Getting the media’s attention these days is no easy task. What you may think is the most interesting topic may completely fall on deaf ears for journalists. What’s one tip for capturing an outlet’s attention? Create a timely hook.
A timely hook is a way of pitching your story that will spark interest from the media. In other words, it helps create a sense of urgency for journalists to take your story idea seriously. Creating ‘hooks’ or angles is what a good public relations agency does for their clients. And it takes a good sense of editorial judgment to know the kind of content the media will pay attention to.
Creating Timely Hooks for Medical Public Relations
At MedVoice PR, we work with medical and healthcare brands, including digital health companies, healthcare IT companies, health plans and various physician specialty practices.
There are two kinds of timely hooks or pitches. One relates to the actual time of year or season and the other can be linked to national announcements or trends, which is where we use ‘newsjacking’.
First let’s talk about seasonal hooks. Here are some examples:
- Back-to-school health topics
-Exercising in intense heat
-National Heart Month
-Spring time allergies
We recently crafted a seasonal media pitch surrounding back-to-school health-related topics. We came up with various, timely topics and offered up our multi-specialty client, Harbor Health. Their experts discussed healthy back-to-school lunches, back-to-school vaccines, back-to-school safety and back-to-school sleep routines. Here’s just one story that came from that pitch.
Another form of a ‘timely hook’ includes health or medical ‘newsjacking’. Newsjacking is often used in medical or healthcare public relations and involves promoting your brand by joining conversations about current events, new data or research, an announcement of a high-profile person experiencing a health scare, or even a new FDA-approved medication or device. We often leverage our clients’ areas of expertise and pitch them to an entire database of medical and health journalists.
Here's an example of newsjacking: When the FDA issued a warning about a compounded form of a weight loss drug, we pitched our client, Texas Diabetes and Endocrinology and one of their board-certified endocrinologists to the local media. Here’s the interview that was garnered from it.
Our healthcare industry landscape continues to evolve. Collaborating with our team, who has decades of medical public relations expertise, can help you better secure the attention of both mainstream and industry media.
Contact us today at emily@medvoicepr.com