Dear PR pros: The problem is you
If you’re begging for your product to be covered, incorrectly targeting a journalist for your client’s news or attempting to spam a publication with links, you’re doing it wrong.
This article first appeared on PR Daily in August of 2017.
A bad pitch won’t do you any favors.
Inspired (or depressed) by subpar media relations efforts, we’re publishing a regular article geared toward making journalists’ inboxes a better place and PR pros’ efforts more effective. Welcome to “The Pitch Project.”
To kick things off, here’s an excerpt from an email I recently received:
Who would I need to contact to share our real estate story with. [sic] No automated inboxes please.
I often send automated responses to those who pitch me stories that no journalist cares to read and that we don’t accept for PR Daily and Ragan.com. Apparently fed up with this response, this communicator further inquired about how to get this story in print—with a polite request to refrain from my previous email response.
Here’s how I answered:
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