Publicity Is A Valuable FIRE Tool – Seven Ways To Promote Your Side Hustle, Small Business Or Personal Brand

I recently posted a guest blog on Sisters For Financial Independence. This is personally exciting for me because the site is helmed by Filipina sisters like me (one of whom coincidentally has the same name as my sister!).

It’s also professionally exciting to collaborate with fellow FIRE-fighters and see my writing published elsewhere. Finally, the publicity factor – getting your work out in front of a broader audience – is a valuable FIRE tool, in that it helps us grow our business.

I haven’t seen publicity covered as a means of achieving FIRE, but you’re missing out if you overlook this powerful tool. Publicity has been extremely helpful in growing my consulting business. Mentions in A-list media provide instant credibility. I once booked a client directly with no consultation, after I appeared as a guest expert on CNN. Even if you’re an employee and not a business owner, your personal brand gets a credibility boost from publicity, whether it’s a media mention, media appearance or a published article.

Guest blogging is just one way to generate publicity for your business or career

In addition to submitting guest posts to blogs relevant to your field, six other ways to generate publicity include:

1. Social media
2. Professional associations
3. Affinity groups
4. Business contests
5. HARO
6. Personal contacts

1 – Social media

Social media is not just for socializing, but also for branding. Writing posts or uploading video, curating other posts or videos related to your expertise, or even adding insightful comments to other posts are ways you can publicize what you do and what you know.

2 – Professional associations

You might already be part of a specialized professional association for your industry or function or a general association, such as an entrepreneurs group or working parents group. These associations often put on events and publish newsletters. If you can speak at an event or guest post for the association newsletter, that’s publicity for you and/ or your business.

3 – Affinity groups

Just this week I led a webinar for a military veterans group, which helps my consulting business reach a whole new audience. In two weeks, I speak at a transportation company’s Asian employee group event. Many companies have affinity groups (sometimes called employee resource groups), and there are national affinity groups as well, such as the military veterans group I’m addressing this week.

4 – Business contests

In the first year or so, after I launched my consulting business, I entered a small business contest for women entrepreneurs with an innovative business idea. I won $10,000, which definitely helped with cash flow as a start-up. More importantly, I was featured in an advertising campaign that ran in major publications. A few years later, I was a semi-finalist in another contest that provided some online publicity.

I found out about both contests while reading entrepreneur blogs and publications – keep an eye out for creative opportunities to get publicity!

5 – HARO

If you haven’t yet signed up for Help A Reporter Out, the basic level account is free, and it’s a great way of connecting with journalists and hearing about stories in the media pipeline.

Journalists post a query on HARO – for example, they’re writing about the dog training business and want to hear from dog trainers and customers. If you are a dog trainer, this is possible publicity for your business. However, even if you’re just a customer and your business is something completely different (say, FIRE blogger) you might still want to comment because the media mention may include details about you.

I once responded to a query looking for married couples who met in high school (that describes me and Scott!). Our high school prom picture ended up running in a major magazine, along with my name and profession.

Not only did I get press mentions by responding to HARO queries, but I became more aware of the variety of stories out there and got invaluable practice at providing catchy, media-compelling sound bites.

6 – Personal connections

Don’t overlook your own friends, family, former classmates and professional colleagues as you think of sources for publicity. Don’t assume you only have to know journalists or publishers specifically.

Your connections might know the journalists or the publishers, or they might hear about publicity opportunities and refer you IF they know you are interested.

Tell people that you’re looking for ways to get quoted in the press or featured in an article or published as a guest writer, etc.

Publicity begets more publicity

Once I got some publicity, it was easier to get more. As I got more experienced in navigating publicity queries, the way I interacted with journalists, bloggers, publishers and others who could help became crisper and more compelling.

Reporters who quoted me before came back when they were working on another story. Media outlets who saw my earlier press mentions felt more reassured about contacting me because I had publicity experience – I once landed a last-minute guest spot on ABC News because they needed my jobs expertise, saw my media page and figured they could trust me to jump into the news segment and not wreak havoc on the set.

Publicity begets more work – which gets you closer to FIRE

Publicity can be fun, but the tangible value is in the brand awareness, credibility boost and leads it brings. The additional work I can trace back to clients hearing about me via publicity is additional revenue contributed to our FIRE escape.

One of the four strategies for making FIRE possible is to build additional income streams – e.g., a side hustle, a consulting business. Publicity can grow that income stream.