(FREE POST) Part 1: Things Publicists Wish Writers Would Do to Make Publicists’ Jobs Easier

We asked publicists what they wished writers would do/not do to make their jobs easier. Here's what they had to say + writer perspectives on these hot topics!

Happy Thursday everyone. Hope your weeks are going well.

We’re doing things a bit differently this week in our Top Tier Consulting Substack and tackling a topic that we’ve seen trending in recent weeks. A publicist in one of our PR/Writer forums recently spoke out about how the job has been hard lately. She admitted that things have been very different than it used to be in the past on the PR side of things and she’s just not getting coverage when pitching writers. This inspired us to create this post to touch on:

What Publicists Would Like to See WRITERs Do On Their Ends to Help Make Their PR Jobs Easier

Plenty of us writers are writing Substacks talking about what we’d like to see publicists do on their ends when working with us. But we decided to flip the tables a bit here because the PR/writer world is all about relationships. And it’s a two way street!

So, we did some crowd sourcing to hear what publicists and writers were saying about this and promised to make this post free. Here is a look at some of the things that came up.

To help, we added some comments from our perspectives (to see if that can provide any help with getting inside writers’ heads on these things) as well but would love to have people get interactive with this one in the comments.

We received SO many great responses and had such a robust convo break out on this topic that we decided to split this in a 2 part Substack.

After reading this, if you have any additional comments to add that you’d like us to address in Part 2 (in addition to what we already have on tap from our original crowdsourcing), let us know. Either leave a comment on this Substack or shoot us an email Info@TopTierConsulting.NET.

Without further ado, here’s PART 1: What Publicists Would Like to See WRITERs Do On Their Ends to Help Make Their Jobs Easier

1. One big theme that came up was that publicists would LOVE a reply one way or another to their email pitches.

One publicist said: “Just a simple response back to a pitch even if it’s just a “pass” would be so helpful.”

Nicole chiming in here with something I always tell publicists. On my end, I can’t stand when I email editors and they don’t answer me. So I feel your pain here big time! I get it. And trust me I’m also about to throw my computer out the window sometimes as you are in these situations I’m sure.

But editors have told me that they have a zillion emails in their inboxes and I try to remind myself of that. So when I send out pitches to them, my workaround to this I follow up and follow up and follow up. Oftentimes if they don’t reply to my initial pitch, they’ll reply to a follow up. And I try to do that with publicist emails as well. If I didn’t get them on the first round, I try hard to answer on the second or third.

One writer chimed in on the thread noting: “I get about 500 emails a day. If I spent 30 seconds on every single one it'd take me 4 hours... 😕”

We unfortunately have that same issue. This week I’ve had anywhere from 500-700 emails DAILY in my inbox. And most of them are PR pitches. I usually start my morning off by replying to the ones that I can — trying to prioritize the ones that are personalized and seem really geared towards me vs. the obvious mass pitches — but then I realize half the day has gone by and my deadlines are piling up like crazy. I have this dialogue with myself daily where it’s like “You have to prioritize paid work” and I feel TERRIBLE every time I delete a pitch without responding. The sad reality is there is no easy workaround to this. It’s unfortunately impossible for most busy writers to get back to all their pitches.

Recommended Reading:

We’ve written Substacks on this in the past and are sharing the link here in case they are helpful. In these, Nicole & Jill each take turns walking publicists through their daily process of tackling their email inbox — Spoiler Alert: They do open almost EVERY email pitch sent their way. Hopefully that’s reassuring that writers, even if they aren’t writing back, ARE READING YOUR PITCHES

PART 1: A Look INSIDE the Process of How Writers Handle an Inbox Full of PR Pitches

PART 2: A Look INSIDE the Process of How Writers Handle an Inbox Full of PR Pitches

That being said, here are a few tips for helping to up your chances of getting a reply:

• Personalize the pitch. Taking a moment to say something about having read a writer’s article that just came out recently, asking about their kid or their dog, etc. makes the interaction so much more human. And when we’re scanning our inboxes, we usually take a moment to prioritize answering those types of emails that people personalize. It’s obvious when a pitch is a spray and pray approach and just goes out to a ton of writers. Those are the ones that feel easier to just delete and ignore.
  

• Follow up on your pitches. One writer who hopped in one of our crowdsourcing threads said “I do try to respond to follow ups, so hopefully that helps!”

