Did you think we were done with pet peeves? No way, Jose! As long as journalists pet peeve, we will be here. Which, if our calculations are correct, would mean eternity. Although overall, we’re spotting less pet peeves. Since we don’t think there are less bad actors in the wild west of journalist pitching, it’s safer to pin it on journalists leaving X/Twitter altogether, as well as changes to the algorithm that potentially favour non-journalist users.
But back to what really matters in this blog series. The second quarter of 2024 saw a lot of the old classics returning, but also some new ones.
Check them out!
In some cases, you need to show the full product for the buyer to make a decision, not just a brochure.
What amazes us is that so many companies want a linkback for commercial purposes in the article, but they don’t bother to link for informational purposes in the rest of the process.
The hard truth about PR is that you don’t control the final outcome – journalists do. However, you can report a factual inaccuracy.
Likely most PR practitioners do this out of goodwill / etiquette, but it’s simply not needed. Reading this one million times from people they don’t know ends up bothering a few journalists.
Every journalist is different. With some, a followup is already annoying – they will read everything and if they don’t reply it means no interest. With others, you can follow up a bit more, they might have crazy inboxes or forget. However, universally PR pros report getting good results from following up (without even annoying journos).
This is inexcusable, especially to a TechCrunch journalist. Damn, what are we thinking here? Very likely, not a PR pro, but just ‘someone attempting PR’.
You might work for a quantum company, but that doesn’t mean that every tech/science-focused journalist out there is a quantum expert.
Templates. If you’re doing real PR, why not simply start fresh every pitch? If you’re doing a wider outreach, just pay a bit more attention to detail…
If you’re told ‘no’ it’s highly unlikely you’ll be able to overturn the decision. However, we didn’t say impossible!
World Password Day. Does seem like a cool date to do something security-related. Seems like a case of Digital PR targeting the wrong journalists.
Make it easy for journalists to get more information. That includes being able to reply to your original email.
This one we mentioned before already. Corrections are fine, but polishing your marketing isn’t.
Surveys and reports… do send them, not just the press release associated with them.
Take your time before pitching a top-tier journalist. It’s not simply a numbers game. It’s about attention to detail, understanding the person on the other side and actually properly assessing the feasibility and desirability of pursuing something.
Can’t get enough pet peeves?
Check out Mauro and JJ’s piece for Maddyness UK summarising lessons from years of pet peeves from tech journalists and our previous pet peeve summaries:
