Are You An Entrepreneur or Expert Seeking Media Mentions? Avoid These 3 Tragic Mistakes

During my four years as a Forbes Careers Senior Contributor, I received thousands of pitches - mostly from publicists - prodding me to write about a particular topic, book, business or person. Ironically, for most of my professional life (as an author/business expert/entrepreneur), I was on the other side of the table - working with a great publicist for nearly a decade to secure valuable media exposure. Fortunately, my pitches were largely successful landing me valuable mentions, citations or published articles in more than a dozen notable online and traditional publications including The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Redbook, Glamour, Entrepreneur, CNN, HuffPost and more.

Bombarded with pitches from highly paid publicists representing authors, experts, entrepreneurs, executives and other all-around professional rock stars, as a media contributor I'd also occasionally receive LinkedIn messages or emails directly from others - without a publicist - also doing amazing work equally deserving of amplification. I'd often take the time to iterate with them to extract the information I'd need to write a compelling piece worthy of their accomplishment, and I took the time to do this because I firmly believe that you shouldn't need a paid publicist to get great publicity.

But if you're going to do it yourself, you do need to curate a tailored list of journalists and send them an expertly crafted pitch.

Too often, authors, executives, experts and entrepreneurs waste their precious time by sending weak pitches or using an ineffective approach overall. Let's explore three classic mistakes many make when trying to pitch the print media directly (without the benefit of a paid publicist).

Mistake #1 - Simply Asking, Not Pitching

You'd be shocked how many "pitch" emails I received that start with a simple request to write about someone's business, accomplishments or career.

That's kinda not how it works.

You shouldn't simply request coverage because you think your book or business is great. Instead, your pitch should focus on how you can address an issue or solve a pressing problem of interest to their readers. The first paragraph of your pitch should be laser focused on identifying or addressing a compelling problem of interest to their readers.

That's a very different perspective which is why you should also take the time to better understand the structure of a strong pitch and check out sample pitches before crafting your own. There truly is an art to doing it well - which really does speak to the value of a highly effective publicist. If you're going to write your own pitches though, don't take it lightly - learn how to do it well.

Mistake #2 - Overpitching

No, sending the exact same pitch to the same journalist over and over and over, week after week, month after month really isn't a smart approach. Even if you preface the resend with "Circling back to see if you had an opportunity to review my previous email" or if you ask the journalist to let you know whether they are interested or not. I would typically receive a pitch in my inbox about every five minutes so I rarely had time to respond back to let each sender know that I wasn't interested. You can't expect that type of feedback from busy journalists. If you've sent the same writer the same pitch five times, and they haven't responded, it's pretty safe to assume they're not interested.

While some may be tempted to inundate a small handful of journalists with the same pitch over and over, a much smarter approach would be casting a wide net initially - identifying a broad set of journalists to target so you're not tempted to fixate on a few. Instead of sending a pitch to one journalist ten times, curate a list of 15-30 target journalists and send the pitch to all of them simultaneously. Check out the full course for a list of suggested selection criteria that you can use to approach this process strategically.

Mistake #3 - Lazy pitching

Before sending any journalist or writer your pitch, ask yourself a few questions:

• Why have I selected them to receive my pitch?
• Have I read their work?
• Am I familiar with their writing style and their beat/focus areas?
• Have I attempted to build a (professional) relationship with them online?

Lazy pitching comes in various formats, but this is a classic one - simply pitching to anyone and everyone without taking the time to curate a specialized target list.

A highly effective publicist can be well worth the investment, but you shouldn't have to have one in order to have your accomplishments and achievements amplified. Admittedly, securing valuable media mentions isn't easy, but it is absolutely doable if you know several tricks of the trade. I cover those and more in my new course Pitching Yourself Without a Publicist.

*Advice and recommendations are based entirely on my personal experience and do not represent the processes, policies, recommendations or procedures of any specific media organization or enterprise.