Ok, so I admit, there’s nothing new about what the media loves but this is a good reminder and some helpful tips to help sharpen your pitching skills and your campaign!

1)      Be brief or be gone: Keep it short and to the point. In fact the subject line of your email should tell the story. Create a compelling subject line and follow that up with a short 2-3 sentence pitch in your email.

2)      Relevance and target: I can’t say this enough. Pitch the right person and pitch topical stuff. If you aren’t sure who to pitch look up the show or ask the person answering the phone.

3)      Tie-ins: What does your topic have to do with? A calendar date? Holiday? Local event? Tie ins are important, if you have one make sure the media is aware of it.

4)      Visuals: What sort of visuals do you have? If your topic is crafting, cooking, painting, sculpting, or even something related to history visuals are always important. These can be props and/or B-roll which is an industry term meaning footage that rolls during your interview. Rarely will an interview be all-you focused. Viewers don’t respond well to talking heads so props, B-roll and anything else you can add that will enhance your interview is a great way to dress up your interview.

5)      Responsiveness: thanks to instant access to everything (a la Twitter and blogs) the media response time has shrunk. You must get back to media right away and respond to emails they send immediately (or as fast as you can). In fact it’s not a bad idea to set up a special email account for media pitches that you know you’ll have access to all the time. That way you can check it and don’t have to worry about sifting through the hundreds of other emails and spam you got.