How to use editorial calendars to get earned media coverage with Jason Mudd

How to use editorial calendars to get earned media coverage solocast with Jason Mudd

In this solocast, Jason Mudd joins On Top of PR host Jason Mudd to discuss editorial calendars and how you can use them to pitch for earned media coverage.

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Short Bio

Jason Mudd, CEO of Axia Public Relations, is a trusted adviser to some of America's most admired brands.

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5 things you’ll learn during the full episode:

What editorial calendars are
Different types of media you can find editorial calendars for
How to use editorial calendars to help determine pitches
How to get/find a publication’s editorial calendar
How to actually pitch once you have an editorial calendar

About Jason Mudd

Jason Mudd is the CEO of Axia Public Relations, with a career spanning decades and collaborations with prominent organizations, including American Airlines, Hilton, and Verizon.

Quotables

“Editorial calendars are a tool that is used predominantly by print and digital publications and specifically their advertising departments to kind of help plan out and coordinate between advertising and the editorial or newsroom or features department upcoming coverage that has a theme.” - Jason Mudd

“You want to use the calendars that determine the content/ideas that these publications are looking for.” - Jason Mudd

“Once you have the editorial calendar in your hands, whether it's digital or you printed it out or however it might be, the first thing you want to do is you want to start being an investigator.” - Jason Mudd

“I want to emphasize that this is a relationship business, and we in the public relations profession need to start putting more emphasis on relationships.” - Jason Mudd

Resources

Connect and learn more about Jason Mudd on LinkedIn.

Additional Episode Resources:

Additional Resources from Axia Public Relations:

Listen to more episodes of the On Top of PR podcast.
Find out more about Axia Public Relations.
Free Blog Editorial Calendar Template
Editorial calendars: A PR pro’s best friend

Episode Highlights

[01:17] What are editorial calendars?

Jason: “Editorial calendars are a tool that is used predominantly by print and digital publications and specifically their advertising departments to kind of help plan out and coordinate between advertising and the editorial or newsroom or features department upcoming coverage that has a theme.”

The theme is usually a feature or interest focus of a publication.
- Ex: The November/December issue in a national magazine might have an issue on gift giving.
Popular blogs and podcasts will even have thematic calendars they follow.
The ad department uses calendars to try to recruit advertisers who want to sponsor content
PR people are sometimes looking at media relations and the practice of getting earned media coverage. They're looking for opportunities to become part of the conversation, part of the content, and integrated into the content, not just sponsoring the content.
This is a cooperative effort between the ad department and PR department.

[04:04] Types of magazines and how to use them

B2B magazines or consumer magazines
You should start reaching out to them for coverage as early as October.
Editorial calendars should be finalized in January, so get ideas or insert your ideas ahead of time.
Pitch editorial calendars at least 90 days in advance.
- Publications are always working months ahead of time!

Jason: “Each of these magazines will produce typically in the fourth quarter, what's called an editorial calendar, planning out their coverage for the next calendar year. So if you're listening to this and it's 2023, about to be 2024, or it's 2024, about to be 2025, et cetera, you are probably in the market right now as a media relations professional or a PR or corporate communication professional looking for earned media opportunities. You should be in the market of acquiring editorial calendars and skimming through them month by month, looking for opportunities of how you might insert your client, your experts, your employer, their topics and expertise into the editorial or news content of this editorial calendar.”

[07:33] How to use editorial calendar to help your pitching

Jason: “You want to use the calendars that determine the content slash ideas that these publications are looking for.”

Think about the publication’s theme.
Prioritize your clients’ goals for PR.
Editorial calendars can give you cues and clues as to what they're going to be covering that you might be fit for when you pitch.

[10:10] How to get an editorial calendar

Narrow down to 10-12 publications.
Reach out to the outlet producing the calendar.
- Go to their website, hit the advertising section, and download the calendar or view or provide information for one.
- Or you can always send them an email to get access to the calendar.

[14:26] How to pitch once you have the editorial calendar

Jason: “Once you have the editorial calendar in your hands, whether it's digital or you printed it out or however it might be, the first thing you want to do is you want to start being an investigator. You want to start being a little bit of a detective. Not only do you want to skim through the topics and the timing by month and the deadlines, you want to start to figure out, okay, how much notice do they need before the deadline? What's the submission deadline for your ads? What's the date that it's going to run?”

