How (Not) to Build Media Relations
Not all pitches will immediately result in stories. But all (good) pitches will shape your relationship with a journalist which will hopefully result in a piece of coverage.
Journalists are not your colleagues, and pitching to journalists might be as tough as pitching to venture capital investors. You spend hours and days crafting your pitch, picking the best contacts and doing outreach. Yet this will be a waste of time if you think of it as a linear process “I Pitch – They Publish”.
Instead, let’s look at it as dialogue. If you really want your startup being mentioned and you being quoted, this is the approach you take.
Building Media Relationships
Media outreach as “sending a pitch” process is just a part of media relations. If you are willing to build something decent, you have to be more human.
Lesson 1: be more human but keep the boundaries
You don’t have to become best friends, but don’t think of journalists as mere targets in your Excel spreadsheets. If you’d like your pitch be converted into mentions, interviews and pieces of media coverage for your startup, don’t get off on the wrong foot and treat journalists as people.
A pitch, to be successful, needs to be open, honest, well-informed and to the point. Journalists, particularly news reporters, are time-poor. They genuinely don’t want to hear about what you’ve been up to on the weekend. Not because they are rude, but purely because it slows them down.
Lesson 2: pitch right stuff to the right media
If you don’t personally know the journalist who you are pitching to, then an inappropriate “matey talk” is the only thing that is sure to annoy them more than treating them as a bothersome stepping-stone on the way to obtaining coverage.
If you aren’t pitching the right stuff (not relevant to their beat, editorial policy or location) then you’re wasting your time. And, if you are not sure what to pitch then go to the reporter’s Twitter and read their recent articles, the outlet’s about page or get someone to help you!
Lesson 3: respect journalists
Always remember that spamming with irrelevant emails has never produced good media coverage for anyone. Journalists don't have time to read through all the PR emails so relevancy in the headline is a helpful timesaver.
No one owes you coverage. So don’t be pushy and pesky. There is no excuse for rudeness.
Talk to journalists, like you would talk to any other reasonable, intelligent human being. As you’ve probably spent some time making your pitch clearly and researching the best media contacts for your story, it really does help to land your pitch and do not sound like a marketing robot!
From crafting an eye-catching pitch to finding all the relevant media contacts and telling you when to follow-up with journalists, PR Guy will guide you through the journey of pitching to success.