Business benefits
Get the background work complete before you pitch. Draft materials, prospect media contacts, and pre-sell content to media.
The most important and successful PR SEO happens in the pre-pitching phase. In addition to drafting content and researching the most relevant publications, pre-sell your content to media through exclusives, embargoed pitching, and concept pitches of thought leadership pieces.
Write your content and publish it live before the launch on URLs that journalists can access. Label important pieces with EMBARGO and the launch date.
Embargoing a pitch until a specific date ensures that, by the time it goes live, all related website content and promotions can go live as well.
Avoid using embargoes for every single pitch or without good reason, as this may cause journalists who have received multiple pitches from you to start ignoring them.
Plan story launches for Tuesdays or Wednesdays.
On Mondays, most media professionals are still catching up with the weekend news. On Thursdays and Fridays, they tend to defer writing the story until the next Monday, at which point it’s no longer relevant or fresh. This applies regardless of location or industry.
Include this information in any pitch:
- Friendly introduction.
- Short description of why you are reaching out and what you are offering.
- Brief description of the company and spokesperson.
- Content offering, like the quote, an expert available for an interview, research data, case study images, or a byline idea.
- Other useful information, like the spokesperson’s short bio or the company boilerplate.
- Offer to provide more information upon request to support the submission.
- Friendly goodbye.
Develop your own pitching style that’s succinct and gives them the information they need.
Avoid adding fluff that doesn’t tangibly add to the message to stay succinct and to the point.
Personalize your pitch using what you know about the journalist and any information they offer on how they like to be pitched.
Consider looking at a picture of the journalist to whom you are pitching to humanize them and create a more personalized, engaging pitch.
Release any exclusives. Clearly communicate the terms and conditions to all stakeholders, including the journalist and your marketing team.
Clarify exactly what the exclusive entails, like getting the exclusive run for content versus getting exclusive time to run the content before other media can pick it up. You can run multiple exclusives for a single story as long as their audiences don’t overlap, like featuring American data in an exclusive data publication in the United States while featuring European data in an exclusive European feature at the same time.
Sell the content to a wider media audience.
Follow up with media after the story launch to make sure they have everything they need for a story.
Increase their attention by adding extra content, like more information, more data, or an extra interview. This adds value to a follow-up contact and makes it more likely for the media to respond or reconsider the story.
Promote the content on your own social channels, ensuring that you keep to the terms of any exclusivity contracts.
This includes social media, newsletters, and email.
Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T09:53:17Z