Public Relations

At AHA, we have spent a great deal of time focusing on what makes a great pitch – to media, to bloggers and, depending on the objective of what we’re working on, to other external and internal stakeholder groups. A good pitch tells a story. It should be a short story, but it is a story – one that piques curiosity and provides relevant information through stats, facts, details and writing that paints a picture. More and more often these days, you can also use video or audio in a pitch. We often create video news releases or pitches for clients and have experienced strong success in this area.

There is a great piece on Ragan.com on how to create a great pitch. It’s worth a read.

Before you head over there, I want to focus on additional opportunities that can come from developing a good pitch. Over the past year, AHA has done quite a bit of research on the art of the pitch and how pitches to a range of stakeholders, including media and bloggers, have evolved. It has been an interesting process and, in part, our discoveries here have led us to develop a new area at our PR agency. We’ll be “soft” launching this tomorrow, so I won’t say any more about this yet. I hope you will check us out on Wednesday to learn more about this great, new opportunity we are offering clients.

The world communicates differently these days – the majority of your stakeholders have online access and use it regularly. This is a given and it’s time to embrace the fact that online communication is at the core of how the world communicates.

When you develop a good pitch – one that is newsworthy, that showcases your organization, that is authentic, interesting and even entertaining, that provides a glimpse of your brand personality and of the people that work in your organization – it is important to look at it from different angles of how that story can be used, how it can be told, and who would be interested in hearing it. Creating interesting and engaging pitches for journalists and bloggers is one component of communication. For our clients, we often look at how we can take an interesting pitch – which, I must repeat, is a concise story idea put into a style and format that works for the specific journalist or blogger – and use it for other stakeholders, if it doesn’t get picked up by media.

Newsrooms are shrinking; bloggers are overwhelmed with good (and bad) pitches. Generating traditional media coverage or having a blogger write about your organization isn’t a given – even if you have a great story that would/could/should work for them. Sometimes there just isn’t space to cover your story; other times there isn’t enough time or person power to do so. It is just the reality of the times we live in.  However, that doesn’t mean that the story can’t be told; it means you have to think of other ways you could use the content.

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The discussion about the connection between PR and social media is always interesting to me. At AHA, we believe that social media provides an opportunity to share information, learn, educate and connect – and that has always been a part of what we do as public relations professionals. However, we also work with some great marketing and advertising agencies and there are areas and opportunities in their world for social media as well. We often partner with them on campaigns and we’ve never had an issue understanding where each component or initiative lives or how it fits together in the bigger picture.

I think that it’s important to remember that social media provides an opportunity to connect and engage. It also offers people the ability for interactivity, giving them the chance to put their voice forward to an organization, brand or initiative. Sometimes an organization’s social media initiative is through a contest or a marketing campaign; other times it is through what we would consider a more PR-related approach. Some examples are short video segments that showcase the people behind the scenes of a company; Q&As with industry experts, the CEO or other senior executive; thought leadership pieces such as white papers and Twitter conferences or “meetups” (tweetups).

With our clients, we work with them to develop the objectives of the initiative or campaign. We then define the strategy and build the plan. It is there that we begin to identify how we will share information, create engagement and interest, and make sure that the relevant stakeholder group has the opportunity to participate in a way that makes sense to them. And during this process, we bring everyone involved to the table and focus on creating a team effort, rather than a territorial battle. However, we have had projects where there were some challenges in this area and this is where it is important to already have clearly defined objectives, strategy and the roles and responsibilities that you can look back on.

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I have spent more than half my life surrounded by journalists – either working as a reporter for Maclean’s or in public relations. I love TV news, magazines, newspapers and the online world of news and information. One of the challenges I have (and so does my family) is that when I go on vacation, I want to watch the local news shows to see how they do things, see what they find newsworthy and find out what they are all about. Sometimes that can make the people with me cranky. (“Come on, let’s go to the beach!”)



Working with journalists is one of the things I like best about my job. Reporters, editor, producers, videographers and others in the news business are incredibly interesting and informed. They are great people to stand beside at cocktail parties because they have the best stories and are usually up on what is happening in the community, nationally and around the world. At AHA, we have strong, positive relationships with the majority of journalists that we have worked with over the years. Even in a challenging situation when a client is dealing with an issue or a crisis, good journalists want to get the story, get it right and to do a good job. We always approach any interaction with a journalist with the assumption that they have integrity and ethics. We respect what they do. Having said that, it’s also important to understand that they have a job to do and that they aren’t being paid to get your message out. They don’t work for you.



When we provide media training for clients, we often talk about the different personality types of reporters and the different ways a journalist will ask a question. I recently read a great piece on Ragan.com about some different “types” of reporters; it’s worth a read.



The people that make their living asking questions are adept at getting answers – it’s their job and most of them are really good at it. They prepare for an interview and that’s why we believe our clients should also prepare when they agree to an interview. Working with the media can create positive outcomes, but not if you go into an interview unprepared. You wouldn’t go into any meeting unprepared and an interview is a very important meeting – one where what you say is recorded and printed or broadcast.



At AHA, we work with clients to make sure they are prepared. It’s about making the most of an opportunity to reach your target market.

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