First things first, be positive: positive about your business and positive that people want to hear about it. Then be prepared to call journalists…. “eeek, they’re scary and busy and don’t want to hear from me,” I hear you say.  They do want to hear from you, because maybe they’re just doing a profile piece on mumpreneurs and need that final gem for the story or maybe they’re having a very slow news week and are a little bored of talking about Julia Gillards leadership challenges….yawnnnn!!  So have a read and then I want you to come up with three story ideas to pitch:

Rule 1 – Do not go into the hard sell when you’re pitching to the media. They’re giving you free media coverage in the editorial part of their title/program, so they’re not wanting to hear about buy one get one free or how much the knitted bunny with velvet tulle* costs

Rule 2 – Go personal. Okay, they might not want to hear what colour knickers you’re wearing but how many stories have you read recently that don’t involve an account of a person and journey they have been through. This is where being a mumpreneur rocks! You are your story!

Rule 3 – Use media holidays. I love a good media holiday!  What do I mean; I mean Father’s Day, International Women’s Day, Refugee Week etc. There are a 1001 different days you can leverage and ‘hook’ a story onto, do your research and tailor your story to winter/easter/school holidays and you’ll be on the right wavelength

Rule 4 – Use stats, can you do some of your own research by using SurveyMonkey for example, or can you regurgitate something that is relevant to what you’re talking about?  I found a stat today that 8% of people who have a heart attack outside of hospital survive. Wow, who knew, that’s pretty low odds and helps me make a point around heart health that is interesting and newsworthy

Rule 5 – Pick your outlet, I like to send out media releases and then do some phone pitches too. It is soooo worth doing phone pitches by the way. What better way to get direct (and yes some journalists are pretty direct!!) about your ideas. Give them three and see if they bite. If not, they’ll tell you why, I rang a women’s magazine the other day and although she loved my idea was very honest in saying that they pretty much only cover celebrity stories. Cool, now I know and now I won’t bombard her with useless media releases which go straight to the trash

Rule 6 – Tailor, if you’ve picked news media and parenting media then I suggest tailoring your pitch to reflect the differing audiences

Rule 7 – Timing. Remember monthly magazines you need a two month lead in time. Daily newspapers, radio and TV give two weeks, if you’ve got a time sensitive story or event

Rule 8 – A picture paints a thousand words. If you have some great professional, high resolution original photos then say, if not, give them some fun ideas around getting a shot of you/your client/whoever in front of a jet plane, sell the photo and story could follow

Now come up with three ‘pitchable’ ideas,  ring your chosen media and see what happens.  If they’re keen, right up the story and send as a media release and let me know what your ideas are, I’d love to hear them.

*happy to be told velvet tulle does not exist