15 Sep The Golden Hour: When Your Media Pitch Will Be Most Successful

You’ve got a great story idea, and expect that most of your media targets would be interested. You’ve put all the pieces together and feel confident in the story idea your organization has. You have your team assigned for pitching and are awaiting their feedback and reports on how traction is proceeding. You might be even prepping your spokesperson for upcoming interviews.

Then you find out things just aren’t getting picked up like you’d like (insert frustration).

While there is no magic bullet or perfect way or time to pitch your big announcement, new launch, or story idea, there is one major tip to help you land the most success: The golden hour.

So, what exactly is the golden hour?

Think of this friendly term as the time prior to your media target’s planning and pitching their idea to their editors or producers (their supervisors).

You will want to ensure that your team’s pitch goes out with timed and fine precision – that means, 4:30 p.m. on a Friday usually won’t work at all (and you probably know that). Instead, you want your team’s pitch to land in the inbox of your desired reporter, editor, or producer just as they’re cultivating their concept ideas and sketching out their schedule.

Every media contact is different. Your team will want to know how their media target works, their publishing schedule (are they a national morning show that plans weeks or months out or produces a weekly schedule, or are they a monthly magazine that plans farther out?).

Touching base with them about the best time to get ideas to them is always a helpful tool. For example, a local news station might have its planning meetings at 9:30 a.m. daily. They plan out their stories, shots and locations for the remainder of the day. Your team will want to land your pitch likely before 9:30 a.m. of course, but with ample time to review the story idea but not close enough to their deadline that they have already chosen something else to run with.

We like a general, pre-planned golden hour to be around 8 to 8:30 a.m. This is for nonurgent story content that is relevant that week to most local news stations, for example.

Each of your media targets will have their unique golden hour – ask your team they’re understanding on this and ensure excellent management of your PR efforts.