Public Relations 101, What It's Really Like Dealing With Influencers And Creating A Business Name

to Outspoken. Now. Amy and I just got back into the office after a big day out at a shoe and we thought, why not talk about all things PR. So we thought we'd do a bit of a PR masterclass. Yeah. So, for those of you who don't know who might be new to the podcast, Sophie and I run a digital agency called Hula Media and a few We launched it three years ago and it was called the PR Bible

and we focused on all things public relations. But now the business has expanded to offer content creation services and social media marketing services as well as public relations. Yeah, so we decided to rebrand a number of months ago. Actually, it was right on the cusp of when Corona sort of broke out, and we didn't think it was a

great time to be announcing our new name. So, yeah, it's only been a few months that we've changed over to Hula Media, and we did receive a few questions about how we tackled the rebrand, how we came up with the new name, So Iman, can you fill everyone in how we came up with the name, because it was a very long process. Yeah. Well, we first realized that we actually hated the name. And I think it's important, I mean the old name, the old name, the PR bible,

I mean when we first came up with it. The reason we wanted to include the word PR in it because we thought it would help us with our SEO ranking, which it really did. And I used to work at a previous PR agency called Girl about Town. And when I'd ring up and say that I was from a business called Girl about Town, and for those in Adelaide who know, we used to work on Heinley Street, and that would raise a few eyebrows. People thought we were

either a promotions business or even a strip club. So we really wanted to make it easy for our clients know who we were. And you said we wanted it to be help us with our SEO ranking, but that was totally wrong because everyone just kept asking us if we were religious, and we had to keep explaining it's like the lad Bible and all of that by Bube. That being said, we did pick up some lovely Christian clients. Some people did come to us because we had the

name Bible in it. But yeah, so we decided at the start of this year that we wanted to rebrand, and it was so difficult coming up with the name because there are so many names that are already taken and so we no name was springing to mind, which was really difficult because Sophie and I pride ourselves on

being quite creative, and we just couldn't think of anything. Well, I think the best advice was, if you are trying to come up with a name, you're not going to come up with it just sitting at your desk, Yeah, trying to think, think, think. So what we like to do is if we have a brainstorm session. Amy and I are lucky enough to live quite close to the beach, and we'll do it of a beach walk, you know, have a look around. What's about the place? I don't know.

You always feel a bit refreshed when you're out in outside, and I think there's all also so many different resources on YouTube, so I was looking up different ways that people had come up with business names, and there was a lot of advice on there saying that a two

syllable name is really helpful. And the reason we came up with Hula was we wanted to be known as sort of like, oh, the girls from Hula or that the team from Hula, instead of because it's I don't know, the PR Bible it was too many words, well, yeah, one word. We really wanted to have a business that was just really one main word, and we also wanted something that seemed bright and fun and young but still professional.

We kind of want to do something that was a little bit different to all of the other PR firms here in Adelaid because they're kind of all a bit old school, so we wanted to be bright and fresh. But it was important as well to have the word media because we do so much more than PR. So anyway, that's the background for us changing our name to Hula Media. But a lot of people we found, even clients that approach us, actually don't even know what public relations is.

And I must be honest. When I first went to UNI, I had no idea what PR is because I used to watch Absolutely Fabulous, which is an English a comedy, and they used to laugh and joke about that they worked in PR and they'd always be drinking champagne and going to events and so kind of that's sort of what I thought PR was, thought, I don't want to be a part of this. Can people jump in our Facebook community if they have also watched Absolutely Fabulous? Our

Facebook community has outspoken the podcast community. And it's so funny because the night before my first PR job, we literally thrash that show and I have to say, I'm Patsy and you're Eddie. For those who are playing at home, Eddie's the boss, though Patsy is just like the friend. That's just the hanger on. That's right, sweeties. So it's quite accurate, not really, but so yeah, So a lot of people don't actually know what PR is, and just

if you guys are wondering at home. So as publicists, we work as the middleman between the client and the media. So we liaise with the media about different stories that our clients might have going and we also come up with really creative angles that we think will make a great news story, especially now there's so much more to pr in the modern world we're living in because it's all about social media strategies, even crisis management, and influencers, influencers.

