Into PR

Don’t call. The only exceptions are journalists I know reasonably well and I know it is their type of story. The feedback can be useful – it got lost in a deluge of pitches from others PRs or it was of interest but space/other stories meant not now. Sometimes you can add extra news/topicality to it and re-pitch at a better time. The other exception is with a rare story that I know is so good and on target for their audience/readers and they haven’t picked up on my email.

But for most stories I wouldn’t do it and DON’T ALLOW my team to do it.

Hey Owen,

If the placement is important to me, I’ll follow up with a phone call every time.

In most cases, I allow a couple hours or days to elapse (depending on how timely), so the reporter has a chance to read and respond. If they don’t respond, I’ll either send a quick follow-up email or make a phone call (never leaving a voicemail).

If the news is a really big deal, I’ll call just before or just after the email pitch to give them a heads up. In that case, I like to give the reporter a quick summary of the news, share an unmentioned detail or fact, and offer to arrange interviews while the reporter is reviewing the release for complete details.

For four years, I worked along side a former national trade magazine editor. He always said that the persistent flacks who made the phone calls (whether following up on releases or pitching edcals) were the ones who got the ink.

Personally, I’ve had enough reporters respond positively to phone follow-ups and ask me to resend press releases (because they missed it the first time) to justify making the call.

The trick is never to say “I’m just following up to make sure you received my release.” That’s the fast track to the reporter’s bad side. Instead, I prefer to add a piece of information or a fact not mentioned in the press release. If I can give the reporter something they don’t already have it will demonstrate value and increase my chances of arranging an interview (and therefore increase the odds of placement).

Over time, the media will recognize your name, hopefully associate it with solid news, and follow-ups will become less of a necessity. The goal of every media relations specialist should be to establish reporter relationships so they recognize your emails from the crowd and contact you. Just sending emails without follow-up eliminates opportunities for relationship building.

All this said, I do agree, Owen, that there is a very fine line between being helpful and being annoying. Unfortunately, that line differs with every reporter. In time, we all learn how not to cross it.

Todd

I receive over 100 unsolicited press releases per week and usually several phone calls related to the press releases. I hate both of these things and view them as spam. I don’t want a release that went to hundreds of outer journalists. I don’t give a hoot about your new widget. And if you call me to tell me about a release then I get annoyed and are even less likely to care.

The worst is when PR types call me to say “The CEO will be at XYZ conference and I see you will be there and I want to set up a meeting to talk about our widget.” Ugh. How egotistical and self serving can you be?

HOWEVER — I welcome when someone has carefully read my blog and understands the things I am interested in. I like it when someone emails me to say something like “I see you’re working on a new book. I’ve read the blog posts. I’ve got an idea of a company you should profile in the book based on what I’ve read on your blog.”

If they follow up a real pitch like this which is especially for me by phone, great!

Guess what? A PR person did just this with me a few weeks ago. Result — their client company will get two pages in my book, I will talk about the client on the speaking circuit to tens of thousands of people this year, they will get a blog post from me, and also be part of an upcoming column I’ll write in EContent Magazine.

Pretty good result just by reading my blog.

For me, it is all about PR people caring enough to read my work, knowing what I want and not spamming me.

My journalist friends all agree with me, by the way.

Journalists will tell you never to call … but the reality is that e-mail pitches often get lost and a follow-up phone call can sometimes work.

So there’s no real answer to the question. It all depends.

If it’s a big story, I would follow up with a select few.

Thanks everybody for the tremendous response.

David, I think we all feel your pain. I hope more PR pros start specializing and reading your blog.

The consensus sounds like it all depends. Some tactics work for certain journalists and other tactics do not.

It sounds like it also depends on the PR pro’s personal style, some things work and some things don’t.

What it seems, from all of your comments, is that targeting is probably the most important process. Making sure you have the right journalist seems to go a long way.

As an addendum to my earlier comment, I want to reiterate that it depends on the importance and value of your news. Ask yourself (and be honest), do you personally believe the pitch is newsworthy? If your answer is a firm yes then I think there is no question about it – you should follow-up if you don’t get a timely response.

Look at the front-page stories on prweb.com. I’d take a pass on following up to most of those “news” items.

Also, the answer to this question also varies by practice/industry/topic/media outlet/etc. Is this a new product pitch? An event invitation? An expert on a timely topic? A merger of two giants? A new hire? Is Trump building his tallest high-rise?

Like David said, reporters receive hundreds of unsolicited pitches a day. If you know the reporter, know their work and, therefore, know the pitch is relevant and valuable to them, the follow-up phone call will help make your pitch stand out. Otherwise, it’s probably spam to them.

However, the Wall Street Journal’s spam might be a trade magazine’s cover story. It’s all a matter of knowing your targets and having a tailored approach.

This reminds me of a funny story an old agency colleague shared with me about one of his phone pitches. Without familiarizing himself with the pitch, he took his pitch points and made a phone call to the reporter. About halfway through the pitch he stopped… paused… and said, “Man, this is a really bad pitch. You wouldn’t be interested in this at all.” He apologized for wasting the reporter’s time. The reporter laughed and appreciated his honesty. It helped the next time he brought a newsworthy story to the reporter’s attention.

Hi, Owen

Hmm… fine line. Generally, if something has been released widely – i.e. over the wire – then calls can be annoying and redundant for journalists. That said, if you’re absolutely gagging for coverage then those calls can sometimes get results. (Like spam, no? Annoying as it is, it must work or people would stop doing it.) You have to pick and choose very carefully if you use this tactic – if it becomes your default approach you won’t be winning any friends.

I do make calls a few days after I make specialized or customized pitches. For example, if I’ve got an exec on a media tour then I’ll do a follow-up call w/ local journos after I’ve emailed. But not right away and not everyone – again, I’ll pick and choose by priority.

I’d have to agree with the ‘there is no clear cut way of doing’ argument. I have worked for places that have told me to phone even before sending the release, after sending it, or not at all.

I have had the dubious advantage of living with a journalist, so the biggest and simplest piece of advice I have is that you have to know your release and client inside out. If you are just reading from a sheet they will find out, then enjoy asking you harsh questions and rattling you. Not to mention what will happen when you phone next time.

I understand that it is difficult when you are starting out and trying to build relationships with the journalists, but no one likes to be pestered unnecessarily. Just relax and investigate your journalist a bit, and expect bad moods and questions.

Great advice Alex and Mary.

Todd, thanks for the reiteration. Your comments are now longer than my post by nearly double. But seriously, thanks for going so in-depth.

I appreciate the help.

If any of you have any further advice or anything to say, please keep it going.

Brevity isn’t easy for me.

Personally, in tricky “it depends” situations like this, I tend to go on intuition. But I base that intuition on if I know my intentions are legitimate — as in, I’m not PURELY approaching this from the client angle and not thinking enough about if it has value to the journalist/blogger. And like many have said, putting the time into sending the information to worthwhile recipients in the first place is definitely essential.

I think Todd and John have this one on the money.

i’d have to agree with everyone and say that “it depends”. if you know a journalist reasonably well then a follow up call after a couple of days. if the news is important and time sensitive, a call is worthwhile.

but whatever you do, you need to add value to every interaction with a journalist. as david says, no one would be interested in something that everyone else has – they’re all in competition and are pretty competitive, even within publications.

other times, email is perfectly acceptable and i’m sure that everyone has had great success or horror stories for either method. ironically, the decision is often not up to our own judgement – clients need feedback on how the “story” is going and there’s often no way to feedback from email.

so no easy answer but an insight into why PR is a stressful profession – the three way pull from clients, agency colleagues and, of course, the media.

Ed

[...] Media Relations: Call on a Pitch, or Don’t? (Into PR) [...]

Great answer, Ed.

Well put at the end there.

Leo, I think you’re right. John, of course, is right as usual and Todd put his advice well, even though it took him awhile.

Owen – Thanks for starting this discussion.

Should you have someone with a phone list and a copy of a news release call reporters to ask “are you going to run it?”

No. Some agencies do this to demonstrate activity over results. It is short-sighted and does no one any good.

Generally, IMHO, if you are calling a reporter, you should add value—whether you are building on a pitch, an earlier email or giving them a tip that has nothing to do with your client.

A news release by itself is not a pitch and it does not merit any follow up. If it is being used as background to a pitch, ok. But even then, I would not call to ask if they got it/ saw it/are using it.

People try and make news releases do more than they are able. Kinda like every other tactic in the book.

Thanks for your thoughts, Kevin.

I agree with the over-extending the news release thought. I believe many firms and practitioners, even now, try to get more out of a release than they should.

It’s like a crutch for some.

[...] Owen Lystrup has written a post about media relations over at Into PR that has stirred up some really valuable discussion. He’s presented the following question: When pitching a journalist on a story, do you call after sending an e-mail and release, or wait? [...]

Wow, I thought I was going to say something smart like “Depends” and get away with it. Looks like you have all the answers you’ll need here. Can I say “wow” again? Thanks. Wow. Way to get a response out of the PR blogosphere!

Chris,

Well I hoped you learned something anyway. I know I have.

Even though your “depends” thunder was stolen (this may or may not be a pun on adult diapers), you can rest assured that you had the answer before you came.

This is a topic incredibly close to my heart and I agree with Erin. I just use intuition. My experience has taught me that Todd is wrong, but it might work for him.

“Personally, I’ve had enough reporters respond positively to phone follow-ups and ask me to resend press releases (because they missed it the first time) to justify making the call.”

This is an extremely polite way of getting you off the phone. This missed it the first time? Seriously? Or they deleted it and they’re too tired to go through the “not interested” “why not, what would you be interested in?” routine.

Quite often I simply don’t follow up, if thet were interested they would have gotten back to me. I don’t use press releases as frequently as I used to when I began, I rather just write journalists individual e-mails about a story I think might interest them.

At the end of the day it depends entirely on the reporter. So why not ask them. I once individually e-mailed about 30 key contacts with the subjecty “A few quick questions” along with “hi, i’m fairly new to PR and am now working on clients x, y or z which I believe are in your field. I’m hoping you can answer the few questions below so they I can provide you with interesting stories in the manner which suits you best.”

Then write 4 – 5 questions which don’t require too many detailed answers, and see what you get. You could ask if they prefer press releases, e-mails, website links, phone pitches etc. From there it becomes a lot easier to build a relationship and you know they have taken the time to acknowledge they want the news, otherwise they would have told you otherwise!

Didn’t check that for typos. Sorry.

I always ASK Cathy to call, but if she gives me that certain look, I know I have been overruled.

What a great discussion, very very helpful. I am a frequent reader of Dave’s blog, Web Ink Now, and appreciate hearing him, as a journalist, weigh in on this.

The only time I feel good about calling a writer is if it’s somone I have an established relationship with, meaning, they know me by name, and they know I would only call if I felt it was something they really would want to cover. I have had a lot of sucess with this.

With that said, I am encouraged at my work to frequently call writers who don’t really know me after sending an email, perhaps a few days or a week later. I don’t feel comfortable with it, my gut says it’s not effective, but I will say I have had some sucess with it. “Some” being the operative word. Most of the time I either get a polite, “send it to me in an email” or a not so polite, “I don’t have time for this…” before I can even get two words out of my mouth.

I think with the way media is changing, calls are sort of becoming more and more of a spam outreach than they were, say, five years ago.

Richard,

Now we know why you’re so good. I like your tactic; it’s the way I go about it. I usually write a release (if it’s important enough) and then customize e-mails to all the journalists I think would like it. I don’t actually send the release unless they ask for it. It’s just easier to write a short conversational e-mail asking if they would be interested and to include any links.

Aly,

Glad you came by. Establishing a relationship, like you and Richard both said, is the most important part. So I think it would prove useful to put a lot of effort into it. After all, isn’t that our job?

Owen your approach sounds about right, but if you’re going make the effort to craft an email pitch, you’re doing yourself and your client a disservice if you don’t take the time to ring as well.

Never blast out a press release and ring down the list. But if you believe in your pitch, you should be willing to defend it in a telephone conversation.

Sherrilynne,

I don’t ring unless the journalist asks, I’ve worked with him/her before, or the news just so compels me too because of its worthiness.

[...] Owen Lystrup is a young blogger who is clearly excited about his chosen career PR. Yesterday he posted a plea for some guidance on whether or not you should ring up a reporter after sending an email pitch.  [...]

Sorry Owen, very late to the party. Judging from the response from all the guys above I’m sure my answer is quite irrelevant.

I’m not going to sit on the fence on this one. Nope. I’m going to say yes I would call them.

One reason: When I want something I’m pretty determined to get it. Sometimes it will lead to disaster; sometimes it won’t. But either way I want to know if my story’s being printed. And if not I want to know why.

There’s a stout heart. Good on the verve, Stephen.

Better late than never.

I think more than anything this huge conversation shows that most everyone has his/her own style.

I am even later to the party, but I say that unless it is major news that most (or targeted) media would be interested in covering, call first and use the press release as the follow up.

We in PR need to do more customized pitching and less press release spamming. Just my opinion, of course.

