As many of you know, if you follow Tin Shingle’s Instagram, I’m a big fan of the radio/podcast series of shows under Marketplace from APM (American Public Media). All of the Marketplace shows. Your business definitely wants to be showcased there, in some capacity. The benefit of business news is that it gives your business validation - as a business. Not just as a service or product that people really want to buy. Of course you want that :) But you also want to be a contributor to how businesses are thinking right now.
In Tin Shingle’s PR Leads section, that you can access with a membership with Tin Shingle, you’ll find a suggestion to pitch the “My Economy” segment that airs from time to time on Marketplace. It’s where Marketplace host Kai Rysdall interviews a business owner for their take on their corner of the economy. He wants to know how the pandemic shifted the business, or how a life transition transformed the business or started a new one. Anything that has to do with trends (good or bad) in the economy right now, he wants to know about it as it relates to your business. Sometimes he has back a guest as a followup!
The story angle must be money-focused, as well as small-business focused. Ideas can include life-based transitions, pandemic-based transitions, supply-chain-induced transitions, anything related to money and regular life and how it help or hurt the business.
Producers seem to like a focus on a money-shift as it relates to current events. So if it's the sad, sad war in Ukraine, the pandemic, BLM (Black Lives Matter), a fight for living a normal life in the LGBTQ (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans Queer) community, transitioned life as a parent or caregiver, etc.
Recent recorded features have included:
A traveling barber makes house calls and friends
Tara Morgan roves Vashon Island to help customers look spiffy. Her business, C'Mon Barber, is the result of a midlife transition.
Role reversal at home has allowed her photo studio to grow during the pandemic
When her husband started working from home, Liz Hansen was able to spend more time at her boudoir-style photography business.
How a Kentucky teen is balancing work and her first year of college
Aneesha Edwards has a full tuition scholarship but still expects to take on about $10,000 of debt every year she's in school.
This Maine fishery owner tries to keep an even keel amid volatile scallop prices
"How do you set your price when you don’t know if it’s going to be $12 a pound or $37 a pound?" says Togue Brawn of Downeast Dayboat.
Interviews are few, so this is a difficult spot to land. Use Tin Shingle’s Pitch Whisperer in the Google Group to run a draft of your pitch by us (ok, me, Katie) to see how it reads, and if it can be catchier. Feeling shy? You can book a Private Session no problem.