If you pitch me on Twitter, make sure you are following me so I can send you a direct message to follow up. (It happens.)
Better yet, just email me.
Tip #170: Rafe brain hurt! No like!
I hate to break it to you, but there’s no award for Most Convoluted Pitch. I therefore suggest this writing strategy: Lay off the Red Bull and only write in the still quiet of the dewy morning. Or something. Just not this:
Hi Rafe,
With thousands of travel apps available, it would seem that business travelers would have an endless selection to choose from, right?
Not necessarily. While many apps simplify consumer travel, they don’t necessary translate to corporate travel. Rather, they can cause companies major headaches and add expenses because they fail to take corporate policies into account, and multiple apps might be needed to juggle all the “simplifying.”
The key is finding a mobile solution that focus both on end-user experience and productivity, while keeping travelers compliant to corporate policies. But as more mobile developers jump on the HTML 5 bandwagon, sorting through the ‘business travel’ mobile market is about to get tougher.
How about a story that educates corporate travel managers about why consumer travel apps shouldn’t cut it for their business, how to get the most productivity out of an app by choosing one app that can do the work of 4 or 5, and how HTML 5 development is about to transform the mobile travel experience?
As a source, I can put you in touch with [a guy] of [a big Web development company], who is heading up the companies’ development of its [new app] in HTML 5.
Would you like to arrange an interview?
I think what you’re trying to say is that your product is better than TripIt for corporate clients. Is that it? Did I get it right? Where’s my cookie?
Related: Tip #98
Filed under Email
Tip #169: Scale up your pitch
If you’re going to show a pitch video on your laptop during our meeting, at least make it full-screen so I can see what I’m ignoring.
Bonus tip: Learn how to do this before the meeting.
Related tips:
#16: Point of view
#41: Press F5!
Filed under Meetings
Tip #168: There is a right answer and a wrong answer
Another one from the Department of Emails We Never Finished Reading:
To: Rafe Needleman
Subject: Lying awake at night……wondering ‘what in heck does [Whatever] Systems do anyway??’
One of the secrets to success in business is to get people to say, “yes.” To what? To anything. Don’t ask questions where you can pretty well guarantee that the answer is, “no.”
Tip #167: Don’t bury the lead
Although it pains me to repeat myself, I post the beginning of an email pitch I received this morning. It’s the perfect example of why I wrote Tip #98: Make it snappy, Sweetheart.
Subject: Everyone loves a good pitch in the morning
Rafe,
Who am I kidding, no one truly enjoys reading a press release; much less being bombarded by them hourly. If you don’t mind hearing mine, then keep reading… and if you don’t, then feel free to click the shiny red X or red circle at the top of the page anytime.
[Our company] is releasing a new service called…
By this point, you’ve lost your audience. Look, it’s your job to pitch. It’s my job to be pitched. So let’s do our jobs — quickly, please — and move on.
Filed under Common sense, Email
Tip #166: I don’t do quickies
There’s no way to get a good, rich, nuanced story from a rushed interview, so an invitation to just “drop by for five minutes to chat,” really doesn’t play.
See, the idea of good reporting is to have more information on the story topic than you need to write it up, and to cherry-pick from all that knowledge things to put into the story. Sometimes people write articles with less information than they need to paint a complete picture. It shows.
Filed under Reporting
Tip #165: Pros, stay home on amateur day
It’s April Fools’ day, otherwise known as the worst day to be a tech journalist. Every other pitch is a lame attempt at humor. Maybe one out of 50 is halfway funny. I don’t want to complain too much, though. It’s like open-mic night at the comedy club. We all know what we’re in for today.
The problem is that the real pitches are blended in with the fake ones, and sometimes it’s sadly hard to tell the difference. Especially when non-joke pitches have April-Foolish headlines like “This is no joke…”
Look, we’re just confused. If you have a real pitch, have a heart, save it for the next day. Thanks.
Oh, but then there’s this: A joke that should be real. (See TV industry turns blind eye to non-3D viewers.)
Read more: CNET’s directory of foolishness, 2011.
Filed under Compassion
Tip #164: Whiners never whin
As much as I like hearing from the people who make products directly, if you can’t use nice words, have your babysitter — sorry, I mean PR person — contact me instead.
Rafe,
I’ve been assuming that you didn’t cover the email industry because I sent you emails about [our product] with no response. Now I just read your article touting [other products] while ignoring [my product] completely. [etc…]
Do you also report on [this other field]? Our mother company has a better [thing in that field] than [competitors]. I hope that you won’t write a big article about [the other field] that touts only [competitors] as if we never existed.
Please take notice.
It is true that the author of this e-mail, Kvetch McCranklestein (not his real name), did have a point. I glossed over e-mails he sent me in the past and didn’t cover his product. But this is so not the way to make things right when that happens. And it happens all the time. The thing is, even when you’re wronged by the press, it’s rarely in your interest to be snippy with a writer. Remember what your strategic goal is: To get known and then covered by someone who’s disposed to like your product. When you complain like this, you just give writers reasons to look for excuses to not cover you.
In the case of McCranklestein, I actually e-mailed him back, at first admonishing him for his tone. We eventually had a civil and forthright e-mail conversation about how things like this happen. It felt pretty positive.
But I still haven’t covered the product.
Filed under Common sense, Email
Tip #163: Smile or die
When you reach a reporter on the phone, turn on your energy. Smile. You’re selling something, remember? Act like it. Don’t be a downer.
Also, take the gum out of your mouth, don’t make a PR call from a mobile phone, get to the point, etc. Reporters’ ears are highly attuned to tone and effort. When you’re phoning it in, we tune it out.
Filed under Common sense
Tip #162: I love the smell of press releases in the morning
Avoid carpet-bombing your press releases. That is, sending the same release to everyone in a newsroom. It just creates problems.
First, it makes you look cheap. If you don’t know who to send information to, sending it to everyone is not a good alternative. Do your homework.
And of course, reporters know when a release is carpet-bombed. We carpet-bomb our newsrooms ourselves when we get information that we want someone else to grab but that’s not important to assign to a particular person immediately. But when everyone gets the same release, you end up with multiple internal carpet-bombings. Any impression that the information is precious and worth jumping on is wiped out.
You dilute effectiveness when you don’t focus.
Filed under Common sense, Email
Rafe
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