There's just so many facets to it, which is why I really enjoy it. We'll talking about influencers. We do work with some influencers and have had some experience in that field. Sophie, what is the reality of actually organizing a kind of a deal with an influencer, Well, it can be really frustrating. It can be a bit of a waiting game. I mean, it really depends which influencer

you're working with and whether they have a manager. So generally speaking, it's easier when they do have a manager, who most likely will get back to you within the within a few days. That being said, some of them can be really slack and a lot of them are just looking for their ten percent or twenty percent cut. But that being said, a number of influencers you do try and contact directly, they're terrible at getting back to you, which is so surprising considering you know they have the

possibility of making a lot of money from it. Well, it's normally the bigger the influencer, the worse they are. At actually getting back to you because they do all have manager that normally handle all of these deals. But one hack I can give people if they're looking, you know, if you've got a new brand or a new product that you're bringing out. My advice would be to actually contact the influencer directly. If they're a micro influencer, even if they are a bigger influencer, it's worth a try

because sometimes they'll charge less money. Like the manager is always looking for the best deal for their client and they'll always bump the price up. But we've found when we've worked with some influencers, they're more than happy to either work for a voucher if it's for you know, to be in a particular video or something like that, because they want the exposure. Yeah. I mean, we do work for a major shopping center here in Adelaide and

a number of influencers we do approach. If you contact them directly, they're more than happy to just want to be associated with the fabulous brand at hand. But when you go through their manager, as you said, they just want a profit from it. So that is a good

little tip. I suppose that kind of leads on to how we deal with some difficult clients as well, because you know, along the way of our three years of business, there have been some very difficult clients, and you know, you do have to jump through hurdles in the first early stages of your business to impress people. Well, I think you quickly realize who you do and don't want to work with, and that's something that we've realized over

the past three years. As you said, So when we first started out, you kind of just have to work with anybody and everybody to get your name out there. And we did work with a lot of small businesses and some of them were amazing and some of them,

to be honest, were just nightmares. Yeah, that would be my piece of advice for maybe a small public or boutique public relations firm, is you really need to work out who your niche market is, because you know, it's great to have a particular niche, but you've also got to work out, as you say, who you don't want to work with. So it's really tough working with small

businesses because that is their whole world. Well, the thing with small businesses is they can be great, but they also expect a lot from you, and they also don't want to pay a lot of money. So what we've realized is we actually want to work with bigger brands because one we actually enjoy that side of PR. We enjoy pushing bigger stories. We enjoy strategizing, we enjoy the

influencer side of things we don't so much enjoy. You know, a lot of small businesses, there's not heaps you can do for them unless there's a really news where the angle and retain a PR for a small business just isn't really a necessary thing. I think it's also difficult dealing with people who, you know, perhaps it's a hospitality business, who don't understand actually what PR is, so they don't understand and that the results you're getting are very good. Yeah,

and that sort of leads us. I suppose you did say how do you deal with difficult clients? And we're not going to name anyone, but we have a client that we no longer work with from our choice, and this sort of it was. It was a really good learning experience, to be honest, because it showed us who we don't want to work with. And I suppose some of the warning signs and this particular client, we got

them so much coverage. I mean, you know, for the business they were, this was sensational coverage, and they would just never happy with anything. I think also, when you get a client that just takes up so much of your time, like it was constant phone calls for about two hours, and as a small business, it's just not

acceptable to have that sort of demand on you. Yeah, Well, with that client in particular, they also didn't listen to our advice, so they disregard our strategic advice and do what they wanted and then not actually get the results that they wanted. But that's a really good point for anyone who is in public relations or if you're starting your own business. I think you need to add up the hours that you're spending on each job and then

evaluate whether it's worth it for your business. Because in this instance, we were finding that we were working so many hours that it worked out to be we're paying ourselves like five dollars an hour, and that's not good business. So we ended up ending that contract. And now we're

really careful who we choose to work with. Yeah, and I think obviously we're in a position now that we're three years in so we can be a little bit more selective of who we choose to work with because there have been some people now that we just say no, I'm sorry, we don't have the time. The other question a lot of people ask us, and I'm always interested by this question when I hear about other people's jobs, is what is the day to day life of someone who is in PR? And this is what I love

