Building Brand Authority Through PR with Lydia Bagarozza

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

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Ann Morrissey: Welcome back to another episode of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. This is Ann from the Food Blogger Pro team. And in this episode, Bjork sits down with PR expert Lydia Bagarozza to demystify proactive PR, showing that it’s less about crisis control and more about shaping brand perception and earning credibility through the media. Lydia breaks down how to pitch timely newsworthy stories to the right editors and producers and why clear positioning and specific expertise can turn a pitch into a yes. The conversation also makes the case for PR as a long-term investment. Lydia explains how appearing in respected publications and local news builds social proof, backlinks, and brand signals that feed into SEO, AI visibility, and trust. And she shares go-to tools like quoted connectively and help a reporter out for finding real media opportunities. If you’ve been curious about earning press for your brand, this episode is a great place to start. And now without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Lydia, welcome to the podcast.

Lydia Bagarozza: Thank you for having me. So excited to be here.

Bjork Ostrom: We’re going to be talking about all things PR. I think people hear PR and they think that they know what it is. They maybe have a general idea of it, but give me a little bit of an overview. What is PR? Why is it important? And is it different than when I think of PR, sometimes I think of like, oh, it’s a PR nightmare. Oh, you got to go and correct this thing that happened and you got to fix it. So that as PR. But what we’re going to be talking about today is actually proactive PR. So let’s just lay the groundwork. How would you define what it is that you do when we talk about PR?

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah, it’s funny that you said that. People ask me all the time, “Oh, that’s crisis management, right?” I’m like, “No, that’s not what we do.” So PR stands for public relations, and it’s the idea of helping the audience or helping people, the masses, understand the perception of your brand. So it’s really about creating that brand awareness and also sharing your narrative and your story online and in the media so that people really understand and know your name or your name, your blog, your brand, what it stands for, and really what you do and what makes you different from other brands.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So can you give a couple examples? I know that you work a lot with CPG brands. So number one, define what CPG is. In the food world as well, what would be an example of doing PR for a CPG brand or a beverage brand?

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah, for sure. So CPG stands for consumer product goods. And so we work a lot with product brands. A lot of them are food and bev, so perfect for the topic today. And so what that really looks like is, let’s be honest, there’s many, many products out there and everyone kind of has already invented something. So what makes your brand or your product stand out from others in your category? I think for example, Graza olive oil, they do a really good job of this because they kind of reinvented something that’s been around for a long time. Olive oil has been around for a long time, but their brand is very modern, very fun. It has a totally different application. If you don’t know, it’s basically like the squeeze-bottle brand with the fun green font. And so it’s really about how do we basically share the experience with others in words, with publications. So when we’re talking about our favorite olive oil brand as a consumer, we can think of, or we’ll have Graza olive oil as top of mind.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. So I can imagine that with a brand. You want to get in front of people, you want to have your brand have this kind of awareness factor. So hey, if you show up on the morning news, if you show up in a article on Star Tribune, which is the paper here in Minneapolis, that’s beneficial because then next time somebody’s in the store, they’re like, “Oh, I’m going to go check this out.” It’s kind of like you’re winning that in having. Well, I guess how? How are you doing that? So you have contacts, you reach out to those contacts. My guess is a huge part of it is the angle or the story. And then there’s probably some that are like, I think of the local morning news 10 years ago. Lindsay or I reached out and were like, “Hey, would you be interested in us having this come on?” They’re like, yes. It was kind of like they’re almost desperate, but we really want somebody to come on, but then there’s other ones that are going to be harder. So strategically, if you are trying to think about getting in front of these media outlets, how are you doing that both as an agency or how should publishers and bloggers be thinking about it?

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah. Yeah. So I would say first off, there’s a perception change that I think a lot of us need to understand, which is that you’re most likely not going to get discovered unless you have a lot of followers or a big following, in which case you’re building that credibility more locally. And you don’t need to do that by the way. You don’t need to have a lot of followers in order to be featured. So there’s ways you can go about doing this. I personally think that PR is faster to get there than trying to go viral on certain pages, but I understand, of course, their strategies for that. But the way that you would reach out is exactly like what you said. I’m so happy that you said that the morning news are excited to have you on because I think something we don’t realize is that the media is looking for you, but it’s kind of like needle in a haystack. So the way that the industry works is brands or publicists will reach out to the writer or reach out to the producer. It’s not the other way around. That’s just how the industry’s worked for a really long time. We’re kind of all in this beautiful little machine and that’s how we work together. It’s very collaborative. So if you’re a brand listening today and you’re like, “I really want to get on local TV,” a great way to do that is to reach out to them and then remember that they’re always looking at what is relevant, timely, newsworthy right now. So say you are a chef and you would love to come on to talk about fun different recipes for the summer. Summer is about to happen. That would be a great way to reach out to them and say, “Hey, I think it could be fun to bring a really simple salad recipe. I can bring the ingredients. I’d love to come on your show.” Where you’re providing them with value and they’re already interested in thinking about seasonal stories and making them interested or more likely to say yes. So that’s just an example of something that you can do for local TV. But if we’re thinking about online publications, the exact same thing applies. So I’ll go back to the olive oil example, but say I’m Graza Olive oil and I want to reach out for a summer story. Maybe I say the best summer must-haves for your barbecue. And I can reach out in this timely, newsworthy way where I’m still able to highlight my brand and talk about the differences of how it makes it unique, but also really align it with the seasons of what they’re really covering at this time.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It seems like that in and of itself, that idea of you need to reach out is an important one. We think of that and have that conversation a lot in brand partnerships. So you are reaching out to a brand you really want to work with and you want them to pay you. And I think when people are initially getting started, the initial thought is like, “Hey, these brands will just reach out,” which sometimes does happen.

