What's in store for this edition:

• Pitching

• BlackRock Pulls Ad Featuring Shooter

• COOL or CRINGE: Crowdstrike strikes out

• TOOLKIT 🧰 — Qwoted

• Attention Seeker of the Week 🐈

Pitching

A media pitch is a personalized, concise email that is personally addressed to a journalist and tailored to their beat and audience.

This email lets them know what newsworthy event or occurrence is happening. Media pitches are more conversational and less formal than a press release.

Put yourself in the shoes of a journalist and think about the hundreds of pitches they receive weekly. What is going to make yours stand out? By thinking about the story first, and not about your brand or company, then you will be on the right track.

💫 Pro Tip: Don’t send a generic pitch, your email will be blocked by the journalist.

A Pitch Breakdown

Pitches are a great way to let the correct journalist know about a story idea that their audience would find interesting or useful. This is an effective and creative way of telling the story of your brand.

Pitches should include:

Subject line: Make it compelling and short. (short subject lines are better than average and earn a 4.73% response rate)

Greetings: Greet by name and mention why you chose them for your outreach. Be honest.

Content: Should be relevant, newsworthy and timely. If it’s not, it will be ignored. 

Body: Get to the point. State why this information is important and why it deserves coverage. Giving a story angle (link back to the previous post with angle) mention what audience it would be good for. Studies show pitches between 51-150 words performed best, over double the average, with a response rate of 7.51%.

Conclude: With a call to action and contact details.

Call to actions might be:

• Setting up an interview with, for example, the CEO, expert, or lead developer

• Offering a free product demo or trial

• Inviting them to attend your event

• Offering an exclusive first-peek

• Visit to factory

• Participation such as come make ice cream/candy/candles/laser engravings with us (you get the point)

Key PR Takeaways 💪

• Personalize every pitch

• Research the journalist and what they have written and their style, know what makes them tick.

• Include assets like graphics, photos, videos, etc.

• Use data like original research from trends, market dynamics, industry insights, polls, studies etc.

• Email is best. Do not pitch over the phone or via social media.

Should you follow up? Give it a couple of days. If there is no response perhaps your pitch didn’t resonate, and a new improved pitch is better. But also remember on average only 46% of journalists will open your pitch, and of that only respond 3.43% of the time.

The number one reason journalists don’t respond to pitches is because the pitch is not their area of coverage. Always, always, always make sure the journalist covers what you are promoting.

Sure it may seem that the odds are against you for getting your pitch accepted, however, never sending anything is a guaranteed 0%. 

For 5 examples of pitches that have worked, here’s a deeper read.

Do this now: Here’s your mission should you choose to accept it.

Write a practice pitch to me.

I am a the ______ reporter for a local paper and you are a ________ business, you fill in the blanks.

Come up with something you want to pitch. Obviously this is fictional exercise, but it can get your creative juice running and get some practice pitching in. (No need for assets for this assignment)

Just like in the major leagues the more you practice the better you get!

Next time: Learn how to research who to send pitches to. Which journalist has what beat? What publications would be interested in my story?

Get PR techniques from recent news.

Newsworthy

BlackRock Pulls Ad featuring shooter

The world’s largest money manager, BlackRock, pulled a 2022 ad that had Thomas Crooks in it after it went viral.

From a PR perspective they did the right thing. The day after it went viral, they issued a statement stating the facts, what they have done about it, and the companies view on the shooting.

✍️ Key PR Takeaway: Monitoring social media is crucial to be quick in responding to the negative situation.

Learn from others.

0% Cool : 100% Cringe

CrowdStrike’s massive fail caused chaos for millions people and companies.

The first message out the gate should be empathetic, especially when your company had caused major disruptions. Instead, the world got this tone deaf statement on X:

Four hours later came the apology.

✍️ Key PR Takeaway: Put yourself in the shoes of those affected. What would you like to hear? This is called empathy. Don’t avoid accountability, in the end you’ll be accountable anyways.

Useful PR Resources.

🧰 TOOLKIT

Qwoted - Free Expert Account

This free tool is perfect if you are an expert in your field and you want to get quoted in publications. You need to be ready and available to answer questions from journalists. The concept is similar to SOS, however this is more than an email list, it allows you to set up a profile and then receive email inquiries about your selected expertise and even has a category for products.

This is a perfect tool to accompany this newsletter on pitching, because that’s what you’ll do, pitch your expertise!

Reality check: ALWAYS follow the instructions and requirements from reporters. Do not take liberties and think, oh this is close enough. Be respectful and thoughtful. Be brief. Use the pitching tips from this week, and all the other tips you’ve learned on standing out.

Attention Seeker of the Week

Jamma, the vocal 9-year-old Calico, is more than happy to let you know what she wants. When she wants to go to the attic? It’s one tone. She wants to have some treats? A different tone. Wants to go outside? Yet another. Jamma, you door-opening, little actress, you had us at meow.

All this talk of pitching has got me nostalgic for baseball. ⚾️ I wonder what Fernando Valenzuela would have to say? 💙

Until next week, keep your shades on and stay cool.

Your fellow Seeker,
Keren

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