  This is something we try to do on our ends too. We recommend following up a week later or sooner if something is time sensitive. Have an exclusive opp you’re sending a writer? Follow up the next day if you have to. Let the timelines of the pitch determine when to follow up.

  
  And no phone calls please — unless we’re already working on something together — OR you are offering us a huge juicy exclusive that you need a reply on right away.

• Target the pitch to the right writer per their beat: If you pitch a writer who doesn’t cover kids content, like Jill, kids pitches, she’ll likely just delete them. If you pitch a travel writer like Jill, however, something about travel, she’ll me much more inclined to answer the pitch because it’s something that she knows is geared towards her.

  
  On this note, one writer wrote: “If someone is pitching me on women's fashion brands to my men's lifestyle site, I click delete.”
  

• Accept a no. One writer commented on this topic and said: “Half the time I respond with a pass, I either get some type of argument about why I’m missing out, or they want to pick my brain about why it wasn’t a fit or how they could improve their pitch. I don’t have time for that… it’s a huge deterrent to responding.”

  
  If a writer takes the time to say no, a pitch is not right for them, and doesn’t explain more in their reply it’s likely because they have a super intimidating inbox and don’t have the bandwidth to get into a big explanation but are trying to at least acknowledge a pitch as a courtesy. And writing back to an email that results in more emails will make them not super keen on writing back to emails when they are in tackling their inbox mode.

2. Acknowledge receiving press samples

There was lots of talk about press samples and how writers ghost on those. One publicist said:

“Honestly even a response that a sample was received would be nice! It looks really bad when we send a sample that was requested for a specific gift guide and then to be ghosted with absolutely nothing in reply. Just would be great to confirm it was received & in consideration.”

Writers typically don’t accept press samples unless it’s something they feel like they can write about — either in the moment or in the future. But sometimes something is within their beat and they just haven’t found the right fit yet. Or maybe they haven’t had time to try ti. That being said, even if they aren’t placing a product quickly they should acknowledge receiving it.

Writers take note. If you can at least try to make a point to acknowledge receiving something on your ends, it can go a long way with publicists.

One publicist said: “When it comes to samples, clients are always eager for updates especially if it’s pricier items sent and we as pubs know testing takes time but any initial feedback on what’s being tested is helpful for our notes plus when best to check in again or simply a “haven’t had time to get around to it yet but plan to in X time.”

We all get busy but we can probably do better in this department!

One thing publicists can do in this situation is to:

Follow up with writers: We can’t tell you how many times we get something sent in the mail and then it sits on our coffee tables for a week or two and then by the time we open it, we forget who sent it. Or sometimes we honestly forget it’s even sitting on our coffee tables until you remind us. Eek! Sometimes we spend time trying to search our inboxes to find the right rep to reach out to and not been able to find that email. It’s amazing how Gmail sometimes just eats emails!

If you sent something out and haven’t heard back and it’s been a week or so, definitely follow up with a writer. Ask them to confirm that they received the package and ask if there is any additional information, quotes, images, etc. you can provide to help them get the item placed.

One hot tip though is if you send something that a writer needs to do something with, like an ingredient to cook with or face lotion to try, try not to follow up too early. Give them some time to try it out and give it a fair go. For items like skincare, writers need a few weeks to experiment to give things an honest assessment of how well they work. And someone is probably not going to bake a cake the day after they receive a new cake flour mix in the mail. They’ll add it to their to do list but it may take a minute to get to it.

Recommended Reading:

Part 1: 5 Golden Rules of Sending Press Packages

Part 2: 6 MORE Golden Rules of Sending Press Packages

3. Let a publicist know what you are working on

One publicist said: “It would be super helpful if when a writer writes back to our pitches, they could let us know what they ARE looking for. For ex: I once had a journalist reply saying no but that they were looking for XYZ. I had XYZ so it was awesome.”

Chiming in here to say that this request is super hard for writers. Again, we get TONS of emails a day. So taking the time to put something together individually for each publicist who inquires is hard. It’s a lot of unpaid work on our ends and can really add up. But the biggest thing to stress about these requests is that they can be a waste of time on both the writer and the publicist’s end. Let us explain further:

Writers (especially busy freelancers) are often working on a ton of articles at the same time. And things move FAST on their ends. The times we have answered these emails with what we are working on, a publicist then circles back with clients and pitches they spent time on. But many times we’ve already completed some of those articles by the time a publicist circles back and then they got their client’s hopes up for nothing and spent time on a pitch for an article already completed.

