Pitching the Media - 10 Strategies To Get You Noticed


By Liz Dennery Sanders

If you’re ready to get serious about press coverage for you or your business, these are ten time-tested tips to follow.

1.Offer Information of Value – Does your product or service offer something that’s unique and of value to your target audience? If so, it might be of interest to the media. It’s not about you or your business, it’s about what you or your business can do for others. What can you offer the public? Four questions to ask yourself before you approach a media person are:

-What makes my business special and unique?

-Why am I different from my competitors?

-Why are my clients purchasing my product or service?

-How does my business tie into a current trend?

If you can answer these questions easily, in a clear, concise way, then you are well on your way to being able to pitch a journalist.

2.Do your research beforehand – Make sure that you are familiar with the media outlet and that you are pitching the correct person. Addressing the right person signals that you are familiar with the subject area that a particular journalist covers. Read their work before you contact them so that you know how you would best fit.

3.Be professional and establish credibility – Approach the journalist in a friendly way, but don’t be overly casual or familiar. Let them know who you and why you are contacting them in a clear, concise manner. Be respectful of their time and know that they get hundreds of phone calls and emails each day. Introduce yourself, get to the point quickly and then ask if they would like you to follow-up with additional information.

4.Use their preferred method of communication – Always ask a journalist how they prefer to be contacted. If they ask you to email information, don’t badger them with phone calls. Once you have taken the time to develop a relationship with a journalist, it will be easier to pick up the phone to them at a moment’s notice and get a response.

5.Tie your news into a trend or community issue – If you have a product or service that ties into current news of a change taking place in our society or an evolving trend that is being covered, you will have a much better chance of getting a journalist’s attention.

6.Be subtle – Media people are in the business of producing news, not producing sales for your business. Your communications with the media should not be an obvious bid for free advertising. Focus on how your product or service can help their readers/viewers, not it’s features.

7.Don’t be sloppy – Check your news releases for typos and grammatical errors. Make sure you spell the journalist’s name and their outlet correctly.

8.Make it easy for reporters to cover you – Before approaching a journalist with a pitch, make sure you are ready to provide them with all of the information they need if they ask for it. A complete press kit (profile, bio, fact sheet, press releases, images etc.) and/or a robust online media room are a great place to start.

9.Follow-up, but don’t be pushy – You want reporters to see you as the solution to their problems – not as a problem. If you have sent information, but haven’t heard anything back, one follow- up call and email is fine, calling five times a day is not. You will have ample opportunity to pitch them again. Courtesy and respect go a long way here – you want to be in the relationship for the long haul, which leads me to our final tip.

10.View the relationship as long-term, not as a one hit wonder – Keep the information flowing between you. Don’t just send an occasional press release – pick up the phone to call the reporter if they wrote a feature you particularly liked and let them know it. Keep sending in good ideas for stories every few weeks – not just about your business, but about your field or industry. Over time, make it your goal to become a valuable source of information and a trusted, well-liked and respected business person.

Liz Dennery Sanders is a branding visionary and successful entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in marketing, public relations and celebrity outreach. She is the CEO of Dennery Marks Inc., a nationally acclaimed brand strategy and celebrity outreach firm, and SheBrand, a company dedicated to empowering other female entrepreneurs and small business owners to embrace success and create more money and freedom in their lives. Known as the Entrepreneur's Marketing & Mindset Coach, Liz gives her clients the marketing and mindset tools they need to be successful and teaches them how to build powerful personal brands that will resonate with their target market and garner tremendous visibility.


More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

More PR Information:

