10 tips for successful communication with editors
ByIf your work involve (online) PR you communicate quite often with editors of web sites and magazines of your interest. Here are some tips that can be of help.
1. Don’t send immeditely you see some new section/site about your/your client industry. Find some time and read what kind of articles they publish, how they are written to see if they use more formal or funky style in writing, how long are the articles etc.
2. Go to the meeting with the editor. Many people never find time to see the editor of the certain site/magazine. They think it is enough to send a press release and content-hungry editors will publish it if they like it. Internet is great but don’t avoid face2face meetings.
3. Don’t send the same press release to everyone. Try to identify your most important media partners and adjust your press release and content of your email to them. It is not enough just to change the name of the recipient when you write Dear, [editorname]. Everyone likes to see that they are important, and also not many editors like to publish the same content like dozen of other media.
4. Don’t bold keywords and sentences in your press release. Editors are smart enough to know what is important and what is not so imporatnt.
5. Send objective news and not over-hyped press releases. Usually editors don’t want to publish over-hyped press release because they will sound as a free ad and not informative news and they won’t bother to adjust your press release.
6. Proofread your press releases.
7. Give a proper Subject name for your emails. Many people send press releases with blank Subject line or with the Subject line: For immediate release
8. Send your press release in the body of email and as an attachment. Because many editors won’t publish it immediatelly and they want to save the file somewhere, but some other editors don’t like getting attachments. Also, some local letters can be shown in error if sent in email because of recipient email client’s settings.
9. Don’t be pain in the ass. Once you sent the news don’t call every day and ask when it will be published. It is good to know what is the standard schedule for publishing and if you see that it passed too long since they got your email (in case of web sites several days) you can call them.
10. Give some benefit to journalists. Some exclusive information, product review or taking them to your company travel/conference or sponsoring their trip that can be later used in their articles is usually a nice thing to do. They will appreciate it.