Savvy public relations professionals learn how to leverage everything at their disposal to their employer’s or client’s benefit.
One such way to do this is to keep an eye out for emerging trends that you can hook your employer’s or client’s products/services to. You can call it bandwagon-jumping if you’d like, but in my book, if [...]

If you’re having difficulty reaching a journalist, here’s a suggestion:
Sometimes it’s better to try calling journalists at the very beginning or very end of a day.
Try it sometimes.
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BONUS TIP:
This suggestion often works for trying to catch anyone [...]

Be honest with yourself: Not every thing that happens at your company (or client) is newsworthy — certainly not to every reporter or media outlet – regardless of what your boss or client may think.
Nevertheless, I’d bet that something newsworthy is happening each and every week at your company/client organization.
The challenge is to

Set proper expectations internally,
Target the [...]

If you’re still at a loss at who to pitch at a given media outlet and there is no Editorial Assistant on staff, try contacting the Managing Editor.
Most media outlets have at least one M.E., even broadcast outlets.
Just recognize that Managing Editors tend to be very busy senior journalists, so be brief and to the [...]

If you’re still having difficulty identifying the best journalist for a particular story pitch, try contacting the Editorial Assistant.
This is a position one will typically find on magazine staffs, but occassionally at other media outlets.
Yes, this person will likely be one of the most junior people on the editorial staff. That’s okay. Chances are they’ll [...]

Even if you use Vocus or MediaSource, you can speed up the process of finding and identifying the best journalist for a particular story pitch by using keyword searches.
Here’s how this can work.
Presuming you have identified the “best” media outlet for your story idea, use the search feature on the outlet’s home page and enter [...]

So now that you’ve identified the best media category (or categories as the case may be) and the best media outlet(s) for your story idea, how do you identify the best journalist to pitch?
Aha! That’s the tough question.
At our agency we use Cision’s MediaSource to help us identify both media outlets and specific journalists to [...]

What happens if you’ve identified the right category of media outlets for your story idea, but can’t decide which specific media outlet to pitch?
Simple. Tweak your pitch to come up with more than one slant to the story.
For instance, going back to the idea found in the previous tip (Politis PR Tip #33), let’s say [...]

Last tip I wrote about the need to focus the right story idea on the right journalist.
In fairness, however, I might have gotten a bit in front of myself. Maybe the first thing a public relations practitioner needs to figure out when it comes to story pitching and placement is to identify the right media [...]

Want to land a story in your favorite media outlet? Make sure you focus your pitch on the right journalist (or producer) for the story.
For example, if you’re going to run a story idea by Brice Wallace of the Deseret News, you better have a business angle for your pitch.
Conversely, if you’re working on an [...]