It was never easy to get a reporter’s attention, but with budget cuts in the newsroom and time at a premium, you must work even harder to stand out. Here, PR pros, a journalist and multiple entrepreneurs share what’s working—and what’s not.
Help your company stand out (especially on a limited budget)
“When you’re working with a limited budget, hiring a PR firm or other agency to find and connect with journalists and blogs on behalf of your business isn’t an option. Fortunately, with a little tenacity and know-how, you can achieve much of the same results with only one or two dedicated people. If you have a product launch or other upcoming event, stand out by personalizing your pitches. Journalists get pitches all day long, likely for products or businesses just like yours, so you can’t expect an impersonal cold email to inspire them to cover your launch. Take the time to browse their recent work and include a short blurb in your pitch about how you enjoyed their recent article on XYZ.”
—Dr. Emily Perry, senior education program manager, QuillBot
“Reach out to local media contacts and develop key relationships that will foster continued coverage. Not every media relations effort needs to be national.”
—Carson Kunnen, communications coordinator, Fifth Wheel Freight
“With journalists and their editors looking as closely at their social interactions as their page hits, the best angles are those that provoke conversation. If you lack a strong enough hook for your news, try approaching with a comment piece providing a fresh outlook on the industry that goes against the grain. Get people talking about the message you’re pushing and they will start talking about the person behind it, and thus the business they own/represent. There is a fine line between provoking a conversation and aggravating figures within your industry. Tread lightly.”
—Ryan Hathaway, PR and media manager, BrighterDirections
“Find the publication you’re targeting, and the specific journalist if possible, and see how they write, what their common themes are, and how well their readers engage on social media. Afterwards, if you still feel your story is a great match, be sure to point that out in your outreach. It demonstrates that you’ve done your due diligence, which will set you apart.”
—Connor Hewson, managing director, Assured Marketing
“Make personal connections with the media in your region.”
—Ben Baker, newspaper editor, syndicated columnist and freelance writer, Baker Brothers PR
“One of the best and most cost-effective ways to launch a PR campaign is to create link-worthy content in the form of a study or industry report. Original data will help you stand out and attract journalists’ attention. Research content, for example, from your competitors, that generated mentions and backlinks from reputable publications. This exercise should give you an idea of the type of content you need to create.”
—Kas Szatylowicz, content and PR manager, V7 AI Vision Platform
Make your pitch stand out
“When pitching your B2B story, make it simple and direct. Journalists may already have a plethora of pitches to review, and so it’s advantageous if you can capture their attention within the first few sentences.”
—Martin Luenendonk, CEO of FounderJar
“First, the don’ts: As a journalist, I am not interested in hearing you have opened a new business and are offering X to the public, unless X is something truly unique and revolutionary. You may think what you have is unique and revolutionary. Ninety-nine percent of the time it is not. Absolutely do not come to me to announce a big sale. If I don’t block you, I will refer you to the advertising department. Don’t come to me with a story about superior service. Everyone says this. I forget how many businesses come to me and want me to write this story. No. A real story is why you opened the business. Tell me about how you grew up, what you wanted to do as a kid and why that led you to the business. Tell me about your community service work and how that dovetails into your business. We have a Youth Apprenticeship program in my community. Businesses hire high school students to work in the place. Students get paid and get high school credit for this. Each one of these kids is a story. Volunteer in the community. [There is] always a story there and it can link back to your business. Tell me why you located your business in the community. Be local. Local is defined as my coverage area. I regularly get PR that says LOCAL in the subject line. I open it to find out the person/place/event/thing is several hundred miles away. Do that a few times and the email gets blocked.
—Ben Baker
“Unless you are bringing a revolutionary product to market, immediately contacting national outlets is unlikely to yield results. Work up through the media ranks, quietly and proportionately building your contact bank as your business itself grows. As mentioned before, provoke a conversation. Think about the articles that you read and share with others: What do they have in common? They either present something new, present an opinion that goes against your own, or provide new insights in an area of interest to you. When your angle is ready, create a priority list of media outlets you would like to be featured in and personally pitch to the right contacts at each. It is vital that you take time to research each outlet closely and discover: A) What are their guidelines for contributions? B) Who is the best person to contact for this pitch? C) Are there any specific pieces of information that they want to receive with your pitch? D) Is your news relevant to their audience? From here it is a time-consuming but ultimately rewarding process of reaching out to discuss your idea.”
