As you're flipping through your favorite magazines, you are reading inspiring features about other people. In the back of your mind, you may be thinking: "Ah, one day, that will be me."
Reality Check: Today, that is you.
You Can Be Featured In The Magazine Too!
As you are trying to market your business, you're going to want PR. You're going to want to be mentioned in magazines, TV segments, blog posts, and interviewed on podcasts. It's a big job - all of this marketing - but somebody's got to do it, and that someone is you. Here's how you're going to hit the grand slam:Step 1: Realize that you can be featured in a magazine like Architectural Digest. This is the "Give Yourself Permission" approach we preach in Tin Shingle Training TuneUps (all of which are free with an All Access Pass Level 4 of membership) and is the undercurrent in all of our articles.
Step 2: Find the "Why." Why would this magazine feature your business right now? What about your business is significant to that magazine's readers?
Step 3: Go for the pitch. This means you will write an email to an editor (or contributing writer) at a magazine, with some clever suggestion of why their readers would love to know about your company right now.
The Pitch Deconstructed
The pitch is the trickiest part. It's a simple email, but needs to be written to just the right person in just the right way. We have deconstructed this full page feature in Architectural Digest of the designer Porky Hefer. Tin Shingle Members at the Community Level 1 and above can log into their accounts and find the analysis right here in our Pitch Whisperer Workshop forum of the Community Boards.Find out what may have appealed to editors at Architectural Digest that convinced them to give this designer a full page in the "back of the book" aka the back of the magazine where lots of people flip the back cover and see it, and how you can do it too.
The Pitch Whisperer Workshop forum is available to Community Members Level 1 and above to submit their pitches to the group and get feedback (and sometimes edits!) from our supportive community. No pitch is to far out for our eyes. Tin Shingle is all about helping you Think Big and Go Big for your business marketing.
PR HOMEWORK:
Read a Feature & Think Backwards
To help train your mind in pitching the media:1. Read the magazine you want your business featured in.
2. You'll notice a feature of a business that could have been yours.
3. Think about what they featured about that business - all of the highlights and special points that was in the article.
4. These observations will help form your pitch.
5. Use Tin Shingle's Media Contact Database to help you find the right editor or writer to pitch to.
6. Use Tin Shingle's PR Planning & Tracking Template to log when you pitched to them, and when you'll follow up.
