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if you are interested in securing a podcast interview or a guest post or maybe even something a little bigger like a magazine opportunity or a digital media hit well then you are gonna like this one keep watching if we've not yet met my name is ashlynn carter and i'm a conversion copywriter and brand and launch strategist for creative entrepreneurs but fun fact before i did this whole small business thing this is my background i studied journalism in college and then went straight into the world working at a full service communications firm doing marketing and pr think emily and paris but like not emily and paris at all i say this because i've been on both sides i've been the one that's pitching and landing in coverage like bon appetit in usa today and i've been on the other side one of my very first jobs totally inspired by double wears products saw that in high school knew this is exactly what i wanted to do with my life i've written content for outlets like southern living and style me pretty i'm telling you this because now i pitch and land coverage for my own brand and business and i want to show you how you can do that too with this template let's get into these four pieces of a pitch number one the hook i found a very interesting study that showed that journalists like to get a pitch that is about 100 to 200 words in length that's ing to this fractal research this though is what that looks like this is 100 to 200 words that's not a lot of space so what we need to keep in mind with number one the hook is to get to the point and get to the point fast i start off all of my pitches by saying that i know you're busy i'm gonna make this fast that also holds your feet to the fire nearly 47 of journalists in another study said they get at least 11 pitches a day while nearly 29 get over 26 pitches on their desk every single day that's a lot so you're trying to break through all that noise and get them to pay attention to you you're gonna do that with two strategies the first is you have to be newsworthy you don't have a choice and the fact that your company exists is not a story for those of you that are in prime to launch i have a 60 and 60 exercise in there you can go back and revisit i'll link prime to launch below this video but that's how to generate 60 content ideas in 60 minutes you can also use that to story mine for ideas that you could pitch to journalists and writers this hook is a quick one-liner that showcases why what you've got should be interesting to that outlet this is your shot get to it fast also that whole concept of if you can't explain it clearly then you don't understand it well enough totally applies here okay back to the newsworthiness you are going to love this look down below this video there's a freebie from my friend selena sue she actually helped me land the forbes article that i had about a year ago and she has created 12 months of epic ideas that are already there and waiting for you these are dates and hooks to help you become timely as you're reaching out to different outlets when i say outlets i'm talking tried and true journalists and editors but also new media podcasts bloggers influencers i'm going to flip the camera around and show you in just a moment a couple of great examples of hooks that we've gotten in my inbox from people that want to partner with us but i want to break down quickly what publicity or what pr is because we get into step two which is the second strategy i was just telling you about i want you to remember that public relations is essentially free buzz that you're getting for your business so it's not paid like ads are i've done a blog in the past where i explained the difference in pr and advertising and what the breakdown of that is you can look down below open that in a tab for after this video but i'm here to tell you to grow a little bit of thick skin as you pitch and catch media because you're gonna hear know a lot and that's just how it is and it's not always you because think about it this journalist or writer is trying to appeal and serve serve as the keyword there an audience in their interests maybe a timing alignment thing your story is great it just doesn't fit what they've got coming down the pipeline i'm gonna give you some tips at the end for two words specifically that i want you to start including in your pitch so be sure to watch until then but let's go ahead and get into step two of this this is the relationship intro the big elephant in the room secret to getting pr for your brand is that it is all about relationships all about it you want to be knocking on the right door and this is why i spray and pray approach or sending out some press release or whatever it's not gonna work that's just not effective instead it takes spending about 15 to 30 minutes crafting a great pitch to someone specific don't send this to a general inbox but start to try to figure out a relationship look and see if you can identify the writer the reporter the editor the blogger whomever is covering a certain beat or area of specialty and that's the person that you want to talk to yes this requires a little bit of internet sleuthing some of your best tools here are going to be linkedin that's my number one go-to to figure out who works where search engines and twitter can be helpful as well what you're trying to do here is figure out who is the right human being that you need to send this to and also what have they produced recently that you can comment on you can share with your audience you want to build some kind of rapport with that person before you ask them scratch my back i'll scratch yours relationship you want to establish yourself as someone who is authoritative has integrity and they can trust we talked earlier about how many pitches the sheer volume of emails that these people are getting every single day so that second strategy to cut through the noise is talk about the relationship now you can also play the personal angle here maybe you have somebody in common that can introduce you maybe you have the same alma mater we're looking to find that cocktail conversation moment with them while you're crafting this introduction you're including a very very brief elevator pitch in essence so copywriting for creative students you know you have this for those of you who have my about page template from the copy bar shop there's also some resources in there that you can use to pull together your professional bio but this is short here's some examples of what that could look like baked in your email pitch media pitch template number three here you're gonna come in hot with your pitch idea i typically transition from that introduction to what i'm actually pitching by saying something to the effect of i have an idea that i think would be great for your publication name audience or i noticed your xyz campaign and i had a few ideas that would complement what you already have going on now here's where you give a few ideas of content that you could help them out with one thing to keep in mind here is how far in advance editors writers journalists bloggers content creators in general work print publications specifically magazines are working way in advance six months three months whereas typically the more digital a medium gets the closer to deadline they'll work but still when i'm pitching i always give them respect of kind of coming into it saying i know you're working way far out you're probably already going into q3 content planning but i had an idea here maybe you're bulleting out one to three ideas that you would like to be a guest expert in and contribute these are topics either you usually comment on or things that have come up in the news recently that you can speak to obviously