Photo credit: Chris & Karen Highland
Journalists get a lot of pitches. Some of them are well-crafted and on target. Those often lead to worthwhile media placements. Some of them are well-done but don’t prompt media placements for many different reasons, including timing, current events, importance in relation to other possible stories, or general lack of interest in the subject on the part of the individual journalist.
Some media pitches, however, are (How shall we say it?) — horrid. Both journalists and bloggers complain of horrific pitches. Pitches to bloggers are often worse than pitches to journalists.
A simple rule of PR: Better pitches produce more and better placements.
These are some of the most common pitching mistakes we’ve gathered from sources around the Internet. These faux pas make any PR pro appear amateurish and lazy and decrease the chances their subsequent pitches will be accepted or even opened.
1. Pitching something completely off topic. If you send a story idea about dogs to a blog on cars, it’s obvious you haven’t bothered to do proper research. Inadequate or improper research is the core problem in most bad pitches.
2. Misspelling names. Getting their name wrong offends journalists and bloggers – prompting them to mistrust all the supplied information. Another version of the wrong-name mistake is sending a pitch to a writer who left the publication years ago.
3. Fill-in-the-blank greetings. The spray-and-pray method is ineffective and actually hurts chances to succeed with subsequent pitches.
4. Being dishonest. Reporters often complain about PR people who have misled them or downright lied to them. That’s a sure way to ruin a relationship. Journalists are suspicious of PR and learn how to spot signs of inconsistency and untruthfullness.
5. Spamming. Beware of adding journalists to marketing lists and blasting out promotional offers. Besides annoying them, it may lead to violations of the CAN-SPAM Act.
6. Too much jargon. Pitches full of marketing-speak or acronyms are likely to be deleted. Superfluous words saying how wonderful your company and product are won’t help. [Note: Never use “we’re thrilled” in a media pitch or news release.] Explaining your proposal in unadorned, objective, journalistic-styled language increases the chances reporters will accept your idea and build a story around it.
7. Being overly aggressive. Persistence is a virtue – to a degree. Persistent quickly transforms into annoying. Calling a reporter every day crosses that line. And to borrow a phrase: “No means no.”
8. Pitching no news. Pitching stories with no news value and press releases with no news puts a PR pro in the category of the child who cried wolf. The result: You’re more likely to be ignored when you have real news. If your client or CEO presses you to send a press release with no news, suggest recrafting it as a guest blog post.
9. Spelling and grammar mistakes. Journalists value accuracy above all. Pitches or news releases containing errors face quick rejection, regardless of content. As with misspelled names, copy mistakes cause loss of trust.
10. Writing in all caps. Email pitches in all caps appear as if the writer is shouting. They’re a certain turn-off.
Bottom Line: Journalists and bloggers quickly delete carelessly-prepared pitches. PR personnel who send pitches created with little thought or research decrease the chances that their future story ideas will receive friendly welcomes. Avoiding the all-too-common pitching mistakes increases chances of placing your story.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
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