The editorial calendar can be more focused on advertising deadlines.
There’s not always a deadline for a pitch submission.
Submission deadlines are also known as active deadlines.
Approach the editorial assistant for help with pitching ideas/how to better understand the editorial calendar and its deadlines.
Build a relationship with the editorial assistant throughout your entire pitching process.
Ask questions early and often.
Ask the editors what type of story are they looking for when it comes to the theme.

Jason: “I want to emphasize that this is a relationship business, and we in the public relations profession need to start putting more emphasis on relationships.”

[23:15] Editorial calendars: a tool in a PR pros toolbox

Jason: “When you look at an editorial calendar, I'm just going to stick to the example of April. If you see in April that your target industry trade magazine is doing topics that you want to become an expert contributor towards, or you want to be sourced in that magazine or in that issue or on that topic, I recommend, again, 90 to 180 days ahead of time start working on content. So here's what I mean by that. Number one, if the editorial opportunities in April, maybe in January, you're publishing a blog post, social media post, you're doing a podcast episode, you're doing an email blast on that same topic, planting a seed with that reporter or that news outlet, and it's editor with this idea of, Hey, I'm already a thought leader on this topic.”

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Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to On Top of PR with Jason Mudd, presented by ReviewMaxer.

Jason:

Welcome back to On Top of PR. I'm your host, Jason Mudd with Axia Public Relations. We really appreciate you tuning in and helping us help you stay on top of PR. Today we're talking about how to use editorial calendars to get earned media coverage, and today I am doing a solo cast, which means it's just me. There's not a guest. Today's episode is all about me sharing some of my thoughts and experiences with you to help you improve your practice of public relations. So regarding how to use editorial calendars to get earned media coverage, we're going to walk through what is an editorial calendar, how to use editorial calendars to help your pitching, and how to take action to clarify what editors are looking for and when to develop your pitches, as well as a bonus tip at the end. So please stand by for that.

So again, welcome. I'm Jason Mudd. My agency is Axia Public Relations, and this is your first time tuning in. We produce this podcast On Top of PR with the goal of helping you stay on top of PR and various public relations and corporate communication topics, tips, and trends. Editorial calendars are a tool that is used predominantly by print and digital publications and specifically their advertising departments to kind of help plan out and coordinate between advertising and the editorial or newsroom or features department upcoming coverage that has a theme. And that theme is typically a feature or a focus area of interest that is happening, perhaps if it's a monthly magazine that's the feature or the theme of that particular issue. So an easy one to think about is the holidays. So the November or December issue of a national consumer magazine might have a special emphasis on holiday gift-giving tips, and so throughout the issue, it's going to have articles pertaining to certain themes or certain types of gift-giving for certain people that might be the difficult person to give in your life or gift ideas for kids or parents or loved ones.

So it depends on the overarching theme of the magazine or publication or the online edition as well. Also, there are some newsletters that are very popular both in print as well as digital and email, and popular blogs and even podcasts will sometimes do what's called editorial calendars or thematic calendars of the type of topics that they're looking to cover. So the ad department is using these calendars typically to try to recruit advertisers who want to sponsor that content or be surrounded or form a perimeter around it or maybe be a sponsoring ad on the opposite-facing pages of this. Now, PR people are looking sometimes at media relations and the practice of getting earned media coverage. They're looking for opportunities to become part of the conversation, part of the content, and integrated into the content, not just sponsoring the content. So kind of like if you are picking up a magazine, newspaper, newsletter, tuning in to television, or even streaming something, you're usually tuning in to be informed or entertain or educate yourself on something.

You're not looking to see who's advertising. So in this case, this is a cooperative effort between the ad department and the writing department to try to complement each other and put together some themes to candidly attract readers and attract advertisers. That's the purpose of doing these themes. Each magazine, and I'm going to say magazine or publication, but again, it could apply to websites, podcasts, newsletters, and even popular blogs and things like that. But for the sake of this episode, we're going to call those magazines. So there are two types of magazines or media formats. There's B two B and there's consumer, there's business media and there's industry trade media. Then there's consumer media that is trying to attract enthusiasts, hobbyists, and people who are passionate about the topic that they're writing about. Each of these magazines will produce typically in the fourth quarter, what's called an editorial calendar, planning out their coverage for the next calendar year.

So if you're listening to this and it's 2023, about to be 2024, or it's 2024, about to be 2025, et cetera, you are probably in the market right now as a media relations professional or a PR or corporate communication professional looking for earned media opportunities. You should be in the market of acquiring editorial calendars and skimming through them month by month, looking for opportunities for how you might insert your client, your experts, your employer, their topics, and expertise into the editorial or news content of this editorial calendar. Some places to look for these are like your local business journal. Again, your national, regional, and local industry trade publications and websites, as well as the consumer media magazines you see on the rack and things like that would be relevant for these types of topics. So come the fourth quarter, they're typically producing their content or their editorial calendar of what they're going to cover in the next calendar year.

