So your PR efforts have paid off and a journalist has arranged to interview you. Congratulations!

Your work is far from finished, however. Now you have to prepare.

One of the often overlooked elements of preparing for a media interview is to get more information from the reporter.

Here are 10 questions you should ask before your media interview:

1. Whom do you write for?

Know which media outlet the reporter works for. Do some background research, just to make sure they’re legit, but also to get a better understanding of their readers/viewers/listeners, editorial style and biases (you’ll be surprised; the media aren’t as objective as you thought).

2. What types of articles do you write for your publication?

If the journalist writes features, then you’ll know that you should be armed with human interest stories. If he writes news items, then have all your data with you.

3. What story are you writing now?

Know in what context your interview will appear. It could be just a part of a bigger story, in which case the journalist may be using your story to illustrate a point. Or you could be the entire story. Either way, it’s good to know exactly how your interview will be used.

4. When’s your deadline?

By knowing this, you can respond to her requests in a timely manner–which you should always do anyway.

5. Are you contacting other companies?

Not that you’re demanding exclusivity, but it’s good to know whether competitors or complementary businesses will be featured alongside yours.

6. Would you like a sample of my product or service?

The reporter may forget to ask, so be proactive and offer a sample.

7. Would you like a customer reference?

Again, this is something the reporter may overlook. Be ready with feedback or testimonials from your happy customers. They may just be quoted in the piece!

8. What trends or issues are you seeing in this segment?

This is good market research for you. It will also help you frame your answers so you can be more relevant.

9. How did you hear about my company?

This is a good way to find out which of your PR efforts are paying off.

10. When is the story scheduled to run?

Don’t expect the reporter to give you copies of your interview when it’s published or aired. Be ready to monitor and file your own copies.

These are just some of the most important questions you can ask a journalist before your media interview. Don’t be timid about getting the information you need to go into the interview prepared and confident.

Image from from Crestock Royalty Free Images

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Year after year, the same holidays come up that the media are obligated to cover.

New Year’s, Valentines, Mother’s Day, Back to School and Christmas are just a few examples we are all familiar with that reporters and bloggers are looking for stories.

By tying your story, service or product into these times, you may have a better chance of getting some coverage.  Don’t forget about deadlines though, many magazines really are working on their Christmas issue in July!

And don’t limit yourself to the major holidays.  As an example, besides Father’s Day, coming up in June are observances such as:

• National Safety Month
• National Rose Month
• National Dairy Month
• National Business Etiquette Week (June 7 – 13)
• Men’s Health Week (June 14 – 20)

You can view a partial list of holidays and observances here

Ask yourself, “what time of the year are people talking about my area of expertise or could use my product?”

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And I’m sure, it’s also what holds you back.

Why? Because most people don’t consider themselves as experts. You’ve probably said to yourself “other people are experts, but not ME!”

The truth is, if you’re running a business, you’re a knowledgeable expert. You know more about your business than most people and you have a lot of valuable and useful information you can share.

But no one is ever going to come up to you and dub you an expert. YOU have to do that yourself. YOU have to believe that you have the knowledge people are looking for about a particular product or service. That YOU can solve a problem that’s causing a lot of people, a lot of pain and trouble.

Look around at the current “experts” you admire. I can assure you they all had to start from the same place you’re at – before they decided to share what they knew, before they decided to brand themselves as THE expert in their field.

If you still need permission, let me give it to you.

“I, Elena Verlee, a passionate publicity expert, hereby declare YOU an expert. Go and help others with your knowledge. Continue to learn and grow in your field of expertise and serve people profitably with your knowledge.”

So go on. You have no excuse not to take the next step in making your knowledge available to others.

Everyone’s an expert at something.   Even you.

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A question I often get asked about approaching the media is, “do I send the same pitch to everyone?”

The answer is, it depends.  I think there are two different ways to approach the media to get publicity:

1.  One Size Fits All – in this approach you write one document or media pitch, and send it out to everyone on your media list whether you have hundreds or even thousands on your list.

An example of when to use this approach is if you have a story tied to a particular timing, like “Earth Day”, or want to be a journalist source on a breaking news story (an estate planning expert commenting about Michael Jackson’s death and what it means to his family).    

This works if you are able to give the journalist a reason why they need to talk to you NOW.  However, we’ve also sent out one-size fits all pitches for clients about an event they are holding, or a book launch for example, and still gotten coverage months down the road.  Journalists often file interesting pitches for use later on, which is why it’s important to keep in touch with your key media.

The drawback to this approach is that your odds of success are lower than when you use the “custom” approach outlined below.

