Category: media relations

Pitching story ideas to bloggers

Some questions for the public relations and media relations folks out there:

  • How do you pitch your story ideas or press releases to bloggers? What tips, techniques, etc., do you recommend for successful story placement?
  • How do you decide which blogs and bloggers to pitch? Are you going for the big guns only, like TechCrunch and Boing Boing? Or are you targeting niche blogs?
  • More importantly, are you even pitching to bloggers at all? If not, why not? What things are keeping you from doing so?

I asked these questions last week on a communications listserv as part of my research for PR School 2.0, which happens in just a few weeks. I only received two responses about pitching to bloggers — one from a media relations guy who has had some success targeting niche and newspaper bloggers, and another from a media relations guy who doesn’t pitch to bloggers but had advice on how he would do it, if he did. The lack of response tells me that very few of us in higher ed are trying to pitch to bloggers.

Hitting the books for PR School 2.0

I’ve been busily working on thinking about my upcoming presentation for the Higher Ed Experts webinar I’m presenting as part of PR School 2.0: How to survive and thrive in the new online world of Public Relations and Communications, to be held in about a month. My session is titled “Upgraded story pitching: Do’s and Don’ts to keep your clip book fat.”

I’m not sure how many PR folks keep a clip book these days. (We don’t, unless our online del.icio.us version counts as one.) But the concept behind the webinar is simple: new media is gaining prominence as a distribution outlet for institutions’ stories. I’ve got a lot of ideas in my head about this session. I just need to get them down on slides.

Anyway, I hope you’ll set aside some time and budget to catch at least one of the three webinars in the PR School 2.0 series. Here’s a rundown, lifted straight from the site (sans the HEE graphic):

Webinar Series – PR School 2.0: How to survive and thrive in the new online world of Public Relations and Communications: October 21, 22 & 23, 2008

“PR School 2.0” is a 3-webinar series that will bring you up-to-speed on the new higher ed PR practices powered by Web 2.0 technologies. It will show you how you can put the online monitoring of your brand on autopilot at almost no cost, upgrade your story pitching with best online practices and cross over to online news publishing. Designed for seasoned PR practitioners as well as new comers, this series will give you the tools necessary to do your job in the conversation age.

October 21, 2008 1PM-2PM ET – Rain date: October 28, 2008 1PM-2PM ET
Monitoring 360: how to make sure you hear it and see it before they do
Responsible for the Web and Social Media initiatives at Texas A&M University College of Engineering, Matt Herzberger will guide in the maze of free and for-a-fee monitoring tools to help you set up an effective system that works but doesn’t require hours and hours of your time. By sharing best practices and good tips, he will help you monitor your brand online without any information overload side effects.

October 22, 2008 1PM-2PM ET – Rain date: October 29, 2008 1PM-2PM ET
Upgraded story pitching: Do’s and Don’t’s to keep your clip book fat
Andrew Careaga, director of communications at Missouri S&T, will share creative strategies and techniques to help you keep your stories and your institution in the old and new media. With his list of do’s and don’t’s, you will make the best use of the Web and other online tools to successfully pitch reporters, editors and bloggers.

October 23, 2008 1PM-2PM ET – Rain date: October 30, 2008 1PM-2PM ET
Online news publishing 101: how to go beyond online press releases with a dedicated news website
Geoffrey Mock, manager of internal communications at Duke and editor of Duke Today, will explain why and how his institution launched Duke Today, an online news website serving the community. He will also share lessons learned on covering, writing and publishing news for an online daily publication and how to drive readership to the site.

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I hope to see you there!