The Clean and Green Club

Have you been cited in places like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Woman’s Day, Entrepreneur, and the top trade publications in your industry?

I’ve been in all the above–several times each. I’ve also been in hundreds of lesser known publications.

If you’d like that kind of ink, your pitches and press releases have to reflect the reality of the newsroom: overworked journalists sort through a mountain of information, mining for the nuggets to share with their readers, often under severe deadline pressure.

Here are a few approaches that tend to work:

• Solve a problem/ease a pain point/make people’s life better
• Expose some hidden truth that can change people’s thinking or behavior
• Tie in to a current and immediate news story or trend
• Provide a deeper “back story” on a news topic—or on a celebrity’s life
• Dip into your personal journey to show how you overcame adversity, did something really unusual, or separated yourself from the crowd in some other way
• Win an award, achieve a big milestone, etc.
• Create a catchphrase or buzzword that so perfectly captures an idea that it enters the common language

Next month: specific tools you can use to make your pitch. Note: my seventh book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, offers six entire chapters on effective publicity. Click on the book title to order your copy.