PR Officers, Journalists, and Pitches

In 1970s, who would have thought that email will become a basic necessity for the generation of today? Even the never-ending popularity of social bandwagon has not ruled out the dominance of emails in our lives. Every single day, we receive hundreds of promotional and formal emails on an average from tons of companies and individuals. Now, think about the inboxes of journalists! Ever since the industry of PR sprung up, journalists have long been peeved about their inboxes that are barraged with pitches and press notes. The reason? Because consultants in PR companies in Delhi approach journalists on the email requesting them to quote their clients, publishing articles in credible newspapers and magazines.

Do journalists skip all those pitch emails or revert to just a few of them?  After all, PR people deep in heart always expect a response from the journalists, but reverting to every email is not possible for journalists either, especially when most of them are not relevant to journalist’s area of interest. In such a case, what a PR officer or person should do? If the journalists won’t respond, how will they be able to communicate a brand? The key to grabbing journalists’ attention and convincing them that their story is relevant to the readers and worthy of publishing is crafting a boilerplate pitch interesting and up to date with accurate facts and figures. PR agencies in Delhi and all across the globe, journalists collaboratively work to create great media content that would be useful for the readers and society as a whole.

How to craft PR pitches that make your media stories land up to the world famous magazines and newspapers:

Personalise the pitch to start the conversations

It’s not a good idea to copy paste the same pitch to every journalist as it forms really a bad impression. Try giving a standard pitch a personal and friendly touch by calling the journalist with the name, telling them that you recently read his story in xyz newspapers and what encourages you to approach him. It makes journalist realise that you have done your homework and you really want only him to publish the story exclusively. Nowadays, Public Relations companies in Delhi have realised the fact that an automated email sent to over 100 journalists will do no good to you if you send one story to a reputed journalist.

 Don’t quit pitching journalists, take a pause instead

Strengthening media relations is a cautious job when one inapt word or a small action can damage the entire network. If a journalist does not respond to your pitch for even a month, you must not ceaselessly drop follow-up emails to them as it frustrates them. This does not mean that you should completely stop pitching them. Journalists work under a lot of pressure and on tight deadlines, and when they notice that you stopped reaching out to them the moment they stopped replying, your relations with them may get dented. They don’t want you to reach out to them only when you need them and stop when they skipped your email. If you’ve been sending them pitches that might not interest him, take a pause for a few days or weeks, research on the content type they write and news they cover, and then pitch again with some stories that they can’t reject. That’s the art of managing relations with journalists.