Why you need to research who you're pitching to

Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

When you have a story you want to sell into the press, as many of you with PR experience will know, you'll need to work out which journalists to contact.

I'm begging you not to just send it to any old journalist. I receive so many emails/messages on LinkedIn/Facebook DMs from businesses and PRs who think that because I'm a journalist I'll write about them or their client. Same applies to pretty much every journalist I've ever spoken to.

Please don't clog up our inboxes or contact a journalist "just in case" (words I'll regularly see accompanying a pitch).  It adds to our already stifling inbox and really doesn't help with building relationships with the media. It's like contacting an electrician about a plumbing job. I would never send an editor a pitch about gaming if their beat was music. And I wouldn't pitch a magazine without buying it and really looking at what they cover. 

You need to research which journalists your story might suit.

A journalist who specialises in tech? Women's issues? Education?

Research who's writing about your/your clients' competitors. Look at who is writing about your sector via Google News. Buy magazines and newspapers and browse the various sections. Look at the bylines to see who's writing about your industry. Check out media databases. If they're a generalist like me, you need to be specific and have a targeted pitch with case studies. Look at what we write on Muckrack. There you'll get a sense of the stories we like to cover.

Have a great weekend,

Susie