—Ryan Hathaway
“Don’t be boring or generic. Lay out how the business or product you want them to write about is different or disruptive and offer some angles specific to the journalist’s niche or location. Help them help you! It is not their job to come up with how your product or business will change the world, and if you don’t include the angle, you will likely not get a response. Also, don’t expect a journalist to drop their other stories to cover yours because you were late pitching. A week of lead time is considered good practice for events like product launches. The opposite is almost never true: Even the best pitch levied too late in the game won’t fly. And don’t contact more than one journalist at an outlet at a time. If several from the same place accept your pitch, you will burn bridges because they don’t want to be writing the same thing.”
—Dr. Emily Perry
“A good human interest story will almost always increase brand awareness. It’s crowded out there, and the fact that people buy from people first will never change. Tell the intimate stories of how your brand helped customers overcome hard times, share customers’ milestones or achievements or random acts of kindness or bravery, honor unsung heroes, or highlight a social cause that’s near and dear to your heart.”
—Lakesha Cole, founder and principal publicist, shePR
“Journalists hunt for interesting facts they can turn into compelling stories. To be successful at pitching journalists as a B2B business, you have to give them what they’re looking for—intriguing, original findings that will make them go ‘Wow, I need to be the first one to cover this!’ My tip is to make sure you provide journalists with everything they need to share your stuff with minimum effort—give them the write-up, highlighted facts and numbers, infographics, quotes, etc. And make sure you reach out to relevant people in the first place!”
—Kas Szatylowicz
“Getting coverage as a startup is relatively easy, particularly if you can announce a successful round of funding. There are many outlets that want to hear about the pitch deck that helped a hot startup raise millions. You have to be able to sell the story, though—what are you going to do with the investment that’s different? That’s the key: identify what makes you different and tell a story that hasn’t already been told.”
—Jennifer Reid, managing director, Techmarketingtalk
“The best way is to document your own narratives internally. Write down all the events, twists, turns and key people who are making interesting things happen. Ask yourself, would I like to read about this? Think of your startup as a movie set—or better yet, a Seinfeld episode. Who are the standout employees or executives or investors who have a compelling or funny or innovative story? How did they defy the odds and come up roses? In what ways has your launch or product or startup journey been excruciatingly interesting? Telling your compelling or educational or amusing business story is largely free if you have the time, the penpersonship, and the patience to write to each journalist individually and ideally exclusively. Never send out an email blast to every reporter on your list. Expensive PR or publicity consulting firms like mine are simply selling you their time and expertise, along with their contact list and proven strategies for earning great press. Truth be told, you can do this yourself if you and your team can advance an authentic, multi-pronged narrative that reads like a mini action-adventure novel or Navy SEAL mission.”
—Baron Christopher Hanson, growth strategy and turnaround management consultant, RedBaronUSA
“When you are starting off, the best step you can take is to be personal. Offering to take the journalist for a coffee to showcase what you are offering is a much better idea than hoping they will respond to a cold email. Start local and build a core of support with the journalists around you and build from here.”
—Zac Surprenant, marketing director, BPKC
Build a targeted media list on a limited budget
“Find out who does the reporting for the media outlets that cover your area. Find out who covers the sector your business is in. Harvest emails from websites. Find out when their deadline is. Then, make an appointment to speak with that person well before or sometime after deadline. Caution: If you start spamming me, I will block you. I’ll never see your stuff again. I have blocked all the major press release distribution agencies. This morning, I blocked two small PR agencies.”
—Ben Baker
“Building a targeted media list can feel overwhelming. Start with a Google or Excel sheet. Once you feel this is inefficient, try a platform such as Muck Rack, Cision or Meltwater. Include contact name, publication, areas of expertise/coverage, mailing address, links to their socials, etc. It is important to keep your media information up to date. Attention to detail is crucial. You don’t want to send your pitches to the wrong email or spell your contact’s name wrong. This could ruin a potential relationship.”
—Carson Kunnen
“The easiest way is to use a tool such as Muck Rack or BuzzSumo to get access to the journalists’ database. The cheapest way is to find relevant people on Twitter and LinkedIn and start building relationships with them.”
—Kas Szatylowicz
“Make a list of topics related to your company and put them into a search engine to find out who covers them. For example, if you are in the B2B cloud computing space you could search for cloud storage, cloud migration and cloud management. When going through your search results, identify not just publications but journalists who cover these topics. Now you can build a media list of journalists and the publications they write for.”
