Lessons

Lesson Info

Introduce Yourself to Reporters as an Expert

We're going to look at something a little bit different here which is how to introduce yourself to reporters as an expert so I put this here because it's a little it's similar to your podcast pitch and that you can create more of a temple it and do it but this is a little bit more like a little little little tougher to get into than some of the others but I do totally recommend it because even though the pitch to publication ratio is lower which we will look at in a second um it's a really powerful way to get in front of you know those influencers who are really focused on your topic so this is really the pitch that you're going to be using when you find somebody who's writing all the best stories in our industry so we talked in theseventy lesson to terra gentility and she talked about how she creates influence our immediate lists so if you have an influencer media list on your twitter feed and you're following them or maybe you could put it like a feed lee you know reader about all th...

e top publications and blog's in your industry and you find somebody or reporter a tv reporter somebody who is on the radio anyone who was really talking having that conversation that you want to be having who's having all the most interesting angles on that this is how you introduce yourself to them this is the best way to introduce yourself and get yourself in the role of x is a source so some of the example of what you can do with this expert pitch is kelly studer was a client of ours and we actually sent on a pitch for teo reporter at bbc capital and this this pitch of the reporter was sending them over a story idea saying thank you are you know you're having this conversation we really think you should talk to kelly studer she had something really interesting to say so here we talk about this seventy percent principle of hers so what she says just to give you a quick overview is that when you're job searching, most people look for one hundred percent match but she thinks you should only take jobs that you're seventy percent qualified for because otherwise going to become stagnant in your career and this is totally mind blowing for most people most people look at you know, job search advice and they feel like I need to be one hundred percent qualified for this or he shouldn't even apply or there are hiring manager and they think I have to hear somebody one hundred percent qualified so this person was actually working on an article can the best job come without a promotion? This reporter for bbc capital so we sent over this expert pitch she said you know what? I'm working on an article about this very topic and here you can see the pull quote so of kelly the space that she was able to get in this bbc capital and now she's able to put people see capital at our home page just pretty amazing so the benefits of this it's a really effective way to introduce yourself to the people who are really big influences or in your field um and there's not a lot of customization needed so this is going really rely heavily on that expert bio that you've pitched are put together and so you don't need to create different kinds of story angles for their doing this this is really just an introduction the drawbacks kelly didn't get a link back in that article so you might not get a link back when you have when you're a piece of a story like that you know you might not get a link back and your share of the coverage might be minimal so a guest poster contribution or a podcast interview you're the star your ideas are the star and this you're probably going to be a piece of a story we did an extra pitch also for tara gentilly and it was the same thing she was in forbes and she was a piece of a story she did get hauling back in that one so sometimes you will you just you can't control it at this point once it goes teo like a reporter you don't have a lot of control of what comes out of it the pitch to publication ratio for this is pretty low so you could send out you know fifty expert pitches and maybe one will get picked up it's really about hitting the right person at the right time but we do have people who will send one out and then a reporter will come back because they're looking through their source list that they're searching your emails when they're working on it saran there on a deadline and they'll come back and I'll say I want to talk to this person so it's this great way to introduce yourself to somebody like we said so how you get started here so this is actually a snapshot of my own feed lee which is a feed reader where you could you know, aggregate a bunch of stories where I have one it's called thought leadership so this is a twist on that twitter list idea that we had of you know I put together a feed of all of the people that I want to be following in my industry on communications business building you know, I really want to like push the pr industry into um some of the innovations that you're seeing an other industry so I follow a lot of different clocks that help me with that so I'm paying attention industry knew so when I see somebody writing a lot of articles I can say like that's a great idea and we also do this for all of our clients, so just paying attention there. You're doing it with the reader, whether you're doing it with a twitter list and seeing what's being said out there. And then once you find somebody you want to reach out to, you want to make this first impression, and you could be a little bit more personal about it. So, that's, why we recommend modifying, I recommend modifying this pitch a little bit. You know you still want to give them kind of a snappy headlines, so pick one of your headlines. Pick one that feels a little bit more representative about your main message here, um, and then send it over to the reporter. You want to compliment them on their work and introduce yourself. So here you really want to say, you know, I've been reading your articles on. I've been reading your articles on interior design on how people might be remodeling their homes and I especially loved in quote an article like name an article I especially love this article I'm introducing myself because I am an entire interior designer who does something unique for my clients you know I bring together all the pieces so they're not having the individually source different people to work with them through all the project management I take all the headaches away from them and I love to talk to collaborate with you on an article on and then give them a couple of your ideas these don't again have to be headlines it's more like that podcast pitching where you're just bullet ing out ideas and then again you want to do your same closing so this is away again you're just really relying on your bio you're making it a more personal email and you might not always have the best fast results with this but once you have one of these put together than you save it and when you find somebody else again you can do it again and then what I recommend to make the most out of this is that you're really connecting with these people then on twitter on pinterest on facebook whatever social media that they're using and you're using so that you can keep that conversation alive so reporters air just like the rest of us you know they want to be compliment in another work they want to be a compliment another product they want us to share and spread their ideas they're really proud of the articles they put together says something as simple as tweeting out somebody is article or you don't want to have post something on twitter a question you get dead air like if they pose something and you happen to see it don't spend a lot of time but if you happen to catch it, just respond you know those little things can go a long way to making an impression you could even tweet somebody down the line and say like, hey love your articles you know, I sent an introduction a few months ago I'd love to talk to you about whatever it iss and then see if they give you an invitation they might say, oh, I miss that send something over, so that definitely happens that definitely happens so that's away where you can build up a relationship over somebody who is a really influencer in your industry in your industry. So I know this is a little bit different, so I'm wondering it does anybody have any reporters or anybody that they know is influential that they want to connect with or maybe there's like a media outlet where you're like this media outlet it's really influential and so I'm gonna find somebody could connect with maybe I've been trying to do that on dh option with the kitchen because it's one one place that I'm really into yeah over time building it up and how have you been connecting with them on twitter there have you sent over a pitch yet uh okay didn't know I could do that or I didn't know how todo eso there will be a great one and for the kitchen I feel like you know because you're doing the personal chef work that could be an opportunity where you could either send over a guest poster contribution or a more general introduction so I would just kind of look at them are they mohr doing articles and maybe you can answer this you know do they do more guests bloggers or do they more quoting a people they do a combination of both they do a lot of guests blogging okay, great yeah then I would probably start there that's probably our best way in um but that's the way you can tell what to do it's just looking at are they doing a lot of guests posting or are they interviewing people and do they have a staff that's writing most of the articles and that can be a great way to figure it out cool so will you commit to taking action doing eyes so excited so what I'd like you to do is you know, to start looking at that industry news as you find you know, media outlets where you're like, I really want to break into this. This is really influential attention. Who was writing those articles you like, you know, pay attention. Who is writing the pieces where you thought I should have been in that that's, the best way that should have been me, yeah, why didn't lloyd id this person that you would get all the press wire right there? That is the best place to have the opportunity to introduce yourself and give them another person. It turned tio. They will be so happy to hear from you, so definitely go ahead and introduce yourself as you're finding these people.