This article was written by YEC member Beth Doane. She is managing partner of the award-winning communications firm Main & Rose, a journalist, speaker and social entrepreneur.
Attracting investors, reaching new customers or even landing a book deal, major speaking opportunity or television appearance can be game changers for you and your business. But they all hinge on good public relations. Most entrepreneurs know very little about PR and how it has shifted in the past few years — and even less about how to actually pitch the media.
You may think one way to get earned media is to make your product so incredibly intriguing that deluged content editors somehow find out about it on their own. Sorry to break it to you, but this will not happen to you. Unless your company cures cancer or produces clean energy out of Starbucks cups, an overworked editorial staff is not going to find you. You, Ms. or Mr. CEO, are going to have to get earned media the hard way — by pitching editors and journalists yourself, or by hiring someone to do this for you.
I run a firm that specializes in building personal brands for CEOs, celebrities and public figures, but I know how to secure media coverage because of my background as a freelance journalist and my years as an entrepreneur securing my own media coverage for my companies. Living on both sides of the earned media game, I’ve learned that getting media attention is all about your pitch. Award-winning senior level journalists, pitch writers and media consultants have actually made careers out of advising firms on what works (and what doesn’t). Getting a frequent inside look at this constantly shifting landscape is essential to your success.
My colleague, Isaac Simpson, and I recently sat down and dove into what has happened to the media world that makes pitching so hard — and what brands need to do as a result. We agreed that while relationships with editors are important, no editor is going to risk their reputation writing about something that is not really news. After all, they are bombarded with hundreds (sometimes thousands) of pitches…