As you start doing more interviews in any media, you will have journalists, reporters, show hosts and producers contacting you to ask if you will do an interview on a topic they choose. Usually those will be time-sensitive, based on something important or popular in the news that day.

But if you really want to start doing more interviews, and really get your name out there to grow your practice or business, you will have to start pitching those people and suggesting a topic for them, a topic where you can offer some insight for the reader, listener or viewer.

But before you can pitch them, you must come up with ideas for articles or show segments. Those ideas must not only appeal to the writer or producer - and obviously appeal to the person at home or in their car listening, watching, or reading - but be a topic in which you are an expert. A topic that can position you as a leader in that field in your town, and help attract clients, customers, and patients.

Unfortunately, ideas come at all times of the day, in all sorts of scenarios. And you must have a system for capturing those ideas so you can remember them when you're ready to pitch.

Where do those articles and ideas come from? Here are some ideas. I use all of these.

Academic journals in your field

Most fields have some sort of publications where new research, strategies and work is published. In medicine, those are academic medical journals, like JAMA, the New England Journal of Medicine, and many others. New studies, new research, new information the public needs to know is great. You can summarize what people need to know and do. Producers and reporters value these pitches.

RSS feeds on your topic

Or set Google alerts for a topic. These are ways to find less academic but still important articles on topics in your field without you having to spend hours each day searching all these different websites. Essentially you are filtering a lot of noise - articles you don't need to read - and creating a stream of articles that give you a long list of topic ideas.

Press releases from your parent organization

Just like new research and studies, press releases from your governing body or organization aim to share information to the public. A reporter or journalist can rewrite it and create his or her own article from the press release, but they like to have experts give context and offer quotes. When you get these - maybe from emails they send you - collect them and use them to get interviews about those topics.

Celebrity magazines, like People, Us, and others like it

It doesn't matter if you’re a doctor, lawyer, financial planner or any other kind of expert, there are ideas in these magazines. Here's what I mean.

Regardless of your topic, celebrities have issues just like any of us - medical scares, tax issues, legal trouble, whatever. And when stories about those issues hit the news, they offer you a great opportunity to go on the local TV news and talk about that issue.

Questions from patients, clients, and customers.

If there are questions you get more than once or twice, write them down and put them in your filing system. If people are asking you personally, you can bet tons more people have those same questions. Again, it's all about finding topics that attract viewers, readers, and listeners, so answering questions and discussing ideas that people ask about a lot will interest the media. Count on that.

If you want to learn more...if you want more customers, more clients, more patients, you want to make more money, you want to be recognized as THE expert in your industry, or you even want people you don't even know to come up to you at the gym or in the grocery store, thanking you for helping them,