[PR] TuneUp: How To Pitch For 2021 Valentine’s Day Gift Guides - Starting In October/November 2020

It's that time of year! A monthly series where we start a new month and plan ahead for what we are pitching! October is a special month because...it's your time to begin pitching Valentine's Day. Oh yes. If you missed your chance last year, and found Tin Shingle when you were Googling "how to pitch valentine's day gift guides," and discovered that the time is not January, but is October, then this is your time to shine!

In this TuneUp, we went over ideas for national print magazines (6 months ahead), local (2-3 months ahead) and trending news stories right now.

Plus, we had a special Motivation Minute, that we're slowing down to a slow jam.

HOW TO WATCH

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Holiday Gift Guides :: The Truth Bomb Edition

Hey!

Happy Monday! Way to do your Money Monday business, be that sending invoices in the morning, paying a bill, or addressing your customer service questions right away.

In the Publicity department, emails have started coming in asking us about how and when to pitch Holiday Gift Guides, for those amazing opportunities to showcase your designs, or special services you offer around the holidays.

Truth Bombs: Holiday Gift Guides Are Done!

Sadly for your todo list today, the print magazine editors put these together in July, August and a little bit in September. Here’s a special video message about it:

Really? Nooo....

Yes. So your job now is to sleuth around in Hashtags and get your Instagram game on, hard. In fact, if you wanted to activate an Instagram Ads campaign right now, we'd advise it, since this holiday season is so clogged with everyone trying to show you their must-have gift ideas. Listen or watch this Training TuneUp about building buzz in social media:

[GIFT GUIDES] How to Work with Social Media Influencers for Holiday Buzz and Beyond

Start collecting great Hashtags that will get your gift ideas in front of the right people. See Tin Shingle's huge Hashtag Cheat Sheet, which includes hashtag collections for a variety of industries and interests.

Listen/watch to this TuneUp that we begged you to listen to in July when you were at the pool or on summer camp drop-off:
[GIFT GUIDES] TuneUp: The Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide Pitching Guide

Don't Not Know This Again

Tin Shingle gives you as-it-happens learning. We call this "In The Trenches Training." We're business owners just like you. So you're going to get training in your language, in a way you understand.

1. Watch the Training TuneUps
The first Wednesday at 3pm EST of every single month, you can call into a free Training TuneUp that gives you a breakdown of what media is working on when: Magazines, TV, Blogs, Social Media. This Training TuneUp is recorded and added to our library of TuneUps, which you can access here.

2. Plot out when You'll Pitch Magazines - In What Month
Easily remind yourself! Tin Shingle's easy to use Template is designed in Excel and works in Google Drive for you to organize when you'll pitch what kind of media outlets. Download it here.

Members of Tin Shingle (Level 3 +) can access these recordings for free at any time.

All Is Not Lost!
Pitch Valentine's Day Gift Guides - Right Now

Seriously. October and November are the times when the big print magazines are putting together their Valentine's Day issues. Listen to this Training TuneUp for ideas on how to pitch:

[PR] TuneUp: Preparing for Valentine's Day Gift Guides - The Early Bird Edition with Kelly Kepner

How Do I Find Anyone To Pitch?
Who Even Cares About My Business?

We have a list of writers, producers and editors who are looking for very specific things. Like "Social Media and Body Image." Who knew? We do, now, after we research them and put them into our Media Contact Database (available to Level 4 All Access Members).

Your job is to find these writers, and get in front of them with a "pitch" aka an email you send to them with an idea for a story on your business.

Meanwhile, List Your Gifts Ideas
In Tin Shingle's Holiday Gift Guide!

Tin Shingle's Shopping Guide is a living Shopping Guide that anyone can search through, but only Tin Shingle members can add to. Gift ideas for anyone: Foodies, Book Readers, Jewelry Lovers, Corporate Client Gifts. Don't see something that fits? Email us. We'll create a new category to fit your business (service or product).

Adding to it is easy. We made you a video of directions:

Note For PR Agencies:

Adding your clients to Tin Shingle's Shopping Guide is a great idea! But they will need their own Level 2 Directory Membership for promotion on Tin Shingle's website. They can activate that level of membership here.

New Class Available to Stream: Tin Shingle's Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide Pitching Guide

Training TuneUp Available Now:
Tin Shingle's Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide Pitching Guide Online Class

There are 3 submission deadlines of the year when your business has as chance to be featured in one of the most coveted magazine issues of the year: The Holiday Gift Guide Issue that hits newsstands in November and December.

Those deadlines are:

• July (right now!) for national print magazines like O, The Oprah Magazine and Real Simple.
• September for regional print magazines.
• October/November for last minute blog submissions and TV shows.

