In response to How to make an awesome Social Media News Release, Jonathan Rick asked me, “Isn’t this essentially the same thing that Pitch Engine offers?” Jason Kintzler then added, “Yes Jonathan, exactly! Did I mention you can do it all for free?!” (See Socialmedia.biz‘s earlier writeup on PitchEngine: A social PR platform for the new era.)

Well, my response is the topic of this post today: “The article is only about the what and why of the Social Media News Release and not the how. Pitch Engine is a how!” I then added, “Pitch Engine doesn’t take away the work: writing/collecting compelling copy and assets. You do that work” and then “Our SMNR is just a platform and structure. 90% of one’s time should be spent writing amazing content” and then, finally, “Installing WordPress, an amazing platform, does not an amazing blog make; Pitch Engine is amazing but content is king”

So, let me explain. Pitch Engine and WordPress are best-of-breed application platforms that make creating a Social Media Release and Blog seamless, removing the technology hurdle from the process. Those are good things, to be sure. However, after re-reading my SMNR post, I was reminded that it wasn’t about technology at all, it was about the collecting and presenting of relevant assets, copy, images, and videos; it was about organizing and branding an ease-of-use “steal all this content, blogger, and please post on your blog” microsite.

In fact, I made a point of showing how one doesn’t even need to spend all your time installing WordPress or some other database-backed website or web app — one can hack together a very valuable SMNR with just the most basic HTML, an inexpensive hosting plan, and a $12/year domain from a domain name registrar.

Why humanity trumps technology

It’s not about the technology, people! Hire and train people based on their ability to write and their ability to connect and engage people — who like people and care about personal, human, relationships. Signing up for Pitch Engine won’t write your SMNR for you, creating a profile on Twitter doesn’t make you an influencer, and installing WordPress doesn’t put you in the AdAge Power 150 or Technorati’s Top 100. These are all essential steps, but they’re no panacea.

If you’re spending more money on tech than talent, don’t. If you’re intimidated by technology, don’t be. If you think that Social Networking and Social Media is about apps and sites and smart phones and Twitter and Facebook and Google+, then you need to get past that and remember that it’s about people. Real fleash-and-blood folks who hunger to connect and relate. Yes, with each other, but also with you and your brand, products, and services.

Pitch Engine’s job is to make Social Media Release-making as easy-as-possible, tech-free, as possible. And they do an amazing job of it. The same goes for WordPress and Facebook and Twitter. If an app doesn’t make it easier for you to connect with other people, the app doesn’t work. At the end of the day, all these web applications are top-drawer, but they just make it easier — effortless — to do your job. They do not do your job for you and they often make folks lazier, more careless, and less concise. They tend to be enablers, enabling bad grammar, poor spelling, and just good enough editing. People should always write as though going to press and being printed on paper instead of just assuming you can always edit it later.

If you’re intimidated by technology, that’s OK. Social Media News Releases and Blogger Pitch Emails are more about the quality, simplicity, efficiency, and targeting of the writing, structure, and presentation of the page. Some of the most popular blogs online are Blogger and MySpace blogs, even though there are more sophisticated platforms. Why? Because what it is to be a blogger is to be a writer and not a technologist or programer. The same thing with digital PR and social media marketing. The most effective marketing campaigns combine the ability to write clear, compelling copy; understanding the target audience and their associated wants, needs, desires, and hunger; and knowing where the sweet spot in the market is — it is not about the technology. The tech is a necessary evil that must be transcended in order to ensure that the messaging is able to seamlessly reach the market without barrier.

Reporters don’t need to know how to run a printing press, news anchors don’t need to understand how a picture makes its way, as if my magic, to my LCD HDTV, and radio hosts surely don’t need to go out to get their Ham Radio License. And you don’t need to become an iOS developer, a web application developer, or a CSS guru, either.

Too many people in this space get stuck behind the technology barrier. They spend all their budgets on building the perfect web application, the best Facebook App, and on graphic design and architecture, leaving very little if anything on the best writers and the best marketers. Don’t get stuck in that trap.

Your social media presence, digital PR strategy, and social media marketing campaigns are only as good as your writers, marketers, PR professionals, community managers, designers, and creatives — the artisans — and not on the technologies — the tools. When I teach young college marketing and PR students in their communication schools, I remind them every day that all the things they’re learning in class, though possibly dated and old school, are still relevant because human nature is human nature and people are people and technological platforms are ephemeral and fleeting.

