9 Tips to Pitching the Press
I just returned from keynoting a PR Newswire seminar in Tel Aviv on how to run marketing campaigns on a shoestring budget. Kudos are well deserved to Rakefet, Sharon and the rest of the PR Newswire team as well as Avi Yair at NCSM Marketing and Yigal Cohen at Linx for pulling together such a great event. We packed out over 100 folk for an event that wasn’t expected to break 70!
Israeli companies are always engaged in interesting technology and this case was no different. We had a company involved in online translation another in architectural collaboration, biotechnology, a wide range of leading Israeli IT companies including RAD, SANDisk, Allot Communications.
Some super information came out of the talk and, no, it’s not just because yours truly spoke. I was super delighted to hear from Lisa Ashworth, the CEO of PR Newswire across Europe, Middle East, Africa and India, about changes they’re making to the standard press release. Normally, we in the media world are bombarded with rather long, dull and boring looking releases, lots of text no graphics, which I suppose indirectly effects the enthusiasm and quality of coverage we can offer to you, our readers. PR Newswire is adding graphics, clickable links and video to their releases making them more “Web 2.0ish”. Good stuff.
Kelli Brown from P3 also had a very thorough presentation on the ways and approaches to social media. She illustrated her message with an indepth case study of the work being done by the folks at RadVision. It’s well worth reading.
My shpiel focused on the dos and don’ts of pitching the press. Mucho gracias to all of my commiserating journalists and bloggers out there who contributed content for the talk. Together, I was able to discern nine mega tips that anyone pitching the press should follow, the biggest being know your journalist. Kind of banal, I know, but seems like it’s an axiom that more PR folk need to follow.
Other tips to keep in mind:
- Match the audience to the magazine
- Tell the right story
- Highlight the unusual
- Make it timely
- Provide compelling collateral
- Do not expect every interview to lead to a story
- Do not stalk journalists
- Poor professionalism WILL backfire
You can find the full presentation here.
Got another tip? Love to hear it; add it below or email me. If you’re in the PR world and have some tips for us bloggers and journalists, I’d like to hear them. Email them an include your name, URL, and tip. I’ll pull the them into a future presentation sourcing youand your organization, of course.
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