A newsworthy pitch is no longer enough.
Journalists (and especially bloggers) want you to bring something else to the table: an audience.
For now, this isn’t something most of them speak of openly. But when staffers at venerable titans like the New York Times or WSJ open up, they admit writers are under pressure to earn page views just like everyone else. Has this knowledge changed how you pitch?
What can you do for me?
It’s become part of the journalist’s editorial calculations by necessity. If they cover you, how many page views can you deliver to them?
Podcasters are pretty blatant about this. They interview people who already have big followings—either via social media or email lists—because they know the thought leader will then push the link to the podcast out to his or her lists and say, “Hey, I was on this podcast the other day, check it out.” And then the podcaster will get more downloads and be able to present that higher number to advertisers.
You also remember this from when blogs were still on the upswing: Bloggers would guest-post for each other, then go back to their own blogs and direct their followers over to the other blog site, bumping up page views.
Propose ways you can help promote their resulting content
Now back to you. What audience can you deliver to the influencers you pitch? Maybe you do have a platform to promote their resulting stories about you—a significant social following, email list or website where you can share the link and drive traffic.
I’ve even seen some of them reach out and ask PR shops to do so. So why not just offer it in your original pitch?
I was working with a media relations pro who was attending my pitching workshop. She asked for my input on an email she was sending to a new writer at a top-tier national paper. I suggested that she include the size of her organization’s social media following (the group is fortunate to have 7 million Facebook fans) and hint that she’d use them to drive traffic to resulting stories.
About 45 minutes later, the writer responded to explore the opportunity.
The numbers matter only in proportion to the size of the outlet. Your niche trade site or local TV station won’t need to see follower counts as high as would, say, USA Today, to get interested.
But even if you don’t have a platform like that, if you think hard enough, you can still make this principle work for you.
Relating how a piece of content is already performing
What was once taboo is becoming a new media relations tool: citing data to demonstrate that your proposed story will perform well online.
This doesn’t replace the need to concisely spell out the substance and merit of the news. That won’t ever change. But now savvy PR pros are getting ahead by supplementing their core stories with information that helps targeted journalists and bloggers predict audience reaction.
This comes intuitively when you’re pitching a video. It’s natural to say something like, “And it appears to be picking up steam on YouTube—5K views yesterday, already up to 11K today…”
But you can also do the same with written content, whether it’s on your newsroom site, your blog or even a third-party site. Showing that people are interested in a topic can pique an influencer’s attention.
Just be careful to make clear that the momentum is still increasing. They won’t be interested if it’s obvious the content already has reached its viral peak.
Figure out which audiences your target influencer is going after—maybe something like young moms. Then find some ideas or content that have performed well with that audience, and use that to validate your pitch.
So it would look something like this:
Dear Important Healthcare Influencer,
I’ve noticed that you’ve been sharing items of interest to young moms recently.
Our hospital has some quick guides that help moms determine whether to take their toddlers to the ER, the doctor or stay home.
Since we posted these, traffic to our site is up 15%. I imagine that with your broader reach, you’d see even more moms clicking through to check these out. Would you like to share them?
This isn’t forecasting; this stuff is already working. I’ve seen pitches like this land coverage on NYTimes.com, Time.com and a recurring column on Forbes.com.
Reap similar results with this formula: Newsworthy content idea + built-in audience = win-win for you and your target journalist.
CONTACT: Michael Smart is the media pitching coach PR pros turn to when they want to boost media relations success. He advises everyone from Fortune 10 brands to nonprofits and sole proprietors. Learn more at: michaelsmartpr.com