PR & Marketing Brainstorming Tips – Part 2

To begin, set up a session to review all of your media hooks and possible PR ideas.  They can be obvious, or they can be crazy.  You don’t have to use all of these, but you do want to push yourself, use outside of the box thinking and let your creativity run wild.  Once you’ve created a list of possible ideas, the next step is to review which ideas are your strongest, which have a chance of gaining you and your company media coverage.  Now start thinking like the media.  Let’s say you’re an editor or a producer; which of the stories you’ve come up with would be the most appealing.  How and why will those ideas work?  Now drill down even further, which ideas will work specifically as TV pitches?  TV is a visual medium; you want to present stories that offer more than just a talking head.  When pitching TV, think in terms of the strongest visual stories you can present.  Now think in terms of radio, what type of story ideas would work best there?  Next, do the same type of exercise with print media and social media.

Finally, start segmenting the media.  Different media outlets have different needs.  You need to keep that in mind when pitching and presenting your story ideas.  This is where most stories meet their doom.  You need to not only pitch great story ideas, you need to pitch stories that a particular journalist who writes for a very specific target market understands.  For example you might come up with a great pitch idea that you could present to women’s magazine, men’s magazine and general interest magazines, but how you pitch your story to each particular outlet  is going to decide whether the media is going to cover it or not.  That’s why you want to spend time brainstorming practicing how to build those media bridges.

Remember your PR hooks and media pitches need to meet the needs of the various magazines, newspapers, radio shows, and internet sites that you’re targeting.  You could have a great story, but if you pitch it to the wrong media outlet, it won’t get you very far.  Effective PR comes down to effective story telling. Take time to brainstorm and develop your stories.  It will be time well spent.

Copyright © Anthony Mora 2012

Brown, Ronald. “Innovation- Idea-Light bulb.” Photo. Mashable. 22 Jun 2012. 25 Jun 2012. <http://mashable.com/2012/06/22/measure-product-viability-agile-time/>