“Help Me, Help You”: 3 Tips to Pitch Media Successfully

Remember that scene in Jerry Maguire where Tom Cruise utters one of his famous lines, “help me, help you”? Well, to successfully pitch to the media, you need to essentially channel Jerry Maguire. Help them first: be the solution to the obstacles they’re facing, and they’ll help you.

Firstly, what are the issues that are plaguing reporters? Recent surveys have shown that despite the technological advances and fancy workflow programs, 68% of reporters are more unhappy and overworked now than five years ago. Why is this? Workplace satisfaction is dropping, newsrooms and resources are shrinking, yet journalists and media professionals are required to produce even more content than before in this multichannel age.

Behind the rise of native advertising and advertorial is the fact that the tides are turning, branded content is welcomed and a great resource as 77% of journalists surveyed in the APAC region say that their news organizations publish branded content. Thus, here is how PR and marketing professionals can help alleviate the mounting pressures:

1. Press releases save time – but here’s how:

Even as social media is slowly becoming a hotbed of breaking news and story ideas, the issue remains that tweets or Facebook posts are often not an official source, lacking a certain amount of verification that is essential in reporting standards. Press releases, on the other hand, are an official and verified source, as shown in a joint survey by Cision and George Washinton University.  Journalists depend on press releases and PR professionals for their primary research, either for more information or interviews and access to sources and experts. Here’s the key though: write releases that saves journalists time. How?

• Use accessible language they don’t need a large amount of time to edit
• Get to the point quickly and ensure your takeaways are obvious
• Write releases with the media’s audiences in mind – have a story, a context, and an understanding of the readers
• Have the media contact information within the release
• More importantly, ensure the veracity of your release and be a dependable source

 2. Let them receive your pitch on their time via email: Journalists still like it old-school: 90.7% of reporters prefer email as the channel for pitching. So don’t try to pitch to “journos” via Facebook or Twitter, email is your best bet and ensure your headline is relevant, catchy, and to the point.

3. Provide multimedia to save them time:

Each week, 75% of articles published contain multimedia content, yet most pitches journalists receive only contains text. This results in reporters putting in extra time and effort to source their own images, which is sometimes not possible due to deadlines despite great written copy.

There is a reason why the importance of multimedia has been repeated again and again, and why extremely popular websites such as Buzzfeed include so many pictures and videos. Multimedia is desirable with 86% of audiences wanting more visual and interactive content. As savvy PR professionals and marketers, we should be providing these for editors. Save them more than an hour by including a high resolution logo and photos within the release, and ensure the file isn’t too large for their mailboxes. Guess whose pitch is more likely to be picked up?

In short, package your press release so it’s easily digestible and ready for journalists. Think of it like this, if someone wanted to wear a dress, the probability of them buying a readymade one off the rack is much higher than someone buying a piece of fabric and a sewing machine. Jerry Maguire was really onto something with “help me, help you”: help the reporters out by saving them time, and they’ll be much more willing to help you out as well.

Celine Wu is the Audience Development Executive for PR Newswire.