And so as early as October, November, and December is when you start reaching out to these target news outlets and asking them to send you a copy of their new editorial calendar. Now, don't be surprised. Some of these outlets do not have these ready until Christmas, which I can only imagine has got to be tough for them to produce a January, February, or March issue if they don't even have their editorial calendar ready until January. So the truth is, it is done, it just may not be ready from a public distribution standpoint. Maybe it's not laid out yet, or maybe it's still being tweaked in the latter months, but clearly, by November, or December, they've got to know what's coming up in the January issue because this is the one key major takeaway from this episode is you need to be pitching editorial calendars at least 90 days of ahead of time.

And speaking of ahead of time, I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself, but a rookie mistake I see is that a cub or junior or entry-level media relations professional or public relations professional will see, let's say an editorial calendar opportunity in December and they start pitching it in late November, misunderstanding that these publications are typically working months ahead of time, not days ahead of time, and they're not producing or turning around content instantly. And so you really need to be looking at the deadlines and communicating sooner with the contacts in the newsroom. Let's get to that in just a minute with a little bit more. But as you're looking at editorial calendars, you're looking for fits or opportunities to kind of sneak in or latch on or ride the coattails of a theme or a topic that they're planning on covering. So PR professionals use these editorial calendars to help develop ideas and opportunities for their pitches.

Now, how do you do that? How do you use an editorial calendar to help your pitching? First of all, you want to use the calendars that determine the content slash ideas that these publications are looking for. So the content and ideas they're looking for, again, might be around a theme. It might be how to winterize your home. It might be how to organize your closet for the winter or how to Declutter for Summer. It might be about how to recruit salespeople for your company. It might be about how to prepare for tax season personally or for your business. It just depends on the overarching theme of the magazine or the outlet that you're going after. But what you want to do is prioritize what are your clients' goals for PR? What are they trying to accomplish? What messages do they want to get out there, and what are you working on this year that you think would be relevant?

Maybe you're rolling out a new product, or a new service, entering new markets, looking to win awards, and looking to raise visibility among certain audience segments. And so the editorial calendars can give you cues and clues as to what they're going to be covering that you might be fit for when you go to pitch. So use this as an opportunity to craft the perfect pitch to align your client, your expert, your employer, and your thought leader with the topics that this outlet is looking for. And so some states have a statewide magazine or a local business journal in your metropolitan area. They're going to do things like the fastest growing company, or they're going to talk about different business-related topics that you could try to squeeze your client into. And so be sure to craft a pitch that would be not just interesting to your company of course, but more importantly, interesting to the media outlet that you're pitching, and most importantly, interesting to the audience that they serve, which is ultimately how and why or how they should make their decisions on what they cover is.

Is this interesting to our readers? They're not very interested in, if it's interesting to you, the person who's kind of shameless self-promoting or pitching your company. They're not interested in if your CEO would be interested in seeing this topic covered. They want to know if a majority of their audience would be interested in seeing this covered, and does it give them good support to create or for advertisers to be attracted to it. So that's how you can use your editorial calendar to help you pitch. But let me go a little further in that. So when you get the editorial calendar, in fact, let's talk about how you go about getting it first. So the way you go about getting an editorial calendar is again, in the months of October, November, December, and January is when you start reaching out to your ideal publications that you want your client or you want to be featured in.

I would narrow this down to maybe a handful, maybe 10 or 12, certainly no more than 20 or 25 just depending on your organization. Although we have clients that are actively doing business in six industry verticals. And those six actually, and we have another one that's doing it in about 10 or 12, and those six to 12 industry verticals all have specific trade journals that cover their industry. And so it's possible on a big enough client or a big enough company, we might have 150 target news outlets on our list. We divide that list up into business units or divisions, and then there are different representatives from our team working on each of those business units or divisions. And so with that specialization, they're taking on the connections and contacts with those news outlets. They're developing the media lists for those outlets. They're developing the contacts there, they're developing the editorial calendars, and they're building relationships with those people on an ongoing basis.