Lydia Bagarozza: Similarly,

Bjork Ostrom: It’s like occasionally you’ll get Star Trib here in Twin Cities, reach out to us. And Lindsay had written an article about her favorite NA drinks and they’re like, “It’s January. We’re doing a dry January thing. Would love for you to weigh in on it.” And one of the things she said when we were having a conversation with her, she’s like, “I’m really surprised that we’ve never partnered on anything at the Star Tribe before because you guys have been, we’ve been doing it for 15 years and we’ve lived here our whole lives.” But it’s like we’ve never reached out and I’m sure everybody there is busy doing their own thing. So you really have to be intentional is what I hear you saying. You have to think about pitching and in a similar way to how you’d pitch to a brand. My guess is within that pitch, there’s a couple things important. Number one, who you’re reaching out to so that you’re getting to the right person. And then within that, that you’re crafting a compelling story that will make their job easier. So how do you know who to reach out to and how do you Set something up in the best way possible to make whoever it is on the other end receiving that say yes to whatever your idea is?

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah. You’re spot on with all of this. So I will say every strategy, it takes a little bit of time. So my whole spiel I would say is like, “Hey, how much time do you spend on social media? And what is that really doing for you?” And then this is not to bash social media by any means. I think it’s really important to have a robust social media because it kind of acts as a business card or it acts as a space for our current audience to stay up to date with what we’re doing. And especially for food blogging, I think it’s probably extremely important in that space. But what’s also important too is thinking about the other areas that bring new audience members in. So PR is kind of borrowing other people’s audiences. So if we get on a TV news segment or if we get on a publication like Food and Wine, for example, those are new places where new audiences that are aligned with something that we’re already doing, it gives them an access point essentially to us or an avenue to our pages. And then of course, online stuff is really good for PR. It also populates our brand and LLMs, and we can talk about that in a little bit if you’re interested in some AI conversation. But when we’re thinking about who to reach out to, to answer your question, it’s really thinking about, okay, who are we and what are we looking to communicate or do? So say I’m a chef and I really want to be an expert for a story about different types of food. Maybe I’m a vegan chef and I really want to talk about vegan cooking. I would then look up vegan sites. You can also look up food publications as a whole, and you’re going to look up the food editor or you can do lifestyle sometimes. Sometimes lifestyle, they cover a lot of different topics. Maybe they cover clean eating, something like that. And I would take the time to just create a spreadsheet where it’s like, all right, food and wine, here’s the food writer. Bon Apetit, here’s the other food writer. These are the things that they cover. And so when you do that, it probably takes an hour or so. You have a nice healthy list that you can reach out to time and time again with different angles. Sometimes it’s a little bit of a, not like a numbers game, but kind of where it’s like we kind of want to pitch one angle that’s timely. Pitching meaning reaching out, emailing that angle, and see if they’re interested in covering it. And then we get to pivot with the different angle or with the different seasons and whatnot. So yes, it’s really important to reach out to the right person. Also, we don’t want to waste our time or anybody else’s time reaching out to the beauty editor if we’re not looking for beauty content. So I would recommend taking a little bit of time. Sometimes I even recommend doing it in front of the TV when you’re watching a movie and just create a little spreadsheet for yourself and it’s something you can use time and time again.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Let’s talk about the AI piece. It’s interesting. There’s so many people who are interested in the world of AI. There’s so many contemplations around, in our world, a lot of people are thinking, do we want to be showing up in search results in AI? Because is it going to display our recipe? Is it going to display all the recipe? A lot of back and forth around should we block AI? Should we not? But let’s assume that we want to show up in as many places as possible. And I will say this, I think it’s also really important just from an authority standpoint. And there’s this ambiguous, you need to be authoritative, you need to have a strong brand. What does that mean? A lot of things, but I think one of them is that you are showing up in other places where there’s credibility. What does credibility mean? The two extremes that I think of would be on one extreme, we show up in really the lowest of low-end sites where they’re scraping content, they’re including links. The site is maybe there for three months and then it’s taken down. Who knows what or why? But if you look through our data of link content, you can see this stuff popping up. Is that helpful for us as a brand for Pinch of Yum? Probably not. So that would be one way to show up. On the very other end of the extreme would be these more established news sites. And so these are ones like, I don’t know, New York Times or The Atlantic, long-form, well-established, well-known sites. And what would happen if Pinch of Yum every week was showing up in one of these established news sites or local news or Good Morning America as another example? That would be hugely beneficial in my opinion. We don’t have any concrete data to look at from a SEO or showing up in AI algorithms, but there is the online component of it. Are you building authority? Are you building credibility? And that’s not even touching the general awareness piece, which is like somebody sees it and they’re like, “Oh, this is really interesting.” You’re probably not going to get a lot of direct traffic from it. You are on Good Morning America and it’s not like then the next day you have 50,000 views Or page views on your site. But talk about the piece from a PR standpoint, how you have seen and how you are advising people. And it could be bloggers, publishers, creators, or it could be brands as well. It’s maybe a little bit easier to talk about it within the context of brands, but how you are advising people to think about the PR angle and then showing up when somebody searches what are the top Minnesota food bloggers? I don’t know. That would be an example where hopefully if somebody searched out in Minnesota, Pinch of Yam would show up. Or what are the best food sites for vegan? Okay, you’re going to have to have some authority and credibility to show up there. So what does that look like on your side? I wonder if you’ve seen.

