Submitted by Sabina Hitchen on | 0 Comments
If you follow our Tin Shingle blog or Facebook you'll know that Daria Artem, the Chief Confectionary Officer (!!) at Lady Fortunes Gourmet Cookies had me at her beyond creative cookie designs (from QR-cookies to personalizd fortune cookies). Good news for her DIY PR campaign is that her responses to PR leads also have editors hooked.
In fact, within her first month at Tin Shingle she landed a feature on The Street. As we all know, a fully rounded publicity campaign isn't all about product stories, you need to tell your business story too, which is what Daria was able to begin doing here. Just how did she do it? Read on, and learn a bit from her process, from pitch to placement!
Note from Sabina: I LOVE her answer to question #2, it inspired me!
HOW LADY FORTUNES COOKIES LANDED THESTREET.COM
How often have you been working on your DIY (do-it-yourself) PR?
3 months
What press opportunity did you snag by replying to a PR Lead?
The Street was doing an article on Management Horror Stories- so we replied and got a great feature!
Can you walk us through the process, from pitch to placement?
We responded to the lead and a week later got a bite from the writer. Our pitch included 2 stories to choose from, interesting facts and main points bulleted for the writer. She set up a time for an interview and I called her and told her my story. She asked specific questions- she told me she was tape recording because I guess they do that so that they can listen later and add quotes. She told us the date that the story would run.
I contacted her that week to confirm the story ran and it did! This writer works with a lot of other magazines and news programs so I will be keeping her on file!
*smart says Tin Shingle
How long did the entire process take (days, weeks)?
The entire process took about 3 weeks from pitch to placement. You throw out a response and sometimes wait up to 2 weeks to get a bite!
Did you learn anything through this process that you can share with other small business owners?
YES! I almost did not reply to this query because I did not think they would take my story and mention my business- but I responded anyway. It is really funny about pitching because everytime you pitch a writer they see your name and see your story and this writer told me she saw another pitch from before (which did NOT work out for her) but this time it did! The lesson here is to be tenacious and don’t give up. Respond like you mean it EVERY time. You wouldn’t serve half baked cookies- so don’t offer up half baked pitches!!!!
