Like many journalists, The Guardian’s tech editor Charles Arthur deals with a lot of enquiries and press releases coming from PR operators – some of them relevant, many of them not. But in an effort to try and make PRs be more concise with him, he’s decided to take it to Twitter. He’s removed his email address from Gorkana and wants pitched by tweet alone.
For Charles, it’s a chance to free his inbox from some clutter and perhaps free up a chunk of his time as well. For me, it’s completely fascinating on a number of levels:
It forces PRs to play catch-up and be Twitter-savvy
It changes the rules of interaction between PRs and press
Firstly, making PRs change their method of contact is quite interesting. I’ve often argued that even if they do nothing else, PRs should be monitoring Twitter to see what is said about their clients, but now they have to learn how to use it if they want to appeal to the UK’s top mainstream technology supplement. It’s not the only bit of education involved as Charles also hopes it means people will start to be more relevant in what they send to him.
Secondly, making the PR and journalism interaction take place out in the open is a significant game-changer (and how long before some organisations insist on it for all comms involving publicly funded bodies?). A phone call or email are limited to those involved, but a tweet can be seen by anyone.
So by theoretically tweeting a pitch to Charles – and remember you can’t direct mail unless Charles follows you – everyone knows that you’ve pitched to him and knows what you are offering. So if Charles rejects it, you can’t then go to someone else and say ‘I’m offering you first bite…’ which then gives you the quandry of going to reporters one at a time or all at once. (But Charles himself is quite accepting of this, saying “I’d understand it was non-exclusive. That’s OK – exclusives last about three minutes online.”
At the other end, it’s a lot harder for a person to ignore a @reply than an email – and takes less time to reply to as well.
There’s also the possibility that this might increase PR tweetspam because if PR A sees that PR B has sent Charles a tweet about a product and A has something similar, then they are also going to get in touch with him.
(of course, some are also wondering if this will lead to people phoning up to see if someone received a tweet, just as some currently call to see if an email was of interest/received)
It’s going to be interesting to watch because if Charles – who is one of the more polite and patient senior newspaper staffers when dealing with PRs – does stick to his guns, does it mean he runs the risk of missing a good tale by email? What implications are there for PRs who don’t/won’t use Twitter? Will other reporters follow suit? Will PRs return the favour by saying ‘reach us only via Twitter?’ (Which would crazy, but that’s another post.)
But I wanted to ask Charles a couple of questions about it and he graciously took the time to answer them for me.
What do you expect to gain from this?
Less spam in my inbox. Seriously: there’s no reflection given to the stuff people spew at me. How many separate technology sections are there in Fleet Street? One. How many technology correspondents are there on Fleet Street? About five…If you can’t tailor your email output to a group that select, you simply shouldn’t be in the business.
How many pitches a day do you get?
Oh, God, twenty? Thirty? People to meet: average two a day. Twitter is starting to build up; I tell people to pitch the idea in 140 chars.
(Note: for a comparison to what Charles is saying, see Chris Anderson from Wired’s now legendary post on PR people)
Anyway, Charles continues…
(Or try to DM me, but I’m not following them so it’s lost.) Then there’s just all the other part-ideas. The thing though is that almost all PR stuff is announcements.
And then, he had the decency to point out something that’s probably obvious to those who have worked in editorial departments and PR but perhaps not to all…
I have a sedimentary concept of news. At the bottom you have all the debris: announcements. Almost all press releases are announcements. Above those are “issues” – topics that have people energised about something, but with no particular timeliness. (Eg parking near your house being discussed for charging by the council. Grinds on for months. It’s an issue.)
Then there’s news – when an announcement plus some issue comes together and makes news. That’s the top level, where I work. Why bombard me with sediment? I’m working at the news level. I need issues, not announcements.
And here’s possibly the most salient point from his email when talking about sending out a press release via email to a lot of reporters: “I realise it’s the client who pays the bills, so they want the press release put in front of as many people as possible. But I’m afraid that model is officially broken, and has been for about five years – possibly ten or more.”
Now that’s an opinion I’m coming back to tomorrow…(what? a blog can’t do cliffhangers? It’s how you get readers coming back. Works for Jack Bauer every week)
(As an aside Anna Svenson also pointed out that Dan Martin of www.BusinessZone.co.uk has done the same – pitches via Twitter – and hopefully Dan will drop us a note to let us know how he got on with it. And thanks again to Charles for taking the time for this.)
