PR Tips | Want Quick, Quality Hits? Go Local
Pitching a story or oped successfully takes a lot of hard work. In fact, it can be so difficult that many people – and even PR practitioners – simply give up. But if you pitch locally, your job suddenly becomes easier.
For example, let’s say you wanted to pitch a story about the mayor of a suburban town outside Philadelphia. If you tried pitching the Miami Herald, you’d probably strike out. You’d have a much better success rate if you targeted the Philadelphia Inquirer or a local paper because of the geographic connection.
So going local makes it easy to get fast hits. But what if you want to make a bigger splash? You can also apply this technique in reverse. There’s often a way to broaden the appeal of even the most local stories.
For example, let’s say the suburban mayor’s solution to his town’s unemployment crisis contains lessons for how other towns could solve their unemployment problems, as well. Voila. With a few small tweaks, we have national appeal.
To make our pitch even more attention-grabbing, we could plug in unemployment data for whatever state we’re pitching. If we pitch the Detroit Free Press, for example, we could call attention to Michigan statistics showing Detroit has a major unemployment problem – and our small-town mayor is offering a solution.
Suddenly, our suburban Pennsylvania story has Michigan appeal.
Sometimes coming up with a good geographic pitching angle can be tricky. But keep at it and you’ll eventually succeed — and the big hits will follow.
