How to Pitch a Journalist Successfully

Most PR is not news. Writers for daily papers and blogs may run something they know isn't news to meet a quota (I've been in that situation), but the best way to pitch us is to give us something that's actually news.

My advice:

1) We're not all the same, no one can speak for all journalists.

2) Edward Bernays, a spin doctor so good he convinced the world that he invented PR, told Stewart Ewen that the job of PR is to instruct clients on how to "just interrupt... the continuity of life in some way to bring about the [media] response" (Ewen's book PR: A Social History of Spin) In other words, your job is making news. Easier said than done, but worth keeping in mind.

3) Read William Zinsser's book On Writing Well and apply it to all your communications. Specifically, write what you mean as simply as you can. Look at this for an example of what not to do: http://boingboing.net/2012/02/06/edward-norton-and-daria-wer...

What does that Norton quote actually say? "I liked working with these companies." That's not revealing or funny or interesting. The vast majority of executive quotes I see in press releases are like this. All they really say is "We think we have a good product." Yawn

4) Speaking of which, we hate quoting from press releases. Get someone important, like the CEO or CTO, to write a blog post that we can quote from.

5) I'm pretty technical for a journalist, but don't assume even the most technical of us are going to be able to decipher your string of buzzwords and jargon. Knowing what each word means individually doesn't mean we'll know what they mean when you use three or four of them together as a noun. Keep it simple.

6) Think about your subject line as a headline. Why would a reader read want to read your story? If a reader would want to read it, I as a journalist will want to read your e-mail. I get too many e-mails that just say "News from [some company I've never heard of]" or "big data announcement, time to talk?" I'd also throw a specific date into the subject line. Examples: "New open source operating system launches Tuesday" or "Data Released Today Shows MindFuck is the Fastest Growing Programming Language on the Web."

6) Even tech blogs want people stories. If you're stumped on how to pitch something in an interesting way, think about people. Things like ERP and tape backup are inherently boring. Find a fresh human angle. "How a big customer avoiding disaster with our solution" is a boring story. "How Dr. Steve Made a Medical Breakthrough by Studying Archival Data" or "How an Average Jane Worker Catapulted Her Career with a Simple Manufacturing Process Tweak" could be interesting stories.

I'm a journalist, not a tech journalist though.

We write for the readers.

Some pointers.

1. Use the Who, What, When, Where and How. Who are you. What do you want. When is it happening. These are the three most important points to get across.

2. Press releases are usually technical jargon that makes no sense to readers. Explain what your product and service to help the readers. E.g. iPod can hold 1000 songs, not 10gb of songs.

3. Think of the readers and pitch it such that your story will be exciting to the readers.

I think it's important to remember what journalists are looking for - a story. I've had journalists basically admit to me that they don't have time to put together all the stories that they need, so they look for interesting stories that are easy to understand. A common problem that we had early on was that the media didn't understand our data - so we worked to refine the story down to a simple sentence that just about anyone could understand - and we tested it with people outside our company.

I think the problem with most PR is that it isn't a compelling story - but the people go to the trouble of doing a full PR release (including throwing it on the wires) for something that really isn't news and will never get covered. For items like that, the blog is a perfect outlet combined with social outreach.

In my opinion, it is also worth measuring the impact of your PR - not by number of article placements, but with a brand awareness survey of your target buyers. Yes, it costs money, but you can do it these days for a surprisingly low amount of money (like $1000). This can give you a benchmark for brand awareness among your target buyers and you can then measure the impact over time.

Finally, I think the reason to hire a PR person is because they have the relationships with the media outlets that you target. Yes, they can help with messaging, etc - but at the end of the day it's about whether or not they can pick up the phone and call XXX and have them take their call. Not something for all startups naturally - and as @brackin said at the top, developing those relationships yourself is very powerful.

Make relationships, it's simple as. You can very easily do this on Twitter but it's similar to investors in the sense that they won't pick up on you without an intro or building a prior relationship.

To get the most out of journalists at events you have to do your research. I went to TC Disrupt and got almost no press at all but did start some relationships. Six months later I went to LeWeb and prepared and was able to get an interview on the Wall Street Journal, TNW, Huffington Post, France 24 TV (CNN of France) and many other publications.

All I did was research who was going to be there and emailed them telling them about me and my startup. They then lined me up as a target to interview rather than me having to follow them. If their editor already knows about you before they go filming then you have a better chance as the editor has the real control, if they like what you've said in the email or call then the chances are they'll be wanting to get a lot from you as they think it'll be used.

This is appalling pabulum. It has no more to do with pitching a journalist successfully than wearing nice clothing to the interview has to do with getting a job.

Every pitch should have dual goals:

1. Ideally, you'd like to get covered. 2. Absent that, you'd like to increase the likelihood of getting covered in the future.

So you should think of your pitch as being more about making your company look worth writing about. In particular, don't breathlessly oversell a minor piece of news.

If you're a native English speaker, you should strongly consider going without a PR firm altogether. They're the sort of outfit who follow the cookie-cutter advice in the post linked here and think they're adding value. They also are very bad, with few exceptions, at finding credible ways to make you sound unique.

The thing to consider about a press release is it's a way that other journalists know every other journalist has gotten the news, and thus, is a way to guarantee that not many people will write about you (journalists are driven by the scoop). If what you have is actually 'news' and not just propaganda, give an exclusive to someone at a major daily. That beats a press release. Don't worry that the story they write hasn't got your contact details, the best journalists are like hackers, they can get any information they want. So the people that call you the day the story has run (and for this you must fit with the journalists schedule and resist talking early) will be a selection of the best and most interested journalists.

Asking it here instead of commenting in the blog for more eyeballs:

1. The (only) media covering startups for my target market happens to be funded by the same investor and in the same company group with the startup I'm competing with. How to deal with this?

2. How to deal the case where you get reply from more than one media near simultaneously (after you BCC-spam them). Promising each of them "exclusive info" seems weird right? Should you honestly reply the rest, "Sorry folks, one media already replied."?

It's really not that hard. If the news is actually interesting to me - I assume (that if i'm a reflection of my readers) it will be interesting to them.

Basic product pitches, 500 words context setting shit and partnership stuff is often not interesting. Something i've never heard of before, something that will improve the way I work and live - that's what I crave.

Pitch me on that - and I'll write.

Is it just me, or is this title missing a 'to'?

How to pitch a journalist - surely I can't be the only one thinking that this contains instructions on how best to throw a journalist 10 meters in any direction...

I've noticed this quite a bit in American posts - words clearly missing, but no one cares

few pointers: Never, and I mean, never ever, call a journalist after you sent them your news and ask them if they got your mail and when they will write about it. It's a sure way to get you blacklisted. Target your mail. A tech-blog needs other information than a local newspaper. Set up a page with pictures and link to them.

And: Get a professional PR person. You might be good, but if you let your pr be handled by "guy x in marketing" then you are no better than those companies who let their IT be handled by "my sisters brother, he really knows his way around the internet".

Bookmarked! Great work. Thanks.

I'll add one thing that I've found so far:

They can take a long time to respond. One site got back to us several weeks later. A few days or more is very common.

Of course no response at all is by far the most common result, but just because they don't respond within a day or two doesn't mean they aren't interested. They get a TON of emails...

great stuff as usual tdm!