NOTE: Editors are notorious for assigning a writer a due date then asking if they can get an article in faster so that’s why this happens sometimes. OR a writer may have a bunch of articles in the works and have something else slide onto their plate that requites them to move deadlines around in order to make space for that article, which means turning another article in faster.

This request is definitely not an easy ask for writers and many aren’t going to take the time to do this.

4. Acknowledge when you receive email interview responses

One publicist wrote: “When writers proactively set up an interview with my client and when I send over the detailed answers, no response. I understand writers can’t reply to all emails, but this message should at least get a “thanks” or “received” reply. My client probably spent an hour minimum to answer and then no confirmation of receiving this hard work is disheartening. I have no idea if you received it or possibly missed my email. And then many times the client is not in the story because the writer says they never received the answers after multiple follow ups.”

This is important and is something that is not done intentionally but happens because writers are so so busy. When we ask for email questions it’s usually because we are juggling SO MUCH and unable to answer all our emails. We’ve both been guilty of this too.

We get the email questions promised by the day they were promised on and then we just copy them, put them in our working research doc and dive into the article. But this is an important one to take note of writers: We should be making sure we’re giving some sort of acknowledgment that we received these.

And for publicists, know that it can be helpful as well on your ends if you acknowledge that you received questions a writer sent over to your clients. Sometimes it happens where we send them over and never hear back and a publicist promised responses by a certain date and then that date arrives and they say “oh we never received the questions.”

Let’s both try to do better in this acknowledgement department. Email inboxes are crazy but when we’re actively working together, we need to prioritize communication on both sides to make sure that article gets from A to B.

5. Be thorough

One publicist noted it could be helpful if writers: “Look for a photo link in emails before asking for photos.”

A good reminder to both sides - writers and publicists, that taking the time to really read through an email can go a long way on both ends. For instance, writers are usually pretty clear on what exactly they are looking for when sourcing and sometimes publicists miss the ball on that and try to sneak in sources that aren’t the right fit.

A common examples is when Nicole posts that she is working on an article and need to talk to sleep doctors to weigh in with their best sleep tips and someone pitches her sleep supplements, which was not the ask. Or when Jill is asking for a lip glosses for a gift guide that have to have 500+ reviews on Amazon and she gets pitched eye liners that only have 2 reviews and totally miss the mark.

This is obviously something that writers need to pay more attention as well. You publicists are pretty great at including what we need in pitches a lot of times. So writing colleagues, let’s remind ourselves to scan through the email first to see if the photo link is in there or the things we need before we fire off a quick email asking for something that’s already there. We’re over here admitting we’ve been guilty of this. It’s easy to blame it on the fact that we have 500 things on our plates at all times but still, if we’re interacting with a publicist and working on something together, we should be reading those emails thoroughly.

6. Not asking for email interviews over phone interviews

On this topic, one publicist wrote: “It feels like journos are leaning more and more toward just wanting written responses when asking for sources. and i get it. you’re in a time crunch, it’s easier to work with what’s already been typed/quoted, it can be difficult to coordinate a live call… i really get it. but a phone call with a source is going to give you infinitely more background, color, and even potential additional angles or sources than a written q&a ever will. i always share some insight for a journalist to jump off of (and help prove my source is legit) along with my offer for a call, but 90% of the time i just get an ask for more in writing.”

Writer’s perspective: In a perfect world, YES, all interviews would be phoners. But writers have reasons for requesting email interviews on their ends. Here are some of those reasons we’ve put together to help bring some clarity on this topic:

Lead times are getting shorter: In a perfect world, writers would love to hop on the phone with all of our sources and have lovely conversations. And we still do make that happen whenever we can (think: a big feature with a nice and lengthy deadline, which gives us time to hop on lengthy phone calls). But being assigned stories with long lead times is happening less and less frequently. Editors are notorious for giving writers quick turnaround stories these days, especially as they try to keep content around trending news and culturally relevant situations. And when things move fast, email tends to work the best.

Writers are juggling A LOT: A newbie writer may have a handful of stories a month, but the seasoned writers you are pitching that write for top-tier publications are bussssssy — sometimes with 15-20 assignments a month. That means they constantly have a big slate of stories going at the same time. They are trying to stay on top of multiple email inboxes. They are networking with new editors and pitching story ideas to other editors. They are tracking down payments and doing edits that pop up on stories they have already turned in. In the middle of all of that, they are trying to source and write. And they are juggling multiple stories at the same time. Having email questions out to sources can make it easier to be able to keep up with this pace, as a writer can shoot off questions and then be working on other things while waiting for the answers to come in. Then when they come in, they write that story and can move onto the next.

