Categories: OLD Media Moves

How to better pitch business journalists

The public relations staff at Thomson Reuters interviewed some of the company’s business journalists about what they prefer in receiving in terms of story pitches from PR staff.

Here is some of the advice:

1) Do background research on your journalist first. Monitor their Twitter stream and their blog. What do they write about and whom do they respond to? Which social site do they dedicate much of their time to? Are they posting on Twitter hourly? Do they update their blog daily? How do they respond to comments on their blog? After better understanding their activity and preferences, start to engage them through these channels to build a relationship rather than pitching them blindly.

2) Get your influencer hooked using simple, short pitches. Grab attention in 20 seconds or less—an email/tweet with a link to video or image that tells a story is more interesting than plain text.

3) Write like a journalist. If the journalist bites on a pitch and asks for more, tell the story in a way that is most easily accessible for the journalist. If they are forced to strip out the jargon and spin, they may also strip out the main points as well. Credibility is lost and relationship is damaged if main story has to be altered.

View Comments

Theo Francis says:
September 27, 2011 at 3:34 pm
Don't forget: Make sure you're pitching a *story*, not just looking for free advertising or publicity for your product or service.
The distinction should be clear to anyone in the business, but just in case: Stories tend to reflect more than one point of view, and include some kind of tension, disagreement or question; they also typically have a beginning, middle and end. Advertising and marketing, by contrast, are all warm and fuzzy stuff just about your product or service.