How can you start pitching like a PR Pro in 2024? As we begin the year anew, producers, editors, and reporters are pursuing stories that will empower audiences to stick to their resolutions surrounding health and fitness, business growth, financial success, parenting, and many other areas.
PR Pro Tips for Pitching a Story Idea Using the New Year’s Resolution Angle
In a New Year pitch, skip the mundane details. Use succinct adjectives that will create an immediate visual in a producer’s mind’s eye. As a PR Pro, help the producer see their audience responding to the content. Highlight convincing before-and-after visuals — especially if your client is in fitness, weight loss, or beauty product spaces. Then have your client provide detailed tips and ideas that will motivate people to accomplish their New Year goals using their products/services.
As a PR Pro, position your client as an expert in their business or service and have them disseminate advice for easily accomplished New Year goals. This is highly effective with clients who offer information for the following:
Fitness
Weight loss
Organization
Travel
Financial advice
Nutrition/healthy eating
As people retain and implement your client’s advice, pitch an on-going monthly segment to have your client check in with audiences to offer encouragement on how to sustain New Year habits/goals throughout the year.
Keep Your Pitch Simple and Succinct
A pitch should begin with a bold statement that’s impossible to ignore. So ask a question, share a personal story, or throw in an unbelievable statistic to get their attention. Then after the attention-grabbing start, follow it up with a quick explanation. Follow PR best practices for success. After all, producers and editors are eager and willing to book a guest who engages an audience with valuable information that will help them achieve their New Year goals.
A press release is an official statement (written or recorded) that an organization issues to the news media and beyond. Whether we call it a “press release,” a “press statement,” a “news release,” or a “media release,” we’re always talking about the same basic thing.
Most are a page long — two pages max. The goal is to provide enough information so that news outlets have sufficient material to craft their own stories about whatever the release is detailing.
Press releases are delivered in a myriad of incarnations, from new restaurant openings to executive promotions, you’re feeding an unpredictable news cycle. PR professionals then make the ordinary extraordinary.
Here are a couple of tips to make your next one stand out.
Create a Simple Headline that Gives an Overview of the Content
Press release headlines frame the ensuring content. They should convey the central message of your story that is easy to understand.
Make Your Email Subject Line POP
News makers barrage new outlets with this type of information overload every hour of every day and in order to lift your clients’ news out of a sea of emails, it’s paramount to write a succinct message with an eye-catching subject line.
Less is More with Press Releases
Consider the last time you scrolled through social media or read the news. Your gaze probably gravitated towards the stories that had sensational headlines or graphics. Journalists are skimmers. It’s an art form for them. They are looking for information that interest them and their audience quickly.
Keeping your information concise is a great strategy to boost its impact. Putting the most important points at the top will give interested journalists an immediate entry way to find everything they need while removing anything that isn’t absolutely necessary to the story that they are developing.
As a public relations professional, there’s no better feeling than seeing a client featured in a news story. There’s an exhilaration when an idea you’ve pitched appears in a magazine, newspaper, radio or the coveted TV spot. An earned media placement will impact a client’s awareness — and hopefully — their bottom line.
However, pitching isn’t easy. With fewer journalists, swifter news cycles and an extraordinary number of media outlets, communicators need to be savvy and strategic about formulating and targeting pitches. Muck Rack reports that there are now nearly 6 PR pros for every one journalist.
A 2021 Muck Rack survey stated that 34% of PR pros said finding and interacting with journalists is one of their biggest challenges. And 59% of journalists view their relationship with PR pros as mutually beneficial, but not quite a partnership. This decreased from 64% in 2020. Only 6% view it as a partnership.
Why is there such an inequity between PR professionals and journalists?
It’s no mystery that PR pros can’t do their media relations jobs successfully without journalists. And journalists depend on Public Relations outreach, too.
“I get roughly 300 emails a day. Most of the time, I read a subject line and that’s it. There’s just simply too many emails every day from publicists to be replying to each one. I can probably count on one hand the amount of general PR pitches I’ve responded to over the past few years. What they all have in common is they were targeted at BuzzFeed and me specifically. The publicist knew who I was, what kind of stories I write and was able to speak to this and why their pitch fit in line with that. They also know what BuzzFeed News is (hint: it’s not the same as BuzzFeed!) and why their story was of interest to our readers. It’s all obvious stuff, but you have to tailor your pitch like you would a cover letter for a job application.”
—David Mack, deputy director for breaking news at BuzzFeed News (source Muck Rack)
Personalization is key to getting a reporter’s attention.
It’s important to remember that each reporter is unique. In order to successfully connect with members of the media, know who they are and what they prefer when it comes to pitching. In Muck Rack’s Annual Journalist Survey, reporters cited lack of personalization as the number one reason they immediately reject pitches.
Writing the ideal pitch will not have “legs” if it is not strategically targeted. A political writer does not want to profile a new restaurant (unless the chef is a former president). An investigative journalist probably will not respond to a pitch about what’s trending in the fashion world. Educate yourself on a reporter’s areas of interest and get to know their point of view. Familiarize yourself with their writing style and how they communicate with their audience. Make each email distinctive to the individual. Remember that the ultimate goal is to establish or continue a relationship with the journalist.
Customize your pitch to their medium.
A wide-ranging PR campaign can be incredibly time consuming. Sending an initial mass email to all news outlets is, at times, the only course of action. However, this approach does not embolden coverage unless it is a very widely known product and/or personality. If possible, customize the pitch to the medium. When pitching a television producer, send clips or b-roll and include camera ready art to a print outlet. Reference the assets and describe how the visuals will enhance an interview or feature. If you want a reporter/editor/producer to accept your pitch, it needs to intrigue them — and contain something that that will engage their audience.
The media relations process — what happens next?
After sending a pitch, be respectful and allow the reporter enough time to decide if they are interested in covering the story. Give them a few days to review the pitch, and then follow up via email. If you don’t hear from them after a follow-up, assume they aren’t interested.
If a pitch is accepted, be sure to thank the reporter and share their story online. A share goes a long way, especially in a world where more reporters are being evaluated based on the success of their stories — 62% of journalists say they track how many times their stories are shared on social media.
