On another occassion, I spoke for about 5 minutes in a radio show (recorded interview) and the host read my URL out totally wrong. Thanks for that! Total waste of time.

If you ever get interviewed by a paper/radio station or on TV be sure to request a blog or homepage link from their site – just drop it in there as an innocent request!:)

If nothing else, once in a while, it is always good to have your opinion ratified… and your ego stroked

Sounds like a no-brainer
but you’d be surprised…

The only exceptions have been in those cases where the newspapers or magazines have also had the online version, one which included the links to the Manolo’s humble shoe blog.

Even the Manolo’s own weekly column in the Express of the Washington Post, generates only the few hundred extra visitors each week.

But, as the same of the time, these exposures have greatly increased the Manolo’s visibility and credibility, and now he is considered one of the experts in the world of shoes and fashion, and weekly receives requests for the interviews.

Bye the way, love the picture.

I was twice featured in our national newspaper, Gave me around 100+ direct traffic and increased my name search a bit.

Nice observation Darren, 2 tumbs up.

Here’s the link to the news BTW:
http://www.carlocab.com/want-to-take-a-peek-on-the-newspaper/

That said, it sounds like a lot of folks do not in fact notice much increase in traffic, but for smaller blogs every little bit helps.

Mel

But the only time a major media outlet will mention another Website or blog is if there is a controversy. Now media outlets have their own blogs that they are promoting.

Now – how do I ask my editor to please allow me to make reference to my blog in the magazine I am writing for?!

(Note: that was a hypothetical question……although I am asking myself this this week!)

In regards to TV… Most folks are not sitting on a computer while watching a morning TV show… hence you don’t get any immediate boost in traffic.

We did get intangibles like additional media coverage along with some exposure to bigger ad networks interested in working with us.

Who knows maybe some advertisers will see the article and then want to buy some ads on my blog!

But mostly what I got was a bunch of spam and paypal scammers offering to buy links on my blog. Made a few nice on-line friends because of it but I’m still waiting for the phone to ring and hear Martha Stewart, Burpee or Smith & Hawken on the other end.

It is hard to keep up with email as it is, but a mention on mainstream media might flood the inbox with more email you don’t want to answer than usual, mixed with a few gems you wouldn’t want to miss :)

Great post, thanks. Scott

Great points, and that’s where we are to. These days we don’t chase these appearances, but we do take advantage of what comes our way.

Media is not that great at driving traffic, that’s not what it’s about. It’s about exposure and getting in front of a new audience, often times an audience rich with people who have access to many more new audiences (read: other journalists watching what their colleagues are doing). That’s huge.

As our Dating & Relationship site has really taken off this past year, we’ve been fortunate enough to get a number of media opportunities, including newspapers, radio, and TV.

These have been overall really great for instant credibility, but there are also some down sides that we didn’t know about beforehand.

While our URL was clearly visible in most every one of these (because we always requested that), we were surprised at the relatively small amount of traffic received as a result.

Radio is great because there’s virtually no prep overhead… you call in and they put you on. Just like writing or filming a piece for our website really.

Newspapers and magazines are great too, same benefits and little drawback.

But TV has a lot of overhead… With the exception of CNN Headline News (which has Dallas offices), every show we’ve talked to asked us to fly out to their studios, whether it was in Hollywood or New York.

Between preparing the trip, packing, traveling, etc, you break your routine. So unless you’ve got your content producing down to a fine science (we’re almost there), your output can take a hit.

On the bright side our unplanned recent Hollywood visit was a great excuse to take a romantic day off together at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills, but our weekly productivity schedule was still severely disrupted.

So upsides and downsides, but overall having a few of these is definitely a good thing.

Have an awesome day!
Dan & Jennifer

I think it has to do to with the fact that unless there is a direct link present, The reader has to take several extra steps in order to get to your site (cut out the article, turn on the computer, type in the url or type keyword into google,).

However, it does give you credibility in your field because traditional media is still looked upon as being the “gold standard” in terms of branding and if you’re looking to expand your platform offline having MSM is crucial.

Now that Problogger has put the stamp of approval that media coverage help bloggers, this is a post titled ‘Top 5 steps for bloggers to get written about in newspapers and magazines’ that was written as part of the Problogger group project months back. The content might be relevant:

http://tinyurl.com/3e4bx9