New Year’s Day and Beyond
Happy New Year! (well, almost). Hope you’ve been thinking of New Year’s ideas to push to the media. If not, today is definitely the day to do something about that idea you’ve been sitting on. Don’t be shy, members of the media are always looking for ideas. It never hurts to send them a quick email and ask if they’d be interested in covering you for something.
Having said that, don’t send them something lame like “This is our sales goals for 2009″ or “People have been raving about our products.” No, no, no, no, no! This is not a sales pitch. You are not advertising here. Make your pitch newsworthy.
To do that remember WWWWWH…and W
Who
What
When
Where
Why
How
and Who Cares?
That last one, asking who cares, is very important in getting coverage.
Ask yourself why a the media outlet you are pitching to would care about what you want covered. Say, for example, you sell water bottles. Okay, maybe you have a unique New Year’s day idea you pitch to your local TV station that’s about helping all the hung-over people in your area recover. You tell the TV station producer that you are going to do this by giving out free water bottles that morning (or even the night before and you add something on the label that says “drink responsibly”). The TV station producer cares because this is something going on that is unique and helpful to the community. Plus everyone gets free water so that usually makes people perk up and pay attention. Plus your water label gets distributed all over town. A good many of you on this list are very creative people. You could probably come up with all sorts of much more clever ideas. Start thinking about why who you pitch to would care about your idea.
*One more thing before I go. Now is the time to work on your own resolution for better press in 2009. Start planning ahead for ideas to pitch. Most magazines are thinking Easter by now, other publications are looking for something mid-January and you may want to think about product pitches for Valentine’s Day.
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