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah, absolutely. I love that you touched on brand credibility and authority. First off, whoever’s listening, if you’re thinking I don’t have any credibility or authority, you do. So that can be built in lots of different ways. That can be built like for example, say you are a chef and now you have a food blog, or maybe you worked in restaurants for the past 15 years and you’ve always been interested in just trying different recipes and you’ve been a foodie and you started an Instagram and then it turned into this and that. And there’s lots of ways to talk about credibility. So I will say that’s step one is your personal credibility. Could be life experience, could be academic, whatever that is. Then your second layer of credibility is how are you credible in your brand in the context of a brand and online? So that could be that you have a lot of followers. Maybe you don’t have a lot of followers and that’s also okay. So then in the context of other followers, I mean, I think everything eventually will come with time, but if you don’t have a lot of followers, you’re looking to earn credibility, everything looks good, your brand looks good on the backend, you’re ready to go. The next step I would say is getting featured into magazines. And so getting featured into magazines, we would talk about the stuff that we were talking about before and getting associated with New York Times, Good Morning America, those things. Credibility can be used in so many different areas. It doesn’t just mean those vanity pieces of getting the features. It also means that you can put those logos on your website. You can talk about it when you’re speaking with others, and then also it can populate onto AI. So AI pulls from earned media over everything else, which is very great for my whole thing because we talk about building authority through PR. But it’s basically pulling from all these earned media sites, earned me – Could you find what that is?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah, of course. Earned media means that you are not paying to get featured. So we’re not saying it’s an advertisement. The only exchange is you’re providing value for access to their audience. So if Bjork, you get featured talking about the blog, they’re wanting your information, your expertise. And so you might get interviewed for a story about how to build a blog from scratch, and then that link would go directly to your website. So it’s creating this backlink essentially, which is going to help your SEO. And it’s also going to inform Google and ChatGPT or any AI model that you are an expert. So I don’t really know necessarily how to block AI. And I completely understand that that could be something scary, but I’m not really sure if we have full control over what’s available online these days. I really don’t know because if you like.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s also a hard piece where it’s like you can put these text in internet world. In internet speak, you can have a robots.txt, which can give a directive to have certain bots crawl or not crawl. Terms of service, you can outline it there. But to your point, the question is how much are these bots respecting that?

Lydia Bagarozza: And that’s still not clearly defined. But I think even if we don’t know exactly what that looks like, what we do know is what should your sentiment as a creator be around blocking or not blocking? We’ve decided that we’re not going to block, but I think this is getting into the weeds a little bit, some people in the creator space will follow pretty closely. I think the risk for us is that if we are not blocking explicitly within robots.txt, then eventually down the line there will be some litigious outcome where we would get a payment as a creator. And if we weren’t explicitly blocking them, then it would’ve been kind of double-dipping.

