If the journalist or media outlet doesn’t like the first pitch, don’t give up. They may be more interested in the story when presented in a new light or angle. It’s not always easy to direct “them”, so, go with the flow and offer a few ideas. Negotiate.

**Note: Don’t always rely on one news channel to pitch to either. Have multiple (including online).

It’s an easy process to do this story pitching stuff. Just think of at least three themes to spin your topic. This isn’t a rigid rule – just a way to help you along. You could follow the themes of:

1. Product benefit
2. Industry trend
3. Service upgrade

or

1. Celebrity entertainment
2. Personal profiling
3. Customer impact

etc. Or you might come up with your own that you tackle each time you start a new pitch.

For example, taking the concept of “Brow Bars – Shaping Eyebrows”, your story angles could be:

1. Shape trends/celebrities and the rise of perfection. Client opinion piece.
2. Older ladies using brow shapes for face-lift results or the rise of the social media #selfie having impact on how we view our face shape.
3. Introducing… ie business owner, entrepreneur or new staff member.

Once you are happy, you need to prepare.

Think about how your story would sound/read ie considering brows again, the journalist may not be interested in a story about shape trends, however they may be interested in a business related or social media article. How would that be written up?

When negotiating a pitch (basically just talking to a journalist or news outlet on the phone), it is good to have written an introduction paragraph for each of your story angles to give yourself (in the first instance) a better understanding of how a story could play out. This helps understand if the story has substance or weight or indeed how much more research you’d have to do to help get the story published (if this was called for).

By doing all this background work BEFORE calling, once you hit jackpot, you can easily shoot an email off and keep the momentum going and remain in the moment of getting your story published.

Now, not saying it will get an article or release published – but it doesn’t hurt to be as prepared as a girl scout.