16 responses to “Guardian boss: PRs need to learn to pitch by Twitter”
I’d be happy with that approach actually, as I’m bombarded with all sorts of pitches every day (didn’t realise tech writers were such a rare breed). Most don’t even warrant 140 characters.
Last year I took a slightly different tack however to Charles, one that allows PR people to send whatever they like at any time, and for me to glance at and ignore or read the stuff easily: Gmail. I’m moving all my communications with PR companies into Gmail, which they can sediment over as much as they like.
Some more unkind journos will consider a service like Mailinator.com for this purpose, but I’m one of the nice ones. 🙂
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Juha, speaking with my PR hat on, if I knew a journalist would actually read the release that I send then I would have no problems just emailing them and leaving it at that.
The one thing I’ve been wondering though is this: should reporters set up standalone accounts for pitches? If they do, will they monitor them as much as their normal account or will it be ‘out of sight, out of mind’.
I really liked this post, Craig. I do believe that forcing PR people to think in 140 characters goes a long way to finding the genuine story/issue that a journalist might be interested in. But I think there is still a role for press releases too — as long as they are well-written, without a lot of jargon, and sent to journalists who you believe will have a genuine interest in the story (and without the ‘did you get the release’ follow-up’).
I see Twitter as yet another channel for real relationship-building and I can’t imagine why a PR person wouldn’t use it. That said, if they are only on Twitter to ‘sell’ then they won’t get very far.
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I wonder how this will pan out. I’m sure there aren’t many stories that couldn’t be communicated in 140 characters, but there will be the occasional one. But fair enough, if a story’s that big then journalist will most likely get it without the help of a PR pitch.
But, I think there will be two problems here. First, if Charles gets 30 pitches a day, he’ll end up with the same problem on Twitter as he has on email – a system clogged up with stuff he doesn’t want to read. Secondly, I don’t agree that exclusives don’t mean much these days. My experience is that the best results come from tailored pitches to individual journalists, not mass mailings – and an open Tweet is effectively a mass mailing. But I guess that’s a personal choice for each journalist.
It’d be really interesting for you to talk to Charles again in 3 months and see how this has worked?
Nice post Craig and many thanks for giving me a plug!
I did indeed recently announce that I would only accept PR pitches via Twitter: http://www.businesszone.co.uk/item/195015/1107/1097/1096 for a couple of days and it proved to be an interesting experiment. I certainly saw a massive reduction in emails and phone calls and some of the tweeted pitches (or twitches) were very inventive. However, I still received a couple of ‘are you interested in a good story?’ tweets and lots of completely irrelevant material.
PRs need to acknowledge that the way news is gathered has changed. Social networks like Twitter have given ‘normal’ people the power to breaks news and an increasing number of journalists are turning to such platforms to source content. That is not to say that there is no longer a role for PR professionals but they need to think differently about how they communicate with journalists.
Brands – and the PRs representing them – also need to adjust. You only need to look at the negative tweets on Twitter over the weekend about AT&T’s poor wireless network at the South by South West festival which forced the company to respond to see how things have changed.
“Charles – who is one of the more polite and patient senior newspaper staffers when dealing with PRs”
Blimey, am I? I thought I consistently got “rudest sod” or something.
A couple of clarifications, though.
1) I’m not saying I never want to hear from PR companies by email. Some do understand what I do, and pitch ideas that are relevant. The ones I’ve called out have been essentially spamming me – sending me details about the appointment of the something-or-other manager in Arabia, or the new line of $60,000 servers with new Flashing Lights(TM). That’s unacceptable: it shouldn’t be acceptable business practice. I used GMail too, but it’s impossible to keep on top of the email I should be reading when I have to plough through dozens of subject lines on other irrelevant topics.
2) if I get loads of people @ing me on Twitter with irrelevant stuff, I will block them. Noise stops at once.
3) what needs to change is the idea that you can spam email at the few remaining full-time tech journalists. There are so few of us around, and we have access to so many other sources of news, that thinking that putting us onto a mailmerge with 500 other people is going to get any result is frankly bonkers. It has the opposite.