Learn the tools, surely, but don’t become obsessed with them. Shine the spotlight where it matters: people. Via Marketing Conversation via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology.

Related articles

• Social media success demands talent above technology (socialmedia.biz)
• Social media success demands talent above technology (biznology.com)
• How to make awesome Social Media News Releases (chrisabraham.com)
• Detailed analysis of the perfect blogger pitch (socialmedia.biz)
• The Social Media News Release explained in detail (socialmedia.biz)
• Inside a Social Media News Release (biznology.com)
• WordPress 2.5 – So exciting I can hardly contain myself… (theresabloginmysoup.com)
• How to write an irresistible blogger pitch email (chrisabraham.com)
• 5 Types of Sites You Can Build With WordPress (thetechscoop.net)
• How To: Add Customer Reviews To WordPress (wpjedi.com)

Over the last five years that Abraham Harrison has been pitching bloggers on behalf of clients, we have learned a thing or two about how best to reach bloggers, how to engage them, how to get them to carry our client’s message to their readership. Whether we’re doing an outreach to the bloggers of mainstream media and celebrity blogs or to someone who has just set up a blog for the first time, it all begins with the message model.

Below is an example of a message model we developed for Miriam’s Kitchen for National Homelessness Month. We didn’t use it because we focused on Give to the Max Day instead, but I think it is an example of our best work and I’ll put it aside and we’ll use it next year for sure. I will share the entire email pitch in total below but then I will go through a line-by-line explanation as to what we did and why we did it:

From: Chris Abraham <cjabraham@miriamskitchennews.org>
Subject: November is National Homelessness Month

Hi <<First Name>>

November is National Homelessness Month and I’m reaching out to you to discuss the issue of homelessness in America. I’m also hoping that you’ll discuss this issue with the readers of <<Blog Name>>. I am a volunteer at a small kitchen for the homeless in DC and while working there it occurred to me that this issue affects every town, village, and city in America.

I have put together a microsite that puts the issue of homelessness in perspective and also uses Miriam’s Kitchen, the kitchen where I volunteer, as a model for addressing homelessness and untreated mental illness in the US capital city. There are a multitude of news, facts, videos, photos, and banners so please feel free to repost any of it:

www.miriamskitchennews.org

If you are able to post about this issue in any form, it would really help spread the message of homelessness in its many diverse forms and maybe suggest ways to help improve many lives. Please let me know if you have any questions and if you are able to help. Thank you so much.

Chris

–
Chris Abraham,
On behalf of Miriam’s Kitchen
www.miriamskitchen.org

OK, now I will go into more detail, section by section …

From: Chris Abraham <cjabraham@miriamskitchennews.org>

The first thing you’ll notice is that I am doing the outreach in this example. Though not the norm, I personally volunteer and donate to Miriam’s Kitchen and people know that, so I decided to reach out as me because that’s the most authentic relationship. In other cases, the names of Abraham Harrison team members fit the bill. The next thing you’ll notice is that the email doesn’t come from either miriamskitchen.org or chrisabraham.com domains. Instead, we virtually always reserve a completely new and unique domain name for each campaign, in this case miriamskitchennews.org. Why? Three reasons:

1. Clients protect their domains. Most companies and organizations have very restrictive IT policies that limit the use of their domain and the allocation of email addresses. This makes it almost impossible to place social media news release content on their site, so we reserve our own because it gets around any of those issues.
2. Bloggers don’t trust PR firms. We prefer to reach out to bloggers as the client instead of as Abraham Harrison on behalf of our clients. Why? Not to be deceptive but because a strong majority of all the bloggers we reach out to are not trained in public relations processes and don’t generally feel comfortable being communicated to via a broker, so we always try to communicate as clearly and as simply as possible, so choosing something in-between the two is best, in this case cjabraham@miriamskitchennews.org.
3. Spam detectors are always a risk. Because we reach out cold to upwards of five-thousand bloggers at a time, it is essential that we don’t put ever put mission-critical domain names in jeopardy of being black-listed as spam or being taken away by a fickle registrar such as GoDaddy.com. While we’re exceedingly careful when we target and how we engage each blogger, it is amazing how few email recipients need to report a single email as unwanted before the gray-bearded email wizards can ban and block an entire domain from being deliverable–we never want to put ourselves or our clients in that precarious position. While this has never actually happened to us or our clients, we have felt enough saber-rattling and there have been enough shots over our bow that we make sure we never put anyone into a defensive position. Ultimately, protecting our clients’ brands as well as our own is of top priority.

