TuneUp: When A Feature On Good Morning America (GMA) Goes In A Different Direction | Interview With To My Old Racist Earth Founder, Moraya Seeger DeGeare

When A GMA Feature Goes Not The Way You Wanted

When: Wednesday, July 14th, 2020
Time: 1pm EST
Where: At your computer or on your phone.
Price: Free for all during this live broadcast.

The dream came to this New York based relationship therapist - Good Morning America came calling. Moraya Seeger DeGeare of BFF Therapy in Beacon, NY  (you've seen her before at Tin Shingle!) started a chalk conversation movement from her side hustle activist brand - To My Old Racist Earth - during the beginning of the protests in 2020.

A friend saw what she was doing and reached out. That friend worked for Good Morning America, and wanted to feature the movement that encouraged children's participation.

Moraya organized several families for the producers to interview, and a lot of footage was shot. However, what aired was much different than Moraya expected. So much so, that she didn't want to share the full feature with her own following after it aired nation-wide.

In the name of helping others, Moraya has agreed to come on Tin Shingle's next TuneUp to talk about the experience. Here's what we're going to cover:

• The Process: How the Good Morning America segment came to be.

• What to expect: can the star of the story control the narrative?

• Analyzing the segment: What parts triggered Moraya and why.

• "Granddaughter Of": Moraya is the granddaughter of Pete Seeger, the musician who was a major figure during the Civil Rights Movement and in environmental justice. Will this always lead a segment, leaving a person feeling in a shadow?

• What to do next? What if you hate the segment? Should you bury it forever? No. We are going to milk it, and Katie will tell you why.

• Where do we go from here? You got Good Morning America - most people's biggest dream - now what?

• Sought After - but what if you want to steer? Moraya is approached often by the media as an expert in her field. When it comes to building buzz around her chalk movement, she realized that she needed to start pitching - just like everybody else! Katie will give her some tips. Not that she needs them! But all of us need tips and nudges.

• See pictures of this segment in Tin Shingle's blog post, and watch the whole thing.

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Get ideas! Join us live on the broadcast!

If you can't make it to this free broadcast, Tin Shinglers with the Media Membership get 24/7 access to watch any TuneUp whenever they want. Apply for Tin Shingle membership today to get access!

Pitch Whisperer Small Group Training Meets Today 8/26/2020

Hello!
Today is Small Group Training time.

Last session we experienced a big breakthrough for one of the members on the call. Valerie Rice, Trend Analyst and Communications Director for Vital Pet Life, maker of Wild Alaskan Salmon Oil for pets, had just launched a press release, and wanted to brainstorm how to build off of it.

The breakthrough was this: the press release mentioned that the salmon oil is the only MSC Certified Sustainable available. There may be others to market in the future, but right now, according to Valerie, Vital Pet Life is the first to make the commitment and the investment.

That's amazing, but...what does "sustainable" really mean? Another member on the call had this question, as did Katie of Tin Shingle. This revealing question yielded several insights that Valerie can use in her pitching of the media, including:

• Defining a buzz-word like "sustainable" is important in the pitch. There's a lot to it that makes the pitch even more enticing.

• Educating in what "sustainable" means in general to different types of reporters is useful. Not everyone is well-versed in wellness. These can be spin-off pitches, where you have more reasons to email the media.

• Remembering that not everyone knows everything. Another member on the call did not know about the benefits of salmon-oil to humans or dogs. This may be common-knowledge for some, but it's a good reminder for every business owner and PR specialist that not everyone knows everything, and there is still room to educate.

If you are a member of Tin Shingle, come on today's Members-Only TuneUp! These are closed sessions, and not open to the public. You can turn on your video camera to speak eye-to-eye, or just talk on the phone or through your computer speakers.

In this series, members of Tin Shingle with the Media Kit Membership can call in to workshop any need in their marketing campaign, including:

• Media Pitching: What a pitch to a certain media outlet should look like, and how it should read.

• Facebook: How do you increase traffic from this platform?

• Website: The media will circle back to evaluate their website. What are they seeing, and is it clear?

• SEO: What's your game plan? Let's get one. You don't want to miss out on all that search traffic.

DATES
These are drop-in sessions. You don't need to commit to them all, but results are best when you do. These are every other Wednesday.
WED, AUG 26, 2020, 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM EDT
WED, SEP 9, 2020, 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM EDT


HOW IT WORKS:
Tin Shingle's owner Katie will moderate the call.

