Yesterday, I wrote about How to Pitch a Story: Part One. I focused on the steps I’ve used in preparing for a pitch, including targeting outlets and developing pitch materials. Today, I’ve provided How to Pitch a Story: Part Two, which focuses on managing the process and closing out the pitch. I look forward to hearing your feedback on these posts.

Keep Good Records

If you’re not using a customer relationship management (CRM) system to manage your media outreach, start using one now. It’s the best way to keep track of your history working with organizations and individuals, particularly if you’re working in a team environment.

Take good notes on your interaction with the journalists, and attach all your pitches, documents and other information to the system. Ideally, you should use a system that also enables you to manage tasks and follow-up as well.

Most CRM systems are built for managing a sales pipeline, and that’s what media relations is all about. You’re selling a story and need to track your prospects and lead-to-close ratios. If you do this for a few months, you’ll quickly identify patterns around what works and what doesn’t. [Read more...]

Whether you’re just starting out in PR, you’ll need to know how to pitch a story. With all the talk about off-topic pitches and “PR spammers” I’ve been seeing out there, I figured it would be timely to offer my suggestions for how to pitch a story. I’ve broken this advice into two posts, the first of which I’ll share today on preparation, followed by part two tomorrow on managing the pitch process.

For the critics out there, I don’t believe there is one right way to pitch a story, but there are a lot of wrong ways. I’ve put together this advice based on my own success and failure working with the media. I’ve found the greatest success using this approach, and it’s my hope that you too will find some helpful tips for preparing your next pitch.

Regardless of the approach you use, the only way to produce consistent placements for clients is to do your legwork. Pitching is a lot of hard work, but the better your preparation and persistence, the more success you will have. [Read more...]