N ow more than ever, newsrooms are turning to news releases as a primary source of quick, easy-to-produce content that can help them make the most of their shrinking staff and the never-ending need for more material. That makes the press release the perfect doohickey for all the goals you need to accomplish as a communications professional.
Category: Media Relations
5 questions to ask a reporter to help improve your story pitching
The answers to these five questions can say a lot about what stories a reporter is looking for and how … More
It’s not you, it’s me: Why reporters are rejecting your media pitch and how to move on from it
Whether in love or story pitching, rejection is hard.
7 tips for recycling a story pitch that didn’t get picked up the first time (or maybe did)
If you have an interesting story happening at your campus but the first attempt to pitch it to the media didn’t work out, here are few ways to break your story into its component parts to spin a new pitch that might yield better results.
Analytics: As newsrooms continue to ‘go digital,’ helping reporters meet their digital goal is key to media relations
(WARNING: This may be the nerdiest public relations/digital media post you read all year!)
Serving leftovers: How to warm up your cold story pitch and make that press release look appetizing again
What was once so hot and tantalizing is now just cold and ready for the Trash Bin. I could be talking about dinner leftovers. But I’m really talking about how a journalist sees a story pitch from something that happened more than about a day ago.
How to politely fact-check a reporter in advance to avoid a mistake in reporting
For an industry that is so (rightfully) obsessed with getting the facts straight, it may come as a surprise to many outside the newsroom that there is no one, universally accepted process for journalists to fact-check their work.
How to get over writer’s block in 5 easy steps
If you find yourself stuck trying to write that next press release or campus magazine article, or the idea of committing words to paper makes you overly-anxious or self-critical, here are a few tips for pushing past the block.
7 ways to use Constant Contact, Smore or any other newsletter program to improve your press release success rate
If you’re using Constant Contact, Smore or some other email system with stats to send out press releases, here are a few ways to use the system to improve your email pitching both in the short-term and in the long run…
Know your newsroom – not just your education reporter – when pitching a story about your school
Perhaps, too often when pitching to an outlet, we tend to think “who is the Education Reporter over there?” But if you’re relying just on “education reporters” to report on your schools, you may have a hard time getting their attention.