So what you want to do is you want to reach out to the outlet that is producing this editorial calendar. Now, my preferred way to do that is to hit their website, go into the advertisement section, and try to get an editorial calendar in real-time, either by downloading it as a PDF or viewing it on their website. Sometimes you have to fill out a form where they will register you as a sales lead for paid media or advertising, and then you just ask for it through that form. Sometimes that means you'll have to work with a sales rep to have them send it to you. And of course, they're looking oftentimes to sell you paid media advertising or sponsorship so that they can earn a commission. And we can't fault them for that. That's what they do for a living. And they're there to help many brands potentially including yours, subsidize their PR program with paid media, which is always a good idea in many cases, but I'll leave that up to you and your employer to decide.

But ultimately, you want to ask them to send you the editorial calendar. I always like to start with self-serving or DIY. Do it yourself. Try to get a hold of it yourself without connecting with anybody, without bothering anybody, and without being sold by anybody. But if that's not possible, the advertising department or advertising rep is always more than happy to send it to you and always more than happy to take your order for advertising as well. Now, in that particular case, if you're not able to get it from their website, either DIY or through a contact, the other thing you might do is just send them an email instead of filling out a form or just do the old fashioned thing of picking up the phone and asking. Now, an alternate contact besides sales is often an editorial assistant, and that would be a good person to reach out to, either A, to ask for the editorial calendar or B, and more importantly to actually pitch the content you want to pitch for the editorial calendar. So with that, we're going to take a quick break and be back on the other side where I'm going to tell you how to go about pitching to the editorial assistant or to that news outlet once you have a copy of the editorial calendar in your hands, and we'll tell you how to go through it in just a second.

Announcer:

You are listening to On Top of PR with your host, Jason Mudd. Jason is a trusted advisor to some of America's most admired and fastest-growing brands. He's the managing partner at Axia Public Relations, a PR agency that guides news, social, and web strategies for national companies. And now back to the show.

Jason:

Welcome back to On Top of PR. I'm your host, Jason Mudd with Axia Public Relations. We're talking about editorial calendars. It's that time of the year to really start thinking a lot about editorial calendars, but there's never a bad time to grab the current editorial calendar and start looking into it. Once you have the editorial calendar in your hands, whether it's digital or you printed it out or however it might be, the first thing you want to do is you want to start being an investigator. You want to start being a little bit of a detective. Not only do you want to skimp through the topics and the timing by month and the deadlines, but you also want to start to figure out, okay, how much notice they need before the deadline. What's the submission deadline for your ads? What's the date that it's going to run?

You want to learn and get familiar with all of those dates. So sometimes the submission deadline in the editorial calendar is actually focused on the advertisements deadline, not on the submission deadline for content. So you want to make sure you have some clarity on what is the deadline for advertising, what is the deadline to submit stories? Some editorial calendars don't give you a deadline for when to submit stories because they're hyper-focused on advertising deadlines. Some people consider these submission deadlines to also be called active deadlines. So you want to definitely make sure you see a difference or the difference between the ad deadline and the submission to submit a pitch or an article deadline. If you don't know that, this is when you start to become friends with the editorial assistant. The editorial assistant is somebody in the newsroom who is helping the editors do their job.

This tends to be a little bit more, but not always a little bit more of a junior or cub person, a junior woodchuck as my friend would say in the organization. But typically, it's somebody who is there to be helpful to you and to the editors, and so they're going to have good insight and good access to the editors to ask them your questions. This person's typically a very organized individual who is really charged with making the editor's life easier. And so if the editorial assistant is helping you, then the editors are not being distracted and disturbed with their work by your inquiries to them. So that's why it's good to work with the editorial assistant. But I want to emphasize that this is a relationship business, and we, in the public relations profession, need to start putting more emphasis on relationships.

And if you've listened to many of my podcasts, I talk about this often, but the relationship is the important part. So you want to build a lasting relationship with this editorial assistant. So you want to be very kind to them. You want to be very professional with them, you want to be very respectful towards them. But this is also an important time to leverage this contact to get answers to questions that you might have. So again, once you have that editorial calendar, you start to study it, you start to dissect it, you start to kind of investigatively, figure it out and how it all works. Then you want to approach the editorial assistant about a specific topic for a specific issue. So you might say, “Hey, I see in your April issue you're doing a section on how to select a home improvement or a home services company for your home.”

So you might say, “Hey, since this article is appearing in April, what's the deadline you would have to submit their articles for publication for this April issue,” and then they'll tell you what it is. And then whether this is by phone, email, DM, text message, or however you've reached this person, then you might say, “Okay, and when would be the right time?” Or, “What would be the timing that you start assigning these stories out for your April issue?” And then they will give you a date. And don't be surprised if the date is December or January or maybe February. And then you might say, “Okay, and if I wanted to pitch our expert or our company for inclusion in that April story, when would be the right time to reach out to your organization? And who would be the right person for me to reach out to share this?”