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah, there’s a lot of things going on in the backend with that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. But our general thought with it is it’s good to show up in as many places as possible As long as the way that you’re showing up isn’t with your content being completely replicated and displayed within the chat result. And so we’ve had other conversations with creators where we’ve talked about, “Hey, if a recipe is just showing up in an AI overview, that’s bad. If your brand is showing up when somebody searches healthy food creators or vegan food creators or best creators for Christmas cookies, that’s good.” And so there’s this hard in between where as creators, we’re trying to figure out what does that look like? My general thought with it has been, “Hey, let’s push to do whatever we can to influence what the output of these results look like.” Raptiv has had, which is an ad agency that we work with, some great initiatives around really speaking directly to or as directly as they can to some of these channels like Google to say, “Hey, you can’t display the recipe in a search result.” And so we’ve had some of these conversations, some great interviews on the podcast around that. But it’s a little bit harder in the world of creating content, especially on a blog, where the thing you are selling is the content. And if that shows up in its purest form or its most original form in the search result, that’s going to be negative. But for a brand, I think even last night we were putting our girls to bed in five and seven, and we have this kind of wooded area in our backyard and one of our daughters had a tick and we’re like, “Oh, shoot.” And it’s like, I’ll get around to it here. My point with the story is that we were bummed. We had previously sprayed and we decided not to because we also don’t like the idea of spraying for ticks. So then I just did some research. Where I go for that now is Claude and ChatGPT. And who are the most reputable companies near me that would do perimeter-based tick spraying? I follow up conversations and then I whittle it down to like, okay, here’s the brand. I take that. I create a to-do for today to call this company. And so I could imagine that being extremely beneficial in the context of product or if you have something that you’re actually selling, what’s the best natural cereal? What’s the best NA cocktail? And then as a brand, a creator brand, if you are showing up around these general terms or ideas that people are searching, I think of a bunch of different examples, friends from the past as food creators, hundred days of real food. It’s like, oh, if people are searching for real food, they would want to show up. So can you talk a little bit about what you would see as the benefit on the other side? So you get these placements, you’re able to show up in the morning news. And my guess is you probably start small. Start with local news, start with morning news. You build some social proof, which then you can point to in the future and kind of build to get more exposure on these bigger platforms. Talk to me about as a creator, what would be the reason to do that and the motivation to do that? And my guess is it also ties into cookbooks and things like that as well. Before we continue, let’s take a moment to hear from our sponsors. Building a creator business isn’t getting any easier. Between AI, constant platform changes, and the pressure to keep growing, it can feel like you’re running just to keep up. That’s why we’re excited to partner with Raptive. Raptive works with thousands of the webs leading independent creators, including us, to help them earn more, grow smarter, and build sustainable businesses for the long term. They combine industry-leading advertising with personalized guidance, data-driven insights, and a team that’s constantly helping creators adapt to changes in search AI in the broader digital landscape. They’re also leading the charge to protect creator content and advocate for a future where independent creators can continue to thrive. And now it’s easier than ever to join. If your site gets at least 25,000 monthly pages, you can apply to become part of the Raptive creator community and get support that’s designed to grow with your business. To learn more or apply, visit raptive.com/fbp. Thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode.

Lydia Bagarozza: So you don’t necessarily have to start small. What I mean by that is if you have those credential pieces backing you. So say you are a chef, a certified chef, that is a credential where you could go directly to a big publication and you can get quoted in a story of how to make the best sourdough, something like that. Now, if you are somebody who doesn’t have those necessarily typical credentials, you might want to start small first and then build your way up because it’s building that credibility. So that’s what I meant before by your credibility needs to come from somewhere. And there’s different layers of that credibility, but there’s always ways to continue to grow, which is really cool about credibility. And then I love what you were talking about in terms of population, company population, brand population on ChatGPT or on Claude. So a lot of people are using these AI platforms instead of Google. And we used to use Google as the same way of I want my brand to populate on Google. And so now I think we need to start thinking of the context of I want AI to populate my brand. And what’s cool about it pulling from earned media is we’re kind of in control of that in a way. I personally want to be in control of the way that I’m perceived online. So if I’m approaching my PR strategy with I’m pitching Food and Wine, I’m pitching Bon Appetit, I’m pitching X, Y, and Z, Martha Stewart, Pioneer Woman, and I want to get those features, I am then getting interviewed in an area of my expertise. Whatever is getting narrated online is now in the ethers with AI. And so it’s naturally pulling things that I’m already an expert in because that’s the way it’s getting fed information. So you’re kind of in control of the way that your brand is perceived online. And the way I think of a good well-rounded press trail, if you will, is topics that I’m an expert in and speaking on. So say even we could go back to Graza olive oil, but say the brand is featured in the top cool new products for your kitchen, and then they’re also featured in the best tasting olive oil. And then it’s like, here’s the best application for your olive oil. It’s like they’re all those different differentiators that we’re expert in or something that we want to be highlighted. That’s all being fed to AI. And when you are typing into AI and you’re asking questions, they’re going to a lot of the times link where these sources are coming from. And so it’ll link and say, oh, we got this from Bon Appetit or X, Y, and Z. So it’s not fully giving you information where it’s not sourcing these things. So AI is getting better. It’s learning for sure, and there’s definitely some kinks in it. But I will say if you’re trying to build credibility and really be a brand that’s more of a household name, I think it is important to think about as a strategy.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Can you talk through, let’s say Pinch of Yum, you don’t have to know anything about Pinch of Yum, but let’s say it’s – Oh,

Lydia Bagarozza: I creeped on you guys. Okay.

Bjork Ostrom: So you have a little bit of context. Let’s say we came to you and we’re like, “Hey, we really want to, as a food creator, we want to figure out how to increase our authority online or we want to show up in more places.” Walk me through what that looks like.

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah. So I had a client that was a chef and they had recipes that they wanted to get featured on the other places. So would you want your recipes to be featured somewhere?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I mean, I think that would maybe be part of the conversation is Pinch of Yum makes money through people visiting the site, so it’s traffic. Yes. It’s occasionally we’ll do meal plans. So we’ll sell meal plans that people will sign up for. It’s occasionally branded sponsorship. So we partner with the brand and they pay us money to do an Instagram reel, and then maybe some affiliate income. So In a situation like that, would you say, would we still be a candidate for if we’re just generally looking for more traffic? We don’t really necessarily have a product that we’re trying to sell. The product is the content. Personally, I think the main benefit for us would be links. We would have links on Good Morning America or links on the local news. And that just generally is a good thing. We’re showing up more, the brand is showing up more. Lindsay, who does the content creation on Pinch of Yum, is seen more as an authority or a data figure, which would be my perceived benefit of it. So add anything that you feel like should be considered there, and then talk me through what that would look like if we came to you with that as our goal.

