“This is a strategy we’ve incorporated into our routine where we sit down and swap campaigns that are in need of attention and a fresh perspective. Each of us has different viewpoints and areas of interest, from sports to beauty to personal finance. For example, if I lack extensive knowledge about sports, swapping my pitch with a team member who is knowledgeable adds tremendous value to my pitch and insight into that beat.”

Our pitch swaps allow us to lean on another team member’s experience and expertise. As the promotion team mainly works independently, it’s one of the most valuable ways for us to get time collaborating with one another. Read on to learn our reasoning behind pitch swaps. 

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They See Something You Don’t See 

We all process information differently than other people, so it’s very possible that a coworker can visualize a pitch in a way you never thought of. When you look at the same thing over and over, it’s easy to overlook something that someone else might notice right away. Whenever my team swaps pitches, it’s likely that they will find another way of representing the data in my pitch, find grammatical errors, or change up my writing style to flow better. There are always going to be missed opportunities if you don’t get a second set of eyes to help identify them, so I highly recommend pitch swapping for this reason alone. 

They Know Something You Don’t Know

Bill Nye once said, “everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t” and he’s absolutely right. 

Leaning on your team members’ expertise can be crucial to the success of your campaigns, especially those in areas you aren’t too familiar with. For instance, last year I – the girl who only knows about sports players based on the celebrity they’re dating – pitched an extensive data campaign about major league teams. I thought I was heading into the campaign with enough knowledge to pitch the right thing to the right people, but it turns out I wasn’t. For this specific campaign, I needed to know what was happening on a week-by-week basis in the NFL, change my pitch accordingly, and find new reporters constantly. 

I had almost every member of my team that knew anything about the NFL help me with that pitch (i.e. crafting new angles), and thanks to their insights, I was able to secure multiple organic links. 

How to Stay on Top of the News Cycle During a Pitch Swap

While it’s not possible to have extensive knowledge of every topic, there are ways you can be in the know about the news cycle. When I’m pitching a topic that I’m not too familiar with or helping a team member out with their pitch during a swap, I find the following tools to be extremely helpful. 

Exploding Topics 

Every Tuesday, Exploding Topics sends me an email of trending topics online before they become too saturated and take off. You can search for exploding topics based on a category that can help you hone in on what’s being discussed in a certain beat. The interesting thing about this tool is that it will also tell you when interest for a topic has peaked. This is helpful because, when you’ve found a topic that has peaked, there’s less online chatter surrounding it which is a good indication of how well a certain piece of content might perform coverage-wise. 

Twitter 

Twitter, as we all know, is an incredible way to receive news without having to search for it. I go on Twitter multiple times a day to follow what news stations, national outlets, reporters, and other PR professionals are saying about a certain topic or industry, so my feed is constantly churning out new information. 

Google Alerts 

Many of us set up Google Alerts for our clients, but do you have topic-specific alerts set up? If you don’t, I would get on that sooner rather than later. They offer huge insights into what’s being written about for your selected topic, which can help you and your pitching strategy in the long run. Let’s say, for example, you’re preparing to pitch a campaign about esports, but you have no knowledge about what it is. With Google Alerts, you can set up an esports alert so you can know which outlets and reporters are covering the topic and what kind of stories are being told about it so you can craft your pitch accordingly. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re 10 years, 5 years, or 2 years into digital PR – it’s always a good idea to handoff your pitch to another team member. Although specific team members are assigned as leads on a campaign, we’re all in it together. When one person wins, we all win. When one person struggles, we all struggle. 

Don’t underestimate the wisdom of the crowd.

Here’s Why You Should Handoff Your Pitch to Another Team Member is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

The responses I’ve received from the media, the wisdom I’ve gained from coworkers, and the trial and error that comes with the outreach process have all taught me a lot of valuable lessons on how to course-correct a pitch that isn’t getting the attention I hope for. 

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Below are five of my top tips to consider when your pitch isn’t so perfect. Keep reading to learn more!

1. Get a Second Set of Eyes 

As you’re writing your pitch, it’s so important to ask someone who isn’t familiar with the piece of content you’re pitching to give you feedback on your message. Having a second set of eyes on your work allows you to see your pitch from a fresh perspective. It’s easy to miss new angles or interesting insights if you have blinders on, but with a teammate’s help, you’ll be able to see if your pitch is confusing, too long, poorly laid out, or if there are any gaps you need to fill. 

Our team does something we like to call “pitch swaps.” This is a strategy we’ve incorporated into our routine where we sit down and swap campaigns in outreach that are in need of attention and a fresh perspective. Each of us has different viewpoints and areas of interest, from sports to beauty to personal finance. For example, if I lack extensive knowledge about sports, swapping my pitch with a team member who is knowledgeable adds tremendous value to my pitch and insight into that beat. 

If you haven’t started something like this yet with your team, I highly suggest it. 

2. Rewrite, Revise, Repeat 

Whether or not you decide to get a second set of eyes to review your pitch, it’s always a good idea for you to rewrite and revise it yourself. Here are some steps you can take to tweak your message before scrapping it entirely: 

1. Send out a new subject line – Always have 3-5 subject lines to test throughout the course of your outreach. If open rates are low for one subject line, switch to another. 
2. Pull out different insights – Maybe the insights you pulled out aren’t compelling enough. Take a look at the data again and come up with 2-3 additional data points to highlight. 
3. Cut the fluff and get to the point – Reporters receive hundreds of pitches per week, sometimes per day. Take the ‘less is more’ approach, cut out your fluffy introduction sentence and get straight into the campaign insights. 
4. Take NSFW words out of your subject line – Sometimes here at Go Fish Digital, we pitch campaigns that might raise a few eyebrows. We’ve learned through trial and error that pitching a campaign with a suggestive word in the subject line sends our pitches straight into the spam folder. So, to avoid that, come up with safely-worded subject lines that will still get your message across.
5. Add a follow-up email – Sometimes all it takes to get a response is to send a follow-up email. While some reporters despise these, we’ve found that following up can increase your open and response rates. 

3. Target Smarter not Harder 

Sometimes it’s not your pitch – it’s whom you’re pitching to. 

If you find that a significant amount of your emails are bouncing, spend some time digging up a reporter’s most up-to-date contact information. You can do this via social media, LinkedIn, or any media database you have access to. One tool our team finds really valuable when hunting down contact information is Hunter.io. It’s a quick and fool-proof Chrome extension that scrapes web pages for email addresses. 

Another thing to consider is that you may be contacting reporters who don’t cover the topic you’re pitching anymore. For example, someone who covered pet topics for an outlet one year ago may not be interested in your pet story if they now cover fashion and beauty somewhere else. 

4. Go Back to the Drawing Board

While this isn’t the most ideal option, sometimes it is best to go back to the drawing board. Before doing so, ask yourself or a coworker these questions: 

1. Is the data confusing?
2. Are the graphics displaying the data clearly?
3. Can the graphics stand alone without a blog post? 
4. Is my data outdated? If so, can I go back and find recent data to make it more relevant? 

Remember that this is the first time a reporter is seeing your campaign. If they can’t figure out what they’re looking at or what the point of it is, the message will fall flat and you’ll lose your shot at coverage.

5. Reconsider Your Timing

Take a step back and ask yourself if what you’re pitching is relevant to the news cycle right now. If not, you may need to reconsider your timing so you can get the most interest from your pitching. For instance, if you’re pitching a graduation campaign too far away from graduation season, you probably won’t get any coverage. But, if you pause outreach for a few weeks or months, reporters are much more likely to be interested in covering your piece. 

Additionally, some topics have short windows that they can be pitched in to receive the maximum amount of coverage. If you miss that window, whether it’s a holiday, event, or season, it can be really hard to recover. So, if you’re pitching a time-sensitive piece of content, give yourself at least three weeks to aggressively pitch before the event or holiday. 

Even the most seasoned marketers who specialize in digital PR don’t get it right on their first try. A large chunk of building links and obtaining coverage across media outlets is out of your hands, so it’s important to set realistic expectations for yourself and your clients. However, remember that there are things you can do to refresh your pitch when things aren’t going as planned. 

What steps do you take when your pitch isn’t so perfect? Let us know in the comments below! 

5 Steps to Take When Your Digital PR Pitch Isn’t So Perfect is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

Something I’ve learned during my time on the content promotion team at Go Fish Digital is that each person has their own way of pitching smarter and not harder. When I started at the company, I was given the traditional do’s and don’ts of pitching to journalists and publications: the most optimal times, how to format the message, how to pivot if you’re not getting the desired results, the list could go on. Over the first few months, I cultivated my own pitching routine and found things that some team members liked doing that I didn’t and vice versa. Eventually, I came up with an outreach strategy that has been pretty successful in getting the responses I’m looking for.

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Here are three strategies I incorporate into my pitching routine each day to increase both the efficiency and effectiveness of my outreach.

Utilizing Software 

If you’re doing a lot of outreach, purchasing software that helps manage your campaigns can make the process more efficient. Our team uses Yesware, which makes monitoring the performance of campaigns a breeze. It can also save you a ton of time on things like sending out mass emails, calculating open rates, and A/B testing. The software our team uses has truly allowed me to be more organized in my outreach which, in turn, has led to better results. 

Sending Follow-Ups 

Mass follow-ups were a game-changer for me. For a while, my pitching and one-off follow-ups were manual and it was everything but effective and efficient. Sending a follow-up email for the majority of my pitches increased my open and response rate and has even led to multiple pieces of coverage. Very rarely do I have a reporter in my inbox annoyed or bothered by a follow-up, so I wouldn’t shy away from them.

Here’s an insider’s tip to following up – it’s important to note that reporters need time to ruminate on your pitch (if they didn’t accidentally miss it, then it’s a good reminder). On a normal week, I’ll usually wait two days to schedule a follow-up. On news-heavy weeks or around holidays, however, I’ll push follow-ups out a few more days. 

Establishing Relationships 

Establishing relationships is one that is and will always be, something I work on throughout my career. Everyone at our company interacts directly with coworkers or clients each day. However, those of us on the content promotion team have an added layer of communication with news publications and journalists. The hard part about these relationships is that they are almost always via email and very surface level. I don’t know what side of town a reporter lives on, their favorite coffee shop, or what they did over the weekend (unless I snooped on their social media). This makes communicating and pitching to them that much harder because there is no personal connection. 

As the ‘pitcher’, it’s important for us to dig a little deeper to create a connection. The more a reporter feels like they know us or can recognize our name when we pop up in their inbox, the more effective our efforts are. Remember that they are human too.

Of course, there are a lot of things you can do to pitch smarter and not harder. Effective and efficient strategies come in all shapes and sizes, and it’s all about what works for you and leads to the best results. Just be sure to find the strategies that work best for you!

Pitch Smarter, Not Harder: 3 Ways to Improve Your Digital PR Outreach is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

For the record, I hear Yanny.

Before I get ahead of myself and go on a rant about social media’s most viral moments, that’s not what this blog post is about. This is about how you can move the needle after you publish content online and amplify it using simple social media techniques that won’t cost you a dime.

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But, here’s a reality check – more often than not, your content won’t stand a chance if you’re trying to increase your reach organically through social media. It’s estimated that only 0.1% of content posted on social media is shared more than 1,000 times and over half are not even shared at all. As a content marketer, you cannot expect your campaigns to perform as well as eggs, yodelers, auditory illusions, and the like. But that doesn’t mean they can’t.

