I just read an insightful article in PRSA Tactics that I thought worth sharing and commenting on. In her article “Think Like a Reporter: Making Connections between TV News and Social Media” Kristyn Wilson, a former TV reporter herself, relates how pitching social media is much like pitching television. She offers several points:
- Hit Deadlines – meaning your story must be timely
- Be the First – she who breaks the story owns it
- Establish Relationships with Reliable Sources – PR101, no?
- Provide Exclusives – you decide the tone and release date
- Don’t Tell Your Story, Show It – a visual story is more compelling and online video consumption is rapidly rising.
To Kristyn’s excellent points I would add this: Don’t forget to pitch television too. It’s still the most pervasive and consumed media of nearly any any audience a communicator would seek to reach. With ever expanding cable networks and additional unique programming at the local level the news/content hole is only getting bigger and has a voracious appetite for timely, relevant and visual stories. It’s quite intuitive to see that pitching visual stories to television can fuel your social media efforts and vice versa. How are you maximizing your visual stories across mediums?