Sometimes a writer just needs a few quotes from a source: Sometimes you just need one quote from a doctor to supplement a story or a few thoughts from a real estate expert, etc. It’s hard to do this on the phone though. What could happen in a quick email exchange could easily turn into a 40-minute phone call. What happens then is your source gets frustrated that they only had a few quotes in the article after all the time they committed to being on the phone. Nobody has time for all that.

It can be easier, trust us: Having a source see our questions in print and being able to sit down and think the answers through, then read over their responses in the end, can definitely result in better quotes than having sources being asked questions on the fly. Sometimes sources are unsure of what they want to say on the phone when a topic arises and end up asking to send email responses anyway. Or they fumble through the topic the best that they can while chatting with you, feeling unsatisfied with their answers at the end of the call (sources are quick to tell writers “Ugh sorry I didn’t do a good interview” or “I probably didn’t give you good stuff.” We hear this a lot). Many clients do better when they have time to sit down and really put some thought into an answer, plus see what their responses will look like in print.

Scheduling can run smoother: Finding a time to coordinate everyone’s different schedules, in a sea of time zones, can be difficult. It’s also hard on a writer when sources constantly have to reschedule phoners, as writers are trying to schedule a bunch of things into their days as well. Email interviews allow a source to answer questions on their own time.

Also, being able to have a source put together some email responses can make them appealing to a writer who is looking for a quick same-day quote request and is racing to get a story done and simply doesn’t have time to factor in a phone call + typing up a transcript of a conversation and then sifting through it.

Rates are getting cut: This means many writers have to take on more work in order to pay their bills. They may have been paid $1/word back in the day and got away with doing a few of those articles a month and are now having to do a lot more articles for lower rates. This means much more of a workload for writers and it can just be impossible to do every single interview over the phone and then transcribe them all.

Answering email questions can often make a source more comfortable: Having someone write out their own quotes gives them a chance to review their responses. This avoids situations where your clients come to you asking if you can approach our editors to have us change their quotes (editors never want to do this and writers DREAD these emails because it makes us look bad) that they see in print that they didn’t like after telling us on the phone.

Many sources also do phoners with writers and ask to see the article before it publishes. This is not a practice that writers or editors engage in. Once you do a phone interview, that’s that. The writer does their thing and then the story goes to print. This can help avoid concern over how something was captured.

That being said, you, as a publicist have the option to push back on email interviews if it’s in the best interest of your source.

Say for instance, your source does WAY better on the phone than via email. Let a writer know that. Some sources just don’t want to put in the time to do email interviews also. We get it! It’s not guaranteed that writer won’t go with a different source who is available over email but you are certainly able to stand up and ask. There have definitely been times where we’ve found the perfect source and asked for email interviews and their rep says their client prefers doing it over the phone and it gets shifted to that. Don’t be afraid to speak up about what’s best for your clients!

While we’re on the topic of email interviews, here’s one hot tip we have for helping your sources provide compelling email responses to up their chance of inclusion in an article:

Infuse some personality and personalization into the responses: Boring, dry and generic responses can be a reason why some clients that submit email answers don’t make it in. Have your client include some personal stories and anecdotes into their responses, things they are seeing within their practices and places of business.

If we’re asking someone to comment on something like infertility, have them infuse a sense of compassion and understanding into their responses: “We know this is something a lot of people struggle with and it can be a challenging time…that’s why doing XYZ can help.”

We are always looking for original, unique, and appealing content. Think “what type of quotes would I want to read or find interesting or appealing as a reader” when reading quotes from a source in an article.

Recommended Reading: How to Help Your Clients Rock Email Interviews

6 Ways to Help Your Clients Secure More Email-Based Interviews AND Get Included in the Published Piece

We didn’t want to overload your inboxes with too long of a post so we’ll be coming back next week with a Part 2 of this.

Again, if there are any comments or thought that you have on this subject that you’d like to see us share, again, leave a comment or email us: Info@TopTierConsulting.NET

Hope this post helps to some degree. One more that we’d recommend reading that we wrote in this vein is:

Why Do Writers DO That?! Exploring the Things Publicists May Not Understand

Again, we as writers wanted to take a moment to give a big THANK YOU to the publicists out there. Writers could truly not do their jobs without you guys. We’re such a crucial team.

ox

Jill & Nicole

*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.