4) what’s needed more than anything is the personal touch. I do explain what I want (on my personal blog) and the section itself shows what we write about. Anyone who can’t fathom our agenda from that really needs to consider whether some other profession beckons. Plumbing pays better than PR, at least on the lower levels. And it’s always going to be in demand.
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Great article. It raises so many issues.
It saddens me that PRs still aren’t targeting their releases at those that would be interested. I’m about to move back in to the PR industry and don’t want to be made to cold call journalists that I know won’t be interested. It’s detrimental to the company I represent and my relationship with the journalist.
I completely understand that Charles doesn’t want to be bombarded with irrelevant info but I’m not convinced that Twitter is the way to manage that. PRs need to work with their clients to aid their understanding that it’s not how many people you send the release to, but the relevance of the release to those people. If you send it to 100 journalists but it’s only relevant to two of them then you’ll only potentially get two pieces of coverage. Simple as that.
If PRs took the time to get to know Charles (or any other journalist) and build a relationship with them then they will find out what kind of news he’s interested in.
I don’t think Twitter should be a place to pitch. It would simply be a case of moving the same problem to a different platform. The potential for receiving a high number of irrelevant requests is still high. Yes, the openess may make people think twice about contacting you, but the simplicity of getting in touch raises that likelihood.
However, Twitter can be a great way to build and maintain relationships with journalists. I don’t have a PR background (my background is marketing), but I have worked on blogger outreach campaigns and have ran a corporate blog. And whilst Twitter itself did not provide me with a way to pitch to journalist or bloggers, it did help me build a relationship with them which resulted in placement of articles for the clients I worked for.
Like Anna says, sending your message en masse might get you placement with a few, but will also piss up a number of people for being irrelevantly targeted. Target the right people and you’ll get better results and build relationships for the long term. It might take a bit longer, but it will get you the best results in the long term.
It saddens me that PRs still aren’t targeting their releases at those that would be interested.
Isn’t that why there’s the likes of Gorkana? I mean it tells you about everyone who is interested in a certain area. I think as well that with staffing levels being cut back – and increasing pressure to deliver ROI – there’s more and more pressure to deliver ROI.
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From my point of view, the fatal flaw in using Twitter as a pitch tool revolves around following. Many journalists I know won’t follow a vendor’s PR (such as me) on Twitter because they feel that to follow one means they must follow all. So they follow none.
This means that they’re not listening to anything I say. And I can’t get in touch with them directly, which I believe is the only appropriate way for some types of story (e.g. about forthcoming announcements).
In a sneaky way I like the idea of telling the press that the only way they can contact me is through Twitter. Then they have to follow me if they need info – and voila, I have my direct channel of communication back 🙂
Cheers,
Steve
“…if I knew a journalist would actually read the release that I send…” “It saddens me that PRs still aren’t targeting their releases at those that would be interested. Isn’t that why there’s the likes of Gorkana…”
Backtrack, to the bit where you send out a press release. I’m a freelancer, inc for Tech Guardian, and I don’t read releases unless they have info on a product I’m reviewing. I’m a freelancer, not a newsdesk, and I’m not interested in announcements. Of the many, many press releases I get, I probably bin 95% without opening them. The other 5% I skim, then bin.
And I have never used a press release as the basis for a pitch to Charles or to any other editor, because if it’s gone to everyone else it would be like asking people to pay me for copies of Metro. I am only interested in PR mail if it is targeted to me, from a PR with an idea they know I would be interested in.
Those of you decrying journalists who don’t read releases – do you know how many we get? We get deluged, and sometimes we miss emails we actually need to read because they’re hidden among so much other stuff. Put it this way: imagine you do PR for, I dunno, a novelist. You like being contacted by journalists who want to write about your novelist. But every day, you get a steady stream of emails from journalists saying they are writing articles about poets, screenwriters, holiday destinations, cat flaps, knitting needles, forensic psychology, MP3 players, teabags, art galleries, hiking boots, clocks… are you interested?
That is what it is like. And that is why most of it goes straight to my trash folder.
This is why the idea of getting a 140-character message where there is no subject line and no scope to send 15 unsolicited attachments (not an exaggeration, it happens) sounds lovely.
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