🗞️ The Hype Monthly Edit

🪴 Parish News

Hiya 🌊,

I often speak about how I have three jobs: motherhood, Hype Yourself and learning French / settling into my new French life.

Just like when I ran a PR agency, you have to keep an eye on which major projects are launching at once.

To avoid this, I have a wall calendar chart, where I mark out big moments.

Things like a major French exam, a two-week half-term, solo-parenting stint for a week, specialist heart appointments at Great Ormond Street Hospital for my kid with three rare congenital heart defects, or a website relaunch.

Reader: I inadvertently did all of those things in the same month. It wasn't pretty. Mistakes were made, but I'm here on the other side, still unpacking, and I'm giving you a big, warm welcome from my new home.

Let's get into it.

Lucy x

💡 Inside The Hype This Month

A quick recap of what we’ve been talking about inside The Hype paid community:

✨ Beauty in the Boring — why small, consistent stories build connection.
🤖 How to Be the Name ChatGPT Mentions Next — teaching AI to talk about you.
🕵🏻‍♀️ Do you do this regularly? - Litmus test to see if your PR is working
🗓️ Pitching to Forbes — live class with Jodie Cook
🤓 Can press find you - Make inbound opportunities easier
🗄️ Useful things: Contents Page, FAQs,

If you have not, come and introduce yourself or say hello to others here: Come and Sit With Us (I reply to everyone and even give suggestions if you give me a PR challenge you are facing).

🔮 What’s Coming Up in December

✍️ All the Things That Went Wrong — my post on the messy middle of moving off Substack (and what I’d do differently) to help you avoid my mistakes when migrating platforms.
🧭 The next Hype Directory drop — new podcast guest call-outs, speaker requests, and speaker opps to help you pitch before the Christmas slowdown.
🎙️ December’s live masterclass - End of Year PR review and setting 2026 PR goals AND a 🎁 bonus Christmas Gathering. Paid readers will receive invites shortly.

🚀 Building in Public — The Road to 1,000 Paid Subscribers

Current count: 383
This month’s focus: Bedding in my existing paid readers to the new website and focusing on their experience
What worked: The Come Sit With Us welcome post has been a great way to connect as well as inviting people to share the results from the Hype weekly prompts.
What I’m tweaking: I’m carving out dedicated time to rebuild my editorial schedule, my paid member experience, and my 2026 growth plan.
Takeaway for you: Not everyone likes change, and there will always be churn. Part of hyping yourself is maintaining good mental health to navigate the tougher days.

🌍 Mini Directory — Free Opportunities for Everyone 👇

Here are a few public-domain opportunities worth jumping on now if you want something to pitch before year-end

🗞️ Are you a Top 100 Marketer to watch? Just under a week to nominate yourself or a pal to Fab Giovanetti and the Alt Marketing crew here.
🦁Cannes Lions 2026 is open for submissions: Keynote speakers, moderators, mentors, workshops & more. Read the guidelines here.
⛑️HLTH Europe 2026 is open for speaker submissions for visionary leaders who challenge the status quo. Submission guidelines here.
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scottish-based? The Tab Edinburgh is searching for several things that might fit. Read the #journorequest here
💅🏽Beauty industry expert? For a piece on beauty and AI, quick turnaround I imagine, check here

💡 Pro tip: These are all public-domain opportunities. Paid members receive curated, journalist-verified openings in the complete Hype Directory on a bi-monthly basis.

📈 Curated hype trends - What is hot?

Trends aren’t just noise, each one gives you a ready-made hook for pitching, posting, or commenting this week

🗝️ Property pages and stories are still the gift that keeps on gifting for PR opportunities.
From i’s new expat series, to this Metro Lifestyle piece on Gen Z swapping cities for the countryside. If you’ve got your own relocation story, have a look at the property pages, where often the email of the journalist is featured. Think: unusual friends or family property sharing, boomeranging back to where you came from, alternative living arrangements

🐟 Tinned fish is having a moment - dietician, wellness, packaging, sustainability? You could comment/reshare this
Everyone from Vogue to The Telegraph is covering the “healthiest pantry staple” angle. It’s a great hook if you work in food, sustainability, or wellness.
👉 Read the Telegraph article

💘 Limerence - the coined phrase du jour.
Covered from Cosmopolitan to Brides, this buzzword for infatuation and emotional obsession is giving relationship experts and neuroscientists a media moment. Experienced this yourself? Why not try submitting an opinion piece? e.g. "Off the back of the news about Limerence, I wanted to share what happened for me and why it is of interest to you readers"
👉 See the Brides article

🧡 Paid Reader Win of the Month

I have to shout this one out: Ruth Ramsay who emailed me her successful pitch for Happiful magazine. After our live class session, she appeared in the print edition this month. You can learn more about her work here.

🏠 House News

🎙️ Today:
What are you doing later? I’ll be at The Future is Freelance Forums at 16:00 GMT / 17:00 CET / 09:00 MST.
I’m guesting with Helen Dibble, Sarah Duran and Anna Burgess Yang on How To Take Long-Term Leave as a Freelancer.

📚 Coming up:
I’m speaking at the Freelancer Magazine Masterclass Live:
📆 Go from survival mode to fully booked in 2026 — a 2-day virtual masterclass on 4–5 March.
Grab your ticket and check out the rest of the line-up here.

📣 Visibility win:
A little LinkedIn reply got me a mention in the Creator Diaries newsletter.
You can read more about my (and others') personal brand wins here.

🏡 Retreat news:
Newsletter readers are always first in line for my creative writing retreat.
June has already sold out — September is now open, and the first two cabins have already gone to previous guests.
Save your spot here.

🎧 Community shoutout:
Big thank you to D.R. (one of our readers) who connected me with Marc Ronick from Podcasting Morning Chat.
We talked about leaving Substack, content promotion, and my best visibility advice.

🧾 Are you a creator with a platform?
Got a podcast, newsletter or membership and want a guest expert?
I’m compiling the next Hype Directory → Submit here

Did you receive this email ok? Hit reply and say YES - it really is just me reading and replying. And it helps my deliverability more than you know.

P.s. I passed that French exam!

New to me and my work?
- 🎧 Podcast playlist
- 📚 Books: Hype Yourself, Brand Yourself, No-Nonsense PR
- 💻 Domestika PR course
- 🤓 Book me for a one-to-one mentoring 2026
- 🏡 Creative Writing Retreat 2026

🗞️ The Hype Monthly Edit — November