Stop Your Pitchin’

In our Pitch-uation series, we’ve been talking about pitching the media. Yes, you’ve read the headline correctly, and now we’re telling you to stop.

If you turn the “p” upside down, people tend to enjoy the whining more about not being “seen” than strategically executing their PR and marketing efforts…so stop doing that, too!

You have to know when to give your ‘pitchin’ a break and develop your angles and your strategy. When bringing on new clients who have handled their own PR, we have actually had our media partners say, “Oh you’re working with [insert client now]? Thank goodness! Please tell them to stop sending me the same press release every week and asking me to write about them.” Once we found out how long that same release was being sent out by our client, we waited almost two months before we pitched that writer again. We wanted to give them a break from hearing about the client (for another week in a row) and give them an opportunity to get a fresh take on a business that had annoyed them previously.

It’s just too easy push send on an e-mail and Facebook or Twitter stalk a writer, but public relations (emphasis on “relations”) is about building relationships. You’re not going to be besties with 500 writers and bloggers, but you want to be respectful of everyone’s time (not just a few people’s time, everyone’s time) and their profession. Take the time to develop a pitch and know when to move on to creating a new story angle and giving the media a break.

Even celebrities don’t stay in the media all the time, and they’re chased by paparazzi and tabloids who are capturing their every move. There are seasons in PR, too, so you’ll want to know when to take down time and build up your next strategy for garnering coverage.

How do you utilize your business down time? Work on new product offerings? Events? And how can you use that time to develop new strategies for media coverage?