By: MMM Editorial Team
A few years ago, we published this blog post exploring five reasons journalists were skipping your pitch. It covered how busy journalists are, not pitching the right person and not planning for the current media landscape.
Let's revisit that post and find five more common mistakes when pitching your story, system or solution to the news.
The below tips focus more on engagement, not just how busy the newsroom are so you not only get more placements, but you get higher quality placements as well, which is critical to building a movement or making worldwide change.
Here are the top 5 reasons your pitch wasn't picked up:
Reason 1: You didn't think like a reader or viewer.
Thinking like their audience can help you quickly impress a journalist. You can do this by writing a headline for your press release and mimicking their editorial style, tying your pitch to a recent story or simply referencing their audience.
It's important to envision the final piece. One, it shows the journalist you’re not just trying to use them but the more your envision the final piece, the more you can try to make it relevant for your target audience and not just a mass general audience. This will help you create the content you know ultimately your village wants to see and not just something that gets you in the news.
Reason 2: You didn't include multimedia
A photo is worth a thousand words and since you want to practice short pitches, using photos can help you communicate more in less space.
Maybe you can't create your own images yet, that's OK! Include proposals for multimedia and mention how their team can capture content during the interview, in a tour, etc. News, especially TV, is visual and you need to think about not only what you'll say but how you'll appear.
Reason 3: You didn't format for readability
Journalists are busy! Give them a break and break up those paragraphs. Yes, it's bad but it's also memorable and will come to mind the next time you're writing! Use bullet points, quotes, an infographic, even a numbered list to help you communicate dense information. It's critical to do so because this also ensures few errors when the journalist does take on the story! When you're building a movement, you don't want errors to proliferate while you're still getting out key messages.
Reason 4: You didn't plan for responses.
Don't pitch and then go on vacation...unless you can take phone interviews. You never know when the next pitch might me a major one and so pitching and then ditching is a terrible practice because it signals to the journalist who took on your story that you didn't think it was important to stick around.
Another issue? Not having time in your schedule because this work was so abstract initially you didn't think you'd have to plan for the actual interviews. These can take up to 1 hour at a time and if your brand grows, you may need to squeeze in multiple.
That doesn't mean you can't ever go on vacation. Just to pitch accordingly and maybe send a comment around on a trending issue instead of asking for interviews.
Reason 5: You didn't follow up.
I should put this in every single list because this is often the biggest reason. Sending one pitch is NOT enough because journalists are busy. You may have emailed one while they were in a meeting or they meant to get back to you and then...life. Or sometimes their editor is now asking for a new story and you're a good fit so bumping your email to the top of their inbox can be a massive help.
A general rule is to follow up about 1-2 times over the course of 2-3 weeks just to make sure it’s truly a no.
OK that's all of them...for now :) Let me know in the comments which one resonates with you!
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