Learn the Art of Pitching to the Media

Friends, Thank you very much for taking out time from your very busy schedule to read my blog(s). I really feel encouraged after reading your feedback in the comments column. 

Friends, presenting 69th blog “Learn the Art of Pitching to the Media”.  

Writing a media pitch is like writing a love letter. Yes, you can mass produce it and send it to a wide swath of reporters, or you can take time to read what a reporter has written and craft your pitch to exactly their niche. – Mike Cantina, PromotionCode

Media pitching is one of the best ways to persuade journalists to tell the story of our business. Media pitch is a brief letter, email or phone call offering a news story to a journalist or editor at a newspaper, news magazine, and radio or television channel. The aim of the pitch is to create interest in the story and to find out if the journalist is willing to use it. Journalists receive many pitches and therefore respect those that are relevant and newsworthy. Media pitch offers a brief and compelling explanation of a particular issue, news angle or exclusive story and effectively sells the story idea to the journalists. A successful media pitch helps to gain publicity for the client(s) and builds good relations with the media for future coverage.

Great media coverage starts with a great pitch. It introduces and excites the journalists to know about the various facets of an organisation, its promoters, its USP, its business, and projections about the future. Hence, the pitch must offer an angle for a newsworthy story because we’re competing for limited space or broadcasting time with many other pitches. Our pitch must contain some element that makes it a ‘first’, disruptive, innovative, counter-intuitive, or a powerful human interest story. 

A good media pitch reflects the interests of the medium and the journalist (s) we’re contacting. Before sending our pitch we must read the recent news stories and articles written by the journalists we wish to contact, understand their perspective on the topic or news related to our client’s product or services. Targeting the right journalist(s) increases our chances of making a successful pitch.

A media pitch must be brief. Remember that it’s not a press release and only gives the outline details of a news story or feature article.  Our pitch should cover the key points of the story from a journalist’s perspective, 5Ws & H, - who, what, where, when, why and how. This provides the framework for the journalist to assess the potential of the story. We should be prepared to send additional information if the journalist wishes to proceed with the story. If our story is tied to a specific date, make sure to give the journalists sufficient time to consider the pitch and put together a story by that date. Based on my personal experience, the most effective media pitch is by telephone to our media contact directly – a reporter / journalist / correspondent who specializes in the topic of the pitch. This gives us the opportunity to find out their attitude and interest in our pitch.

Remember that simply contacting the media will not guarantee coverage for our client. We’ve to persuade the journalist that our story idea is newsworthy. PROS typically pitch to reporters, editors, bloggers, and social media influencers.  There's a lack of uniformity in the media defining beats. At some publications beats are not strictly adhered to, meaning that a journalist can write any story that interests them. Given that background, there are following three basic ways we can build a media list to pitch a particular story;

Fastballs: If we do a lot of homework, we can build a highly accurate media list that includes only those journalists who cover a certain beat or topic, using a media database and doing research such as looking up past stories to create that list. If we can do this, we’ll be pitching fastballs that is fast, straight-ahead pitches right to our targets.

Curveballs: We can also be creative in building a media list, adding general assignment and feature journalists, or other journalists who might be interested in the story.

Wild Pitches: This means pitching everyone in a particular media channel, from the managing editor down to the desk journalist. There is a reason why PR professional do it. The main reason is that sometimes by spreading the story to the widest audience; we may find a journalist willing to do the story which otherwise might have slipped through the eyes of the target journalist.

Pitching is a skill that requires creative thinking, persuasive communication skills, and knowing how our story idea benefits the reporter and the audience. The goal of a media pitch is to ask the media outlet if they are interested in featuring our product, brand or newsworthy item. A media pitch could result in a successful press placement which includes being quoted, featured, mentioned, linked to, highlighted, or blasted to a select group of people that have opted to tune into the news from that media outlet.

Timing is important in pitching to the media because no journalist is interested in receiving material after their deadline. Each media outlet has its own deadline, depending on the frequency and timing of its publishing schedules and one of our main tasks is to find out the best times to reach our target journalists. And if we don’t follow the timing, our pitch may not get the desired attention of the journalist.

As a PROS, a key element to our PR skill is to perfect the art of pitching news worthy story ideas to our friends in the media.  Reporters, Correspondents, Journalists, Editors, and News Producers always rely on pitches that provide them good story ideas. Without pitches, most of the media professionals would find it difficult to stay on top of the events that are happening in their respective areas of interests or beats.

Before pitching a story idea, always be sure to address the following:

·        Why this?

·        Why now?

·        Why should they care?

·        Why should this be covered in the media?

     Structure of the Pitch:

·        The Subject Line

·        The Greeting

·        The Hook

·        The Angle

·        The Call-to-Action

And, finally to sum up…while pitching to the media….

• Choose the target journalist, the publication or channel.
• Read or watch the journalist’s prior articles or news coverage [starting with the most recent].
• Pitch only a newsworthy story.
• Remember we’re not to pitch the organisation, its product or service.
• Straight get to the point.  
• Always be respectful of the journalist’s time.
• Politely follow up via email or phone call but be respectful of the journalist’s time.
• It’s not necessary that our pitch might get due attention of the journalist this time, but how we handle our self will speak whether our next pitch will get the desired attention and read by the journalist.

Thank you for reading the blog.

 

###