SBellPR

Many times I find that companies believe a PR program is just sending out one press release after another, period – end of story. What they don’t realize is this is not the best way to have their stories heard. Press releases are good for getting a news brief here and there and for SEO purposes, if your wire service keeps your links live. I’m not saying you can’t get lucky from time to time and get a larger piece, especially if the news is significant enough. However, to get more press, and better yet, get more quality feature stories, custom pitching is the way to go for traditional media coverage.  Why is this? The media outlets that have the bigger audiences, viewers/readers/listeners, don’t want to run a story that everyone else has. They like to be first to market with a story, and a press release that has been blasted out to everyone under the sun can’t do that for them. So, here are my:

Five top media pitching tips for getting more and better quality press coverage:

1.) Search editorial calendars – Editorial calendars are a great way to get quality coverage. Why? We search the editorial calendars thoroughly  for topics that are in line with our clients’ expertise because, this way,  the publication has already dedicated a number of pages to that topic and needs to fill them. You are then pitching something you know for a fact they have an interest in, not something out of the blue. If you were in sales, I’d liken this to a warm call versus a cold call.

2.) Research the outlet and the journalist – It is important to know the outlet and journalist and the kinds of pieces they do before picking up the phone. Our specialty is media relations and you can bet it is not good media relations to waste a journalist’s time. Know what they like and what serves their audience and be able to quickly cut to the chase with what your feature will do for them.

3.) Use common courtesy - Journalists are extremely busy and inundated with pitches. If you are calling them, always be sure to ask first off if you’ve reached them at an okay time. That way, if you have caught them on deadline or in the middle of something, you can ask for a better time to get back with them, which shows respect for their time. A pitch will fall on deaf ears when someone is too buried to hear it.

4.) Use media feeding frenzies to your advantage – You may have noticed that there are some stories the news channels run and keep following for days, even months. They’ll do this when it is a story of ongoing concern to their audience. If you have a company expert that can speak on any aspect of the story they are covering, you can ‘tag on’ to that media feeding frenzy with the right pitch.

5.) Pitch far enough out for the media outlet

Every type of media outlet works in a different time frame. If your pitch is to be successful, you must take into consideration how far out the outlet works. Here’s some general guidelines:

• Magazines - as a rule, work way out. Many national publications work 6 to 10 months out, and the more local and regional ones may work within tighter time frames like 3 to 6 months out.
• Newspapers – Because newspapers are looking for hot and timely news, you can let your beat reporter know about an upcoming news item as much as a month or two out, but they usually won’t work on it it until the week of the news event.
• Business Journals - Business journals are usually weeklies and I like to pitch them about a month out.
• Television - I would pitch a local TV producer 4 to 6 weeks in advance, and national shows further out. However, if you are pitching your company spokesman to a news show as an expert source on a timely news item, you are back to a very tight timeframe of days to hours, as they can bring your spokesman into a local affiliate and interview them remotely.
• Radio Interviews – I’d recommend pitching radio at least 2 weeks out.

As you can see, media pitching is very involved and time consuming. That’s why many companies leave it to pitching pros like me. But, the results are well worth it. For instance, Bloomberg TV reaches 200,000+ homes worldwide — be sure to watch Venture, their show on successful entrepreneurs, this Friday. One of my clients, Antonio Swad will be featured. And, feel free to contact me for further guidance.