She will rotate through people on the call, and encourage each other to contribute to each person's challenge as a conversation.

CALL-IN DETAILS
When you are logged into your Media Kit Member account at Tin Shingle, you will be able to click this link in our Community section of the website to get the private link to call in details.

Once on the call, Katie will adjust your settings so that we can hear and/or see you. We love talking face-to-face, so turn your video on if you want. Otherwise, audio-only is fine.

Featuring Your Success Stories for Valentine's Day Gift Guides

Hello and Happy Monday!

If you've been in this game for a while, you'll know that your next big chance for Holiday Gift Guides is happening now - and it's Valentine's Day. This week's live Tin Shingle TuneUp is focusing on how to pitch Valentine's Day Gift Guides. The bigger magazines have already filled this, but you have a chance elsewhere.

We Want To Feature Your Gift Guide Success Story

Did you land a Valentine's Day Gift Guide? Are you a business owner, artist or maker who did this? Are you a PR professional who did this? We want to hear from all of you.

We are sharing success stories during this week's Tin Shingle Training TuneUp - if you send them.
Contact us here with how you did it. Can be a quick email - just let us know! We want to feature your clever tricks.

Dream Come True: Hudson Henry's Good News Granola Featured on Today Show with Kathie Lee and Hoda 4th Hour

This morning, I was watching the Today Show at my sister-in-law's house while on a family visit. I watched a few segments that featured some products and organizational ideas (that possibly were sourced by organization experts in other small business communities like In Good Company), and I thought about Hope Lawrence at Hudson Henry Baking Co., and how her dream (as stated even on her packaging) is to have her "Good News Granola" featured on the Today Show. She's been working towards that dream and it's actually how she found Tin Shingle: she wanted to get on the Today Show, and discovered that our business membership program had the components to make that dream a reality.

After making my children's breakfast, I'd actually turned off the Today Show so that I could focus on getting them dressed and getting out the door. Moments later, Sabina, Tin Shingle's co-founder and my business partner, emailed me saying: "It happened!!"

"What happened?", I wondered. I dove into the email to learn that Kathie Lee and Hoda just aired a feature of Good News Granola as one of their Favorite Things. (It's also my favorite granola snack that is always stocked in my cupboards...)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What a glorious way to start a Monday!  Now here's something you should know: Tin Shingle is all about empowering entrepreneurs like Hope to build buzz - that's what we do, day in and day out.  We demystify PR, social and online marketing via education, motivation tools and tips so that you can be sure people hear, see and read about your business.

The founder of this granola company that was featured on the Today Show, Hope Lawrence, is a member of Tin Shingle and is especially inspiring to me because she is a mother of two boys who started her granola business so that she could build a business and raise a family. Every decision she makes is made around her family. She doesn't move as quickly as other entrepreneurs because she's on a family vacation, or picking up her son, or is baking granola. But she does it at her own pace. Sabina and I call that a "holistic business" approach, and it's one we try to live by as well. Very often, entrepreneurs in our field don't have families, and they have many more hours in the day and night to grow their business. But the pace of an entrepreneur with a family is slower, and that pace just paid off for Hope.

Hope landed this segment with persistence, patience and by following Tin Shingle's Membership Program. She used several Tin Shingle membership tools to help her get featured on the Today Show. Here is how Hope got featured on the Today Show with Kathie Lee and Hoda:

• Hope read our (free) articles in the Ask the Expert section to learn how to pitch the Today Show and Kathie Lee & Hoda 4th Hour.
• She attended our #PRTuneUps including the virtual classes about how to land a spot on a morning show.
• Hope used our community and resources to check and get feedback on her pitch to strengthen it before she sent in to the show's producers. This helped ensure her pitch was in tip top Today Show shape.
• Hope used our Media Contacts to pitch her product to the right producers.
• Hope then used strategic emails to follow up with the producers and then waited when she needed to. When she had questions she took them to our Community Forum to get thoughts from others who'd been in her position.

And really, Hope had hope for her product, created fantastic packaging, has a darn cute website, and has enough spunk and "wow factor" that her brand was a fit for the show.

We are so thrilled!

See her packaging here, which truly illustrates her belief in the power of good messages. She states her mantras, one of which is to "Ask for what you want". See the first sentence in the packaging "My dream is that this little granola company will allow me to spend my days with my boys and land a spot on the Today Show":

Done. Mission accomplished thanks to Tin Shingle's Membership Program. Play the clip below: