Dos and Don'ts of inviting a writer to an in-person event

You put together the perfect in-person press event. Here's what to do/what not to do when inviting journalists

Happy Thursday Top Tier Community!

Hope everyone is having a fantastic week. We’re doing well over here. Jill just set off for Iceland on a fun adventure with her dad and Nicole just celebrated her baby’s 1st birthday last weekend. Lots of adorable babies hanging out together and such a fun time!

The happy little birthday boy! :-)

This week, we’re talking about something inspired by emails we get every single day: The invite to the in-person event. Sometimes these email invites are great. The info is all there, they are a perfect fit for us as writers, it’s a once we see it slam dunk. Other times, the invites seem like they may be sent to everyone in a publicist’s rolodex, have some confusing details and may not appear tailored to the right writer.

There are definitely some patterns we notice as far as things that work and things that don’t in these emails. Here are some of our thoughts on this topic:

Things to do before inviting a writer to an event 

You have an in-person event that you put a lot if time and effort into piecing together. Now its time to invite the press. But getting the right people there is much more involved than just sending out an invite to your entire contact list. Here’s what to do — and what not to do — when it comes to getting the right press invited.

Make sure they live in the town the event is being hosted in

Writers often get invited to in person events in cities they don’t live. For instance, Nicole lives in LA and is probably invited to an event in New York at least once a day. While this isn’t a big deal, it does on some level make a writer feel like the publicist didn’t do their homework in targeting the right writers for their event and is just sending out a mass email invitation.

Some writers may write back and say “I’m actually LA-based.” in the hopes that a publicist will update their records. A lot of times this happens if it’s an event that would be the right fit for them and they are hoping a publicist corrects the info on their end so they can maybe attend something similar if it’s hosted in their home city down the line.

The big thing here is that if a writer gets continuous invites from a publicist to events in a city they don’t live in, they may just start to delete emails from that publicist going forward, thinking they are just taking a spray and pray approach and email inviting EVERYONE on their list, versus doing a more tailored pitch to writers who would best be in a position to cover it.

This could also be a pain for a writer who sees an invitation, gets excited about a possible story opp, maybe even goes so far as to email an editor with a pitch and then sees that oh no it’s actually in New York and not LA. Nevermind!

If you invite a writer to an event in a town they don’t live it and mean to do that, you’ll have a much better chance of them attending if you can cover their transportation and stay.

Sometimes this means a flight and hotel. But other times it can be as simple as providing an Uber code for a lengthier drive. Nicole, for instance, got invited recently to an event an hour away and found it to be a nice touch that since it was outside of LA and targeted to LA writers, they offered a complimentary coupon code. That is much more of an incentive for a writer to make it out there — hello ability to work in the car on the way or at least chip through emails on your phone!