The purpose of pitching media angles is to gain the attention of a journalist in the hopes your story will be published. There are many approaches to pitching a story, you could send an email or pick up the phone and talk to a journalist. But before you start writing that email or dialling a journalist’s number, think about what it is you are pitching and how to make it appealing to the journalist.
Pitching stories is an important PR strategy for any business to communicate and engage with their target audience, grow their business, raise their profile and get an edge over their competitors.
Regardless of the angle, aim to create a story that evokes a connection with the readers rather than just providing factual information and when writing the story remember to ask yourself ‘why would the reader be interested in this?’
Keep abreast of the news agenda
A good tip is to read the news every day, you need to be on top of what is happening in your industry and those industries you are trying to target. You should also read the publications you want to be quoted in, in order to understand the style of the publication and the different journalists who write for it.
Find the interesting stories in your business
In order to gain media coverage for your business you need to be able to find interesting stories about your company and share them in an appealing and simple way with journalists. Not all stories are obvious. People in ‘non-sexy’ or unglamorous businesses may wonder why a journalist would be interested in writing about their business. All businesses have stories, expertise or advice to share. The trick is to find out what the stories are and then package them in an interesting way.
Journalists are looking for angles that are newsworthy, timely and interesting. If there’s nothing particularly contentious or newsworthy going on in your industry that you can comment on, there are a number of ideas to keep in the back of your mind:
- Business milestones, i.e. 10 years in business
- Evergreen stories such as an accountant pitching about tax tips around June 30.
- Award wins
- Human interest – the stories behind your business
Use statistics and interesting data
Many media angles use data, statistics or trends as the interesting angle or hook. While data is great, according to New York Post business reporter John Crudele, it is not enough to get the attention of a journalist. In order to get coverage for your story you need to go beyond the numbers and think about how this information is relevant to the journalist and what their readers are going get out of the story.
When presenting data, statistics or trends in a story the numbers are just numbers unless you can connect it to something tangible in the readers’ lives. Data is great as long as you can make it interesting and relevant to the readers. Keep this in mind the next time you have data you want to tell your audience and think about how you can make it interesting for them.
All businesses have stories to tell and expertise or advice to share. You just need to find out what the stories are and package them in a way that is interesting to journalists and your audience. When pitching story angles to the media think about how to connect with the readers and what they are going to get out of the story.
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Sydney Public Relations Agency, CP Communications provides specialist media, traditional and online PR strategies that get amazing results. Contact us today. For more great tips visit our website www.cpcommunications.com.au.
