How to Do PR STEP 5 — Sending Your Pitch and Measuring Your Success

What are your Public Relations goals? Did your pitch help you achieve them? (Thanks to kreatikar for the graphic)

Sending your pitch to the media means you present the story — usually via email — to outlets you think will be interested because THEIR readers and followers will be interested.

Last week’s post was about refining your story. Now that you have that, it’s time to send your pitch! You’ve already determined the proper times to send your email, based on when your preferred writers tend to post to social media.

Also make sure you’re keeping your own availability in mind. Send your messages when you can be available to respond.

Be sure to keep track of any feedback you may receive from writers. If they’re not interested in the story, is there a specific reason they can point to? Is there a better time or way to communicate with them?

You’ll also want to customize your follow-up. If you sent a lot of emails, feel free to use a template. However, make sure to personalize the template to match the writer you’re sending it to.

If they send a fast, short response, you should, in turn, send a short, fast response back to them.

Spend some time thinking through the next steps in your follow-up. Anticipate additional questions. Try to concisely answer them to speed up the process and make the writer’s job easier.

Once you have sent your pitch, measure your success (or failure), and optimize the process for next time

All of this comes down to your own personal PR goal (I covered that in another post; you can find it here.)

You’ll want to be sure you’re measuring success or failure in terms of your own goal. If your goal is brand awareness, look at measures such as unique visitors to your website or a specific product page you are promoting.

If you want to get in front of a specific audience, look at how your story performed and who is engaging with it. Do they match your audience?

Use this information to make changes and start on your next campaign!

If you’re looking for a new way to get media coverage, check out my press release distribution service that gets you an “As Seen On…” banner for your page, social media profile…or anyplace else you can use one!

Katie Coates, The PR Secrets

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SEO, Digital PR Courses, Creative Media Marketing, How to Find Potential Customers Online

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