Wednesday, January 18, 2012

The worst time to pitch a reporter is

People sometimes call us because a competitor has a story in the media.

It’s great they want publicity, but they’re not going to get an article from that source, which is usually what they’re after.

To paraphrase Jeff Haden, a columnist at Inc.com, “If I just wrote about the subject, I’m good for the next year or so.”

Luckily, there are always other media to approach.

If the article was in the local daily paper, we could pitch the local business journal, the local weekly or monthly magazines.

We could go for broadcast media: television and radio appearances or quotes in Internet stories.

We could target trade journals—not the ones clients themselves read—but the ones read by their clients.

To do so, we come up with angles focused on the specific media.

That way, a missed opportunity becomes a way of creating a broad-range public relations campaign that delivers long-term results.

For more information, contact Dell Richards Publicity at 916.455.4790 or visit us at www.dellrichards.com.