Pitching is integral to any young PR professional’s career. Despite it’s importance, many of my peers (myself included) find this to be the most challenging aspect of our profession. The only way to truly get better is to have experience, and many companies have policies that don’t allow interns to pitch.
So how do we learn about pitching without practicing? Doing a lot of research and reading numerous case studies helped me grow more comfortable when I first started doing media and blogger outreach.
Over the months, I’ve collected quite a few posts that have helped me enhance my pitching skills. They are all bookmarked and I refer to them often, especially when I’m stumped or uncertain about how to approach a new contact.
Below are some of my favorites that you might find useful, too:
Blogger Relations (and Social Media Release) Case Study by Todd Defren
How You Might View Bloggers by Chris Brogan
A Day in the Life of My Inbox – and When E-mail Marketing is Spam by Josh Bernoff
Open Letter to Fitness and Health Brands Pitching to Bloggers by Stephanie Quilao
Anatomy of a Bad Pitch by Dave Fleet
Great PR Manners Go a Long Way by Chris Brogan
Putting PR People on Notice by CityMama
e-Book: The Art and Science of Blogger Relations by Brian Solis
PR-Squared’s Blogger Relations Bookmark by Todd Defren
How Do I Get Placement on Blogs by Jason Falls
5 Wrong Ways to Pitch RWW and 1 Great Way by Marshall Kirkpatrick
How to Pitch Bloggers: 21 Tips by Darren Rowse
The PR Professional’s Credo: 7 Promises by Todd Defren
The Bad Pitch Blog’s Compiled List of Resources
How to Talk to the Press by Guy Kawasaki
Say What? A .pdf of What Not to Say to the Media compiled by the Bad Pitch Blog
5 Tips for Media Relations Success by David Mullen
Great list you’ve compiled, Meg.
Media and Blogger Relations will continue to be one of the more important parts of our day-to-day jobs for years to come and posts like these will help us all do it more effectively while – hopefully – bettering our reputation as an industry among those we pitch.
AND thanks for including my post among such great company. It’s appreciated!
Hi Meg, your keen insight continues to amaze me. I’m going to share this post with the current crop of students in Issues and Writing for Public Relations. They will appreciate the advice, as do I.
@David – Thanks for comment. It’s sad that our reputation is getting slammed by those who are too lazy to take the time to do media relations the right way. Unfortunately, I also believe that many younger pros (like myself) haven’t been taught effective ways to reach out. It’s intimidating, and without guidance there will be little room for improvement.
@Bob Thanks for your kind words! I hope your students find them helpful – I certainly did, and still do!
@Meg – you’re right. many times young pros are being set up to fail in the area of media relations. That’s not, new, either.
I have a friend who was asked to pitch the Wall Street Journal on her very first day at her very first job out of school. (this was about 8 years ago) She had never made a pitch call before. She stammered her way through the first 30 seconds, the reporter got annoyed and hung up and she felt embarrassed. For the first several months after that she was terrified before making every call because of that experience.
Meg, I just wrote a blog post for my employer (BurrellesLuce) that goes up tomorrow. Boy, I wish I’d seen this before I wrote it! I may reference this in a future blog post, if that’s ok. Thanks, and keep up the great work – I’m now following you on Twitter. (I’m @tressalynne).
Just dropping by.Btw, you website have great content!
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Great list! & thanks for finding me on twitter. (thought you were someone else, realized you weren’t, landed on your blog… a great useful way to end the day!)
As someone who came up in the bad old days of phone pitching… I’d actually rather pick up the phone (it’s so much easier to know if you’ve made the sale, don’t you think?).
So this list will help me reflect more on email pitching. And I’d like to add one more list, from our own site: http://communitymediaworkshop.org/tips/?p=8
I’d also encourage folks to also check out the original blogger ethics code I/we drafted back in ’06 for WOMMA:
http://www.womma.org/blogger/press-release/
Thanks for sharing this list Meg, you may want to add your own site to the list as it is very helpful.
Hi Meg, I just happened to come across your blog and I love it! It’s so informative and helpful. Thanks for compiling this list.
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Nice blog. I love the work you put into your site.