most about PR. Every day is different. So you know, for us, we have our retainer clients, but we also have one off clients who pop up, so we always are working with different people every day and meeting new people, which is an exciting part of the job for Amy and I. We do like to start the day off in a meeting of sorts, so we assess what we're doing for the day, and you know, those meanings can last anywhere from half an hour to an hour depending

on what we're planning. That's right. I mean, if you look at today, I will give today as an example. Today we had a podcast interview with my Millennial Money, which was really good, but he was how crazy was that interview? So yeah, I think we're actually going to leave some specifics of that interview for our Awkward Turtle on Monday. Because yeah, it was Yeah, let's just say that interview. I felt so bad for them. Sophie's course a bit of a ruckus. So we'll leave that to

Monday's episode. But so we did that interview, then we did some basic office admin kind of work. Then we went out to a shoot for most of the afternoon. So we do lots of content shoots and that's actually my favorite part of the day is because I do all of the videography work, so and SO does all the producing side of things, so she'll ask the client

all the questions or whoever the talent is. So it's very much back to what we were doing when we're working as reporters, which I really love about that part of the job. And that's the thing Amy, I'm gonna pump your tires up here. You're a very talented videographer. And because I don't actually do any of the videography myself, the part that I really enjoy is organizing the shoots.

So I organize a lot of the talent. For instance, we work from a major shopping center, and I kind of come up with some of the creative and fun ideas and source influences for those sort of things. But it is really funny because Amy and I are quite a perfect pairing because, as I said, Amy does have the videography side of things, but I'm more in charge of our public relations side of things in the business, so we work well together with that sort of dynamic.

And We're also doing a lot more social media marketing, which I'm loving. And I do want to give everybody a hot tip of someone to watch on YouTube if you are looking at getting into social media marketing. His name's Jordan Platten. I've been so obsessed with his YouTube videos. I've been sending some to Soviet She still hasn't watched them. I'm almost concerned if she does, because she's going to get so excited like me, and it's going to be

next level. But he shows you how to do different Facebook ads and he talks about how to sign on clients. So if you are starting a business, he's one that you can get really like. You can get really excited watching his content. He also does a course, but it sounds really expensive, and to be honest, he's giving out

so much free information that's useful, so definitely check him out. Well, just going back to what we do day to day, This is a little tip for people who may be struggling to balance all of their different clients that they have, because it can get difficult when you have a lot

on your plate. I have been doing time blocking, and that is because I got inspired by Courtney Magnum's recent podcast, which is called She Was the Fire, and she had an whole episode on how she time blocks and I god have a listened to it because it was really inspiring and it's something that I've been trying to implement this week and I found it really effective. Yeah, it was funny. We were working up in Sophie's office and she just kept setting all these timers and it was

crazy how quickly the time does go. I remember you said an hour timer and I was doing some editing and it literally just flew by. So it's a great tip for anyone who needs to be held accountable. And that kind of lends ourselves to the next question which we get asked a lot, which is about business mentors and whether it's a good idea to have one. I definitely think it is important to have a business mentor. We have a business mentor who used to be our

news director. I mean, I don't know if he knows that he's our business mentor, but we do ask him a lot of questions and he's so intelligent and experienced, and I always just love listening to his take on different things. And I think it's also important even just to talk to your mum and dad about these things because everyone's parents have been in the working world for so long, and even just using friends as soundboards for

different ideas as well. I think even when we were going through a bit of a difficult time after we left seven, it was really great to speak to people like Tracy Spicer, who had gone through a similar thing and also runs her own business. So even just speaking

to like minded women like that's really helpful. And it is always great to get advice from someone else who has had a bit more experience than you, because I feel like while a lot of young people like to think that they know everything, there's always something new you can learn. But also if you don't know anybody, there's so many cool people that are on YouTube that do lots of inspiring business talks. And I love listening to Gary Va. I know he's quite divisive. Some people love

him and some people think he's an idiot. But I get really inspired when I hear him, and he's a great one to watch on YouTube and to download on the podcast. And I know this is a bit basic bitch, and people are quite divided on Roxy jusayan Ko, but for me, she's someone that I've really enjoy listening to her different content that she puts out and attended her master class. This was right before we started our business, and it really cemented to me that that was something

that I wanted to do. Do you know what's funny, because I do, you know, people like Rocksing and people like Gary Vee, they talk about more of the sort of grind, which is really cool and I really respect that. But I also do like people who talk more about, you know, choosing a job for the lifestyle of it. And I know, with you and I, one of the reasons we started our business was to be able to provide time to things that we actually wanted to do.

