Hey there! It’s Christina Daves and I’m here today with your Get Famous Friday PR Tip. Today I want to talk about hooks. Not fishing hooks. Media hooks. How do you hook the media in? How do you get them to read that email that you’re sending them, that great pitch that you have?
This is so important because some of these journalists could be getting up to one thousand emails in ONE day. Seriously, so you’ve got to stand out. That subject line has got to make them think, “Oh my gosh! What is in there? I’ve got to hear more.”
So a hook is something like saying, “In Fairfax County, we could lose a hundred homes in this neighborhood by Saturday.” The first thing the journalist is thinking is, “What do you mean?” You are pitching a story about sinkhole danger. You could be a developer, a real estate agent or investor, a scientist – anyone who can talk about sinkhole danger. Something like that is intriguing and compelling and will get the media to open the email.
I’ll give you my favorite trick for learning what great hooks are…magazine covers. When you’re in the grocery store line, why do you think all the magazines are there? They’re “hooking” you in to make that impulse purchase of five dollars. Those people are paid very well to get you to buy that magazine based on that five word hook that they have on the front of the publication. Obviously, you can’t read the whole article while you’re there in line, so you’re going to buy the magazine.
So, think about that. Google whatever magazine you might be interested in getting in or one that’s relevant to your industry topic. Google it and look at the kinds of hooks that they have on the front and see how you can reword it or rework it to something that’s relevant to you and your pitch and use that in your subject line.
We talk a lot more about hooks in my free PR Challenge. If you haven’t joined it yet, please do: www.YourPRChallenge.com. It’s so fun and so exciting and it will help you get so much more visibility. I hope you will join. See you there!