Now, the answer you might get, they could say, “Hey, it's going to be me. Here's the date that we have a meeting to start planning that up.” That issue is that you might say, “hey, I don't know.” The editorial system might say, “Hey, I don't know who that is yet, so contact me” or “I don't know who that is yet. Contact us in X number of weeks and we'll let you know.” Or they might say, “Hey, our writer Dolly, Sally, Devin, Melissa is writing that section or is taking the lead on that section or this special section editor, Bob is in charge of that. You'll want to reach out to him or her.” And so just follow those instructions very carefully. Timing is very critical. Timing is of the essence. You don't want to miss these opportunities or these deadlines. I recommend 90 days before the submission deadline, maybe even as much as 120 to 180 days ahead of time.

You're reaching out to someone, you're building a relationship, you're having a conversation, you're staying in touch, you're expressing interest in being helpful. You want to position yourself as being a helpful resource. You want to position yourself as being helpful to them, not being annoying, not being demanding of them, but wanting to be a cooperative partner in this process. Now, once you know the timeline, you want to create a spreadsheet or some kind of project management document where you're tracking these opportunities and your effort on them. The key thing to do is sort it by the deadline so that you don't miss these deadlines and maybe highlight the sale with the deadline or make it read and then sort it in order of deadlines so that you're always working ahead of time and ahead of yourself. So don't guess what the editors are thinking about in these editorial calendars.

Ask questions early and often. Get a good sense of what they're looking for in the right angle so you can have a competitive advantage against all the other PR people who are not submitting laser-focused content that really matches what the editor's looking for. You can have a competitive advantage against the PR people who waited until the last minute to pitch, and they're not as proactive as you are and as we are, and as I'm describing to you, the other thing you want to do is be or just beat the PR person who waits till a month or a week before, either the submission deadline or even the ad deadline, or even the issue release date where they just have egg on their face. And I see this all the time with junior wood, chucks, and cub or entry-level PR pros. They just start pitching an editorial calendar days or weeks ahead of time.

What they don't realize is that is already written, edited, finalized, and maybe even already have it in the printers or maybe in mailboxes already. You just missed your chance and you got to be early. So I would say start pitching 90 days before the deadline. I'm more comfortable with 120 to 180 days ahead of time just to get yourself out there early and often and start building that relationship. So you also ask the editors what type of story they are looking for when it comes to the theme. For example, for technology, they don't want a million articles or they don't even want a dozen articles for that matter that are all covering the same tech subject. You really want to help them narrow down their focus. If the section is about technology, I would clarify it is digital technology. Is that home technology? Is that business technology? Is it cyber cybersecurity technology?

Like what's the focus? Because technology is very broad, and so you want to make sure you're all singing from the same song sheet or all on the same page, and then whatever that editor wants, you want to mirror back to that in your pitch. You want your custom-crafted pitch to be exactly what the editor wants to see. You want it to be music to their ears as they're reading your pitch, like, oh my gosh, this is perfect. So you've got to find some level, some perfect intersection or Venn diagram between what your client wants, what the editor wants, and ultimately what their reader wants, and how you can be a helpful expert or helpful advisor or helpful content contributor or source or resource or reference for what they're writing.

Okay, so now we've talked about what's an editorial calendar, how to use it, when to pitch it, and what actions to take, and then we want to talk about, and we talked a little bit about mapping out your editorial calendar in an idea of getting it organized and spend time pitching each month between the categories of editorial, pitching, proactive pitching based on your calendar, and then your ongoing just general reactive media relations.

So an editorial calendar is one of many tools in a PR pro's quiver toolbox, or whatever it might be. It's not the only one. I would say it's often underutilized or underappreciated, sometimes even forgotten. But if you start your homework for the year at the beginning of the year, or whenever you start doing a new initiative or you see a new publication, just jump in on the editorial calendar, start looking at it, start tearing it apart a little bit and figuring out how it works and what parts and pieces you and your clients or your boss or thought leader or experts would be a good fit for. Now, here's the bonus tip that I offered earlier.

