Dear PR folks and Movie Studios and other people who want us to post about whatever you’re peddling,
We receive PR pitches ALLL day… every day… we get pitched on Twitter and even through our personal emails, so you could say we’ve seen a lot of bad PR pitches and a lot of good ones. So, let me walk you through a little something before you crack open that email Rolodex and hit send on a missive regarding the next BIG thing. We know you’re just doing what the powers that be and the bosses and the marketing team is saying but PLEASE think twice before sending us the following stuff and PLEASE speak up and try to re-craft the pitch you’re about to send.
Bad PR Pitches That Are NOT A Thing:
1. Character Poster Reveals
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Character Posters are NOT fascinating nor do they make for great posts. Stop sending them in the guise of actual information or cool assets. Also, doing a “character poster reveal” is not a cool social media trick or good reason to email your contacts and ask for coverage. SEND US SOMETHING GOOD. Or if you only have character posters, work with a few select sites and make it an actual EXCLUSIVE.
2. Pitches Without Assets or Links
Why are you emailing us about your thing without a link, pictures, logo, social handles and important info so we can actually create a post around whatever it is you’re trying to get us a post about. Don’t make us do ALL the work, guys! Just include this stuff in the email and I’m sure you’d be surprised at how much more coverage you get.
3. Celebrity X was seen wearing/driving/using Y Product! ZOMG!
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Honestly guys, unless Sam Heughan / Tom Hiddleston / Joseph Gordon Levitt / Ryan Gosling are seen wearing a That’s Normal tshirt than we don’t really care. Sowwy. That makes us think we need to get a TN merch store open ASAP! Stay tuned! Cause buying a tshirt from your favorite blog is totally NORMAL.
4. Sending your PR pitch the same day as the event
Of course, this has it’s exceptions, like a personal sit down with Sam Heughan / Tom Hiddleston / Joseph Gordon Levitt / Ryan Gosling is always welcome no matter the time of day or night. Buuuutttt in most cases though, we’re gonna need some time to prepare, put gas in the car, eat some sort of protein enriched food (those press days are long) and arrange for some time away from real life. Recently I was invited to interview some people at WonderCon I had never heard of about 20 minutes before the interviews were supposed to start VIA EMAIL. GUYSSSSSS are you for realz?
5. Big event/video/image/news happening on… ANOTHER SITE
Really? Now, we’re all for sharing the love and sending people to our friend’s sites and our daily reads but you wanna ask US to send our traffic somewhere else to spend time and get THEM ad revenue? What are we getting in this deal again? We get it, we do, we’re not Yahoo or Perez Hilton, WE KNOW but just send us an embed link guys, it’s really simple, don’t make us increase our own bounce rate. #NerdTalk
This is just laziness PR folks, send us some good stuff! Don’t make us ask our audience to “unlock” something, or go somewhere or look at something lame. Just send us good stuff, is that too much to ask?! Ok… maybe it is… But really don’t stop sending us stuff cause our “good PR pitches” and “bad PR pitches” folders are getting stuffed to the gills.
