As social media continues to invade the public relations sphere, more and more public relations professionals are using it to pitch story ideas to the media.
Here at Weise Communications, it’s no different. After we had not success trying the traditional email and phone pitching style on a story about new technology from one of our health care clients, we turned to video pitching to get the story coverage. We went out to the hospital and put on our journalist hats. By filming the technology ourselves and then editing together a full story pitch, we were able to interest the first journalist we approached with the story. The story appeared on several newscasts this week in Denver on CBS 4.
The moral of the story here is if at first you don’t succeed, critically evaluate what is not successful about your pitch and then be innovative in developing your new pitch. Also, by giving full thought to the interest viewers (or readers, listeners, etc.) have in the story, you can craft a better pitch to the media.
The real art of pitching a story to the media is figuring out what is really newsworthy. By being able to think like a journalist, you can show them how their audience would be interested in the story. And by using social media or new technology to get your point across, you can better show a journalist why it is interesting, rather than tell them.
And here’s the story on the local news.
Let us know if you have any success with innovative story pitches or want some advice on the matter.
on Facebook
on Twitter
Recent Comments