{"id":4655,"date":"2023-03-02T11:59:42","date_gmt":"2023-03-02T16:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.americanbusinessmag.com\/?p=4655"},"modified":"2023-06-12T10:17:41","modified_gmt":"2023-06-12T15:17:41","slug":"hijacking-the-news-cycle-be-fearlessly-opportunistic-and-exceptionally-relevant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.americanbusinessmag.com\/2023\/03\/hijacking-the-news-cycle-be-fearlessly-opportunistic-and-exceptionally-relevant\/","title":{"rendered":"Hijacking the News Cycle: Be Fearlessly Opportunistic and Exceptionally Relevant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI get hundreds of pitches weekly from publicists. And the vast majority of them won’t get read because they are outside of my coverage area or not a good fit for outlets to which I contribute.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is what freelance travel journalist Victoria Walker recently posted on LinkedIn. Sick and tired of getting irrelevant pitches, she <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/posts\/victoriamwalker_pitching-victoria-m-walker-activity-7018245001499271168-Qhis?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop\">crafted<\/a> a pitch guide to help publicists stop wasting her time and their clients\u2019 money.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/document\/d\/11vBfbV7nes49S0kWZmspjD3HVGmDHgrLkvyEJMELMV4\/edit\">The pitch guide<\/a> is straightforward, succinct, and informative. It\u2019s very helpful to publicists who want to place clients\u2019 narratives into Walker\u2019s stories.<\/p>\n<p>But she should never have had to publish it, because a publicist\u2019s job isn\u2019t <strong>just<\/strong> to be fearlessly opportunistic. It\u2019s also his or her job to do the work to make pitches exceptionally relevant.<\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><strong>Anyone can hit \u201csend.\u201d Great publicists do a lot more.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Many PR professionals are good at being fearlessly opportunistic. They eagerly pick up the phone and send an e-mail. But just like a soldier who uses the \u201cpray-and-spray\u201d strategy in battle, they\u2019re going to hit a lot of targets that were supposed to be left untouched.<\/p>\n<p>Nobody\u2019s going to die because a good e-mail was sent to the wrong journalist or a bad e-mail reached the right journalist. But doing it repeatedly will burn bridges that lead to your target audiences.<\/p>\n<p>And the burning can happen two ways. Going back to Walker\u2019s quote, most pitches are irrelevant to <em>her beat <\/em><strong>or <\/strong><em>her outlets<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>What this means is that many publicists are committing two professional sins. First, they aren\u2019t researching the outlet \u2013 which is as easy as scanning a handful of stories on a website. Second, they aren\u2019t looking at her stories \u2013 which is as easy as scanning a handful of stories she\u2019s written in the last six months.<\/p>\n<p>Twenty to 30 minutes of research plus 15 minutes to build a good pitch \u2013 45 minutes of work (less if research shows the journalist is a bad fit) to avoid burning a bridge with someone who could be the perfect journalist for your narrative next week.<\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><strong>Two case studies <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We have two recent client case studies which show how being opportunistic <em>and <\/em>relevant can cut through the media noise to reach journalists.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The first happened at a recent political event. Our job was to find on-site media that would want to spontaneously interview the client amongst the thousands of other people at the event.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Getting in front of journalists was easy. We simply walked up and said hello. The much harder part was to make our client exceptionally relevant, especially when speaking with the local ABC channel. The journalist likely didn\u2019t want the same talking points as everyone else, so we (accurately) framed the client\u2019s research-based narrative as being outside of the common political divide.<\/p>\n<p>It worked. Within five minutes, the camera was on and the client was sharing her narrative with a journalist who previously hadn\u2019t known she existed.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The second client success also started with trying to get through a crowd: journalists covering ChatGPT, the AI system that\u2019s taking the world by storm. Journalists receive hundreds of pitches per week on this hot new topic \u2013 but three outlets we contacted interviewed our AI\/tech client because he could discuss ChatGPT\u2019s strengths and weaknesses for a niche stock market audience.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This success was based upon two relevancies \u2013 first, the client was offering something unique (ChatGPT\u2019s benefits to market movers and shakers), and second, the target audience was very narrow (financial markets-focused tech journalists).<\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><strong>Fearlessly opportunistic <em>and<\/em> exceptionally relevant<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Walker\u2019s story is common, which is why many journalists appreciate great pitches. We use the <a href=\"https:\/\/provenmediasolutions.net\/the-three-ts-to-getting-press-that-drives-sales\/\">Three T approach<\/a> so that journalist receive:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The right <strong>topic<\/strong> for their coverage beat.<\/li>\n<li>Excellent <strong>timing <\/strong>\u2013 we don\u2019t pitch taxes during Thanksgiving.<\/li>\n<li>A great <strong>title <\/strong>\u2013 the right spokesperson for their article, segment, or column.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Not every pitch will be the right one, and success is never guaranteed. But your best chance to hijack the news combines being fearlessly opportunistic when reaching out <strong>and also<\/strong> taking the time to make clients exceptionally relevant. It\u2019s also the most ethical way to treat your high-paying custo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p> \u201cI get hundreds of pitches weekly from publicists. And the vast majority of them won’t get read because they are outside of my coverage area or not a good fit for outlets to which <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.americanbusinessmag.com\/2023\/03\/hijacking-the-news-cycle-be-fearlessly-opportunistic-and-exceptionally-relevant\/\" title=\"Hijacking the News Cycle: Be Fearlessly Opportunistic and Exceptionally Relevant\">[…]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":443,"featured_media":4656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[208],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4655","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-public-relations"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanbusinessmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanbusinessmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanbusinessmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanbusinessmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/443"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanbusinessmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4655"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanbusinessmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4751,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanbusinessmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4655\/revisions\/4751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanbusinessmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanbusinessmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanbusinessmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanbusinessmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}