Social media has a vast outreach and taking advantage of its power could be beneficial to your public relations strategy. With millions of users, you have the potential to raise brand awareness in the matter of seconds. According to Business Insider, Twitter has approximately 232 million monthly users! With that being said, it can be safe to say a high number of those users are reporters and news organizations.

Today, many businesses are beginning to use social media as an effective way to pitch stories to journalist. Not only does social media act as a viable platform to reach customers and connect with them, but it also acts as another communication avenue to reach journalists. Here are some tips to effectively utilize social media to pitch to journalists:

1. Follow. If you are Twitter savvy, begin to follow reporters you want to pitch. Now you may be thinking, “I don’t know who to follow,” well for starters, figure out what type of things you will be pitching. Then, browse the history of potential reporters to read their tweets and familiarize yourself with their style and what they like to cover.
2. Engage. Once you’ve successfully found reporters to follow, begin engaging in their tweets. If they tweet a story, start a conversation about it. You will be brought to the forefront of their conversation and they will have your name in mind. Keep the engagement going until the journalist is comfortable from hearing from you.
3. Pitch. When you have a story to pitch, now is the time to make twitter and the journalist work for you! Keep in mind when you pitch something, don’t be ‘pushy,’ so keep it casual and collected. A simple tweet like, “You might be interested in covering (insert topic here)” and since you got the feel for what they like to cover, it should be something that they would be happy to look into.

Other social media avenues like Facebook may not cover as much ground as Twitter can. Facebook tends to be where journalists have personal, private pages that typically aren’t for pitching stories. Keep it simple by using the 140 character limit that Twitter has in place, reporters love short, direct to the point messages! To fully utilize a social media pitches, check out public relations firms in Philadelphia that have access to a large news market and the experience to back it up.