—Brad Touesnard, founder and CEO of SpinupWP
“Start with local and statewide news organizations that publish in your niche or have a news section. Some of these will be smaller but will also be looking to champion people from their community or state. Then you can add authoritative online media outlets or blogs that cover stories or launches like yours—they could either fit into your niche or have a news feed. From there, you can look at where your competitors have gotten backlinks or press coverage and target those same outlets, knowing that they have covered a relevant company in your niche. You will still have to contact, pitch and make relationships with the people on your target list, but the list will act like a game plan for your outreach efforts.”
—Dr. Emily Perry
“Get your C-suite together, along with your marketing and sales folks, and become voracious readers of industry-related news. As you and your team begin to follow certain journalists and publications, you can organically build contact spreadsheets, and then craft bespoke press release pitches. The secret is to mail select journalists and editors or newsrooms a handwritten note, a recent clipping of other news you’ve earned, and a few questions about a potential follow-up article.”
—Baron Christopher Hanson
“Work on establishing a relationship with a boutique PR agency that aligns with your company values. Bigger isn’t always the best choice for startups. The media landscape changes all the time, making it difficult for many media list providers to keep accurate databases. Most boutique agencies secure access to a regularly updated media database and invest more time into building media relationships. Many will sell you a list for a flat rate and have more flexibility to work with various budgets.”
—Lakesha Cole
“Pre-built media contact databases can be costly, but they do offer an all-in-one spot for your PR and marketing team to pull from. If you cannot afford one, you can build your own database from scratch. It’s time-consuming but does have benefits, including that you will have to visit each outlet you’re targeting, which means you’ll get an idea of what content they publish, helping you tailor your pitch to meet their style. While most outlets offer contact details and an overview of what they look for in a pitch, not every editor makes their contact details public. You may come across their email address or phone number elsewhere, but if it is not prominently featured on the website it is likely that they do not appreciate receiving cold pitches and will therefore ignore yours if you try.”
—Ryan Hathaway
Wondering how often (or even whether) you should follow up with a journalist? Our experts weigh in.
“My first follow-up is about 14 days after my initial pitch. Then, if I’m really determined to reach this specific writer, I’ll follow up again after another seven days. Unless something changes, I follow up a maximum of two times per journalist. You don’t want to burn any bridge and upset them.”
Brandon Hopkins, founder, DiamondLinks
“Follow-up times to journalists vary. If you’re trying to newsjack a trending headline, you should follow up within 48 hours. If you’re pitching an evergreen story, expect some quiet time after you send the first pitch and follow up in a week. After the second follow-up with no response, the best follow-up is a new pitch.”
—Lakesha Cole
“Following up with a journalist can be tricky. You don’t want to be annoying, but you also want to know if and when your story will get covered. Research shows that 90% of journalists say that one follow-up email is acceptable. Sometimes journalists want you to follow up because, as all of us do, they get busy.”
—Carson Kunnen
“One follow-up with a phone call is enough. Keep pestering me and when I see your number on caller ID, it will just ring and eventually go to voicemail, which I ignore, or the answering machine.”
—Ben Baker
“For a launch with a specific date, you can specify in your pitch that you need a response by a certain date. Depending on the timeline, I will follow up no more than twice before the stated ‘response needed’ date: once the week before, and one last time up to a few days before. I wouldn’t follow up twice in one week, though. If they want to cover your launch and you’ve given them a great pitch to work from, they will let you know if they can make it work. It is their job to find and write about newsworthy things, after all.”
—Dr. Emily Perry
“Send them a handwritten note or thank-you once, with your business card, and that’s it. Do not ping them via email or social media constantly. This will annoy busy journalists who are not only on multiple deadlines each day, but also get hundreds of emails begging them for free press. Be different by starting a conversation with them that’s relevant to their upcoming or distant editorial calendar.”
—Baron Christopher Hanson
“It depends on the journalist. With job cuts and shrinking newsrooms, most editors and journalists have an inbox overflowing with messages, many of which will never be opened, which means follow-up emails are needed. We suggest following up four to five days after an initial pitch, and again the week following if you have heard nothing back. Daily follow-up emails are a great way to find yourself blacklisted.”
—Ryan Hathaway
Another great way to get ink…
“You can hire a writer. You can even dictate what that writer puts down. I have plenty of clients who do this. They get irritated when their press release, blog, etc. does not take off or go viral. Not my fault. I wrote exactly what I was told. I have a few clients who give me a topic and let me do my thing. Their articles, releases and blogs get serious traction. I know what the media wants and I will deliver, if allowed.”
—Ben Baker