2. Customized Fit - with this approach you pick and choose the media outlet – a newspaper, magazine or blog that you want to appear in.  You carefully research the outlet, studying the kinds of articles a particular reporter covers and customize your email pitch suggesting a particular story they could do about you that is a “custom” fit with their readership.  It’s the difference between getting a generic, “junk” mail type of letter and a personalized letter.

Getting a personalized pitch means you’ve learned about their reader demographics and what’s important to them, whether they do full-page CEO profiles or Q and A types of interviews, do they do trend stories, round up stories, product reviews, contests and so forth.  You know the type of visuals they are looking for and have it ready if needed.  You propose a particular topic or two based on their editorial calendar.

If you’ve been building your own media list, then the customized fit probably works really well for you.

Usually we do a bit of both.  We’ll pick 20 – 30 of our “dream” media outlets to appear in and customize the pitch.  We’ll then send a more generic media pitch to the rest of our list because often, we’ll be surprised that we’ve hit the right reporter at just the right time and they’re keen to do a story.

You’ll never know who that could be.

What approach works best for you?

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A while back I wrote about How to Build Your Own Media List. Whether you build your own or buy a list, here are three tips that will help you maximize your chances of getting PR and avoiding media pet peeves.

1. DO A BIT OF RESEARCH – even if a paid media list is customized to your product or service, it’s usually based on keywords only – the more generic your key words, the more possible contacts you will pull. Which is why an unqualified media list can have hundreds or a thousand names that you pay for, with only a handful of reporters actually appropriate to you. If a magazine or media outlet sounds interesting, check out their website to see if there is an appropriate section or column where your company could be covered.

As you scan the print or online publication, think about:
• Are they interested in product reviews, book reviews, fashion or trends?
• Is there a giveaway/contest, guest articles, a CEO profile, inclusion in their gift guide that you can contribute to?
• Are they a Print publication or Online website? Often there is a way to get included in their newsletter for subscribers. 

If you can look at the last couple of articles an editor wrote, you can refer to it in your pitch (if appropriate). Knowing what they are writing about will help you stand out. By individually tailoring your pitch, you don’t come across as a spammer! Doing a bit of research will also tap your creative juices and you’ll learn what works best in your pitching.

2. CONTACT EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS – if you’re terrified of pitching the media by phone, editorial assistants are valuable connections! They usually work for print publications and the best way to describe them are ‘editors in training’ – if there is an editorial assistant listed, they may be the friendliest to a pitch as they forward it on to appropriate editors and are usually more than happy to answer any questions you may have.

Do remember that just because they are called assistants doesn’t mean they don’t research and write their own stories. Also, an editorial assistant does move up to become an associate editor and maybe even editor-in-chief one day. If you maintain your contacts well, they’ll remember you.

3. REMEMBER EDITORS WEAR MULTIPLE HATS – some reporters/editors cover a certain beat, but also contribute to other magazines and maybe even have their own blog. Find the right avenue to reach them by reading their profile. You never know where things will lead – the most important thing to remember is to establish a relationship even if you don’t get publicity right away. Keep an open mind. By being resourceful, creative and persistent, you will be surprised at what comes your way when you start building some buzz for your business.

If you’re a mom entrepreneur wanting to jumpstart getting PR with no time to waste, do check out my media list for moms with hundreds of reporters here. I won’t be doing an updated list for 2010, so this is your last chance to get a copy. You can download a free sample from the page if you’d like to see what it looks like.

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If you’re new to the term, an editorial calendar is a listing of the major themes or features planned for upcoming issues of a magazine. An editorial calendar is often in the Media Kit created by magazines (and sometimes newspapers) to attract advertisers. In theory, an editorial calendar tells you in January, what the magazine will write about all the way till December.

Sometimes they are made public so that writers and PR consultants (or even you, the small business owner!) can approach the magazine to send a media pitch in advance of the story’s planned publication. Think of the themes that Oprah has for her magazines every month like “Get Well” or “Gratitude” or “special reports” that appear in your local or national paper.

One of the services we provide clients in my technology PR firm is a listing of editorial calendar opportunities. Our database makes it easy for us to pull these opportunities up and have a systemized way of pursuing PR proactively throughout the year.

For example, an editorial calendar by eWeek tells us they are writing about Social Networking in the Enterprise, for their April 5 issue. Which means that we should be pitching the story now (lead times for weekly publications are 4 – 6 weeks out, monthly magazines can be 3 – 6 months out).