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah, absolutely. So what I would do first, I’m like, “Here we go. We’re going to do a whole strategy live.” What I would do first is I would think about your credibility or your credit line. So that’s the way that we basically say I’m a whatever your titles are. So you would say Lindsay, founder and creator at Pinch of Yum. Then you would think about how do I position myself as an authority and introduce myself to these publications? So because the website has good traffic, maybe you’ve worked with different brands and partnerships, you were already featured in a local station, I would mention those things. So say that we are a food blog based out of X, Y, and Z. We have had over the past few years, we are known for reaching this amount of followers and traffic. Been featured recently on X, Y, and Z. So we’re positioning ourselves to be an authority. So if I were to read this as a writer, I instantly am like, oh, okay, they have a lot of traffic on their site. They were already featured. They have worked with this brand before. So I think when we’re thinking about those credibility pieces, we want to position ourselves as an authority when we’re approaching someone. And then once we approach them, we want to also think about, well, before we approach them, we want to think about what do we actually want to be known for? What information do we want to be interviewed on? So maybe it would be more business sites and you want to get interviewed on how to make a blog successful. That is something that you’re an expert in. It might not necessarily be the direct audience, but it’ll definitely be people interested in blogs. And then you create that backlink, so getting featured on Ink or Entrepreneur or Forbes or something. And then you get that backlink that goes directly to your site and you could just say, “I was featured in Forbes and Inc.” And sometimes those logos are actually really good for investors. I know some people have goals of going to investors and they can say, “Hey, my site performs and I’ve also been featured on X, Y, and Z.” And so I think when we’re thinking about PR, it’s thinking about where do I want to be in five, 10 years? And let’s backtrack and build a PR campaign that supports that to get there. Now, if we want to put maybe the best two meal preps that’ll feed your whole family for the week for Monday through Friday, and we want to reach out with some recipes, you could totally get some features and some recipes where they say, “Lindsay from this site is linked here. Here’s the recipes. You can go here for more.” So it’s basically creating all these links and these owning your, I want to say authority and owning your place in your market share online. That’s kind of what you’re doing and what you’re building. So I would look at different areas of where you want to be featured. Maybe it’s recipes, maybe it’s talking about building a successful blog or food blog, and really hone in on those areas of expertise and go for that on different sites that are aligned.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s interesting. It’s almost like the first most important thing is positioning.

Lydia Bagarozza: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: And that’s why maybe Pinch of Yum would be hard because it is such a broad general site. But the more niche you get, you do healthy food for kids. Okay, man, we could think of 10 different ways that you could position that over the summer for busy parents who don’t want to do fast food and showing up in all these different places talking about, here’s how to do. We have soccer practice tonight and we’re trying to figure out, okay, so do we do packed lunch for the girls? What do Lindsay and I eat? We’re trying to figure that out. I’m guessing a hundred thousand other people are trying to figure that out tonight. So it’s like positioning, which we should all be doing and thinking about. And then once it’s positioning, then it’s taking that positioning and pitching it to these different companies. My guess is once you have something that is compelling from a story perspective and something that would be compelling for the publisher, for you as the creator, say, yeah, I want to be talking about this. It’s important for me to build this as my brand, then it’s working through that list. That’s one of the main benefits with working with an agency like yours is that list, those people, the preexisting contacts that you have that after you shape that, you can start to reach out to those people. So talk about what that process is like. And maybe if somebody’s doing this on their own, they’re kind of doing the DIY version. I think we kind of see what the arc looks like. You’re building your own list, you’re doing your own reaching out. It’s a lot of work. My guess is most people won’t have the time for that. So then they decide to work with a PR agency. What does that working relationship look like and what can they expect in terms of stages of the process? Is it a year-long engagement? How does it work to actually work with the PR agency as a creator?

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah, for sure. So at Visibility on Purpose, we do more done with you options. And then I do have my own agency, which could be the next step. So essentially what Bridget and I realized was that there literally is no starting point for brands when it comes to PR. It’s either zero to a hundred. I’ve worked in PR for over 10 years and I understand that it can be a big investment. I know that the reward is great and it’s a fantastic strategy to implement and to have for the long term, but it can be pricey and it can be a lot for brands that are just starting out.

Bjork Ostrom: When you say pricey, what does that look like, price range?

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah, I mean I would say to work with a good PR team, the minimum you’re probably looking at is like 2,000 a month.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep.

Lydia Bagarozza: Just as a retainer.

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah, as a retainer. And the way that PR works is it’s a relationship building type of thing, so it does take time. So typically the retainers are six months or a year. So I’ve had brands come to me and say, “I spent $60,000 and I got nothing,” and that makes me so upset to hear. I’m like, “Guys, whoever’s doing that, please stop ruining our industry. Thank you. Bye.” But what I will say is for brands that are boutique or just starting out or have never gotten PR before, if you’re interested in working with somebody, work with a boutique agency. Boutique agencies understand startups and startups, that’s their expertise. And so they’re going to understand how to position you well, and they’re going to understand what it takes to break into these big publications. My biggest no-no, and I’m sorry for the big agencies, is if you are not a huge brand, you shouldn’t be working with a big agency. That’s kind of where they thrive and they will take on some startups here and there. And I think some can maybe do well. It’s not a blanket statement for all, but I would recommend really starting out with somebody who maybe has the case studies to back working with somebody of your size just when you’re starting.

