PR Tips | Home runs don’t just happen in PR, either
San Francisco Giants third baseman Pablo Sandoval inscribed his name in baseball’s history books Wednesday night by hitting three home runs in Game One of the World Series. With the feat, he joined some illustrious company. Babe Ruth, Reggie Jackson, and Albert Pujols are the only others to do the same.
To casual baseball fans, Sandoval may seem to have appeared out of nowhere. But he’s actually been toiling in the Giants organization for over eight years. Sandoval had to log more than 2,200 at-bats in the minors — and another 2,100 at the major-league level — before slugging his way into baseball immortality.
Similarly, folks looking to increase their media footprint generally need to notch a number of solid-if-not-sexy placements before they can reach a million readers with one op-ed or feature article.
People come to us all the time looking to get into the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times with their very first op-ed or interview campaign. But that’s like trying to hit a home run in your first major-league at-bat.
We’ve found that it’s best to build your brand as a leader in your field by striving for hits in hundreds of different publications.
Your op-ed submission on free trade to the Wall Street Journal will look a lot more appealing if the editor Googles your name and sees that you’ve been making similar arguments on the pages of the Miami Herald, Cincinnati Enquirer, and Sacramento Bee. Each hit gives you additional credibility as an expert — and marks you as someone worth paying attention to.
The same goes for interviews. Your pitch to the Washington Post’s top healthcare writer for an interview will carry a lot more weight if she sees that you’re a credible source for numerous reporters.
In both baseball and PR, hitting home runs takes time and effort. But with persistence, they come.