What Businesses Are Good for Holiday Gift Guides?

Yours, most likely. You just need to think of the right angle.

• Products: Obviously!
• Books: Magazines will be recommending must-reads on those holiday reading lists.
• Gift Cards: Got a boutique fitness studio? Yarn shop?
• Experts: In the same magazine issue as the Holiday Gift Guide, the magazine still fills other pages with holiday advice. This is the time for New Years Resolution stuff.

 
Magazines Are Collecting Holiday Gift Ideas Now for December Issues

So here's the thing...if you want your business featured in the December issue, you must email the magazines of your dreams now. Yes, think big. But how will you do it? Here are the answers!

Watch This TuneUp Webinar - We Tell You How!

In this Training TuneUp that just released into Tin Shingle's Training TuneUp Collection, we partnered up with our dear friend Sabina Hitchen of Press for Success. Tin Shingle's owner Katie interviews Sabina for the inside scoop on how Holiday Gift Guides work, and the best ways you can email an editor with the suggestion that they consider your business in their recommendations. Tin Shingle does have a list of magazine editors in our Media Contacts Database to make this job a little easier on you.

Hot Tip: Go Niche

There are SO many gift guides possibilities:

• "Gifts for Moms"
• "Gifts For Nerds"
• "Gifts For Guys Who Love Gear"
• "Gifts For Yarnbombers"
• "Gifts For Self-Help Addicts"

The sky is the limit! Part of your job when pitching your brand to be considered for a Gift Guide is to suggest a great theme, or reason. Liberate yourself here. Identify the magazines you want to be featured in, and go for it.

The best way to liberate yourself to pitch your brand into a magazine is to watch or listen to our Training TuneUp: The Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide Pitching Guide as Katie and Sabina explore the ways you will accomplish this mission. If you are a member of Tin Shingle at Level 3 (Online Classes) or 4 (Media Lists), you can stream this TuneUp for free any time. Otherwise, you can just purchase it!

Covered In This TuneUp:

• The Big Picture – Inside a Magazine
• What Makes a Holiday Gift Guide
• 1st Chance for Holiday Gift Guides (Magazines)
• 2nd Chance for Holiday Gift Guides (Local)
• 3rd Chance for Holiday Gift Guides (Websites)
• The Pitch - What It Should Look Like
• The Photos - How Important Are They?
• Packaging - Worth It?

Tin Shingle Member Price for Levels 3 & 4: FREE
Non-Member Price: $65.00

Packaging Will Be Important When Pitching Magazines for Holiday Gift Guides

While perusing Instagram one evening, I saw this beautiful photo of white roses arranged neatly in a stark black box. I’d already slated in Tin Shingle’s Content Planner to write about Packaging as upcoming prep work for your Holiday Gift Guide Pitching to Magazines, and doing it via a re-gram from a Tin Shingle Member seemed cherry-on-top-awesome.

A Tin Shingle member who runs the PR agency, Great Her Good enforced to her following that packaging is everything. See her full message below.

Tin Shingle has started alerting you to the upcoming Holiday Gift Guide Pitching Season - where you email magazine editors with a carefully worded email planting the idea that they might include your product in their Holiday Gift Guide this winter.

Sending samples will be an important component to this. Don’t skimp on the packaging. The investment will be worth it for getting ink (coverage in print media like magazines and newspapers), and customer purchases who buy from you at markets and retail stores.

 

Message from Jackie of Great Her Good:

#Repost @greathergood with @repostapp 

My clients can hear me now, it's all about the packaging and presentation! How you put yourself, your biz and your passion out there.

🚫Bad Packaging? No PR.

✅Great Packaging? Great PR.

Have you ever seen a beautiful package for something on the shelf and it catches your eye? I bet you've even purchased it if the messaging had enough pull. This is a set of 16 beautiful roses, but they cost 10X more than a dozen roses from the grocery store. (Plus, they last for a year, so it's totally worth it!) It's all about how you present your offerings to your customer.

How would you rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 on the packaging and presentation scale?

Image via @venusetfleur

What To Do Next

1. Join Tin Shingle’s Community Level of Membership to talk more about this in our private Facebook Group or Forums aka The Boards.

2. List your business in Tin Shingle’s Business Directory for a chance to be re-grammed like this by joining our Directory Listing Level.

3. Join Tin Shingle’s membership at the All Access Media List Level 4 that includes instant access to over 3,000 Media Contacts and over 80 Editorial Calendars to help you plan your media outreach and execute it. Browse through our lists to get on-point ideas of editors and writers to pitch.