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April 19, 2017

4 tips to achieve the attention of a journalist

The foreign word “pitch” has long ago taken root in professional PR slang. If suddenly someone does not know what “pitch” is a short message to a reporter sent to pay attention to your company and may have written about her. This can be an e-mail, phone call or social media message.

We drew attention to the fact that our services often are not only PR, but also the business owners who want to attract media attention to your company. It is certainly very good, but if you want to press some larger story, interview, success story, case study or expert column, you will have to master the art of pitching. To this end, we have translated for you a column about the secrets of a perfect pitch, which Angela Jia Kim and Rachel Hofstetter wrote for publication Entrepreneur. Despite the fact that all the advice is focused on American journalists, you can bet that, it all works too.

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Frightening fact: the vast majority of letters that get journalists and the producers of the gear goes in the basket. It is a very uncomfortable truth for those trying to do their own PR. But there is a small chance that your letter will still read it, and eventually you will be material. You need to know just a few insider secrets.

  1. Customize

The shortest path to the trash is to send a mass mailing, or make a letter look like her. Instead, do some research and find out which editor or journalist might be interested in your topic, product or expertise, and write individual pitch only for him.

The easiest way to gain the trust of the journalist from the first row to say a few good words about his latest work — in the end, you will need to see a decent amount of the materials before him.

  1. Knowing your category

Most journals, online media and television channels usually follow in their submissions to the pre-agreed formats and are reluctant to invent the wheel for the sake of a new topic. So if you want to significantly increase your chances of publication, it is better to offer the letter to incorporate your story in a specific category or format, which is already practiced in the media.

Examine the material under heading a few months, and offer an interesting topic in accordance with the format and your examination or history. Some formats are repeated only once a month or even a year, so such projects to negotiate better.

  1. Offer a catchy title

If you want the editor fell in love with your business history, it’s nice to imagine how the material will look in the end. Is to offer boring subject, examine the nature of the headers in the desired media and jot down a few ideas with their own catchy titles for future material.

Of course, this material we would call a very bored, like “Tips for writing pitches from experts.” But instead we called it convoluted and more alive. With the same success, this material could be called “Why journalists continue to send your letters to the basket” or “the Secret to a successful pitch for 60 seconds”.

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  1. Be concise, explain clearly

Suppose you wrote an almost perfect pitch letter. And here the final tip on how exactly to get rich: cut all those words and sentences that repeat the idea twice, or just meaningless.

Then try to simplify the work of an editor. Insert the text for important links (including a link to your website), don’t forget the letter to sign with a phone number and email address (all of a sudden a reporter decides to print your letter), add a link to the archive with photos in the cloud.

Re-read your letter again, make sure that you have correctly written the name of the addressee and correctly mentioned all inputs (if you think it’s rare, I can tell you that many familiar editors receive at least one letter with a misspelled name in a couple of days). If everything is in order, click send and wait for feedback.

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