Pitching Media Around Holidays, What You Need To Know

Media relations is a lot of work, can take time and requires strong communications skills, and a little charm never hurts.

What it also requires is knowing the media, understanding the press, their publication or blog, beat and areas of coverage, topics of interest, and best ways to contact individual media. But, there is another aspect I wanted to talk about as we head into Thanksgiving and the holiday season, and that is media and pitching during the holidays.

Pitching media around holidays can be tricky and there are several holidays in the U.S. when the media are much more busy, short-handed or even unavaiable with many being off for the holidays. The main holidays which can be tough to pitch include Christmas and New Years, Thanksgiving, and the 4th of July. Also, with many still taking their personal time off in August, that month can be tougher than others.

To effectively work with media around these holidays make sure you have a good pitch and something really newsworthy, a really cool or juicy story never hurts. Also, if a news announcement just isn't something that is that awe-inspiring and not related to anything about the holiday or consumers, then you may want to advise your client to hold off making the news announcement until after the holiday, when the press are back in the grind and not worried about getting away for their own holiday time. Another important factor is having backup contacts at outlets, other people covering a space as well as knowing who is picking up news for the person out of the office. This way if you cannot push back the announcement to avoid the holiday, then you know who to go to in place of your usual contacts if they are out for the holiday.

One other thing is you need to be understanding and respect the time and work of the media, especially during holidays, as since many of the newspapers, magazines, broadcast networks, online news sites and blogs are undermanned and look like ghost towns during many of these holidays. So remember that the people you are contacting are trying to fill in and handle beats and news for those out of the office. You really should be understanding regarding how busy the media contacts are during the holidays.

Know your contacts, when and how to pitch them, and know that during the holidays many are out of the office and away for holidays of their own, and be understanding for those covering for them during the holidays and holiday season.

Good luck pitching and have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!