If you’re doing your own PR, what you can do is think about the key publications you want to appear in and see if you can find the editorial calendar on your targeted publication’s website, either on the writers submissions page, or perhaps even on pages targeted toward advertisers.

Here’s one by Fast Company, as another example. http://mediakit.fastcompany.com/ – download their media kit and in the editorial calendar section you can see that in June they are doing a story on “The 100 Most Creative People in Business” – dazzling thinkers, rising stars and bold names reshaping the future. If you’d like to be part of the story, you might start thinking of pitching the editors sooner, rather than later.

It’s a great way to increase your chance of a successful pitch since the reporter is already looking for a source like you for his or her story.

Oh, and because I mentioned Oprah, it was interesting that on her site she offers a contact form to pitch stories but only serious queries for advertising (minimum $50,000) will be considered. Due to the volume of requests they receive, I don’t think they put out an editorial calendar – in fact I think this website here, is someone else’s clever ploy to capture your information. It looks like it’s from Oprah but on every page there is no info except for an opt-in form, and it is not on Oprah’s main site. I wouldn’t fall for it, you’ll probably get spammed!

Have you used Editorial Calendars successfully?

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When we had our men’s socks company (which due to a ton of media coverage, attracted a buyer less than a year after we started it), one of the things we struggled with was, “how on earth do we show photos of boring men’s socks?”

The whole point of the company was to sell something mundane that people forgot to buy or replace, but do it in a clever way (socks by mail subscription) so people never had to think about buying socks again. What kind of fun things would they do?

I suppose this is a branding exercise as well, but we had to make sure we had photos that would communicate this tongue-in-cheek message. We did that by having photos showing what men would do where we could feature our socks in the photo – from sitting in a cool sports car and sipping wine on the couch, to more ‘risque’ shots like half-naked men getting dressed and even, a man and a woman in bed, underneath the blankets –him with socks, her without.

The point of this story is, we got a lot of press without having to send out our product.  Some media would just run the story and use our photos. This saved us money.

It also saved us time, because the process of having to send out the product, confirm if the editor received it and waited for them to use it could take weeks. There were times they ran our story within a few days of receiving our media pitch.

In fact, if you’re a small business, you don’t want to be mailing out your products willy-nilly.  Get your target reporter interested first, and then ask if they want to have a sample.  Don’t waste your money unless it will help sell the story.

Most often, reporters will just ask for a few product shots.  Make sure they are good ones and illustrate your brand identity.  If possible and appropriate, have shots where your logo is clearly visible.

At the very least, have on hand professionally shot photos of your product, yourself and partners if you have them.  You can have headshots of course, but try and come up with creative ways to have yourself in the photo, while also illustrating your service or product.

Although you can take your own photos with a digital camera, this may be the time to splurge on a professional photographer with a creative eye.

And remember, don’t email photos, especially high resolution ones, unless you’re asked!  Send low resolution ones first and let them pick what they want. You don’t want to clog someone’s in-box.

How have you used photos successfully in your PR efforts?

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I have friends whose big dream is to sequester themselves and write a book. Although I like to write, it’s not something I dream of doing day in and day out. I don’t like sitting in front of a blank page, but I do know that once I get an idea and get started, things usually flow.

Most entrepreneurs I know are not writers. You started your business because your passion and natural gifts are in a particular space.

Most entrepreneurs I know didn’t realize how much marketing they would need to do in order to succeed. And that effective writing- from websites to sales materials, direct mail to blog posts-  will be a crucial part of you getting heard above the noise.

If you’re doing your own PR, writing a media pitch can be downright intimidating. I know it’s hard to sit down to a blank piece of paper. So I’m sharing with you some questions I ask our clients, in order to help your creative juices flow and create a compelling media story.

1. What does your company do?
This is something that you must be able to communicate with ease. This is your elevator pitch and the two or three sentences that you use every day, that clearly introduces your company.

2. Why did you start a company?
Being an entrepreneur can be hard work. Where did the motivation, inspiration and drive to start your business come from? Or, is there something funny or accidental about how you got started?

3. What makes your product or service offering different or unique?
I’ll be honest that I think almost nothing is really new. Right? But there is something in how you offer it and how you present it and how you market it that is going to be unique just to you. Find out what that is and tell the world about it.

4. What’s the pricing and how is it available?
Please, do make it easy for the reporter to communicate how customers can buy from you!

5. What makes you uniquely qualified to be successful with this company?
People buy from people so it’s really compelling that you figure out, “What is your story?” What’s your relevant background or experience that can allow your potential market to connect with you? What have you done in the past that has given you the skills or knowledge to create your product or service? What kind of awards have you won that establishes you as a particular expert in your field?