Let’s move on to the all-important subject line.

Subject: November is National Homelessness Month

The first, and sometimes only, thing a blogger sees when she receives our email pitch is the email subject line and the sender. Choosing a title is super-hard because we want to be as neutral and as informational as possible. Teasing or tricking a blogger into opening by being cute, mysterious, or clever in the subject line has almost always blown up in our faces. The simpler the better, especially when you realize that we follow up a couple times after the first outreach–something I will go into more in a future post. But first, the salutation.

Hi <<First Name>>

When we research bloggers to pitch, we always do our very best to discover the full name of the blog, the first name of the blogger, and the best address possible. We also make sure the name is correct because it isn’t always clear. I can’t tell you how many pitches my blog, Because the Medium is the Message, and my corporate blog, Marketing Conversation, get from marketers who address us wrong, mostly as Abraham. “Dear Abraham.” Those go straight into the trash. Next, our mailer, nicknamed “The Cloud,” has a mail merge feature, allowing us to personalize our email a little bit, within reason, and appropriately.

What’s behind that first paragraph?

November is National Homelessness Month and I’m reaching out to you to discuss the issue of homelessness in America. I’m also hoping that you’ll discuss this issue with the readers of <<Blog Name>>. I am a volunteer at a small kitchen for the homeless in DC and while working there it occurred to me that this issue affects every town, village, and city in America.

The most important thing is to make sure the first paragraph of every pitch is simple, clear, concise, and immediately addresses why you’re emailing. Yes, answer who, what, when, where, why, and how–but in very short order, so get to it! Who? Miriam’s Kitchen. What? Homelessness in America, an issue that affects every town, village, and city in America. When? November. Where? On your blog. Why? To share the issue with your readers How? Posting to your blog. I added the last sentence to proactively address why I was the person to be writing at all–because I am personally invested and this is meaningful to me, for real.

I am lucky enough to have Dan Krueger and Phillip Rhoades on my team. They’re both excellent BS detectors and masters of minimalism. For a pitch like this, Dan or I generally create a first draft. Then, the other two of us go through the draft line-by-line. As if it were poetry. We cut to the bone. This process is a direct result of three things:

One, you only have a blogger for a few seconds–if she opens it at all–so you must cut to the chase.

Two, we have all received enough pitches ourselves to know who does and doesn’t read our blogs, so the entire “I am a real fan of your blog and have been reading you a long time” are generally lies. So, after you write your first draft, cut out all the inauthentic praise. Truth be told, if your targeting is good and you have a great offer and are clear as to what you want, you’re effectively doing the blogger the favor of providing good content that they can easily and quickly pop onto her blog–and you really don’t need to flatter. I am not saying that you should be short, rude, or curt, but surely be very clear as to who you are, what you are, what you want, and what you need.

Yes, I do volunteer at Miriam’s–many times-a-month. If I didn’t–or if I sent the email out as someone else in the company, an online analyst, and that person hadn’t ever graced Miriam’s, I would never make that up. Everything in the email must be honest and true. This isn’t a con job, this isn’t a cheesy 11pm pick up, this is the sharing of relevant information–don’t feel like you have to sell to someone or fool someone to cover you. Also, be very careful about playing the heart strings too loudly when you’re doing an outreach on behalf of a charity. To be honest, the less said the better–allow the blogger to come up with her own conclusions–you really don’t have to tell the blogger what to think. Not only isn’t that necessary but it can be downright insulting to bloggers, who are by their very nature free spirits.

Now, on to the meat of the pitch.

