How to Pitch Stories for Media Placement

Maximize your success with these five simple tips.
by CR 'Cataunya' Ransom
Mosnar Communications

A mass explosion of free publicity is the best reward to launching a successful
PR campaign. The ultimate goal of a PR campaign is to receive loads of free publicity about your book, product, service, or cause.

This type of free publicity most often leads to more sales, brand awareness, strategic alliances, and so on. Making headlines is the greatest and fastest way to make people want to do business with you.

Achieving free publicity success often involves research and doing your homework. However, the rewards are well worth all the time and effort you
put in. Imagine receiving a feature story about your book, product, service, or cause in a newspaper or magazine for free? Advertising is expensive and most likely would cost a pretty penny to publish a full feature article in a newspaper
or magazine. Learning how to successfully pitch stories to the media could bring in tons of free publicity.

Here are some tips to guide you on how to pitch stories for maximum PR media placement:

1. Release
The first step is to prepare a media or press release about an announcement. It is important to consider that your release should be telling a newsworthy story. New additions, breakthroughs, mergers, acquisitions, research findings, etc. A media or press release will tell the story that you are trying to pitch.

2. Research
Make sure to find media publications that are related to your story pitch. Look for chemistry by matching publications that focus on your industry, topics, reviews, etc. This is the single most important step to receive the most free publicity exposure. A great release and story that is pitched to the wrong media source will never get picked up.

3. Pitch
When pitching your story remember you only get one opportunity to make a first impression. Be ready to pitch your story in 30 seconds or less. Identify why your story pitch is significant to the media source and how readers can benefit from your story pitch.

4. Promote
Allow media publications to find you by promoting your release. Try using press release wire services to help promote your release. There are a number of free press release wire services like http://www.prlog.org/ or http://www.i-newswire.com/.

5. Build
Start building relationships with the media and become a lead source for media publications. Give them what they want: a great story!

Media publications run on news and supplying news is what will get you free publicity. Mastering how to strategize to receive the best media publicity involves knowing how to match your story pitch to the right publications. Keep researching, keep pitching!


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CR "Cataunya" Ransom is the Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer
of Mosnar Communications, Inc. in metro Atlanta, Georgia.
CR consults clients and speaks to audiences relating to
global marketing and public relations practices. CR is the creator of
the Mega Powerhouse Marketing system at www.megapowerhouse.com


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