Draft your pitch in an informal manner, be aware of deadlines, email, call to discuss it then follow that with a summary of your conversation while ensuring the journalist will want to open and read your pitch in the first place by giving it a short, to the point subject line that explains your pitch in an interesting and engaging way. But, as our fifth tip states, beware the usual suspects…
5: EVERYDAY NEWS?:
Award wins and new appointments aren’t standout stories to journalists as they see hundreds of these press releases every week. It is therefore important, when pitching to journalists, to tie everyday stories like these into broader news hooks, such as future plans or client wins and project successes, to get the journalists’ attention. Something like “X Expands On Recent Award Win With New Client Win”.
Our next tip this week will go over positioning and content.
Here’s the rest of the series:
- The ideal pitch to the press – part 1: talk don’t pitch
- The ideal pitch to the press – part 2: timing
- The ideal pitch to the press – part 3: contact
- The ideal pitch to the press – part 4: subject lines
- The ideal pitch to the press – part 5: everyday news
- The ideal pitch to the press – part 6: positioning
- The ideal pitch to the press – part 7: preamble
- The ideal pitch to the press – part 8: attachments
- The ideal pitch to the press – part 9: summarise
- The ideal pitch to the press – part 10: time sensitive