So I would love there to be more chatter about and Gary Vee actually does talk about that a lot, choosing something that you actually enjoy doing rather than just like grinding away day and night making money. And I think that's definitely our mantra for our business. I mean we like to go and have you know, at lunchtime, we'll go and have a walk at the beach and we'll be and sometimes you feel really guilty, but we're like, this is our lunch break, this is why we do

what we do. There's so much guilt put on small bites business owners and women that they're not doing enough. You're always told you're not doing enough. So I think that you know, you've got to let go of that. Yeah, well, Sophie, one question you get asked a lot, I suppose because of the old PR firm you used to work out. It was very much events based and people would say, oh, it's so glamorous, and you know, how do you deal? And is it all smoke and mirrors? What is the

actual reality of being in PR and running really fancy events? Well, well, not really fancy, but you know what I mean, the typical PR events, Well, it was exactly that. It was smoke and mirrors. I mean, I personally, like going from working as a reporter then going into this kind of more event stuff business was a huge shock for me

because I personally hadn't been to that many events. And you know, all of us girls really hated the nights we had events on because we'd have to start work at the normal time, around eight thirty nine, and then you'd just be going till about eleven o'clock at night. And the worst thing about events was we'd always have these like lavish grazing boards or you know, beautiful entrees being served, and we wouldn't be allowed to have any of the food, we wouldn't be allowed to have our

handbag on us. We just had to stand there and basically be there for if anyone had any questions or needed to be introduced to someone. And you know, just having to have an outfit every week as well. I know that might sound glamorous, but it really wasn't, especially when you're not being paid much money to do it. Gosh, I couldn't think of anything worse than doing that. I hate. I actually hate those events. I would rather be sitting

at home in my trackies, just relaxing. Well, just changing the topic completely, I wanted to talk about PR fails because after working in PR, you do actually notice them all the time. Now, have you seen any lately that you've just sort of gone, oh my god, that's ridiculous. Well yeah, well, it's not so much one person doing it. It seems to be a bit of a trend at the moment for influencers who bring out their own new business.

The prfil that I keep seeing is that they're obviously putting all of their time and effort into this business, but they're failing to document the process. Okay, so you're let's just get to the point, because I know everyone loves someone We're just honest. We're talking about people like Sammy Robinson, you know, who's brought out her fashion line one Mile, and people like Shany Grimman who's got her bath the line. Yeah, what is it called? Silk swim swim,

that's it. And when they were bringing it out, it was like they just went quiet on YouTube and and on Instagram somewhat. And it's like, you cannot expect people to buy your clothing line or your swimwear when we don't see anything from me. I mean, the reason I want to buy people's stuff, like influencers things, is because I feel this rapport with them, So you're not going to want to buy it, Like, you can't just go

quiet when you bring out a product. Well, that's something that Mitch and Chloe seemed to be quite good at though, because I heard them speak on a podcast and they said that they they know that they're not going to make huge dollars from their actual ad sense on their YouTube accounts, but they want to keep that up because they know that that is the backbone of their businesses, because people want to know what they're doing. Well. YouTube

is a branding exercise. You know, the money that you make, as you said, it is very minimal compared to what you could be making selling the clothes. But it's like branding for everything you're not going to like, if you're Nike and you haven't worked on branding, no one's going to pay three hundred dollars for your shoes. It's like it's no one's going to pay one hundred dollars for an influencers jumper if we don't know who you like, if we're not engaged in your life anymore. Yeah, that's right.

