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Chris over at StartupBlips has a post tonight about how to title, or "subject", pitches to bloggers to get noticed. I’d like to share my thoughts on the importance of a subject and what makes a good pitch. I am only speaking for myself, other bloggers will certainly have their own requested format. If you are a PR person, you should must ask every blogger you contact how he or she would like to be pitched. By spending a few minutes doing this, you have a MUCH greater chance of being covered by that blog. It’s the same as knowing I like milk in my coffee, Arrington takes it black, Ostrow takes 2 sugars, Om would rather have tea and Eric only drinks Pepsi.

I don’t care that much about the subject and if you use the contact form, the subject is pre-defined. I personally look at every single email we get (about 300-400 a day) and no matter the subject I still scan the email. The key is to capture my attention in the first moments of the email, not in the subject.

• Embargo information if applicable
• Name of company
• URL
• Login if applicable - don’t make me request one and then have to wait for a reply
• Contact info: email, phone, etc.
• Brief Twitter style product overview
• Bullets of why you are better than your competition
• Company info: employees, location, year founded, funding, etc.
• Then and only then should you include a press release

I’ve had a few PR people ask me how I’d like to be pitched. Wish more of ya’all did it. Would make both of our jobs easier and would lead to more coverage. Here is an example of how not to pitch (company name removed). Note that the person calls me Robert, offers very few words plus two links - both which contain nearly no information. I have no problem doing research, but you have to give me something to work with!

Hi Robert,

we launched a new startup. Hope you will find in interesting.

Here: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/site is some brief summary.

Also here:
http://www.killerstartups.com/site/

Thanks a lot!
name
site

At the end of the day, the key is to make it as easy as possible for me to understand what you do, why you are better, how you do it, and then point me to more information so I can research along with a way to contact you.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 11:31 pm and is filed under Insights, pr. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.