Hi Owen,
Great discussion and one I deal with a lot. As a junior, I often am given the task of following up with reporters. This has had many benefits as I have gotten to know several journalists/producers and what they like and I have learned what works and what doesn’t. For the media I know, I will send a personalized email with the pitch and don’t tend to follow up with a call. The ones I don’t know much about, I will call. It will either start building a relationship or teach me never to call that person again! Either way, worthwhile.

The tough part comes when the client has unrealistic expectations for a story, despite our best efforts to bring them back to reality. They want you to call and it’s hard to get through these- you know you’re bothering the journalist with something they aren’t interested in and the calls are tedious. My advice in those cases? Go for the smaller outlets- they don’t get as many calls and tend to be more friendly. And sometimes, they even cover the story and save your butt!

Wow Joscelyn,

Great POV and thoughts on this! More times than not I think the juniors are being more creative and insightful than those of us who have been doing this a while.

I agree, great comment Joscelyn.

Same for Kami too, thanks for your input.

Predictably, I’m against PRs calling to see if I received a press release. Luckily, I’m doing less and less journalism these days – only the occasional fun article – and it isn’t so much of a problem. However, when I worked as a full time freelancer, barely a day would go by without getting several calls from PRs ‘just to check…’. I would get dozens to hundreds of press release emails a day and if they all phone to follow up I would never get any work done. For a freelancer, as opposed to some on a salary on staff, time literally is money. It also means that I don’t have a receptionist to screen my calls. For a writer, concentration is everything. If you call me and waste my time and interrupt my work, it’ll annoy me a lot. I had to put several PR companies switchboard numbers on my caller ID systems so that I would simply NEVER answer their calls under any circumstances as they called so indiscriminately after I had told them several times not to. This was probably my biggest problem with PR companies and I feel very strongly about this issue.

I suppose my advice would be to think very carefully about who you are calling and make sure that your call is likely to be helpful and well-timed. Listen out for clues like ‘I’m on a deadline,’ ‘I prefer email to phone calls’ and ’stop calling me all the time or I’ll never deal with you again.’ I always tried to read and respond to emails that had clearly been written to and for me, rather than spammed to every journo in the database. This was by far the best way to get through to me. Also, whatever happened to sending a nice letter?

I gave a speech to a PR company a few years ago to explain what life was like for a freelance journalist and they were shocked, surprised and amazed by this stuff. I guess the heart of what I’m saying is ‘know your audience’. For every story you ’sell in’ by phone-spamming you’ll piss off a potentially friendly and helpful freelancer.

Sage advice, Matthew. Thanks for your advice. It seems that there is a lot less waffling on the issue for writers. They tend to prefer no call, unless absolutely necessary.

I’m surprised that a group of PR people would be surprised.

[...] I’ve been tagged by Owen on this to call or not question. For what it’s worth I tend to call before as I don’t like to send unsocilited stuff. If I don’t know them, I call and find out what format they want the release in. It gives me a chance to get in a small pre pitch – pitch.  It also means that they get the release in the way and at the time that they want it. [...]

If they won’t care about the news they shouldn’t be sent the release anyway. If they SHOULD care and just don’t know it yet, you owe it to them and to your client to call them and tell them why it is important.

[...] So far we’ve covered whether or not calling a journalist after pitching is a good idea, whether or not gifts are in order, if journalist feedback surveys are a good idea, and today I’ll examine another potential problem: sending news that’s just not news. [...]

I’ve talked to a couple of old friends about this recently. Jack Renaud is a producer for the CBS Evening News. John Bentzinger is assignment editor for WHDH-TV in Boston.

Both say a follow-up call is okay, and they say don’t roll over and play dead if you get rejected the first time. It’s okay to ask, “Is there anything that will make this story better for you?”

When I was on the assignment desk, I HATED people who asked “Did you get my fax?” I looked at everything, and if I hadn’t called them, it was probably because I wasn’t going to cover the story.

However, like anything, every journalist has their own opinion, and it’s clear there is no hard and fast rule here. If you know the journalist and really think it’s a good story for them and they might have misplaced or overlooked your pitch, call them and be quick – don’t waste their time.

[...] Longer shelf life – A brochure is static. It can last for as long as you want it to. A blog post can last for, if you’re lucky, a month. Sometimes, as we’ve seen, the conversation can take over a post and become more important than the post itself, which can be a very good thing and also a bad thing. With a brochure, as in a Web site, you have a fixed message that will communicate what you want (as long as it’s done right). [...]

[...] a great discussion of the art of pitching, see this post by Owen Lystrup asking whether to phone after sending a news release or e-mail pitch, with several [...]