Getting Traditional Media to Mention You

It’s considered the holy grail of marketing: getting the traditional media to notice you and report on your products or services. In essence, getting a report on your company mentioned in the New York Times is worth a whole heck of a lot more than getting a report on some anonymous blog, even if the blog has a reasonably high PR rating. But how does one go about getting noticed by these places? Here’s how:

Do Your Homework

Start by finding out who works in your particular area of business. You can do this by visiting the local library and checking out the latest copy of Writer’s Marketplace. While the book is a directory designed to let writers find places to sell their stories, it’s also useful for finding niche magazines and newspapers which may be interested in doing a feature story on you. Look for the names of editors and be prepared to contact them. Note that you can buy a copy of Writer’s Marketplace too, but it is a tad pricey for something you may not need regularly.

Don’t Waste People’s Time

Editors are very busy people and they’re not going to want to get your spam e-mails which you sent out to 100,000 other editors. Take the time to craft a pitch for your company to specific editors and explain why you think your new product or your company would be interesting to their readers. Remember that you’ll have about five seconds to get their attention, so be sure to grab them and get right to the point. Most editors will have writers they trust whom they can assign the story to, so there is no need to pitch a writer to them.

Have Something to Say

Editors are not going to write up a story about your two man company because you bought a new copy machine. It may have been a big investment for you, but they won’t care. Nor will they care that you just hired a new secretary. On the other hand, if your small company just built a prototype of an interesting product or just hired a well known engineer who used to work for Google, then they will be interested in what you have to tell them.

Prepare an Angle

Editors and writers are busy people, especially in this day and age when writers get paid much less than they once did for their work. This means that they need to be able to see a story in what you are telling them and they need to be able to see it quickly. So prepare an angle which allows your chosen editors and or writers to see that there is something interesting for them to tell their readers. The more you prepare, the better off you are and the more likely you are to get traditional media to mention you.