Minisode: How to Customize Your Pitch Angles for Journalists – Podcast Transcript

Lexie Smith 

Hi guys, this week, we are doing a mini sewed and I decided to take you behind the scenes on how both myself and my team approach, customizing and creating pitch angles for journalists. So if you’re a longtime listener, or you’re someone who’s already in the PR industry, you’re probably not unfamiliar with the concept that in 2023 bulk pitching does not work. Fact one of my biggest pet peeves, or pet peeves in the sense that a lack of information is when someone comes to me with a pitch. They say I have a pitch, I’m ready to go. And I go great. A pitch for who? Oh, for the media? No, no, no, no, pause, right? No longer can we have one pitch that works effectively for every single writer and every single outlet out there. Think about it right? Every outlet is different. Every writer is different. And as I talk through today, and how my team goes about creating these angles, I think it’ll become a lot more apparent as to why. So here we go, how to customize or how to come up with a custom pitch angle for journalist. First and foremost, start with coming up with a general thing. So whether this is for yourself or a client, I’m going to talk high level about one of my clients. Today, we’ve been going after it’s a travel company, a travel tech company. And recently we decided to do a campaign around spring break. So I knew we wanted to go after something regarding spring break. And our target audience was mom’s period. That was a general theme. So start with your general theme. Is it related to a calendar? Is there a lunch coming up? Is it something to do with your founder high level get an idea of the type of pitch that you want to pursue? Because this is going to allow you to identify outlets and then proper contacts at outlets. Now this episode, we’re not going to go into necessarily how to select the perfect contact. What we’re going to do is you have the contact now what how do you take that general theme and customize it for that specific contact? Okay, first thing you do is what I call professional stalking. Just kidding. But not but kidding, but not okay. We can also call this research, we’re going to want to research the heck out of this individual.

Lexie Smith 

And what are we researching? First and foremost, their byline page, right, looking at the articles they’ve written for whatever outlet you’ve selected. If they’re a freelance journalist, or someone that writes for more than one which is becoming more and more commonplace, you’re going to also want to search for their portfolio to get an understanding of their entire body of work. You’re gonna want to look for public facing social media links. Twitter is a big one. Do they have a LinkedIn? Do they have an Instagram? I really liked Twitter because it’s an inside view into their personality type. So big, big fan there. And you’re really going to want to start to consume content and the things you’re going to be looking for, you’re going to want to pay really, really close attention to the types of stories they cover. Are they someone who’s producing roundups, or listicles? Are they doing feature stories? Are they doing first person essays? Are they doing how to articles? Do you see that they’re routinely producing a certain series of sorts? So no, if it’s someone who’s doing roundups that only feature affiliate links, right, so do your due diligence and not just reading the headlines, but clicking in and reading through to understand the types holistically the types of articles that they produce? Also know are they only covering breaking news? Or are these more evergreen topics? Are they jumping on top of trends? So for this client, right spring break is not really evergreen, we were talking or we were tied into a a timely situation. So That’s just an example there. So, you also, here’s the big one, don’t forget to notice their publishing frequency. When was the last time they published? And how frequently are they publishing at this given outlet? Big mistake I see made, someone will find a writer at an outlet that wrote an article a year ago, if you go to their byline page, and they haven’t written an article in a year, they probably aren’t writing for that article still. So get an understanding of how frequently they’re producing content. Okay, so now what I want you to go back through, you’ve noticed all these general things about them, and start paying really close attention to the topics of articles they’ve written about recently, because we do not want to pitch them the same thing they just wrote about. So for my example, that I’ve been going through, we’re going after travel, generally, we’re going for moms and spring break, if I find a writer that just produced an article, or just wrote something, talking about how to help moms with spring break, it’s not the time to pitch that again, right, and just wrote about that. So using all of this information, now we can take that general theme and get a lot more specific. So let me talk you through an example. For this again, client, we identified the parenting.com as a outlet of choice. And we found a writer that produced advice columns for moms. So what we let that do is crafted angle in a style of headline format that she writes that allows her to provide advice to moms going on spring break, and our client was going to be used in such as an expert resource. So here’s another key part of this. Where does your client tie in? How can your client or if you’re doing it yourself? How can your business help this writer with what they’re currently already producing? So are you a hero part of the article? Are you a headliner? Or are you a supporting source? Now, of course, we all want to be the hero. But that’s not always the case. If this given journalist, for example, is only producing advice columns, then they’re not my might not be an opportunity for them to feature you were your client. So you have to be really thoughtful, intentional, and objective with where your story or where your assets can tie in. So I’m going to give you guys another example here, another client, we’re going after HR folks, that was our audience. And that general theme was work perks. So we narrowed down found a outlet that we wanted to pitch identified, a writer identified that this writer produces a very specific type series of articles.

Lexie Smith 

And then she talks about kind of a trending buzzword. Well, there was a trending buzzword that my client knew a lot about. So we reached out, we pitched not my client as the headline. But the series, we pitched her new series idea. And then our client became a supplemental source for her to use and quote in the article and guess what she did, she picked it up, it was published, I used our headline word for word. So something you might be noticing, if you are new to PR, whether you’re once again DIY, or you’re in the industry itself is this is timely. This isn’t fast, right? This, this is intentional, this is a process, the process becomes shorter, when you decide to stick to a niche, or you do this a little bit longer, and you take meticulous notes. That being said, if you haven’t looked at your media list, and a few months, don’t rely on your three month or six month ago notes, double check that this writer is still the same outlet that they’re still covering the same beats and really look at what have they been publishing recently. And remember this, this is a best practice for for all pitching. The journalist doesn’t owe you anything. So don’t go into that thinking that you’re the bee’s knees and they would be so lucky to write about you or your client. Remember, how can you serve them? How can your story or your client story serve their readers? Okay, so that was just a little bit behind the scenes into how my team and I go about creating a custom pitch angle. Again, high level Recap, you

Lexie Smith 

Again, high level Recap, you start with that general theme, you then do a bunch of research or professional stalking, which can then inform you to take that general theme into something a lot more specific. We can take one general theme and have 15 different pitches because we have 15 In different people, we might call it our spring break campaign. But no two pitches look the same. Now if you have any questions permission to slide into my Instagram DMS at the PR var underscore Inc if you’re watching on YouTube, drop a comment. Or you can always hit up my email which is Lexie at the PR inc.com. I’d also love to hear how you guys go about customizing your pitch angles. What are the techniques, tips, tricks, tools of the trade that you use, always always looking to learn. So thanks for listening until next time on the pigeon and sipping podcasts. Hey guys, if you are enjoying the pitching and sipping podcast, please do me a huge favor and leave a review wherever you are listening. If you want to connect with me to learn more about the PR Inc. You can do so on Instagram Act, the PR bar underscore Inc. Four you can check out my website at the PR bar inc.com Cheers