My Pitching Guide 101

A Media pitch is an essential PR tool. And just like many other important things in life, it’s the quality that counts. Your goal as a PR professional should not be to send out pitches just ‘because’. The focus should be on creating pitches that produce results - an effective Media pitch.

What is a Media Pitch?

A Media pitch is a brief personalised message that presents a story, highlights its value and explains why it should be published on a media platform. Media pitches are usually sent to journalists, editors, bloggers, and basically anyone that has the platform that is suitable to tell a story for the right audience. Successful pitches could translate to newspaper features,TV appearances, articles on blogs etc.

To ensure that your pitches are effective, here are some points to guide you in creating a media pitch.

? Know Your Audience

Your audience in this case refers to the platform or journalist whom you are pitching to. And knowing them goes beyond just knowing their names or a little idea of what they write about.

You need to do your research about their; previous publications, niche and interests. This gives you a better understanding on how to craft your pitch to align with what the journalist might have an interest in. You don’t want to be that guy pitching a public health story to a journalist with interest in Arts and Culture, except you at least found a link between the two.

In knowing your audience, you should pay attention to the basic details like their names, their preferred titles and even the pronunciation of their names. One awful mistake to avoid is misspelling the journalist’s name.

? Be Clear and Concise

Typically, journalists and media platforms get tons of pitches on a daily basis. For them, time is a luxury they cannot afford to waste on trying to understand ambiguous pitches. Your media pitch should be brief and easy to understand. The subject should give an insight on what your pitch is about while the body goes further to expand this as clear, concise and tactfully as possible.

? Know your Story

Having a comprehensive knowledge of the story you are pitching can give you an edge in writing a compelling pitch. You do not want to sound unsure or ignorant in your pitch. To this effect, you should carry out research to better understand what make your story relevant.

There’s a chance that there’s someone out there with a similar story. Why should your story be chosen and not theirs?

In knowing your story, you would be able to highlight the very important and unique aspects of it, and in turn create an effective media pitch.

? Proofread Your Pitch

Do not be in a hurry to send out a pitch immediately after writing. Proofread your pitch to make sure there are no grammatical or spelling errors. You can also ask someone else to go through it, to check for errors that you may have missed.

A media pitch with lots of errors sends a bad message about the writer. And being in a journalist’s blacklist is not what any PR professional wants.

? Follow Up

With so many stories being presented to journalists everyday, an oversight is bound to happen. Following up on your previous pitch is a great way to ensure your story is not lost in their piles of emails.

Ensure your follow up pitch adds more value to the original pitch. This could be in the form of visual assets or additional information that emphasises the relevance of your story.

A follow-up pitch can be sent 3-4 days after sending out the original pitch.

Conclusion

As a PR Professional, seeing your story published can be very fulfilling. However, writing an effective media pitch is not always a guarantee that you will get the response you desire. So even when you are not having immediate success with your pitching, that should not discourage you from researching, strategizing and sending more pitches. You could even get a response for a pitch long after you sent it.