9 steps for smarter pitches and getting your story covered

These fundamental tactics will help you garner the media interest you desire

It’s true that every business is a publisher. In other words, every company has the opportunity to produce content, such as blogs and webinars and podcasts and so on, to attract attention and prospects and increase its profile. In essence, every business these days is, increasingly, the media.

Nonetheless, there’s a certain cachet to getting a major news outlet to tell your story for you. There are other benefits, too, of course, like broader reach, instant legitimacy, and the fact that your Mom can brag about it. Every day, for example, I get dozens of e-mailed press releases and idea pitches from business owners and the public relations people who work for them.

Like a lot of editors, I ignore many of them. Some of them are tossed immediately because they suffer from what my friend Matthew Stibbe calls “Frankenquotes,” or bloated, monstrous quotes stuffed to the seams with spare jargon parts, all patched together to create something hideous. The quote is usually attributed to a Big Cheese with a Fat Title. (Ironically, no human would ever utter the words.) Here’s an example of what I mean: