Engaging Your Blogger Champions and the Media

I’m going to let you in on a little secret here. You don’t have to be a trained PR professional to reach out to bloggers, journalists, or writers to pitch a story. I don’t care if you are a little girl selling lemonade on the corner or an exhibit manager of a Fortune 500 corporation who is doing something really cool in her booth, you have the skills necessary to pitch your story. Here is the secret—just pick up the phone, send an email or tweet, or post on the person’s Facebook wall if that is how he wants to be reached. You don’t have to know any PR jargon to make this call. As a matter of fact, it’s probably better if you don’t. You just need to have something interesting and relevant to say that his readers will want to hear.