So, you’re looking to get in the news? Exciting stuff! Have no idea how to do this? Well, you’ve come to the right place. This is WHAT WE DO. We get businesses and individuals the news coverage they deserve to help them reach their target audiences and become thought leaders in their industries. How do we do this? There’s a handful of things you should know to start…
Are you ready to rumble? 🥊 To get news coverage, you have to be coverage-ready. What’s that mean? For starters, you need to have something to say or share that’s deserving of news coverage. Just because something is new, that doesn’t mean it’s interesting or newsworthy. It needs to be a product/service/actionable piece of advice that people will need and gain tremendous value from. Additionally, you need to be sure that you have all of your ducks in a row internally. Do we have a spokesperson? Are they media trained? Do you truly know how to talk about your product at length? Are you prepared for tough questions? These are all things to think about and prepare for.
Our Client Sameer Maskey of Fusemachines on Cheddar Business
Know who you want to talk to 👨💻 Assuming you have a good sense of your target customer, it’s then time to start developing a list of reporters you’d like to contact. Less is more here. Nothing will get your company on a blocked email list faster than a spammy, non-personalized PR email. Don’t just think about one set of reporters either. Think about all of the audiences your product or service can relate to, then check to see if there’s a reporter writing for that audience. If yes, get them on your radar.
Listen and assess the industry’s conversation 🔍 Once you’ve identified a list of reporters, then you have to start working on how to reach out to them. The worst thing you can do is say, “I see you cover this, my company does that!” This will most likely lead to your email getting ignored. Instead, best practice in this step is to actually start reading this reporter’s coverage. Additionally, read as much of the news coverage about the given subject as you can. What you’re doing here is assessing the conversation. It’s a lot like joining an everyday conversation. Let’s say you’re at a party and you approach a group of people chatting. Would you just immediately interrupt with whatever conversation you felt like having? You could, but it probably would be very strange! Instead, you’d probably listen and assess when the appropriate time to jump in would be. News coverage works very similarly. It’s an ongoing conversation that you need to jump into when appropriate. Typically, you’d also want to bring something to the conversation that nobody else has heard of or discussed already. Again, same thing applies to media outreach. More on this next.
Develop a creative approach — an ANGLE. 💥 When conducting your outreach, it’s all about the angle or approach you take. We’ll do another post on how to write a media pitch, but it’s critical that you start your email with the story you think should be written, NOT why your company is great. It’s first an angle or story idea that brings the conversation forward, THEN it’s why you or your company is the best fit to help with or tell that story.
Following these guidelines will bring you much closer to your first or next piece of media coverage. Questions? Hit up the comments below or www.peartheagency.com.
