The Top 5 Story Ideas to Pitch the Media to Get Noticed

I have a fantastic guest today that I know you are going to love! I know you probably want to boost your visibility and attract new leads, and one great way to do this is to reach out to the media to get exposure.

Lisa Simone Richards was kind enough to share a few of her insider tips in this post. We hope you find it helpful!

Here’s Lisa…..

As a publicist for health coaches, nutritionists, and wellness entrepreneurs, my clients come to me with one specific goal in mind: to harness the power of publicity to grow their business. Between publicity, marketing, advertising, and social media, there are countless ways to promote your business. In harmony, they all work together beautifully. If I only had to pick one promotional vehicle though, I’ll always choose publicity because it’s a great way to build brand awareness, establish credibility and promote your business for little-to-no cost.

If you’ve never dabbled in publicity before (hey, we all start somewhere!), the idea of exactly what story idea to pitch can be daunting, intimidating, and overwhelming. To make it easy, I’ve broken it down into the top five story ideas to pitch the media:

What to Pitch:

1. How-Tos

Media want to serve their audiences with easily-digestible, actionable content that offers a specific takeaway. Pitching a story along the ideas of:

How to create the perfect healthy holiday platter
How to master the smoothest smoothie
How to bring the tropics home with island-inspired mocktails
How to make pizza that won’t make you gain weight

You get the idea – teaching the audience how to do something (that ties in with your business of course!) will provide value and encourage them to want to share your tips.

2. Lists

There is nothing quite like a list. Easy to scan, easy to digest, and super easy to execute. Some ideas of lists that you can offer up the media as a health coach include:

The dirty dozen and the clean fifteen
Five ways to hide kale in your kids’ food
Top mistakes when starting a new health program
10 ways to avoid food temptation

Something that explores an extreme (i.e. best or worst, top mistakes to avoid) can encourage a debate, which is especially entertaining on radio or on TV!

3. Trends

Every year every industry lists the upcoming trends – Welltodo shares their ‘Top Wellness Trends’, American College of Sports Medicine shares an annual list of the year’s upcoming ‘Fitness Trends’ – you can take this into your own hands and define the trends, or even better, don’t recreate the wheel – dissect the trends and share your expert opinion on them! Especially if you pitch a story where the trends have been identified by a credible source or body – you can jump in to share your thoughts on where you agree, disagree, and what they may have missed.

4. Seasonal

News sources are always looking for a timely hook for their stories. Consider how predictable the news cycle is: holiday eating tips in November/December, weight loss and fitness stories in January, and get ‘bikini ready’ in time for summer. The beauty of working in health and nutrition is that a seasonal angle is always built in when it comes to food: apricots are in season during May, peaches peak in June, comfort foods in fall, and light, no-heat-needed recipes for summer. Knowing that these seasonal food stories will be coming into play, pitching a healthy recipe featuring these items can be a surefire way to nail a media feature (and if you scroll down to the end, I’ll give you the exact script I used to get not one, or two, but THREE of my client’s recipes featured on Canadian Family!).

5. Commemorative / Awareness Themes

I love sharing this story idea because It’s. Just. So. Darn. Easy.

We touched briefly on timely news stories, and commemorative days/weeks/months make for a built in media opp. (Seriously. Did you know that ‘national split pea soup week’ is the 2^nd week of November? There’s a celebration for everything!) To make it easy, here are links to the various food days, weeks, and months of the year:

Now that we’ve taken the guesswork out of what to pitch, the next question is how to successfully word your pitch? Click here to get a swipe file of the word-for-word pitch I used to land the three of my client’s recipes on Canadian Family. Feel free to tweak it and make it your own!

Lisa Simone Richards is a publicity expert for health, fitness and wellness entrepreneurs who want to see themselves and their businesses featured online, in newspapers & magazines, on TV, and on podcasts.

As the creator of Make Media Friends, an online PR school for wellpreneurs and fitpros, she’s here to teach you how to use the power of publicity to get your brand featured in the spotlight.

P.S. We’ll be chatting about this over in the Health Coach Peer Support Mastermind Group, so be sure to come on over and join us (certified health/wellness/fitness professionals welcome). JOIN US HERE!