I do think that is a big pr blunder that influencers are making at the moment. It's one that they can easily rectify. Also being tone deaf, but I think we've touched on that quite a bit. I Mean, this is another one that kind of comes up on a lot of business podcasts. It's when entrepreneurs talk about whether they kind of spotted that that was going to be their passion later in life. Do you think it was something amy that you kind of thought you do one day? Well,

remember we had this discussion with our cousin. It was hilarious because he pointed out that I, in fact would be labeled an entrepreneur because I never did public relations before. So I went from doing a completely different job to actually starting a PR company, which apparently is a deaf shipping entrepreneurial? What am I? I don't know, You're just another word for it. Why didn't study public relations? I studied JO But you when you were working in PR

and then you started business. So anyway, I thought that was kind of funny. I think, if I'm being completely honest, I'm more of the schemer in the business. So I probably would consider myself quite entrepreneurial. But I don't think it really showed any signs as a child, Like It's not like we had, you know, a lemonade stand like

Gary Vee. I mean we used to make lemonade. Well, what we more did was we actually used to film a lot of things, like we used to film us doing skits and that sort of stuff and make poor Mum and Dad watch them. Yeah, we used to always love filming stuff. It was quite funny because we did end up working as news reporters. We did find some vision of us pretending to report on the news, and that was pretty funny. It was pretty funny. So I

suppose we've always been interested in it. But I mean, I, as I've mentioned so many times, I love flipping things. I mean I used to collect hands. I remember I used to collect cans and cash them in for money. I mean, I'm a little more risk adverse, So I don't think that I'm the sort of person like if it was just me, I probably wouldn't have made the leap of faith to start up my own business. But in saying that, I think that's why we make the

perfect match, because we oh the perfect match. The perfect match. Yeah, I just think our skills compliment one another. Well, yeah, Sophie pulls me into line. I'll come up with these hair brain schemes, and most of the time we do actually go with them. It's pretty funny. Though. We'll be in a meeting and Amy's will just get this expression on her face, and I'm sort of like, oh no,

she's gonna come up with some hair brain scheme. But then a lot of the time the client seem to love the idea anyway, so just gotta get a bit creative. That's right. Well, lastly, we thought we'd wrap this up by talking about some inspirational business podcast that we like listening to and we think you guys should get on too,

So if do you have any that you've been listening to. Yeah, I touched on her before, and it was Courtney Mangan who runs PRFM, Spin and Co. And I do love listening to her new podcast, which is She Was the Fire. And then she also had a pre podcast called The Spin Life where they dissected business, so that was one that I've really enjoyed. I've been getting into Georgie Stevenson's Rise and Conquer podcast because she does speak to a

lot of really interesting guests. And I also do love The Health Code by Sarah's Day and Kurt Hills because they do lots of inspirational podcasts about turning your side hustle into your main gig and all of that sort of stuff. So I really do love hearing about how they've been so successful. As I mentioned, Gary Vee, you guys have got to get onto gary V. He is incredible.

I do enjoy listening to it, but I think sometimes because we are so focused on our business, when I listen to a podcast, I like to escape and listen to things that, you know, just fun and happy. Yeah, you've got to be in a mindset to listen to Gary V. I think I was listening to him a bit too much. I was literally I'm like the biggest Gary V fangirl. I always bring it up in conversations

and meeting I'm like, shut up. Everyone loves it. I can tell the clients that have listened to Gary Vee because they're all into the video content, which is my side of things. So anyway, there's some good ones to get into. Oh. Also, I mean it's not really a business one, but I love She's on the Money by Victoria Devine. That's an incredible podcast, is Yeah, I love that one. I think that's probably all we have time for. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode.

If you have enjoyed today's episode, it would be amazing if you could leave us a review on the Apple podcast and whatever Spotify's version of that is. Yeah, we're copying a bit of hate from some of the some influencers fans, so we'd love if you can help us get back up the charts in the podcast Redcup. I think we can do a bit better than a three point five at the moment. But thank you to everyone who has comments. You guys are so kind, Like I

don't even read the negative bronze. I just go to your guys' comments and they're so lovely, So thank you, like a big thank you to everyone who's left us a comment, and please come and join our Facebook community. Yeah, I would love to hear what other business podcast people are listening to and if there's some good people we should be following along the way, and we are hoping to do some more business podcasts in the future. We do have a list of guests that we want to

have on Who's Jans. We want to pick and hopefully give you guys some really useful information. So thanks so much again for listening.