Before you resort to paid marketing efforts, here are three (free) ways you can use social media to your advantage as a content marketer to help get your content seen. 

Add Value to the Conversation

Social media is a breeding ground of conversation. Every single day, something new is trending, someone says something controversial that goes viral, and the taboo topics we shy away from speaking about in real life come alive when our fingers hit the keyboard. Unless you’ve got a healthy following or happen to luck out, however, being the one to start the conversation can be quite challenging.

When it comes to amplifying your content campaigns online, how can you be a part of the conversation without going through the trenches of starting one? First, you can think about the conversations happening online and how your content can organically fit into them. Are there trending hashtags you can use when sharing your campaign? Is it newsworthy? Does it pertain to a hot topic? Consider these questions as you’re gearing up to start a conversation with your audience. The more relevant the content that you’re sharing is (e.g. a dating/relationship-themed campaign that lines up with the online buzz surrounding Valentine’s Day), the more likely people will see it, find value in it, and engage with it.

Next, find the best social media platform to use to not only share your content but curate the right conversations for your product or service. Not every piece of content belongs on every platform or performs in the same way. One platform’s audience might respond differently and find your piece of content more valuable than the other. For instance, video typically performs better on Facebook than Twitter.

In the end, it all boils down to finding the right time and place to add to the conversation. It can be a bit challenging at first, but it should be your first step in amplifying your content online.

Leverage the Power of Influencers

Harnessing the power of social media influencers is crucial to amplifying your content.

The great thing about our team at Go Fish Digital is that we all have a wide range of interests. We like to take those interests into consideration when interacting with influencers for our content campaigns. One of our favorite tactics to employ is reaching out to influencers in niches we have an interest in or regularly engage with.

Take the home improvement show study for example. As a home improvement show fan herself, my colleague Emily decided to share this campaign on Twitter with Erin Napier of HGTV’s Home Town. As her show was included in the study, Emily felt like this is someone who would probably be genuinely interested in seeing it. While Erin may not have as large of a following as the HGTV Twitter account, considering her high level of engagement, Emily had a good feeling that she would at least see the study.

Voila! It worked – Erin Napier saw our study and replied. By doing this, the tweet (which includes a link to the campaign) now lives on Erin’s Twitter feed for thousands of eyes to see.

Being able to have your content seen and spread by influential people online can really take it to the next level, but finding the right person to ‘cold-tweet’ or ‘cold-email’ so that your content doesn’t fall on deaf ears can be a challenge. Think of it like being on a job hunt and trying to get ahold of a prospective company’s hiring manager — sometimes you’re successful, sometimes you’re not and that’s okay.

While there’s no exact science to harnessing the power of influencers, be intentional and realistic about the influencer(s) you set your sights on.

Would they find this content valuable? Do they have high engagement with their following? Is there someone else who might find this more relevant?  

Ask yourself these questions before firing off tweets, comments, messages, and emails.

Get Involved with Niche Communities

We’re all involved in a community of some sort in real life. So, how can we mirror those communities, but online? Well a large majority of us are already a part of niche communities without even realizing it.

A niche community is that neighborhood Facebook group you’re a member of, it’s the subreddits you subscribe to, and it’s the marketing Slack channel you follow for the latest industry trends.

When it comes to sharing your content with niche communities you aren’t a part of, however, it can be a little tricky. I say this because you are essentially entering someone else’s safe space. Before inserting yourself into a niche community, consider a few things. Does your content belong there? How will it be perceived?

Another important step when joining niche communities is to get involved in the conversation. Dropping in here and there to post a link comes off as inauthentic and spammy. Focus on establishing yourself and becoming a valued member of the community. Respond to other people’s questions. Post things that have nothing to do with your content. Start conversations. The more you do this, the more reputable you and the content you share will be.

