Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Their first interview subject is Kevin Dugan, a veteran of both the journalism and PR disciplines. He is the co-author of the Bad Pitch Blog, winner of an Award of Commendation in the Blog category from the Public Relations Society of America and a listed member of the AdAge “Power 150“. He tweets under the @prblog handle.

From your experience, which email pitches do journalists pay attention to, and what makes them read the press release?

Pitching success boils down to relevance. In fact, the list is more important than the pitch. If it’s relevant? It can be long. It can have large attachments. I don’t care because I’m focused on the relevant content and not how it was packaged. How often is it relevant? Rarely. Unfortunately, everyone seems to spend hours crafting the pitch and minutes creating the list. It should be the opposite. Online audience identification tools are used for scale instead of for accuracy and insight. And this assumes someone is creating a pitch in the first place. Far too many publicists just send a news release. But the release isn’t the pitch, it supports the pitch. It’s background. When I only get a news release? I know it’s a mass pitch. That makes it 10 times less likely I will read that email....