Last but not least on this list are the influencers I told you are losing their jobs left and right. They are called journalists. And yeah, there are 40 percent fewer journalists today than there were a decade ago. But that means 60 percent of them are still out there. They are still working away and by the way they are working very diligently. They're often trying to do the job of two or three people. The days of sort of filing your story and heading over to the bar outside of the newsroom is long gone. This is not the front page. But despite the fact that things have changed for journalists over the years, it turns out they still have a primal primary instinct and that's to get a scoop. They are in the news business and they understand that they're in the news business. And if you understand that too then guess what? You need to provide them with inside information, scoops off the record backgrounds. By the way, one of my favorite tactics is a story under embargo. Now, how does an embargo work? I basically say look, I want to tell you something that's going to happen in the future. But, you can't write about it until I give you the heads up because it hasn't happened yet, things can change. And if you agree quote to put this information under embargo, I will brief you I will tell you all about what's going to happen before it happens, as long as you'll play ball with me. That's what quote under embargo means. Guess what? Because they are so motivated to get the scoop, to be able, that when the news breaks they've already had time to analyze it, to digest it, to figure out who else they want to interview, they have a point of view, they can basically distinguish themselves among their colleagues and by the way, they can get an audience for their news story. That's what makes them work. Now, I will confess, early in my career, I was a journalist. I was the editor of a weekly newspaper. Guess what made me take scoops? I now practice this the other way around, but then I became a blogger, I might have suddenly discovered people were treating me as if I was a journalist again. So this is interesting. I've been in this influence game for a while and I've been on both sides of it. But I'll tell you what the thing that has not gone out of style is journalists want to know in advance what's going to happen. They are behind the scenes view and once you understand that, guess what? You now have a way to engage with these very very influential people. Now, as we do in each one of these lessons, there's going to be a quiz. The grades won't be held against you, so don't worry. Answer the questions as best you can. If you get them wrong, I'm going to pop in and basically tell you what was right. If you get it right, I'll pop in and basically tell you why you got it right. So, it's a learning opportunity. This is a way of telling whether I know what I'm teaching but are you learning it. So, it's as useful feedback for me as it is for you, but here's what the quiz is going to focus on. We want you to analyze the different types of influencer, that we just covered and match up the right engagement tactic for each one. So, we covered nine of them, by the way there are more than nine, but that seemed to be a healthy enough number to sort of dive into. And here's the assignment and the quiz. Take a look at the type of an influencer, try to figure out that's the right engagement tactic, take your best shot and answer the quiz and find out if you're more right than wrong.
