By Jolene Maré

With this in mind, here are three tips to help you pitch your story so that it gets picked up.

Target your audience carefully

A lot of PR agents likes to do the “shot in the sky” approach when sending out press releases. However, this can sabotage any future relationships. It is thus important to find the right target audience that is relevant to your story.

PR Newswire’s vice president of content marketing, Sarah Skerik explains why a target list is important on PR Daily, “Although researching and targeting journalists takes time, the costliest effort is the one that generates no results. Invest more time in your media research, be sure to familiarise yourself with the journalist’ recent work, and pitch selectively. Your success rate will improve, as will your relations with the journalists in your sphere.”

Build relationships with journalists

In order for you to address journalist personally, you will have to build a relationship with them. The easiest way to do so is, to do research on their previous work; what they wrote about and what made them write it. If you can find these details, you are one step ahead of every other PR agent looking to send them their story.

Aspectus PR agency advises on their website that, “[An] important factor for PR pros is the need to understand more than just the journalist’s particular beat. It’s taught in PR-101 that PRs can optimise their relationships with journalists by making sure they know who they’re pitching to and what they write about.”

Let the journalist make the final decision

It is tempting to follow up on somebody who didn’t use your story, but at the end the journalist has the last decision in this – let him/her make it. Do not follow up with numerous calls because this can potentially ruin your relationship.

“As tempting as it is to ply the reporter with a strong armed pitch, you will be more successful by respecting the reporter’s right to say yes or no, while providing them with as many meaningful reasons as possible to have the desire to say yes,” writes Forbes contributor, Cheryl Conner.

What are your thoughts? What other tips do you have to make sure you pitch the right way?