Media Pitch Writing Guide with Examples

Ever wondered how to catch the eye of journalists and bloggers amidst the flood of media pitches inundating their inboxes daily? Ever wondered how the companies and sources that end up mentioned in your niche or industry’s leading publications end up there? Odds are, they’ve pitched themselves. 

A media pitch is essentially your shot at fame – it's the content, story idea, or proposed contribution you send to members of the media, with the hope of securing a spot in their finished piece. 

After reading through this guide, you will know everything you need to know in order to craft a compelling media pitch, ensuring that your brand and website shine in front of the most influential figures in your industry.

What is a Media Pitch?

A media pitch is basically any content, story idea or proposed contribution to a story that you send to a member of the media. 

The idea is that, if selected, you, your brand and/or your website will be included in the finished piece. You could end up with brand exposure and potentially even a high authority backlink from a major news site. 

Sounds great, right? 

Well, in this guide, you’re going to learn how to craft the perfect media pitch and get yourself, your brand and your website in front of the most influential people in your industry.

Things to Consider Before Writing Your Pitch

Something to bear in mind before you dive into this media pitch writing guide is that journalists and high-profile bloggers get absolutely inundated with media pitches on a daily basis. A survey done by AI-based PR company Propel back in 2021 found two things that I think are particularly key: 

• Only 3 percent of media pitches are actually going to be opened. 
• 35 percent of opens will occur within the first minute. 

The bottom line, then, is that while competition is stiff, if you know what you’re doing, you actually have a pretty good chance of being opened and read. It’s not like with cold email outreach for link building–where site owners, by and large, don’t want to be contacted by marketers. 

Journalists have a vested interest in considering what you have to say because it might be the thing that takes their story from ok to amazing. You just have to know what you’re doing. 

Knowing that, you should also accept that even if you do everything right and even if a journalist really like what you have to say, your pitch may just not be what they are looking for at the movement. Sometimes they have a particular angle they’re exploring, or someone has already provided exactly what you are offering. 

Don’t despair. These can be great opportunities for networking.

So, how do you write a media pitch? 

How to Write Media Pitch?

In the below section, you’re going to learn how to do all of the things you need to know how to do in order to get your pitch seen, opened and, hopefully responded to. 

Understand Your Audience

Before you even thinking about writing a pitch to the media, do some research on the people who read or watch the media outlet you're targeting. 

Check out what they're interested in and what kind of stories they like. Whether it's tech stuff or feel-good stories, knowing your audience helps you tailor your pitch to grab their attention. It's all about making sure your message resonates with them, increasing the chances they'll cover your story.

I struggled with this when I first started using HARO for digital PR and link building. I’d get too caught up in trying to wow them with my knowledge and understanding of the topic and less time editing my pitches for the people who actually read their content. 

Remember that you’re writing for someone else’s audience, not your own.

Plus, knowing your audience helps you anticipate what they want to hear. By putting yourself in their shoes, you can talk about your company's news in a way that matters to them. This not only grabs their interest but also builds a connection between your company and the audience.

Identify the Newsworthy Angle

Identifying the newsworthy angle is key when you're putting together a media pitch. Below is an image that you will also see further down the article as an example of a successful media pitch, but look at how quickly the person gets to the newsworthy angle? 

It’s the first sentence!

Before you start writing, take a step back and ask yourself: What's the most interesting part of our company's news? Is it a new product launch, a big partnership, or maybe an exciting expansion? Once you've pinpointed the juiciest bit, that's your angle – the hook that'll grab the media's attention.

Here’s a great article from Accesswire on how to develop a newsworthy angle. 

Think about it like this: You're telling a story, and every good story needs a compelling angle to draw people in. By highlighting the most exciting aspect of your news, you're giving the media a reason to sit up and take notice. 

So, whether it's a groundbreaking innovation or a heartwarming community initiative, make sure your angle is clear to the reader. 

Craft an Engaging Subject Lines and Personalize

Think about your pitch’s subject line as the headline of a newspaper article – it's how you pique interest and secure attention. 

What you are trying to do with your subject line is encapsulate the essence of your pitch in a concise yet enticing manner, prompting the recipient to click and delve deeper into your message. 

It’s a good idea here to brush up on things like action-oriented language, posing intriguing questions, or hinting at exclusive insights to intrigue the reader. It’s also key to know that most journalists want subject lines tailored to their beats:

By putting yourself in the shoes of the recipient and contemplating what would compel them to open your email amidst a sea of others, you can tailor your subject line to stand out and make a memorable impression.

Some additional subject line tips

I’d also like to emphasize the power of personalization in subject lines. 

Personalization is a pretty standard recommendation when it comes to journalist or blogger outreach, but there are a couple of tactic that I feel are especially worth drawing attention to. 

The first is that by addressing the recipient by name or referencing their recent work, you can foster a sense of connection and relevance, which increases the likelihood of engagement.

The second is that by incorporating elements of urgency or exclusivity, you can create a sense of FOMO, compelling the reader to prioritize opening your email. 

These are two things that are covered quite well in this article by PR platform Prowly. 

Remember to keep it concise – aim for brevity while ensuring clarity and impact. A well-crafted subject line sets the stage for a successful media pitch, enticing the recipient to open the email and explore the compelling story you have to share.

Provide Relevant Context

This is something that I see a lot of new businesses and PR people struggle with. 

When crafting your media pitch, it's essential to provide relevant context that helps the recipient understand why your story matters and how it aligns with their interests. This is a transaction at the end of the and people are generally only interested in how what you have to say helps their story. 

You can start by introducing yourself and your company briefly, highlighting key aspects that establish credibility and relevance to the recipient, but don’t wait too long to delve into the specifics of your news or advancement, providing background information that sets the stage for the main story. 

