In my many years of working in public relations and organizational communications, I learned a very important truth about PR folks: if you can’t or won’t do your job well, don’t expect a reporter to do hers. If you’re going to have any success in pitching, it’s important to THINK like a reporter. This means: your pitch needs to have a hook – a relevance to current news or the larger community. You need to be able to make a case for WHY your story matters. Failing to have a hook will – in short – lead reporters to shut you down, ignore you and rue the day they answered your call. Reporters live and breathe to tell stories. They want to share news, to uncover and report truths (and all the juicy details that lie therein). It’s important to remember this – whether you’re a small business owner trying to pitch a reporter on doing a story about your product or service…or you’re a PR pro trying to magically weave “news gold” from some busted hay. In either role, your job is to sell a story. The reporter’s job (if they choose to accept your pitch) is to share it.
Click on the video link below to learn more about how to develop your hook.