a journal– you know.
D: Yeah.
F: I really do. They know how to tell the story. What I discovered with Eloqua, and some of these other marketing platforms, is that Eloqua had a blog entry about why users should hire journalists; because those platforms are all about sellin’ stories, about companies writing about their products. I think they nailed it. Kurdow (?) and all those all these platforms – these marketing platforms – they have huge content needs. This is a different broadcast, but I think that there’s a good potential there for large companies that are running Eloqua, and other large platforms like that, to look to freelance writers and higher journalists. ‘Cause there’s plenty of ‘em out on the street now to come in and tell the stories of their company on these platforms.
D: So let’s say you have a startup: it’s B to B, so you’re. There’s a business that’s actually maybe started using your product –to hire a journalist and have them go interview that customer, find out about their experience, see if they can wrap it up into a case study. Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
F: Yeah, the only thing– the reason I like the case study motif; I’ve read a ton of ‘em. It’s just people don’t grab it quick. When you write an article, [laughs] without a lot of sub hubs, [laughs] somebody goes, “OMG, I gotta read”–
D: No one’s gonna read it.
F: No one’s gonna read it. But if you’ve got a case study – bang – name a company B, well, they are – C used the software; two paragraphs on implementation; two paragraphs on success; or you might throw in some issues. But 800 words, you’re done, and it’s broken up so that it’s like 200-word chunks.
D: Yeah, somebody can scan the subheads, dive into a graph if they really liked what they saw.
F: You throw a couple graphs on, or a photo of the facility, or whatever you want, and you got it. If you can get that, some businesses – or some startups don’t have a client yet – that’s a problem.
D: Yeah, right. So can they find you at, uh: Frank’sPrettyGoodCaseStudies.com? [laughs]
F: They can find me at my (Inaudible) yeah. I’ve got Jossi.BIZ in there.
D: And that’s how we find you, right?
F: Yes, that’s how you find me, yeah.
D: Jossi.BIZ?
F: .BIZ, yeah. I got one of the four in the world.
D: Nice
F: [laughs] That one’s so totally tame – that business.
D: When they split a domain, then that (Inaudible) domain?
F: That domain just didn’t happen. Somebody had Jossi.com. I couldn’t believe it – my name’s not that common. It was some guy sellin’ tennis gloves, or something. Anyway, I picked up the BIZ, but how many BIZes have you seen?
D: BIZ, no–
F: Five? [laughs] BIZ Stone (?), yeah. In a way, it’s easy to remember, because when I tell people, BIZ – I’ll remember that, nobody has that. [laughs] I gotta talk to Lindsay about improving that, but I may just buy some time for her to help me pick a template; I just haven’t been able to find one that I like.
D: So you have web design and development needs, it sounds like.
F: Yes, I do. Yes.
D: Okay. Podcast listeners, take note – find Frank–
F: [laughs] Yeah.
D: Well, let’s wrap it up, ‘cause it’s–
F: Okay.
D: …it’s been a great conversation and a lot of good nuggets for those who are thinking: my path to recognition for my business, or my venture, or my project, is to get some media coverage. I think there’s a lot of good gems in here for people to really think about what’s really goin’ on and how a journalist thinks and what you, then, as somebody (Inaudible) a journalist need to kind of provide them.
F: Yes.
D: So, thank you very much and I appreciate you sitting–
F: It’s been fun – it’s been fun talking to you guys. I’m sorry I rambled. [laughs]
D: No, no, no. Well, you did it so eloquently, so – perfect.
F: Okay.
D: Thanks, Frank.
F: Thanks Don – Garrio.
D: Alright. Well, thanks for listening to another CoCo Dreamcast. This one we went a little bit overtime. Not to be too time-conscious, but sometimes a conversation goes and there’s such value that we just keep it rollin’ and hope that you find something good in here. You know, if you– this is number five, right? Number five – that’s Garrio nodding. You could say there’s a bit of an archive, or a library, of Dreamcast. So please visit our website for more episodes and transcripts. Leave a comment if you find something inspiring or useful or want to give us an idea of who we should be chasing down and talking to. And while you’re there, you can also sign up for our mailing lists and be apprised of new CoCo podcasts, and other news comin’ out of the CoCo coworking community. Thank you very much and see you next time.
About the CoCo DreamCast
Our goal for the CoCo DreamCast is pretty straightforward: we want to talk to CoCo members, find out what makes them tick and learn how they’re living out their dreams. Look for another episode soon!