Bjork Ostrom: How do you know if they’re boutique? Just from case studies they have or previous clients they’ve had?

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah, I would ask for case studies. I would ask for case studies and really take a look at the different brands. If they have the world’s biggest brands on their list or the brands that you’re like, “Oh, I would dream to be them someday.” It could be a potential almost red flag just starting out, you definitely can get there just because they work with brands that already have established names, and so their relationships and their skillset’s a little different. So that’s what I would say there. But if you’re doing done with you kind of thing where you’re having somebody help you with the pitch or having somebody help you with the list building, which is something we offer at Visibility on Purpose, it’s way more affordable. So it’s done with you, but we really help feed you those opportunities and how to build everything. I think it’s great to learn the landscape of media and understand it before you even work with a publicist or a big agency because it also helps you understand how to position your brand really well and how to best support them. We only know what you tell us and a good publicist will ask you the right questions to help position you well. But I think it can be really cool to get that education piece. And what’s nice about it is you also start building relationships yourself with writers. Writers will come back to you if they like working with you. So for example, going back to the chef, we had a chef for about six months and there was one writer that absolutely loved her responses. She emailed us every two weeks and was like, “Hey, I’m writing a story on this. Can I interview them for this? Hey, I’m writing a story on this. Can I interview them on this?” And this writer was a freelancer, and so she worked with a lot of different publications. So they got a feature in Martha Stewart, Bedge News. Where else? There was another blog that was a really good high caliber food blog. And so what’s nice about that is you get to start building those relationships and building that credibility and those logos directly into your inbox. So PR, when I say it’s a long-term strategy, it’s long-term in terms of it’s not going to happen overnight, but it doesn’t take forever. It’s really just something that I would say builds momentum in month three. And by month six, you’re really seeing the results and you’re starting to get the features come and go live.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Can you explain what done with you means? What does that look like? If people decide to work with you, what should they expect?

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah, that’s a great question. So Done With You is we realized we’ve been doing courses and things for PR for a while, and obviously people don’t have time and we get it. So what we do is our first step, I think, which is a great place to start, is our PR plans where we build you a strategy at the beginning. It’s a document. So at the beginning we build you a strategy. We’ll write your pitch for you. So make sure to provide us with the most information on your intake forms so we can write the best pitch for you. I think a lot of us get stuck on writing the pitch like, “What do I even say?” And I get that. So we help you with that. And then we’ll give you five to 10 outlets that are most likely to feature you. And then we give you tools on places that you can put yourself. I’m actually going to give you a link to quoted. You can put that in your show notes for everybody. I think everybody that’s a source or an expert needs to get themselves unquoted. You will see writers posting essentially exactly what they’re looking for. They’ll post something like, “Hey, this is Martha Stewart. I want to interview food bloggers on the best,” I don’t know, the best meal prep meals for the summer. And what you can do is you can create a profile on quoted. You don’t have to buy the free version. If you want to use our affiliate link, that’s great. But there –

Bjork Ostrom: By the paid version?

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah, by the paid version, sorry. So there is a paid version. There’s a free version too. You get a certain amount of credits, I think a month, but it’s a great way to start building your credibility. We call that inbound inquiries versus you proactively pitching. So it’s a great way to do it. It’s

Bjork Ostrom: Q-W-O-T-E-D.

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah. So it’s essentially getting quoted, Written in a fun way. So Q-W-O-T-E-D. So it’s great for sources, for bloggers. I think it’s a great place to start. And then Film With You is essentially now we have this PR plan and we walk you through what the strategy looks like to start pitching and getting out there. So what we like to do is we like to be your accountability buddy. We also are happy to share some contacts with you because we have them, so why not share them with the brand that we’re working with? And we really help you get those features that you’re looking to get. And every brand is different. York, your goals maybe you want to get on more TV. Somebody else’s goals maybe wants to get on X, Y, and Z sites. And so what we can do is we can really help you get there. So you would be doing the pitching, but we’d be there along the way throughout the process, making sure that you know how to coordinate those responses with writers and stuff when they come through.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great. So that’s a personalized PR plan, $500, 499. Yes. Price might change depending on when you’re listening to the podcast. And essentially that gives you your book of work that then you can take and feel confident to start to reach out to people. My guess is the actual outreach process is a lot easier today than it would’ve been three years ago. Even for myself now, I’m starting to realize this is a non-work example, but I’m going to be talking about a lot on our yard. This is going to be an abnormal amount of yard talk that we’re having on this podcast. It’s important. So we have the ticks in our backyard, but we also have pine cones. And so I got this, it’s actually called The Nut Wizard, which is the best name ever. But it’s essentially like a rake that you push and then it collects pine cones and acorns. The size was too big. And so I’d roll over and then it was just me pushing this thing around our yard, but it wouldn’t actually collect any of the pine cones. So I needed to get a different size. Usually what I would do is I would look up the support information. I would draft up the email. I’d explain what happened. But in this case, what I did is I just, so I use WisprFlow, which is awesome. It’s like voice to text.

