What to do if You Are Not Getting Pickup

Getting the media to cover your news is—along with Internet visibility – the primary goal of issuing press releases. Some people stop issuing press releases altogether if they don’t immediately get the pickup they think they should be getting. Instead, we recommend considering failure the prelude to success. Why not use the fact of your not getting pickup to find out why and then make the necessary changes? What we’re recommending is not hard. If you’re suffering from the pickup blues, the following outline will get you started. Some Reasons You May Not Be Getting Pickup

1. You are sending your releases to the wrong media. This is the primary reason people don’t get pickup. Having a list of media you want to get into is not the same as identifying those media that are most likely to cover your news. While you may want to get in the Wall Street Journal, if they don’t find your news interesting, you need to look elsewhere. You goal should be to match the audience you want to reach with the content each media organization considers newsworthy for its unique audience.
2. You are sending your releases to the right media, but to the wrong people. In today’s world where it’s easy to find email addresses, every editor and reporter is fair game. As a result, the vast majority of emails and faxes are screened out or ignored if they get through. It’s critical to find those reporters and editors who match up with your information.
3. Your timing is off. Unless you have a hard news story that is important enough for the wire services to cover, you should time your releases to the news cycle of the media you are trying to reach. For instance, sending a Thanksgiving themed release to the media a week before Thanksgiving is at least a month too late.
4. Your releases are not optimally written for getting pickup. This is the second biggest reason that releases are trashed. Whether your release is read by a screener, editor or reporter, you have only a few seconds to get the reader’s attention. If you bury the most interesting information in the third paragraph, it may not even get noticed.

How to Find Out Why You’re Not Getting Pick Up

The best way to find out why your releases are being ignored is to talk to the editors and reporters that you hope will find your information useful if not earth-shattering. The purpose of your call should not be to find out why a specific release was not used, but rather to find out in more general terms if your news is of interest to that media organization and if so who your releases should go to.

The better your understand of the needs of the editor or reporter, the easier it will be to make good decisions about what to send them and how to write your releases. Say you work for an association that wants to promote an issue in order to convince elected officials to support a piece of legislation. You want the media to cover the issue so that people start contacting those officials to urge them to support your solution. Start by researching how each publication/broadcaster has covered the issue in the past. If they’ve ignored it, you’ll need to make a case for why they should pay attention; if they’ve covered it, but haven’t included your point of view, then you’ll need to convince them why they should do so now – perhaps because new information is available supporting your position.

How you write your releases should depend on what you find out by interviewing various editors and reporters. Releases that are designed to educate the media about the importance of an issue will necessarily be written differently from releases whose goal is to convince them to report on your point of view on an issue they already have decided is important to their audience.

The same is true for business releases. Ask yourself these questions:

• Does the publication need to be convinced that your product or service is newsworthy or that your company is a newsworthy player, or both?
• Do they need someone to serve as an expert on a difficult topic? If you can explain nanoscience in everyday terms, that could be your in; but be prepared to produce your credentials.
• Have they just done a story on your competition? You’ll need to convince them why another story about another company in that industry is newsworthy. Fairness doesn’t count as a reason.
• Do you have information that people need? If so, you may have an argument—again if you can back up your assertions with facts that the general reader can digest.

Working from a Plan Overcomes Inconsistent Coverage One of the common mistakes many people make in their pr efforts is a lack of consistency. They put out a release and then disappear. While we don’t advocate issuing a press release every time you turn the page on your calendar, we do recommend looking at your calendar and putting down some reminders to yourself about occasions you’ll want to issue a release. You’ll want to issue a release:

• In advance of your annual meeting or conference (then during and after the event)
• In advance of the launch of a new product, service or campaign (then during and after the launch/campaign)
• Each time you sign a major client or achieve a major milestone– like being in business for 5 years or reaching your membership goal
• Upon receipt of an award or recognition in your profession, industry or community
• When you participate in a charitable event in your community or profession.

Issuing releases according to a plan will not guarantee results each time. However, editors and reporters will start to recognize your name and soon be willing to spend more than 10 seconds reading your releases and that’s how you begin to get pickup.

Final thought. Some media organizations will cover you because someone else has done so first. Don’t be shy at letting people know about past coverage in their publication or a rival’s.