I have put together a microsite that puts the issue of homelessness in perspective and also uses Miriam’s Kitchen, the kitchen where I volunteer, as a model for addressing homelessness and untreated mental illness in the US capital city. There are a multitude of news, facts, videos, photos, and banners so please feel free to repost any of it:

www.miriamskitchennews.org

One of the results of making the email pitch so efficient and tight is that there’s a lot left behind. Most folks who pitch to bloggers still include the kitchen sink in their email pitches: PDF or MS Word attachments are still very common. The majority paste their rich-text traditional press release inline in the email, along with inline images, logos, and graphics. We refuse for three reasons.

1. Our email pitches are all about starting a conversation. We’re more interested in getting an email reply that we can respond to than we are in firing and forgetting.
2. We always send plain text emails. We do not include anything that might result in spam-boxing. We don’t even include any “http://” prefixes in our links, assuming that the webmail or email client will activate the link when the blogger opens up their email and views the content.
3. We don’t take the blogger’s interest in our pitch for granted. The email, to me, is a speed date. We don’t want to waste anybody’s time or good will, so we allow the blogger to decide whether she wants to go on a second date. We like it best when the chemistry is so intense that our client and the blogger drive to Vegas immediately and get hitched–by which I mean we reach out, the blogger immediately likes our pitch, immediately posting to their blog as well as Facebook and Twitter–but we don’t want to assume any of that. We like to play it cool because a heavy sell never works, especially in an earned-media PR campaign.

On to the end of the email:

If you are able to post about this issue in any form, it would really help spread the message of homelessness in its many diverse forms and maybe suggest ways to help improve many lives. Please let me know if you have any questions and if you are able to help. Thank you so much.

Chris

As I said before, being clear as to why we’re writing is essential. Being clear what you want and what you expect is essential, too. Too many pitches I receive simply share their message but are never bold, brave, or courageous enough to make an ask: please post it anywhere, anyhow, to help spread the message of homelessness in America.

The most essential thing, however, is that this is really just a speed date. If we pass muster but the blogger just isn’t sure who we are or why I am emailing her, we need to be painfully clear that this email is not a fire-and-forget. That this email is the beginning of a connection and that simply hitting reply will result in swift answers. Also, accountability. We end just about every email with a direct request to the blogger to please let us know if she ends up helping and sharing–and that we’re appreciative either way. At the very least because she’s spent some of her time opening and reading our email.

Finally, the signature.

–
Chris Abraham,
On behalf of Miriam’s Kitchen
www.miriamskitchen.org

If you’ll notice, we don’t misrepresent ourselves–or myself–as being on the staff of Miriam’s Kitchen; however, we also don’t want to confuse the purity of the message by bringing a second brand into the brief message model, such as would be the case if I included Abraham Harrison LLC in the signature. So, we chose to split the middle.

What you’re thinking right now is “how in the heck could you blog so much about such a short email?” Well, it is because we spend a lot of time, many revisions, and three or more staff cutting, editing, re-ordering, and BS-detecting each message model. We’re very intentional, very formulaic, and also very careful. We don’t want to tell bloggers what to think. We don’t want to put words in their mouths, and we surely don’t want to alienate a blogger because we color the copy in such a way that they reject our pitch based on style instead of content and mission.

It is like a first date, especially for a man like me: it is more important for me to remember to be a good listener and not to spend the entire meal making it all about me. The longer my message model and email pitch is the more likely the blogger will feel like I might have sent them an email in error. I want each email pitch to be as neutral and factual as possible. All dogma, passion, color, interpretation, and story should be provided by the blogger–and don’t forget that everything that you cut out of the email message model can possibly find a happy home in your Social Media News Release.

While the email might seem very casual and conversational, winging it is not an option when you’re officially reaching out on behalf of your brand. This is doubly so when you’re reaching out on behalf of a client. The message model is a getting-to-know-you process and not simply a product. Before I explain what goes into an email blogger pitch, I need to explain this process and the philosophy that we have developed through trial and error since the Fall of 2006.

Being completely familiar with the client, the brand, the product, and the services, before moving forward with the pitch is essential. Anything we don’t use in our message model and email pitch we aggregate it into a social media, multimedia, social media profiles, news release.

This process of collecting all of the client’s assets and collateral material, including videos, photos, ads, bios, history, background, context, interviews, case studies, testimonials, and media mentions, help us then decide if there are any missing pieces that we need to request from the client or create ourselves.

Then we can interview the client to discuss what the subject of the pitch should be, what the ask is, and then which blogs and bloggers should be included–or excluded–and who to exclude is often more important than who to bring into the pitch.