Lydia Bagarozza: I just learned about this yesterday. So funny. Oh, well,

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s downloaded today. That’ll be your to-do coming out of it. You have a nice mic, and it’s amazing for taking voice and then turning it into text. And what I’ve used it for primarily is voice to text into ChatGPT Claude or OpenClaw, which is essentially just a port into ChatGPT for us. And in this case, what I did was in OpenClaw I said, “Hey, we have this product. Look through my email, find the company, look up what their return policy is. And if you can draft an email, draft that in my inbox and ask if we can do an exchange for the size smaller.” And that took, I don’t know, 30 seconds. But it would’ve previously probably been 15, 20 minutes of my time. It’s not making the world any better for me to do that. It’s not adding value in any way. And my point in saying that is I think some of this manual outreach, especially the transactional stuff where you’re needing to have a touchpoint, you’re wanting to craft something specific, can be drafted. And then what you can do is you can go through, you can make sure that it looks accurate. But essentially, it’s like me saying what I want the words to be, but I’m saying it by just talking them Out. And then it takes all that, puts it into a draft, and then it gets it ready to send. I go, I just review, I look through it, make sure that it looks accurate. But I think more and more as creators, solopreneurs or very small team, we can be thinking about, okay, we have this list that we’ve created and probably have some help from AI in creating that list to reach out to these people. And then how do we create a system and process around it? Keep the human parts human. Maybe it’s a call, maybe it’s a Zoom. But then any of the manual stuff, manual non-human stuff, information gathering, drafting, how do we automate as much of that as possible? So I feel like this is a really great launching platform for people, especially people who don’t have 3,000 a month to spend on PR, but they want to start to build their authority, start to build their brand. It’s one of the things that comes up so often in the world of AI is people say, “You need to have a strong brand.” Okay, well, what does that actually mean? And I think one of the tangible deliverables in having a strong brand is references on other sources of media. And so I think this process, signing up for Quoted is a great example of some of the things that you can tangibly do. Talk a little bit about your agency where you’re actually doing the work. Is that something that you personally are doing with brands? And at what point would it make sense for somebody to reach out to work in that capacity?

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah, absolutely. So I do want to mention quickly for the Done With You, we do offer consulting, meaning we’ll just walk you through that process. And I love that you were talking about different tools because I even as a publicist use tools that will mass pitch out a certain list. Obviously, I’m very curated on what my list is and who receives those emails and who’s open to receiving those emails. But yeah, I mean, we have tools to do all of this for us. Quoted is just a tool where we get to connect immediately with writers. And back in the day, brands didn’t have access. It was basically just the publicists had access or they didn’t really know what to do. And now you can just sign up for Quoted and you have direct access to these writers. There’s so many tools out there that make it easier, which makes me happy because back in the day, there was just no access for the general person unless they had lots of thousands of dollars and all of this information was gatekept. And we’re out here at VOP being like, “We’re not going to gatekeep any of this information.” But if a brand were coming to a boutique agency like mine or an agency where they’re really wanting to work with somebody hands-on, they don’t want to do anything, and they’re kind of just like, “Run my PR as my partner, let’s do this.” I typically take on brands that either feel comfortable with the retainer. I know the retainer can be a lot, or it’s a brand that has a budget already in place and they come to me and they say, “Hey, I know that this is a long-term strategy. I’m excited I’m ready to do this.” From there, we very much handle everything. We make it super easy for our brands. So we set up a Slack channel. Something that I didn’t like when I worked in the corporatey types of agencies was that it was a big freaking deal to have a conversation with your publicist. And it was like, “All right, you have a question, we’ll schedule a call in two weeks from now. The whole team’s going to come on.” It really is not that deep. Sometimes you just have a question. So we set up all our clients on Slack. We talk to them weekly. And you don’t have to, some of our clients are a little bit quieter and some message us on the daily, and that’s totally fine. We offer that. And then what we do is we’ll have a kickoff call having a conversation about how you want to be positioned. We really like to listen to your voice and the words that you use. Bjork, the way that you explain your blog, it could be similar to somebody else’s, but the way that you explain it is going to be different. The words that you use are going to be different. And so we’ve really listened to those exact words and position them in the best way possible so that we are an extension of your team. It doesn’t feel like this is a third party that we’re just paying for. We want to be within your team representing you in that way. Then we reach out to our media list. We’re constantly researching new publications, new writers, depending on what you’re looking for. And from there, you usually hear from us in about a week to two weeks with media already interested. So if you’re a product brand, it might be that they want to sample the product to potentially review it. If you’re an expert, that may be that they want to interview you on X, Y, and Z. And so we’ll send you an email with a media opportunity. And we’re really good with deadlines and everything. So we always ask, make sure that you are available on your email or on your Slack channel because sometimes media will be like, “Hey, I’d love to interview.”

Bjork Ostrom: In eight hours.

