Solving 5 Home Stager Media Challenges

Staging Diva in House & Home Magazine — Here my interview turned into a side-bar to a House & Home Magazine article on home staging. Note the call to action to see the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers to find a stager at the end!

This is part 2 of a post on solving 5 home stager media challenges. Last week I covered what to do about the first 3:

1. Your phone NOT ringing off the hook after you appear in the media.
2. Your name being spelled wrong or a failure to mention your company name.
3. What to do about a spike in traffic to your website.

You can read my recommendations in detail at Solving 5 Home Stager Media Challenges – Part 1. Today we’ll tackle the next two media challenges and learn how to turn a challenge into an opportunity for your home staging business.

4. You might spend an hour on the phone with a reporter educating them about home staging and then get only a sentence or two quoting you in the final story.

Always a let down when you know you gave them so much great stuff and then you only get a brief mention. This has happened to me many times. In fact, in one story I wasn’t quoted at all; but at least the reporter interviewed one of the Staging Diva Graduates I recommended and she got coverage!

Here are some other ways to use the media interview to your advantage, whether you get the coverage you hoped for or not.

Take a broader view of your experience speaking with the reporter. First of all it gave you great practice speaking about your business and probably made you less nervous about the whole idea of media interviews. Plus, if you’ve done an excellent job providing background information the writer is more likely to come back to you for a future story. For example, I was interviewed for MoneySense Magazine and when the freelance writer did a piece for The Globe & Mail a year later, she called me again!

Consider your interview a multi-purpose event to really make the most use of your time speaking with the reporter. Record your side of the conversation and have it transcribed. This becomes content for a newsletter article or blog post of your own. Make sure if you use this technique that you wait until after the original story is published so that you don’t repeat the same content and appear to be plagiarizing the author.

5. Your home staging story won’t necessarily run when you think it will.

Despite your best intentions, you may never find out if the story actually ran, as happened to me after a long interview with the largest circulation magazine in the US! This was a big disappointment to me because it’s such a huge magazine and I had even pulled favors with two past clients so they could be interviewed for the story as well.

After many months of periodic emails back and forth with the writer, saying the story had been delayed, I eventually stopped chasing the information. I never did get around to checking every issue on the news stand to see if I was included, so it remains a disappointing mystery to this day and consequently not on my list of media coverage!

You can promote the fact that you’ve been interviewed by a certain publication but until the story actually runs, you’ll never be certain when, or if, it will. This is another important reason to get the email address of the writer. This way you can stay in touch and ask them when it will be published and arrange for them to mail you a hard copy. For other key reasons to email the reporter, see Solving 5 Home Stager Media Challenges – Part 1.

I also connect with writers who interview me on Twitter where possible. They usually tweet when a story runs so sometimes you’ll get a link to the online version that way. This is one of many Twitter tips I share in the Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter: Building your business one ‘tweet’ at a time.

This series on home staging media coverage started with:

5 Tips to Get Media Attention for Your Home Staging Business,

5 Media Challenges for Home Stagers

Solving 5 Home Stager Media Challenges – Part 1

I hope you’ve found this subject helpful and added your comments and questions along the way!

Please share your experience with getting media coverage for your own home staging business, or ask me related questions so that I’ll know what you’d like to see featured in future posts on this topic!

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