For example, say you join a private Facebook group to share a piece of content. If the members of the community have any inkling you didn’t do your research before posting something irrelevant (which could mean not reading the rules), or that you’re not familiar with the group atmosphere, be prepared for the backlash. You and whatever you just posted automatically lost all credibility, which is very hard to build back up.

With organic reach on the steady decline, more often than not, you’re going to have to ‘pay-to-play’ when it comes to amplifying your content online. But if things like Facebook ads or social listening tools don’t fall within your budget or you’d like to try cost-effective avenues before doing so, adding value to conversations, leveraging influencers, and getting involved with niche communities are all great ways to get your content seen.

3 (Free) Ways to Amplify Your Content Using Social Media is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

The influencer marketing campaign process is more than research, execution, and reporting. It’s a multifaceted process consisting of countless moving parts. Overlooking even one small step can place the campaign’s success in jeopardy.

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It’s important to identify and avoid pitfalls before they happen. Below are the three silent killers of influencer marketing campaigns brands and marketers often fall victim to.

Identifying the Wrong Influencers

Aside from campaign preparation, one of the very first steps of an influencer marketing campaign is identifying the influencers. And contrary to what you may think, identifying and vetting influencers is more than just a few clicks on Instagram. In fact, 67% of brands say finding influencers is the biggest challenge of influencer marketing.

Choosing influencers that aren’t the right fit means the campaign will not flourish to its fullest potential. Think of it like trying to stick a puzzle piece into the wrong spot: it just doesn’t work.

Here’s an example: a local shopping center wants to implement an influencer marketing strategy to drive foot traffic. The most important metric for this campaign should be the influencer’s audience demographics, more specifically, their local audience. An influencer with a strong following but a relatively low local audience would not be a good fit for this campaign because, of course, the shopping center won’t see meaningful growth in foot traffic.

Improper Communication

Much like newsjacking content campaigns which are incredibly time-sensitive, influencer campaigns must be kept to a schedule, especially when you are trying to align with a product release or event. As a campaign manager, it’s important to keep a consistent line of communication open between you and the influencer before, during, and after the entirety of the campaign. And if you’re part of an agency, it’s even more important to be an accessible liaison between the brand and the influencer to address anything that needs your attention.

Needless to say, the influencer marketing campaign process consists of countless moving parts. More than likely these moving parts will come with hiccups, some of which are unforeseen and, unfortunately, out of your control. Whether there is a delay with a shipment, need for content approvals, or an incomplete and unclear contract and campaign guidelines, addressing and rectifying these challenges in a timely manner is crucial. If neglected, one problem can turn into two, resulting in a domino effect that could spiral out of control.

Not Allowing the Influencer Creative Freedom

The last, and quite frankly most detrimental, campaign killer is not allowing room for your influencers to have creative freedom. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine to provide guidance and set guidelines to an extent, but you have to trust your influencers to convey your brand’s message in their own voice. Without this, your influencer can come off as insincere, and even worse, deceitful to their audience thus negatively impacting the way they view the influencer AND your brand.

If you’re as immersed in the world of pop culture as I am, you may remember Scott Disick’s celebrity endorsement blunder. Disick copy and pasted email instructions from the Bootea marketing team to his 15+ million Instagram followers to his caption that read as follows, “Here you go, at 4pm est, write the below. Caption: Keeping up with the summer workout routine with my morning @booteauk protein shake!”

The caption itself isn’t the problem. Had he not made this mistake, nobody would have taken a second look. But it’s not about that. It’s the principle of letting an influencer use their own tone of voice without putting words in their mouth. To avoid this faux pas, make sure to allow your influencers to use their unique perspective to promote your product or service.

While influencer marketing isn’t rocket science, it shouldn’t be viewed as a walk in the park either. An influencer campaign gone wrong can steer an audience away from your brand and right into the hands of a competitor. However, by avoiding these three common campaign killers, you can count on an influencer marketing strategy to help your brand reach your goals.

The 3 Silent Killers of Influencer Marketing Campaigns is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.