What are your media goals for this year?

You probably have set your sights on some big goals for this year. Like, life goals: Get in shape. Eat cleaner. Read more. Earn more. Finally (finally) get that website up and running.

What does it take? One step at a time: one workout at a time, one page at a time, one hour at a time.

But what about your media goals? Yes. Media goals.

Because just as you wouldn’t simply wait for weight to fall off, or hope a website magically appears, it’s not enough to hope your favorite publication or TV show reaches out.

That doesn’t mean you can’t make media happen!

Rather than make “doing more media” out to be some huge, impossible thing, think of media as another key strategy for reaching your professional goals—just as you might look at writing blog posts, or going to networking events, or doing more public speaking.

So let’s do this! Here are some simple steps to making your media goals a reality this year.

Step 1: Make your media wish list

Go for it—do a brain dump of the kinds of media where you’d like to pitch and be featured. And while the Today show, Oprah magazine, Real Simple, and NBC Nightly News may be high on the list, don’t limit yourself to the big media beasts.

• Make a list of your big-dream publications and shows
• Make a list of your next-level media properties (regional news and magazines, podcasts, websites).
• Write down what you’d be most excited to see yourself doing—whether it’s more on-air segments, more podcasts, or getting quoted as a resource in print stories.
• Now, take a good hard look at those media outlets. Study who and what they’re covering, and where you see yourself contributing!

Step 2: Generate content ideas

If you’re going to get on TV, you’ve got to have something to say, right? You already know plenty about your field, your topic, your expertise. What you have to do next is not get smarter, but savvier in how you share what you know.

Getting the attention of producers and editors starts with fresh ideas, relevant, timely takes, on what you do and what you have to offer.

• Keep a notebook on hand when you’re consuming your favorite media—on TV, podcasts, or blogs, and jot down ideas you go. Don’t second guess! Just get it all down so you have ideas to work with.
• Think about what opinions, facts, and perspectives that maybe weren’t cons
• Check out this recent post to spark new inspiration for generating ideas.

Step 3: Hit “record”

Getting comfy in front of the camera is key to getting asked to be (and crushing it on) TV.

In a recent post, we talked about how to leverage Facebook Live to get on TV. It’s easy, free, and low stakes—with the potential to be more. So start practicing. Take one of your ideas, something you want to teach, hit “go live,” and start talking about what you know best!

The future of the internet is video content. You can get better at this—but not by thinking about it.

Step 4: Brush up on your pitching skills

As we’ve said over and over, there’s a right, and a wrong, way to go about pitching media!

First things first, you have to think about your topic and expertise the way someone would who knows nothing about what you do. Find out how to be sure your pitch passes the fifth grade test. And then, be sure to double check it with our pitching checklist.

Step 5: Learn from the experts

Who do you think we learned from? Pros who have gone before us and who are leading the way. And we keep learning. So yes, while we have a few things to share that we know work, we also make it a point to listen to and talk to the pros to make sure we’re making the best decisions we can.

And now we can all learn together—because we’ll be interviewing entrepreneurs, authors, and industry experts (including folks you have heard of) on our new radio show (that’s right) on Voice America!

Our weekly show, “Lights Camera Expert: Unleash Your Expertise” airs every Monday at 3pm ET / 12p PT!  

That one of OUR big goals—practicing what we preach and being our own producers! We couldn’t be more excited for this! Be sure to pop by and check it out (and you can listen to all the episodes here as well as on iTunes and Stitcher.

What are YOUR media goals? We want to know! Pop on over to the LCE Facebook page and share it!