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah. They’ll be like, “Hey, I’d love to interview your client. Can they get this by tomorrow?” And it’s like 10 questions and you’re like, “So sometimes you have to be ready to be on the fly like that. I will say most writers give you quite a few days. It’ll give you four days or something, which you’ll be able to find time. But there are those instances where they’re like, the turnaround time is in five hours.” So I would just be prepared to get those emails every once in a while, but usually they’re worth it. Usually it’s some really cool site and then you get to be featured on there and create that relationship with that writer.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. And to be clear, that’s the kind of boutique agency

Lydia Bagarozza: Done

Bjork Ostrom: For you.

Lydia Bagarozza: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Visibility on Purpose is a little bit of the done with you, productized a little bit. Yes.

Lydia Bagarozza: It’s to help

Bjork Ostrom: Get it off the ground. There’s no retainer with it. It’s kind of a one-time thing that you do, and then you go off and are doing it on your own.

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah, it’s a one-time or we can do a little bit of a consulting retainer with you to basically get it off the ground. So we create that same idea as working with a publicist like myself full-time or Bridget, but it’s more like you’re doing the work and we’re just overseeing it as your, I would say, account manager, if you will.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. That’s great. Any other tools that you had mentioned that have been helpful that creators might want to use or be aware of? We mentioned –

Lydia Bagarozza: I got all the tools.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. What are your top three favorite that you’d want to mention?

Lydia Bagarozza: Yeah. So there is featured.com. They just changed their name. Hold on, I think they just changed it to. I bet you if you type in featured.com, it’ll still populate. Sure. I think they changed it to Connectively back, but it’s very similar to Qwoted. So both of those platforms are fantastic in which you can create a login profile. There’s a free version if you just want to test it out for a little bit. I will say for Qwoted, I would recommend if you think you start seeing a lot inquiries that make sense for you to pay for it because it’s so worth it. Our brands get featured all the time through Qwoted. And that’s not just because we have an affiliate link. I swear because we’re obsessed with it, we ask them for an affiliate link.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s great.

Lydia Bagarozza: We were like, guys – Do you want to share what

Bjork Ostrom: That is? I mean, if people want to sign up for it, do you know? Is it a simple.

Lydia Bagarozza: I think it might just be qwoted.com/vop, but I’m going to send you the link so it’ll be in the description. So thank you. But obsessed with those two sites because they make it really easy to connect with writers. And then another one is helpareporterout.com. This one’s an OG. It’s been around for a long time. It’s a newsletter that comes into your inbox three times a day. It’s like 5:00 AM, 12:00, and 6:00 PM, something like that. And every day, it’s all those three newsletters, it’s the exact inquiries of writers that are looking to interview somebody or looking for products. So it’s the same idea, but it just comes into your inbox. If you have those three tools set up and you are consistent with them, you’ll absolutely get featured and you really don’t have to do the output. So I recommend, of course, pitching because you get more curated responses and building relationships with the exact people you want. But if you want to just sit back and start experiencing some features, I think it’s a great way to do it. I will say with things like Harrow, because it’s through email, you just want to make sure that you present yourself in a specific way, and we can teach you how to do that in VOP. But with quoted or connectively featured, those have profiles where you actually build out a profile. So basically you just have to respond to whatever inquiry they’re asking for, whether it be a product or interview responses. And then you have the profile so they can see about your brand already, which is nice.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Lydia, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. It’s helpful for us to have some of these conversations around what does it mean to build a brand? A lot of people talk about how important it is, talk about how important authority is. And I think these are the tactical ways that you can actually do that and go out and get your site, get your brand mentioned in other places. And there’s a lot of benefits that come along with that. So super helpful conversation. Appreciate you coming on.

Lydia Bagarozza: Thank you. So grateful to be on the show.

Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please take a moment to leave a rating or review wherever you listen to your podcast. Since we are kicking off a brand new month, I wanted to let you know a little bit about what you could expect in the Food Blogger Pro membership this month. We’ve helped thousands of food bloggers grow and monetize their businesses through our courses, monthly live Q&As, Coaching Calls with Bjork, members-only forum, tools, and so much more within the membership. If you’re curious to learn more, you can head to foodbloggerpro.com/membership, and we hope you’ll join us. On Thursday, August 6th, we’ll be releasing a brand new site audit with Erin from the blog, The Forked Spoon. You can watch the video replay or listen to the audio replay on the live page within the Food Blogger Pro membership. Next up on Thursday, August 13th, we’ll be releasing an update to our Facebook for Food Creators course. To go along with that course update, our monthly live Q&A will be all about Facebook strategy with Andrea Balogun, our social media expert. That Q&A will be on Wednesday, August 26th at 1:00 PM Eastern, 12:00 PM Central, and 10:00 AM Pacific Time. Again, you can head to the live page within the membership to add the event to your calendar or submit a question in advance. We hope you will join us live for that Q&A, but if you can’t make it live, you can always watch the video or audio replays, which will be up the day after the event. It’ll be a great month in the membership. We’re really looking forward to it. And in the meantime, we’ll be back here next week with a podcast interview with Jeanelle Castro from Jeanelle Eats. Hope you have a wonderful week.