Lexie Smith
Hey guys, I’m Lexie Smith, a mom, multi-hyphenate entrepreneur, and the founder and CEO of THEPRBAR inc. coaching platform and agency. In my career, I’ve had the privilege of guiding countless brands, ingenious publicists, eager students, and ambitious entrepreneurs on their PR journeys. I’ve danced with the Giants and nurtured startups, directed in-house PR departments, lent my expertise to boards, and spread knowledge across universities nationwide. Throughout all of this, I’ve seen our industry change and evolve while simultaneously proving that some timeless fundamentals remain unshaken. This show takes you behind the scenes of the world of media, marketing, and PR, aiming to teach you all the new tips, tricks and how the best and brightest are achieving success overseas. Now it’s time to grow. Welcome to the show.
Lexie Smith
Okay, hi guys. Today I'm doing a minisode. And before we dive into our topic at hand, I wanted to give you a very quick refresher that I have been in the industry for more than 13 years now, I have a degree in PR and journalism. And today I am both a PR Coach and an agency owner. Now throughout all of this, I have developed a few of my own methodologies. These methodologies I have built out into a series of curriculum, which can be found on my website, theprbarinc.com. Today, I want to take you inside one of my actual lessons. Now, I'm not going to give you the full meat and potatoes because this is literally a minisode. But I'm going to focus in on one element in particular. So let me set the scene a little bit. And let me ask you this. What distinguishes one story from another these days? And furthermore, why do some stories make headlines, while others don't even get a response from an editor? Now, the short answer, if we eliminate pre existing relationships, which definitely can play a part here is that the publishing outlet deemed one story more newsworthy than the other. So the question then becomes, why or what is or who constitutes as newsworthy in the eyes of the media. Many, many, many textbooks essays research and real world life experience later.
Like I just mentioned top of show, I developed my own unique method to determine and define if something is considered newsworthy. I call this methodology, the pre pitch opportunity, which is short for Pre Pitch Op. And Pre Pitch Op is actually an acronym, because in my opinion, that's way easier to memorize the following. We got the P, it stands for proximity, R stands for relevance, E extremeness, P for prominence, I for impact, T for timeliness, H for human interest, O, for outcome, and P for peculiar. Now, these are the 10 categories, or distinguishing elements of what stories are considered newsworthy, and what can make headlines. So obviously, in my portal in my courses, I go into each and all of these in depth. Today, what we're going to do is we're going to focus in on the T and the Pre Pitch Op, which is timeliness. So what makes a pitch or story idea timely, in the eyes of the media, and this is a freaking huge one in so many more ways than one.
So first, timeliness can refer to something that is breaking news. I do feel like you know, that's a little intuitive, and that's pretty easy to grasp. So what I'm going to do today is talk about the other side or the other components of timeliness, that maybe some people don't think about. So intuitively. And that revolves around the question, is your pitch timely? So I'm going to give you some questions to consider when you're trying to decide if your pitch or your angle is both timely and newsworthy.
Question one. When did this or when will this happen? This being the story angle. So for example, if you are a small business that maybe not many people I've heard about maybe your pitching about your restaurant opening. That happened six months ago, you've likely lost your timeliness window. So you're really going to need to lean into other elements to beef up the story. To leverage timeliness and a story in this vein, we want to capture your attention before the news even happens. So new restaurant coming soon. And then right when it happens, okay, so right when it opens a common mistake that I see, our companies will produce a press release, a general press release about their company. But there's absolutely no timeliness involved. Or it's about something or the launch of something that happened quite some time ago, this would not be considered timely.
Okay, next question. What's on the calendar? Is it summer is a holiday coming up is a certain history month coming up. We don't want to pitch editors about a new winter coat in June, unless you know, their lead time is over six months out, because that would not be timely. So this is where understanding and knowing editorial calendars, and lead times really comes into play. So I have talked about this on the podcast myself. I've talked about this extensively with a variety of guests. It also gets an entire lesson in my PR course. But ultimately understanding editorial calendars becomes key and remaining timely.
Next question, what's already there? By this, I mean, what has the publication or writer or podcaster, or producer or host, already written or spoken about? If they just posted a piece about Mother's Day gift guides, then now is probably not the time to send them that same pitch. If a podcast episode just released on top PR tips, probably not the time to pitch them about your client. Who knows best PR tips, right? So make sure you're doing your due diligence to understand what has recently been published or released.
And finally, last question, and this one's a really, really big one. What is trending in the news right now. Now your pitch doesn't have to necessarily connect to something trending. But if it does, you will get far more extra brownie points. So keep an eye on what's happening globally, locally and within your industry. Subscribe to newsletters of outlets you want to be in, carve out even 15 minutes every morning to get caught up on on the latest and greatest news in your industry. You can also let current trends inspire you to create story ideas or concepts, Google Trends, social media news scanning, all of these things should be a regular part of your day, if you want to leverage the current news cycle in a timely way.
So in summary, you should always want your pitches to be timely, you can almost you can almost think of timeliness as a subcategory under every other section of the Pre Pitch Op and I keep saying that I'm going to give you those those core names once once again, my method the Pre Pitch Op. What does that stand for? These are the 10 categories or elements that make a story newsworthy. So we have P for proximity or location, R for relevance. E for extremeness P for prominence, and also say celebrity here. I for impact. There's your T for timeliness, which we really dug into today. C for conflict, H for human interest. O for outcome. And P for peculiar. So again, think of timeliness as a subcategory under all the other letters there. Okay.
Now if you guys want to learn more from yours truly and go beyond this podcast, I invite you to head over to theprbarinc.com website. I have a great blog that's completely free. I have free online trainings. I also have paid more extensive online courses. I have private PR trainings and workshops, and I do also still offer select spots for one on one coaching. With that being said, that's all I got for you guys today. Thank you for your time. Cheers.
Lexie Smith
Okay guys. If you are enjoying the Pitchin’ and Sippin’ podcast, please do me a huge favor and leave a review wherever you are listening. If you want to connect with me to learn and more about THEPRBAR inc. you can do so on Instagram @theprbr_inc or you can check out my website at theprbarinc.com Cheers