My next blog post will focus on what I am all sure you’re curious about: the social media news release (SMNR), that “kitchen sink” catch-all supporting document that provides all the details, content, media, images, and greater story that has been pruned from the initial pitch but surely deserves being told.

A future post will be about the value of following up a couple times with any bloggers who don’t reply or post. We have evolved a process that does not email just once but also sends two follow-up emails to those bloggers who don’t reply at all. Funny thing is, we get only 25% of all posts from the first email. We get 50% of all our total earned media posts from the first follow-up email and another 25% from the final outreach, so I really want to go into the why and how of that–and how we handle something that might very well be scary to some of you and and might feel like we’re being a pest to others–and I will address all of those fears and perceptions.

Please feel free to ask any questions or make any comments you might have on your mind after reading this blog post and I will do my best to respond.

Related articles

• Testomonial from Miriam’s Kitchen (chrisabraham.com)
• Agencies are too afraid of bloggers to do their job (chrisabraham.com)
• Please Support Miriam’s Kitchen on Give to the Max Day (chrisabraham.com)
• Authentic Internet inbound marketing the way God intended (chrisabraham.com)
• Set up your Google+ Brand Page right now! (chrisabraham.com)
• Fire for effect when you can’t get a direct bead on your market (chrisabraham.com)
• Live people over Robot Armies and Zombie Hordes (chrisabraham.com)
• How to make friends and influence bloggers (chrisabraham.com)
• Write your blog to be taken completely out of context (chrisabraham.com)
• Amplify Twitter and Facebook with GaggleAmp (chrisabraham.com)

Via Marketing Conversation via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology

A couple weeks ago Ed Zitron reached out to me to ask me some zany and personal questions about both me and also my habits as an A-List blogger, since I blog for Marketing Conversation, AdAge Digital Next, SocialMedia.biz, and this one, of course.  I enjoyed answering these questions but, as my friend Scott said, “Gee, you’re a high maintenance princess. I guess it’s good to make the flacks work.” I guess those of you who know me might verily agree. Sigh.  Enjoy!

By Ed Zitron How to Pitch Me: Chris Abraham, AdAge, SocialMedia.Biz

Over the past few years, I’ve come full circle.  First a journalist, now a PR rep. In this time, I’ve become fascinated with the pitching process – the gentle art of getting to know a writer and essentially identifying unique angles that will hopefully interest the journalist. Some consider it a dark, subversive art, but others, like my good friend and reporter Chris Abraham, realize its part of the process, and embrace it.

Chris writes for AdAge’s Digital Next, SocialMedia.biz, and a multitude of smaller blogs and guest-posts. He has more than 10,000 Twitter Followers, and insists that I don’t annoy him with multiple emails in the span of an hour.

So, allow us to take you once again into the mad world that is a journalist’s head, and see what his solutions are for the newspaper industry, PR as a whole and, of course, Tiger Sharks.

PR/Journalism

What do you most want out of a pitch? How do you like to be pitched?

I need any pitch to be as simple as possible for me to respond to.  If you don’t have my in 3 minutes the most you’ll get from me is a tweet. Too many people have crap gifts or they don’t have any gift at all — or any activation request: why do I care?  Even if I know you — I recently blogged for a friend — I will become very frustrated if your pitch requires me to download PDF files, JPG files, sort out EMBED code, find quotable text, and everything else. Things work well if you collect all of that content — premasticated, if you will — into an online Social Media Release (for example).

So, if you’ll notice, you have EVERYTHING available there for the taking — no ZIP files, no PSDs or PNGs — everything is “stealable” from the site — copy and images and videos and so forth – because we’re painfully aware that if you don’t have someone in a couple minutes, you lost them to “never” or “later.”

Also, I’m a sucker for getting a book or a galley in the mail — if someone sends me a book, I always read it and try to blog it — I don’t respond well to PDF downloads or telling me about a book and expecting me to blog about it — I will be more devoted if it comes via FedEx or UPS and even more points for a signature and an author business card — but that’s just me.

What makes a good PR professional?

