This Week in PR Takes - Week 24

Happy Friday TWiPRT readers,

We’re going to try something a little different this week, and not have a Take of the Week nor a Chuckle. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that there was not enough strong (or funny) opinions over the past week; but rather it’s that I want to try to highlight something new.

The point of this newsletter is to be a source for the conversations that PR/Comms pros are having about our industry. However, this week Carly inspired me and I would like to start highlighting the resources we share with one another to help us all develop professionally.

Resource of the Week:
A former Editor-in-Chief of a widely read tech outlet once shared with me an incredibly insightful reminder about pitching. It’s quite simple really, but each outlet is going to cover a story differently (i.e. Bloomberg may look at a story from the TAM, whereas the USA Today is more likely to look at it from the first person/consumer POV). So, if we are copying and pasting the same pitch to each outlet, we’re ultimately doing ourselves a disservice and also creating more “noise” that causes friction with reporters.

And that’s where Carly comes in, she posted earlier this week that she analyzed successful pitches and created a playbook on how to help land coverage across a variety of media outlets from Fast Company, Fortune and others. I simply love this, and I was curious to learn from her why she decided to share this with the greater community. Here is what she had to say:

"When pitching journalists, one-size-fits-all approaches fall flat because every outlet has distinct editorial priorities, audience expectations, and story formats that demand tailored messaging. A tech reporter at Wired needs a completely different hook and supporting details than a lifestyle writer at a local newspaper or a breaking news journalist at a national outlet. Understanding these nuances, from preferred story angles to subject lines, is the difference between landing coverage and getting lost in the inbox."

With her permission, here is the direct link to her Successful Pitch Angles: https://notablypr.com/successful-pitch-angles/#conclusion

I highly recommend that we all smash the “Save” button on both her LinkedIn post, and that page so we can refer to it in the future. Thank you Carly for sharing that with the PR/Comms community!

Now, onto the Rest of the Takes…

The Rest of the Takes:
- Dustin wrote about how not every media outlet may be the right fit for your company and/or client
- I try to include posts from reporters in an effort to help us all work better with them, one such post from Rich discusses the pet peeve of requesting to see an article before it is published
- Noah wrote about chasing “vanity or value” in PR
- Stephanie hit home for a lot of us in this post about having industry experience vs. strategic thinking and a willingness to learn
- I feel like I am reading about the resurgence of PR, earned media and even press releases on a daily basis due to LLMs and AI, Shannon posted a great reminder about this topic
- In that light, Jennifer provided tips on how to conduct an AI audit for your brand
- This may not be about PR per se, but as most of us have our hands in thought leadership and LinkedIn, we should read Kate’s post about how not every life experience should dovetail into LinkedIn content
- Nick with some reminders on why an interview did not turn into coverage

That’s it for this week’s takes, thanks for reading.

-Brian

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bkramer/