Sometimes you can get your small business or company great publicity and media exposure without pitching your company or products for a story. How? Instead try pitching yourself as a person who’s got the credentials to talk about a different story that’s going on in the news.

To find an example of this I only had to open up the pages of my hometown newspaper, the Sun-Sentinel here in South Florida. Chinese Drywall is an issue largely in the local news in South Florida that has to do with bad drywall sourced from China and used during the building boom a few years ago. The drywall has been pointed to as a large reason why homes (some worth millions) have been decaying from the inside out. What’s worse, toxins believed to be in the chemistry of the wallboard can make some people very sick.

As you can imagine, the local newspapers and media - some national media have even caught on to the story - have been writing stories almost on a daily basis. So here’s the opportunity: The writers of these stories need people to quote to get information. And because they’re writing stories almost daily, they need to find a lot of people to speak with. All kinds of professional experts have been quoted, including people from industries such as insurance, construction, medical, lifestyle and even environmental.

Many of the people quoted in these stories have absolutely nothing to do with any of the homes that have been affected. But because they see the value in publicity - and in helping out reporters - they’re able to be quoted in the paper for the stories. Many companies do similar PR strategies for annual events, like environmental angles on Earth Day.

Here’s the significant value and true opportunity for you as a small business owner or entrepreneur: The people who are quoted are read by hundreds of thousands of others. And these readers see you as an authority figure in your area. From a marketing and sales perspective, if a reader needs a particular company to call that falls in your area of expertise, they’re most likely going to call you because you appeared in the paper and seem trustworthy. That’s the power of PR.

So what’s your area of expertise? Are there any local or national stories taking place where you could position yourself as an authority figure? Tell us about it here. Download the PR Toolkit to learn how to do this kind of PR. And here are other great resources for getting publicity for your small business:

The Publicity Handbook

Guerrilla Marketing, 4th edition: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your SmallBusiness

MarketWire

Working with the Media