Related Articles

How To Write A Press Release: The 10 Commandments Of A Great Lead Paragraph
How to write a press release is a major challenge facing both experienced and aspiring PR professionals.Press release writing is a learned skill.
All Youve Got To Lose Is Everything
Everything, that is, if you ignore those folks whose behaviors have the greatest effect on your business.What those people see and believe about your enterprise, pretty well determines what their follow-on behaviors will be - for example, do business with you, or move on to someone else.
Effective Media Relations - You Won't be Talking to the Media Without It!
The media's role is to package and spread news, current affairs and public interest information to the public. They have great power to shape and influence public opinion, to target and exploit audience reactions, emotions and opinions.
Photographs - Ten Tips For Getting Good Shots
Photographs are essential for getting good publicity in the print media, especially magazines, newspapers, internal newsletters and even websites. Taking effective photographs often requires patience and practice but is a valuable skill to acquire.
Passion with Purpose - The Winning Combination
The power of PassionPassion is an extraordinarily powerful spring. Without it religion, history, romance, and art are useless.
How To Write A Press Release: The Seven Deadly Sins And How To Avoid Them
How to write a press release that generates free publicity is a great skill to have.This analysis, of the seven deadly sins of how to write a press release and how to avoid them, contains press release sample writing and a how to write a press release sample.
Whats Important About PR?
Quite a bit, actually. Public relations helps business, non-profit and association managers achieve their managerial objectives with results like these.
How PR Makes a Managers Life Easier
Things are pleasant for many business, non-profit or association managers when their public relations people deliver newspaper and talk show mentions, informative brochures and videos, and special events that attract a lot of people.But things could be much more pleasant for those managers if their PR teams were to deliver the kind of behavior change among their key outside audiences that leads directly to achieving their managerial objectives.
Press Kit Elements That Work
Considering how fundamental they are to the publicist's trade,it's always amazed me how lousy almost all press kits truly are.Your typical press kit is a bloated folder filled with puffery,hype, irrelevant information and worse.
Publicizing Your Company
Got a huge need for publicity and a tiny publicity budget? You don't need to have a Madison Avenue-sized advertising budget to make your name known. Here are five ideas to help you promote your company: 1.
PR Failure Defined
I define public relations failure this way:key audience perceptions are not monitoreda realistic, corrective goal is not setan improper, or no real strategy is selecteda persuasive, compelling message is not preparedcommunications tactics are selected mostly by hunchand no follow-through perception monitoring is done to determine progress.Failure insured! Similar, in fact, to the artillery commander who tells his gunners to point their cannons in any direction and fire them when they feel like it!No plan, no results!Why not deal this way with those external target audiences whose behaviors really have an impact on your organization?Who are they? List them in order of their impact on your operation.
10 Tips for Tantalizing News Releases
Want to get radio interviews and coverage in print publications to sell more books? Master the art of writing magnetic media releasesthat attract attention of editors and publishers. A media release (which also goes by its former name, the press release) is a one page, double spaced, single-sided document designed to transmit news about books, products, and people.
How to Master Communication Even if you failed High School Grammar
Does the thought of knowing your verbs from your adjective scare you? Can the word syntax send you running for cover? Or perhaps putting two words together in front of a crowd sends your body into complete melt down. If so, there is help for you.
Getting to Know Your Local City Council Members
The easiest way to meet city council members is to meet them at an event. Usually city council members have a phone number that is listed.
How To Share Your Success Story Without Sounding Like You Are Bragging
A great way to celebrate your achievements and capitalize on your successes is to share them with your clients, members, community leaders, and other influential decisionmakers. But how can you do that without sounding like you are bragging?Tell the story of your success using one of these five approaches, which will work for newsletter articles, website content, and press releases.
Underestimating the Power of In-House PR
Do small-business owners always have to rely on large PR agencies to get attention from the press? An entrepreneur recently asked me this question during a networking event for women business owners. Of course my answer was, "No," but not for the reasons one might expect.
Radio Interviews - How To Get Them!
Getting on the radio can be a great tactical move as part of your overall publicity effort, but you do need to have a story idea or an angle to present on a particular topic. Selling yourself as a guest on a talk show is a great way to raise your profile and if your subject relates to a topic that is currently in the news your chances of getting on is clearly improved.
How to Get a Story About You or Your Business in USA Today
I am often asked by clients to target USA Today for media coverage, and with good reason: USA Today coverage can have a significant impact on businesses and organizations.Here's why:1.
If I Were Coaching You
If I were coaching you as a business, non-profit or association manager on how to get the biggest bang for your public relations dollar, I would sum it up for you this way.Use the fundamental premise of public relations to produce external stakeholder behavior change - the kind that leads directly to achieving your managerial objectives.
Five Great News Stories You're Sitting On Right Now
Smaller companies don't always have the budget - or inclination - to retain a PR hotshot to tell the world about their business success, but that doesn't mean they aren't a ready source of news.The problem is it's often dull news which is ignored by all except the industry press and quite rightly so in most cases.