How PR Pros Can Best Work with Writers in 2024 + Other Questions Answered
Plus: It's also time to sign up for our February Top Tier Talk + get your recorded copy of our recent Networking and Relationship Management group session
Hello, TTC community.
Happy Super Bowl week. Are you watching this week? Who are you cheering for? Chiefs, 49ers, Taylor & Travis? Let us know in the comments!
We’re still on a high from our Become a Journalist’s BFF: Networking and Relationship Management workshop on Wednesday. If you missed out, you’re in luck, because the recording is now available.
This week, as promised, we’re diving into some unanswered questions from our January Top Tier Talk. We had so many publicists who kicked the year off with us and more questions than we could get to within the hour so we’ll be answering those below.
It’s time to sign up for our February Top Tier Talk
Join us on February 22 and 10 am PST/1 pm EST for a custom Ask Us Anything session (we call these Top Tier Talks) … share you’re questions and we’ll tackle them one by one!
Looking for ways to build better media relationships?
The recording of our incredibly popular Become a Journalist’s BFF: Networking and Relationship Management workshop — which we held earlier this week — is now available for purchase.
Now onto this week’s topic. We are diving into some great questions that publicists asked in the last Top Tier Talk that we didn’t get to and promised we would. So here goes:
How can publicists work with journos better in 2024?
That question is the essence of why we do what we do at Top Tier Consulting and we have many different sessions that go into hours of depth on different angles here: Everything from pitching smarter to networking smarter and beyond. We could talk about this topic for hours and hours but here are a few great tips to get you started:
We kicked off 2024 with a great Substack that dove into many of our best practices for getting things off on the right foot and that would be a great read on this topic. In case you haven’t read through, check it out here: Top Tier's Top Tips to Kick Off 2024: Start the New Year Strong with These 17 PR Best Practices.
A few other things that come to mind:
Tailor your pitches: Instead of mass pitching your client to a ton of writers, try more focused pitches that really fit the beat and publication of writers you are pitching to. Being more targeted always always always gets you further than a spray and pray approach.
Pitch story ideas vs. clients: Helping a writer to see how something is timely and could fit into or inspire a story can 100x your chances of getting a client into an article. So many times writers get pitches and think, “that’s such a cool product” or “that expert would be amazing to talk to” but have no idea where they could slate them in. So instead of being like “I have this product for people who like to travel” try “X amount of travelers are supposed to go through US airports this holiday season, which means X many hours spent in lines to check baggage, etc. I rep this product that saves you tons of time and makes your airport experience so much better because of its XYZ attributes.”
Be consistent: If you get a conversation going with a writer about including your product or client in an article, don’t drop the ball. If a writer expresses interest in your source, get that interview scheduled as soon as you can. If you promise a writer some follow-up information about your client, shoot it over without them having to dig through their email to find your thread and ask you again for it.
Do damage control: If you have a source flake, tell a writer ASAP. Give them as much time as possible to find a plan B and bonus points if you can offer up someone else on your roster or refer them to a colleague who can help them scramble to get a new source in time to meet their deadline.
Be nice: Writers want to work with publicists who are pleasant, helpful, friendly, easy to work with and go above and deliver on their promises. It’s a big turnoff when we say a source isn’t right for a story and a publicist argues with us about that. Nobody wants to work with someone who is snarky (it happens all the time). And taking a moment to humanize the interaction — i.e. — “Hey, I loved your article you wrote about X topic.” or “Saw your dog just had surgery. Hope she is feeling better” - makes a writer much more likely to reply to and interact with your pitches versus the Dear First Name Last Name right into the hard cold pitch pitching format writers often get sent.
Read on for answers to a handful of other questions …
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Discounts on all our most popular group workshops
*Note: Our consulting sessions, workshops, Zooms and Substack newsletters are strictly educational. Signing up for anything has no bearing on landing coverage in any of our outlets. Our role is to fine-tune your approach and tactics so that you can apply these learnings when pitching other journalists.