Kate Hanley pitched a local TV show by monitoring their content, tying her pitch to Make a Difference Day, and offering five locally relevant ideas. She got on air within a week, then sent thank-you notes and her book to the hosts to build a relationship for future pitches.
Chapters
Hey there, Paula Rizzo here from paularizzo.com, and I'm joined by my friend Kate Hanley, who is the author of How to Be a Better Person. It's not only a book, but it's a podcast, and she has very smartly been able to position herself in the media as an expert and pitched herself to get on TV. So I wanted to chat with you, Kate, to see how did you do it? 'Cause I was so excited when I saw you post on social media that you had been on your local TV station. So tell me about your thought process of launching the podcast and then thinking through, hey, I should get myself some media for this.
Right. Well, I mean, it's a lot to think about, no doubt. I'm a content creator by heart. That's where I love to really focus and think and brainstorm.. And the PR part has been less appealing to me, which I think a lot of people can relate to, right? Putting yourself out there as an expert feels a little weird. But I realized that this is something that I really care about. And if I'm not talking about it, how am I going to expect other people to talk about it? And so I really challenged myself to— once I got the content sort of well in hand and the podcast was launched— to start sending out pitches. And the way that I got on my local TV news station— well, first of all, I had noticed that we got a new sort of magazine morning news show.
Ah, so number one, you were watching. So that's the most important thing here. People are always saying, oh, I wanna be on TV, but I never watch TV, so I don't know what they're doing. That's the point, you have to watch.
Well, it's funny you say that. I have to confess that I don't really watch TV, but I'll tell you what I do watch. I watch my social media feeds. Okay. And, you know, I'm involved in some local Providence networking groups, and some of the people who are on the show are in the networking groups saying, come check out our show. You know, I'm paying attention. I feel like I got my finger on the pulse, not necessarily the remote.
That's okay, that's good too, it's a good trick, yeah.
Yeah, so I knew I was new, I knew they probably were looking for content. I posted something on a local networking group that said, hey, does anybody know anybody at this show? And someone wrote back immediately and said, oh my gosh, one of the hosts used to be part of this group, she's very active on social, go check out her Twitter profile, which I did.
So that's good, that's a good tip to be able to find the contacts, 'cause a lot of times people say, well, I don't know these people. But local circles, you could be doing, you know, just as you've done. Absolutely.
Social media is great for that. And Twitter especially, I feel like a lot more media people are on Twitter and they will have their email address in their bio because they do need to get pitched. I mean, that's one thing that we have to just tell ourselves is that we're actually helping people do their jobs by pitching them.
They want to hear from you.
They really do.
100%. They need new interesting stories, right? So that's cool. So you got the information and then you reached out. How did you reach out? Via email, I'm guessing?
I reached out via email, but I had wrote up a pitch beforehand. I used to write for magazines, so I know how to do this, but it's not rocket science, right? You come up with this cookie idea that's tied to something that's happening locally or maybe on the calendar, and then you write, you essentially write a little article, which is what I did. So I noticed, I went to, I forget what I, I think I just Googled like crazy national holidays. You know, there are all these wacky days like Flip-Flop Day and Hot Dog Day. I noticed that there was Make a Difference Day was coming up, which perfectly aligned with how to be a better person. So I wrote a pitch about that. And it's also wonderful, not only does that give you something to talk about, but it gives it a sense of urgency. Like the producers are gonna, not only might they like that idea, but they're gonna need to act on it because that day is coming up.
Right, so the hook is there. It's the why now, right? Why do we care about this? It's the holiday that's happening on a Thursday or whatever. So if you're doing the story on a Friday, you're too late. So it is that sense of urgency they want.
Right, like gotta get me in there. I mean, I emailed So I emailed the just like general email address that was in the— it actually wasn't the host's Twitter profile that had her email address in it. It was the show has a Twitter account, and then they had their email address in it. So it was like info@studio10. Sure. They got back to me right away though, and I was on. And within, like, they were like, when can you come next week? Can you come Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday? And then that's how I got there. I just emailed them. That was real quick.