it goes without saying you need to be an expert in these if you're wondering if you're an expert a great gut check is if somebody handed you a mic could you just go and riff for 30 minutes on the subject somebody stuck a quarter in you you could just go you're probably an expert in that here's another pro tip for you the roundup article one type of article that i have seen tremendous success with for definitely over a decade at this point is the roundup what you're doing here is basically giving the writer as much research as possible remember they're so busy so if you can think of what topic can you give maybe one or two points on but you go ahead and do a little bit of the research and legwork for them maybe you think through some peers or colleagues people you kind of play in the sandbox with kind of competitors and you say you could also go to this person i know they speak wonderfully about xyz essentially you're giving them all the pieces that they need to pull together a great article that would be of such service to their audience i keep coming back to that word service i think you'd be surprised if you aren't in the pr industry how many articles out there are kind of ghost written by people that are contributing and giving the writers so much they are busy the volume of content out there is crazy high so help them and give them as much as you can to present them with a body of research they can do their thing hit publish and go step four the last piece of the pitch is saying thank you and giving a call to action one more pro tip i never say anything this pretty much goes for like all emails i never say i hope to hear from you i say is this something that you would be interested in is this a topic that you would like me to gather more details on would you mind keeping me in mind as you plan out next quarter's podcast interviews something like that you also may need to follow this up a couple of times that's okay all right let's look at some real life media pitch templates so you can see how i took the template and fashioned it to work for a pitch so this one to give you the background on this this was somebody that i had met in person at a coffee shop before i knew who they were knew who their brand was but beyond that we did not have much of a relationship so i sent this out asking to be on their podcast it not only resulted in some traction there but they actually came back and asked kind of to take the partnership to the next level and wanted to affiliate for my program and um pitch it to their list and that was huge because their audience was massive and i had no idea that they would ever be interested in somebody like me but i guess we just had to get the ball rolling and it took this pitch to do that so there's the copy for that pitch another one i wanted to show you this is a little bit different so this brand had reached out in dms i kind of talked about the back and forth between should you pitch and talk over linkedin or dms or inboxes and so you can kind of see a phrase there that helped me explain like why i wanted to move it into inboxes the brand wanted to work with me but wanted to kind of know how that could look like like what could a collaboration look like so i sent our spots back they took the bait we're very interested and i have a bunch of their product on my desk right now okay let's move over i wanted to show you a few that we've received so in here i thought this was great look how short this is however i don't have an athletic brand at all and i don't think professional boxing athletes are in my audience shout out if you are so while this pitch is completely like this is what i mean spray and pray where i mean they they've done zero research on my brand but i think like this last sentence is great i like quick background on us and the very brief information they give but 0 out of 10 as far as doing the research and i'm pretty sure they don't even know who i am the last example i wanted to show you this is a great pitch that came in i like how it starts off with a question and it's pretty like softball like absolutely most people do like to share that story and then they also give me the benefit now they took their elevator pitch and just put it into three bullets and i think that's so great i also i do this in my pictures i hyperlink my website and look at how quick their elevator pitch on who they are is so that's great i like if you're interested i can send more details again like i say later in the video i would always recommend saying something like like asking it as a question so you get a response back sometimes more than likely again pitching you're always going to hear some crickets but those are some examples of some real life pitches i hope they help let me give you two bonus tips number one here's the magic word i want you to start including in your emails i figured this out back in corporate and i've done it ever since it's the word partner how can i partner with you to give great content to your audience how can i partner with you to support your q2 sell through of xyz item remember they have a goal what's in it for me so you've got to pitch it to them that way here's another great tip i got from my client julie solomon i did not know this at all but she's the one who changed my mindset on it julie's stance is don't send your media kit until you establish some sort of a report i actually this is kind of a spicy take but i don't think media kits serve the purpose that they once did kind of like press releases which is like that's the stuff i learned in college over a decade ago and it's not as useful now maybe have one on hand because some people do still ask for it but it's not the attachment i'm going to send to the email right away when i'm talking to that writer i want to remember number one establish that relationship with them off of the pitch like i want my name to come in their inbox and then think i've heard this name somewhere then if i can help support them by giving them a media kit later sure i got it also be careful with the platform that you're pitching on my safest bet is to always go email so even though i may establish a relationship with somebody on instagram or even dm with them or facebook linkedin whatever my opinion that no one asked for is i'm gonna always pitch an email first some people just don't like getting pitches on other apps and i understand that but you may find that's exactly where your people respond so you just gotta try it again look down below and grab my friend selena's free publicity calendar i know it is gonna be crazy helpful for you okay that does it except i want to give you one challenge a couple of januaries ago i challenged myself to send five pitches every single monday for one month from that i got 11 different podcast interviews it was a great case study to conduct on myself and i'm going to try to do that again so if you're in and you want to try to do this too hold me to it let's go through it together and let's try to do one month five pitches every single week again crickets are normal hearing no is normal it takes that volume to get some good press in and that is not only good for obviously eyes on your business but think about the domain authority your website can gather if all these other websites and podcasts are linking to it that's valuable no matter how long you've been in business okay now you know how to craft the perfect email pitch template that you can use over and over again when you have your pr practitioner hat on in your business but what about the cfo hat when it comes to paying yourself i have a great templated routine there too so click to watch that in the next video i've got teed up for you as always thanks so much for watching i'll see you in the next video