You in particular do a great job because you treat me like royalty and you also pester me, which I don’t consider pestering because you basically act as my personal assistant until the call is scheduled, the interview is conducted, and then you ping me with great follow-through until my post is posted — and you never criticize me for writing whatever I want — you’re always grateful — also, you have high-caste clients and I always want to get onto a call with someone cool.

What grinds your gears about how PR pros treat you?

I think WORD or RTF or ZIPPED attachments are terrible.  Pitches that have a “no reply” email address suck. Pitchers that don’t reply right away when I reply to their pitch suck.  Stingy or guarded PR reps suck. PR professionals who use CC or BCC and don’t have their outreach sorted out to a professional level suck. PR professionals who don’t ASK me for anything won’t get anything.  This isn’t flirting.  I can’t read minds.  Also, when a pitch is obviously a cut-and-paste — the “real” written part and the pasted “stock copy” — generally different fonts, different sized — usually a serif personalized paragraph followed by the stock email — send to everyone — that is in Verdana. You know what I am talking about — it is hypocritical — they’re pretending to be authentic but they’re really just popping a small message and a really long, annoying, “why should I care” pitch in there.

What can PR pros learn from writers, journalists, etc. about how to do their jobs better?

PR pros need to learn one thing: bloggers are not below the line.  Bloggers need to be treated with as much attention and grace and follow-through as any journalist at the FT — no matter what their “caste” or their “compete.com” stats — you can’t treat a Power150 dude good and then a mommy blog bad — they all need to be treated with respect and with as much courtesy as anyone else.

Also, the initial email should only ever be a “so, here’s what I am doing, are you interested” and not complete pitch. Get to the point.

What’s your absolute, downright worst journalist-PR experience?

Well, I have been pretty lucky because I have a thick skin and because I spend more time learning from bad pitches than I do getting angry or frustrated.

How can the flacks of the world endear themselves to you, and build a gods-honest relationship with you?

I don’t know — how have you been able to make me take an hour of my time off to answer some silly questions?  Probably by appealing to my ego (33%) and to my curiosity (33%) and to my interests (33%).

Misc
Do you think that social media really is that key to the ‘future of journalism’?

I think community and conversation is the future of journalism.  I am platform agnostic.  What journalism did wrong is this:  journalists, reporters, and papers have started to let their contempt for their readers to show.  They fancy us a bunch of dumbasses who don’t care any more about civics and duty and politics and so they have therefore holed themselves up with the Academy and have tried to write and teach for the readers they wished they had rather than the readers they are losing every day.  After a while of inviting your priest and your teacher to your backyard BBQ, you get tired of them telling you how you shouldn’t be drinking beer or eating pork so you stop inviting them to the party — journalism and print media don’t give people the gift they want, they try to give us the gift they think we should have — and with social media the company store is no longer the monopoly that it once was.  That’s the basic tenet of market capitalism: give the market what it needs, right?  Well, the “stewards” of “our culture” are realizing that they cannot “maintain the culture” for us and also make a profit from advertising and profit.

What’s annoying or encouraging you about journalism and writing in general?

I am reading some really awesome books, all telling the end of advertising as we know it: “Making News in the Digital Era” by David E. Henderson; “The Chaos Scenario” by Bob Garfield; “Twitterville” by Shel Israel; and “No Size Fits All” by Tom Hayes & Michael S. Malone — some very amazing insights into what’s going on right now and what’s coming up in the short-term future — it isn’t really the future, per se, but just a clear look into the tip of the wedge of the present.

How would you save newspapers?

I would turn every newspaper into its very own “AOL” — and I would make news an important PART of the new virtual online community, but I would basically convert the paper into something that news papers have always served as, along with churches and the lodge, which is the hub around which a city spins — and this community would mean that journalists would become only 50% of the equation — the rest would be “citizen” hosts and guides and also paid online facilitators, path-finders, and moderators — experts in their city.  There is a market for this and a lot of the opportunity had been stolen by Yelp and other highly-targeted and highly-relevant national sites — because newspapers were too busy being holier than thou and not becoming an answer to what was, indeed, needed by that community that the paper publicly professed as being important to them.

What’s your favorite movie?

My favorite movie of all time is Being There, starring Peter Sellers.

You have to fight an animal over 150lbs – which one do you choose, and why?

I would choose a Tiger Shark because I think I could take it and even if I couldn’t take it, I think being eaten by a shark is a noble way to go.