You know you want to get yourself out there in the media and share your story with a wider audience than you can through direct marketing channels, and you know that in order to do this you need to use PR and pitch yourself. But what if you don’t know where to start? Or you feel like even though you’ve done media outreach for your brand in the past around a big launch or other news, you just don’t have anything worthwhile going on right now so there’s nothing to pitch at the moment? Don’t worry, you don’t necessarily have to wait for something ‘more interesting’ to happen before you can start pitching for media coverage! There’s (almost) always something you can pitch.

Here are a couple of options of pitches you can use even when you feel like you have nothing to pitch.

#1 Start with your expertise

Often people think their PR efforts have to be all about the brand (or all about the product if you have a product based business). This is not the case. You do not always have to be pitching or selling your product or service in your PR efforts – in fact, you’ll often be more successful if you aren’t!

Pitching your own expertise, rather than your offerings, will often result in stories that will actually strengthen your brand even more than just pitching your service ever would. When it comes down to it, people buy from and choose to work with people. Sharing your expertise on the subject, your behind the scenes story, and anything else where your actual personality comes through is much more valuable and will still result in people seeking you out for your services at the end of the day. Figure out how and where you can share your expertise and you’ll always have a valuable, relevant pitch for the right media.

#2 Find a tie in with the time of year, season, or current event

Something that may not seem that big or worthy of an article can often become worthy depending on the time of year or another relevant tie in. Look closely at what is going on in the world, in your city, in the collective consciousness, for the time of year right now, and for the rest of the year or upcoming year.

There may be things you never thought of that you could actually pitch if you plan right, and chances are there is something coming up soon that you can tie in a pitch for right now. There are many ways to find out what’s trending right now: Google Trends, Twitter, Pinterest For Business, etc. Keep an eye on what’s trending to see how your business can relate to current events and interests. Think about if there is a reason or a way for your brand to have something to add to the conversations taking place around the back to school season, people saving for the holidays, mindset and feelings around the coming of winter or the holiday season, the first day of fall, or other less obvious things and times that you will find through some research. There is a way to tie in your story to this bit of daily life, and that is where you can create your angle.

#3 Celebrate something

It could be an anniversary of your business or a certain service within it, or it could be anything else that you could create a celebration around. Keep in mind, the pitch isn’t for a story around your celebration– most writers won’t usually care about an actual event– but the celebration is part of your angle and the reason why you are pitching this. So you use that as the tie in for why your story is relevant right now – what makes it interesting, and why it’s worth talking about at this exact moment.

Most publications won’t do a story around the fact that you launched a new line of earrings last year at this time, but if you pitch a story with the angle of here’s what this one under-30 maker has learned in one year of business after launching a wildly successful line of earrings last year, that is actually a pitch worth putting out there. You can use these things just to make your business and what you’re offering feel more relevant and interesting right now.

#4 Share your business story

There are lots of opportunities for this, depending on the type and size and success of your business. For example, there are all kinds of outlets that share Q&A’s with female entrepreneurs, career profiles on women in business and, of course, you can always pitch your business story in general to many business focused publications and often lifestyle ones too, especially locals in your area that like to publish pieces about local business people who have reached success.

Never underestimate the power of pitching yourself and your story. This is something you can pitch almost at any time if you find the right outlets.

Remember, not every pitch idea is going to work with every media outlet, but I do believe almost every business can use all of these ideas almost any time. Spend some time thinking on these, craft your pitch well, and grab those media opportunities by the horns so you can expand your audience, get in front of more people, and have them actually come seek you out after reading about whatever amazing things you’re doing.

For more information on this, listen in to our Quotable: a female millennial entrepreneur podcast episode on this topic!