And the pitch— tell me about the pitch itself. So you pitched yourself as the author and host of the podcast.
I did, I did. I said, you know, yes, I am the author of this book, I am the host of this podcast, it's National Make a Difference Day, a lot of people want to make a difference but they don't know how or they feel they don't have time, so I put together 5 ideas of ways that you can give back in a meaningful way that's also quick and easy to do for Make a Difference Day, which happens to be next week. And so You know, I came up with those 5 tips. Some were very generic. One was start a compost bin. It was fall and people were raking leaves, right? And leaves are actually an important part of a compost bin. I've been researching a little bit. I don't have one, but it's one of my New Year's goals this year to start one. So that was a little bit, you know, I made it a little bit seasonal. Sure. I looked up a couple of local events, like ways you could give back. The Boy Scout troop in a town nearby was having their pasta supper that day. Like, I gave them a shout out. Stuff like that. So I think that it was, it really made their job easier. I did, you know, I gave, I put links to the pasta supper.
Just make it easy. Like that's the key here, you know. But also like I love, obviously because you've been writing for magazines, you've been writing for so long, you know, it really is content is content. So you basically created like, here's a magazine article that we could turn into a TV set.
Absolutely. I mean, I could take that pitch and sell it to a magazine next year or go on a different show with it next year. Just update the events.
Right.
Come up with 5 different things or, you know, timely, whatever.
So I love that because a lot of times people think through, you know, experts that I'm coaching or work one-on-one with, they think, oh, okay, so I have to make a whole bunch of pitches over here and then a whole bunch of blog posts over here. It's like, no, all the content is the same. You can just—
That was a huge lightbulb moment for me because I was thinking to myself, like, I'm already creating this much content. How am I going to create this more work for myself? And really it was, You know what I did is I set up a Google Drive for myself. And I found old pitches that I had written and blog posts that I had written and just stuff that I thought might be useful in a lot of different ways. And I can go in there and really slice and dice. It's kind of like the Mexican restaurant with the bins in the background. And the bins in the kitchen and it's all the same stuff in the bins but you can make 25 different dishes from it. And I mean, that being said, you do want to really customize it to your market somehow.
Absolutely, for sure. And your local market was in Rhode Island, right? Yes. Providence. And so you went and you did the segment. I saw the segment. I think you did a great job. And it was quick, but it was quick. I mean, you get— I mean, that's TV, right? That's how it is. So from that experience, how did you feel doing it? And then what happened afterwards? Like, did you find people following you on Twitter? I think people think, oh, you're gonna be on TV and all, like, the world is gonna change, and it doesn't really change so much.
No, it didn't really change. I mean, here's what I got out of it. I got to take a selfie at the studio and with the hosts so that I could post it on my social media and hopefully they would post it, repost it on theirs. I got to like meet the woman who does the booking so that now when she sees my name in her inbox, she's going to open it. You know, she's not just going to breeze past it. I really got to connect with the two hosts. I loved them. One of them, the woman who interviewed me, I ended up sending her my book and a thank you note just to thank her for having me on and being so fun.
Very fun.
Really great. And she took a picture of it and she tweeted it and she put it on Facebook and she was like, this is how you— I can't remember exactly what she said, but she was like, thank you notes are really effective. This made my day. Check this out.
100%. I cannot say enough. Thank you notes. You know, when I was a television producer, I could probably count on two hands the amount of thank you notes I got in nearly 20 years that I was working. I mean, no one ever sends them. So it really helps you to stand out.
Right. And I think, you know, I'm just sort of biding my time honestly until I can pitch them again. I'm thinking that it's about time.
Yeah, it's a good thing we brought it up actually. But, uh, so I'd be curious to hear how it, how it goes. But thank you for sharing all these ideas and tips and tricks and I'm glad that it worked out for you so, so quickly. So I'm hoping to see you on again. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks.
And if you want the media to pay attention to you, you've got to know what they want, right? Well, I've got you covered. Go to paularizzo.com/checklist and you can download my free checklist on how to become a go-to media expert. That's paularizzo.com/checklist.
