How Do You Pitch?

Regardless of your locale or client base, one thing most PR pros have in common is that they pitch a variety of media contacts on a daily basis.

Pitching can take the form of a phone call, email, Facebook message, tweet or text message.

All PR pros have their own styles and know what does work and doesn't work with their primary targets, but sometimes it's good to hear what others have to say. It could be that they have just the advice to help form a relationship with that editor that you've been striving to foster for a few months.


One agency, WiredPR, recently wrote a blog post that gave some good advice on the best ways to follow up with media pitches. A couple of these included choosing one way to pitch for each contact and sticking with that method, and if the topic is obscure, mentioning a more prominent publication that covered the topic and explaining the angle the writer took with the story.

It may seem like common sense, but some of the most important things we can do are to be relevant, show respect of a journalists' time and know when to push and when to back off.

What have you found to be your most effective ways of pitching?

Let's Communicate Please!

The channels of communication keep getting more and more clogged. Increasingly, PR pros are more engaged in the "chase" than the communicating. The chase occurs when a client requests something (a release for example), the agency provides a draft, then hours, days and sometimes weeks go by with no response. And that's in the face of repeated phone calls and emails asking for approval, input, anything.

PR pros channel information. We meet the deadlines of media and the demands of clients. Information is our currency.

With some clients (not all), we're experiencing more and more difficulty communicating — connecting to get the simplest answers. There are more and more ways to communicate but some people are communicating the important things less.

Are you experiencing this too?