6. Who is using or could use your product and service right now?
This is about being really clear about your target market and it might seem like common sense. Which is why most people tend to leave it out when they’re pitching to media. Don’t assume it will be clear to a reporter who has never met you and never heard about you.

7. How will your product or service make your customers’ lives easier?
You need to make people’s lives easier, whatever it is you’re offering. There is a pain point that someone in your target market is having and your product or service is meeting that need. So, communicate that clearly because if the editor doesn’t understand why their readership should care, then they’re not going to be interested in writing a story about you.

8. If you could make three points about your company, product or service, what would it be?
Think of the three most important points you want somebody to come away with. The answer to this question alone is an entire media pitch.

9. Do you have an approved customer testimonial you can use in your marketing?
Obviously, testimonials carry a lot of weight or at least show that your product, service or offering is real. You can check out a post I’ve written on How to Get Testimonials if you need some.

10. My favorite question – What’s the boldest, most outrageous or provocative statement you’re willing to make?

I love this question because this is the question that’s going to make you stand out. You know, if you’re going to be doing your own PR , you need to believe in yourself and believe in your company and make a claim that you know is true…but are afraid makes you sound self-promoting.

If you don’t do it, someone else will make a stand for what they believe and what they’re passionate about, what they think the potential of their product or service could be and THEY will get the press and the sales.

I just want to share a quote from Michael Jordan which I found really interesting. He was asked how much he bets on golf. And he says, “Whatever makes me nervous.”

So I want to challenge all of you to be nervous about stepping out and getting buzz for your business. Being nervous just means you’ve stepped out of your comfort zone and are growing.

Make sure when you’re writing your media pitch, to get on the edge. Get on the edge of what you want to say and take a stronger stand for what you believe in.

Those are the stories worth writing about.

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When we talk about pitching the media, a pitch is simply a way to introduce a reporter or editor to you, your company, products or services.

It can be really easy, using the few sentences you already use everyday to describe your business, such as:

“We sell men’s socks by subscription, so it comes to your door like a magazine. You’ll never have to worry about the mundane task of shopping for socks again.”

Or it may need more tweaking, to appeal to what the editor writes about (start-up businesses and entrepreneurs), what their readers are looking for (organic foods, funky baby gear, wellness products and services) or what time of year you are contacting them (for their holiday guide, for Father’s Day gift ideas).

It may sound complicated, but really, just 3 paragraphs will do.

The first paragraph introduces your company and what is unique about you or your offering. Make sure you give your website or blog so they can get more information.

The second paragraph ties into how your company will help the magazine/newspaper or blog’s readers solve a problem. You can talk about benefits, outcomes or even use a testimonial or quote to get the point across.

The third paragraph calls them to engage with you. Offer your product or service for review. Or let them know what topics you are an expert at, to give them story ideas to talk to you about. You want to have an opening to contact them again, so make sure you indicate that you will be following up with them – not the other way around. Make sure you give them your email and a phone number to contact you if they wish.

As you start writing your pitch, here are a few questions to get you started:

• What’s your company and what product or service do you offer?
• What makes your offering unique? If you can’t find what’s unique about your company, the editor won’t either.
• Why will it appeal to the readership? Keep asking yourself “so what?” until you are satisfied with the answer.
• What do your customers say about you?
• What is the boldest, most outrageous or provocative statement you are willing to make about your product or service? You must truly believe this to be effective.

Never assume that your story isn’t interesting enough for an editorial. You would be shocked how often publications are looking for new stories and it’s a great way to get free publicity whether you’re just starting out or have an established business.

Write out your 3 paragraph media pitch today and send it to any media outlet you think might be interested and do let me know how you do!

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What often stops small business owners from marketing, is the word marketing itself. For many of us, deep down the word “marketing” equates to “selling”. We don’t want to be perceived as pushy, in-your-face, annoying or needy. It feels stressful so we don’t do it. And when we do nothing, we get nothing.

One way to be more successful is to think of another word for marketing that reframes your current negative beliefs. When you market your business, what are some positive benefits you are hoping to achieve?

Perhaps it is “earning trust” or “making a connection” or “communicating a benefit” or even just “providing information”. If you come from a place where you are giving, instead of taking, what word or phrases comes up to replace “marketing”?

Notice if you feel differently.

If you come from a place where you believe your product or service is meant for an audience just waiting in anticipation for you (and isn’t that why you started your business?), then marketing is just a way to reach them.

Your product or service may change someone’s life. Don’t you want them to hear about it?

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