My name is Monica Rosenfeld and I’m the founder of WordStorm PR. Over four weeks I’ve been producing short videos to show you exactly what you need to get ready before pitching your story idea to a journalist. Today, I’m going to talk about how to find the names of the people you want to pitch to and how to organize so that you do it in a systematic and methodical way.
Now think about who your target audience is and the media that they watch, read and listen to. These are the media outlets that you want to pitch your story to. I would suggest that you become very familiar with this media. If you want to be on morning radio programs listen to them. If you want to be on a morning show watch a few of them and if you want to be in the newspaper on a Sunday read the Sunday papers. You will notice patterns emerging around content that journalists are producing and you’ll be able to see where your story fits in.
So now that you’ve worked out exactly who or which media outlets you’d like to pitch to. It’s time to find the names when it comes to newspapers and online news sites. It’s fairly simple as well as magazines. The names are pretty much written there. If you look at SMH.com.au and if you look at the small business section the names of the journalists are right there and they’re the people that you pitch to, similar with newspaper stories and magazines. TV and radio are a little bit different however. Whatever you do you do not pitch to the reporter. So if you think your story is perfect for Kyle and Jackie O. Do not email your story or pick up the phone and try and pitch to Kyle or Jackie O.
Who you want to talk to is their producer. And how do you find out their details? Well start by looking on Google you’ll find a lot of information there about who the producers are for the different programs. If you find that you’re getting down a dead end and you can’t find the names simply pick up the telephone and call the radio production company or the TV channel that you’re wanting to reach and ask them the name of the producer of the reporter that you’re wanting to pitch to and what their contact details are. What you’ll find is that the contact details within each Publishing Group have the same patterns. So once you get an e-mail format for some journalists at Fairfax, all other journos you pitch to who work at Fairfax will follow that same format. Now the best way to organise your pitching schedule is to create an Excel spreadsheet and have a column with the media outlet, the name of the journalists you’re pitching to, the angle you’re pitching, the date, the date of the follow up and what the reaction was. If you’ve got all of this you’ll keep track of exactly how journalists react to your story and if they didn’t pick it up this time you can pitch different angles to them a couple of weeks later or three weeks later and have another go. But it’s about building relationships with these target journalists that are on your list and you do that by creating win win scenarios.
They are looking for content you have a story that will add value to it engage their audience go for it and wishing you all the best. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Bye bye.