This is something that we've done over the years. It's not always been successful, but it's kind of a unique play that I think could be very valuable to you. So when you look at an editorial calendar, I'm just going to stick to the example of April. If you see an April that your target industry trade magazine is doing topics that you want to become an expert contributor towards, or you want to be sorted or excuse me, sided or sourced in that magazine or in that issue or on that topic, I recommend, again, 90 to 180 days ahead of time start working on content. So here's what I mean by that. Number one, if the editorial opportunities in April, maybe in January, you're publishing a blog post, social media post, you're doing a podcast episode, you're doing an email blast on that same topic, planting a seed with that reporter or that news outlet, and its editor with this idea of, “Hey, I'm already a thought leader on this topic.”

I've already been writing about it. In fact, here's some recent content that I produced just a couple of months ago that A, they will either see on your LinkedIn or see on your blog post, or maybe they subscribe to your email newsletter. Don't subscribe them to your newsletter without their permission or their consent or their agreement to do so. Please don't spam them. But if you could start producing content weeks and months before you're pitching it, or weeks and months before they're looking for an expert in this space, maybe they will find you in their Google search. Maybe they will see you in their X feed or their LinkedIn feed, or some are maybe on TikTok or Instagram where they see your content and they go, “Hey, that sounds like somebody I want to interview.” So if you know they're doing something in an April issue, try to get your stuff ranking in the search engines by April or well before April, obviously, but you want to do it by January, I would say.

So it comes the time in January/February where they're writing about this topic and maybe they're writing about it even earlier, you might rank in there, is really my point. I think this is a really good tip, and this is where you can look at editorial calendars and your content calendar at your company and start weaving them together so you're always working at least a month, if not more, maybe several months ahead of the editorial calendar for that same topic within your industry. By the way, if you need help putting together your own content calendar for own content that you're producing, again, blogs, social media, email, podcast, et cetera, look at your industry, trade media, and what their editorial calendars cover and then emulate similar topics for yourself and your own content that's in there. So in summary, this is how you tackle editorial calendars.

I highly recommend you delegate the collection, the research, and the collection of editorial calendars down, down, down, down, down to the lowest ranking person in your organization, and candidly, making it the most affordable exercise. So the further down you delegate in theory, the cheaper it becomes to accomplish it. There's no reason why high-ranking people in your corporate comms or PR department should be doing this type of work. This is a perfect assignment for an intern or an entry-level person or the department assistant to be working on collecting all these, organizing these, putting them in the shared folders or however, you want to organize 'em, starting spreadsheets and that kind of thing. And then you want maybe an entry-level or even a mid-level person to kind of comb through and remove and take out the ones that aren't a good fit and really start to laser focus and groom the opportunities that are there to make sure you're finding the best opportunity for your organization.

And then collaboratively as a team start looking at these opportunities and thinking through who's our best expert on this. What's our best angle and how do we get it, what's the best timing? And what do we need to do to prepare that person or prepare our pitch or otherwise? Now, two more thoughts come to mind here. Number one is don't be surprised when the editor or editorial assistant comes back to you and says, “Hey, I really like your pitch. Could you have your expert write 500 words, a thousand words, or 800 words on this topic for us?” And you can always say no, but that's a great opportunity to control the words and the expression and the way that you write this content without waiting on being interviewed, hoping to be included in a story or that kind of thing. So be opportunistic about the opportunity when they ask you to submit something, be ready to do that.

The other thing I would just tell you as well, speaking of being prepared, there's no reason why you can't start working on your pitches now. Start training your spokesperson now for that opportunity, so you have your pitch ready to go, and on that date, you've just flagged yourself or set a reminder, inserted a calendar item to send that pitch so that you're ready to go and you're fully prepared. I'm a big, big believer in being prepared. The other tip I wanted to share is, remember, it's not shameless self-promotion. It's about helping. It's about putting the audience first. So whatever you're pitching, keep the rationale in mind of not why is it beneficial to you and why you want to be featured. Instead, you want to say why your story, your expertise, or your helpful tips are ultimately going to be for the benefit of your audience.

So it's not about you, it's about others. And keep that other focus when you're pitching so that you might have a better chance of being included.

Hey, thank you for the opportunity to share with you more about editorial calendars. These are powerful tools when you leverage them properly when you know how to approach them correctly. Don't forget about editorial calendars, but don't lean on them exclusively. They're just one of many tools, but something this time of the year, you should really be laser-focused on using. So with that, this has been Jason Mud with Axia Public Relations, talking to you about how to use editorial calendars to get earned media coverage. And I hope this was helpful in helping you stay On Top of PR, be well.

Announcer:

This has been On Top of PR with Jason Mudd, presented by ReviewMaxer. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And check out past shows at ontopofpr.com.

How to use editorial calendars to earn media coverage with Jason Mudd

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