This could include details such as the significance of the development, its potential impact on the industry or community, and any relevant historical context. 

Highlight the Benefit to the Media Outlet

As you just saw, a media pitch is a transactional relationship, so it makes sense that you would start by identifying your story's unique value proposition and how it aligns with the media outlet's interests and objectives. 

This could include offering exclusive insights, providing access to newsworthy developments, or delivering compelling content that engages their audience. By emphasizing the benefits of your story, you make it more enticing for the media outlet to cover, increasing the likelihood of them seeing value in your pitch.

It’s also important that, if you are responding to a question or a request for comment, you actually answer the query or question. See the below quote for clarification:

Be specific and concrete in outlining the advantages of covering your story, making it easy for the recipient to understand why it's worth their time and resources. Ultimately, by focusing on the benefits to the media outlet, you can make your pitch more compelling and increase the chances of securing coverage for your story.

Include Actionable Information

At the end of the day, media pitches are a marketing tactic, and with any good marketing copy, there is a call to action at the end. You might consider inviting the recipient to reach out for more details, schedule an interview, or discuss potential coverage options. 

“Happy to answer any additional questions.” You would be surprised by how many people do have additional things they’d like to ask. In the thousands of media pitches I’ve written over the years, I’ve found that making yourself available to provide that last small piece of information can push your pitch over the finish line. 

Like you saw at the outset of this article, journalists and writers are bombarded by these pitches all day and, in my experience both writing and receiving pitches, a lot of what you get is quite similar. Often, it’s the pitch that makes my life the easiest that gets chosen. 

By providing clear instructions on how to proceed, as well as relevant contact information and expressing your willingness to continue the conversation, you make it easy for the recipient to take the next steps, increasing the likelihood of engagement.

Media Pitch Examples

In the below section, you are going to see three examples of media pitches that knock it out of the park, getting all of the most important parts of any good pitch right. 

Let’s take a look.

Example 1: Getting Straight to the Point.

“About 2% of mass emails resonate with online customers from retailers. Therefore, it is not about sending more emails, it’s about sending less, more relevant and personalized ones.”

This was a pitch received by Sujan Patel, a managing contributor for outlets like Forbes and Entrepreneur. 

Notice how the pitcher gets straight into the newsworthy angle and then immediately follows up with the value they can provide to the writer? 

There’s no explicit CTA at the end, but it’s implied enough (does the writer want to be connected with the people mentioned). 

Example 2: Great Contextualization and Quick Response

“New York City Public Schools just banned student and teacher access to ChatGPT, an AI chat tool that’s experienced a 112,740% growth in search interest over the last year”

This is a pitch from PR agency Fractl secured coverage in a wide range of prominent news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Entrepreneur, The Guardian, and others. 

The reason? The pitcher acted quickly and offered the kind of valuable data-led information that journalists are looking to work with.

Example 3: Putting a New Spin on an Old Story

“If you are working on any similar/follow up stories, one of my agency clients just brief us on this experiment they are doing internally to interrogate the question: can AI replace advertising creatives? They use ChatGPT to create the first AI art director, build a legit portfolio and apply to jobs as the director.”

Again, context and value proposition win the day here. 

This pitcher gets right into showing the journalist how new information could make for a great follow up to a story they already wrote–and followups are always nice because you’ve got the structure the story there already. 

Bonus Media Pitch Tips

Before wrapping up the article, I wanted to share with you a couple of pitching tips that I think are extremely valuable, but I didn’t include them in the main “steps” section because they are more subjective in nature. 

They are: 

• Identify the Right Journalists
• Build a Relationship

Identifying the right journalist

Knowing who to reach out to will make or break your success in pretty much anything that involves cold outreach. 

Busy people are conditioned to pay attention to things that concern them and to quickly discard things that do not. You don’t want to spend a long time crafting a pitch, only to send it to someone who was never going to read it in the first place. 

To ensure you're reaching out to the right person when pitching to the media, start by compiling a list of prospects, including journalists, writers, and media sources. You can utilize tools like JustReachOut's AI-powered journalist outreach tool to streamline this process. 

For content with broad appeal, consider targeting large news and entertainment blogs such as Buzzfeed or HuffPost. For more specialized content, like a study on content marketing trends, focus on industry-specific publications and influencers. 

I would also recommend that, when identifying targets, prioritize engagement over traffic. It's more beneficial to secure a feature on a site with 1,000 engaged readers than one with 1 million readers but low engagement.

Building relationships

Relationship building in marketing is absolutely crucial to success, and that goes for any-field–link building, digital PR, influencer collaborations. 

Establishing meaningful connections with journalists prior to pitching media content is crucial for ensuring successful outreach. This involves initiating personalized conversations through platforms like Twitter, where you can engage by sharing their posts and offering insightful comments on their articles.

By demonstrating genuine interest and familiarity with their work, you lay the foundation for a more effective pitch. 

It’s important that you tailor your approach based on the level of engagement you've established, though.

A warmer tone is suitable for journalists with whom you've had meaningful interactions, while a more formal approach is appropriate for those with whom engagement has been limited. If you notice, in the three examples I gave you above, there are varying degrees of familiarity in the outreach. 

The first one, for instance, reads a lot more like something you would send to a person that you were already quite comfortable with and had dispensed with the formalities: 

It is very likely that the shorter, less formal a pitch is, the more interaction a person has had with that journalist, to begin with. 

Wrapping up

As you move forward with your digital PR strategy, armed with these insights, remember that success lies not just in the pitch itself, but in knowing who to pitch and, ideally, laying some relationship groundwork 

That way, when you do start polishing those subject lines, infusing those pitches with relevant context, and presenting an undeniable value proposition, you have a much greater chance of getting yourself the kind of media attention that could take your business from obscurity to industry household name.