Press Trips: Planning Q&A

Taylor Talks Newsletter - 7/6/2020

Cheers to the second week of Taylor Talks! This email is coming out late but here it is. In the first week, I talked about how to start planning for a press trip that you build yourself. In this Newsletter, I want to answer some questions you had for me and take some steps back. Mainly I want to go into detail about some of the phases. I forget that some people know certain information and others don’t! SO if you are lost at any point or need clarification, please let me know.  Q&A  Question: I need more help on finding brands to collaborate with for trips. Does it matter how big the brand is?  Answer: Yes, it does matter! Avoid big chain corporations. Unless you know the Marketing Associate for Hyatt and Chipotle, don’t try to work with them at first. When I am researching potential brands for partnerships I aim for brands that are small to mid-size. You want boutique businesses that have an active account on social media. I like to pitch companies that have 50-100K followers or less. Usually, the bigger/more popular the company is….the harder it is to work for them.  So say you are wanting to go to visit New York (which is too hard to get but) the first thing I would do is google “Boutique Hotels in NYC.” This will bring up a list of boutique hotels. This is what you want! Go through the list and see what brand aligns with yourself. After you do that, you can go ahead and find the press contact.  Question: How can I find the PR contact information on a hotel’s website, for example?  Answer: Sticking with the NYC theme...after I google “Boutique Hotels in NYC” a hotel named The Greenwich Hotel pops up. To find the PR contact information, the first place you want to look at is in the “press” tab. All hotel menu bars look the same. See below. 

80/20 chance there will not be an email listed here. A lot of brands hide the PR contact these days. The press tab will usually have media articles that were written about the hotel and zero mention of the PR team. So to find that, head to the bottom of the page and look for something that says “Contact.” See below.

When you click on it, it will direct you to a page that says “Press Inquiries.” Hover over that or click to reveal the PR email address! Question: First press trip - how many followers did you have at the time? Answer: My first full press trip was to Choctaw Casinos & Resort and Austin in the summer of 2018. At the time I had 6K followers on Instagram and a few thousand page views per month. I am putting a screenshot of my Instagram page at that time. I feel like I had even fewer followers when I went on my first trip. Note: Brands will work with you no matter the follower count, usually, as long you have an engaged audience and provide ROI to the brand you are working with...

HOMEWORK: Now that we explained some steps to you, go and draft an email pitch to a hotel or restaurant (pretend like we are post-COVID).  I will be back next week with an email template (MY EXACT EMAIL). You can compare your draft email to mine. I will show you my first travel email pitch and the email I use now!!! Reach out to me with any questions. We created an access portal...  for you so that you can view past Taylor Talks in case the Newsletters get deleted or lost from your inbox. Visit this link to sign-in and view. Only subscribers to this Newsletter can view this page!! Woohoo! If you have specific requests you would like us to talk about, send it our way. 

NEED MORE HELP ASAP? Schedule a Zoom call with us if you need personalized help pitching to brands, finding brands, analytics, advice, resources, and more! We will tell you exactly what works for us. Seriously. No fluff or beating around the bush. What to know how to travel for your blog? We got you. Need help writing a pitch email? Let's edit it together. 

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