Welcome to the Kleber & Associates blog! Here’s the latest on Choosing Your Words Wisely
It is with a heavy heart that I must confess that I am not a blogger…my attention span is much shorter than that.
But so are the attention spans of the reporters I pitch to.
In a world where information is instant and time is always of the essence, public relations professionals are left with only a few milliseconds to capture an editor’s attention. The same applies to the public, or should I say “audience.”
So what’s a PR girl to do? The answer: become word smart and choose wisely.
I have learned that it’s not the first sentence in a pitch that is the most crucial; it is instead the first three words of the subject line in the email. Why? When looking at your email through a phone or computer, there is a high chance that a long subject line cannot be seen in its entirety. An editor typically gets hundreds of emails a day and it’s your job to convince them to read your email. So those first three words in the subject line are crucial to persuade them to “make the click” to open your pitch.
The drama doesn’t stop there though. Your next consideration is the time it takes to get your point across and to remember to cater to the editor’s needs. By “needs” I mean to remember that technology has made us lazy and has trained us to search for information with little to no effort. So it is important to not only supply the press release but to take the extra step to copy and paste the press release in your email. That way it is as easy as a quick scroll down and voila, it’s all there!
Simple steps but they all have a huge effect. An editor picking your client’s product to feature because of a pitch that you wrote is pure gold, 14 karat gold. Taking the time to choose your words wisely and asking yourself “What would the editor want to read,” really does pay off in the end. Before your next attempt at pitching, be sure you will strike gold: Pick your words carefully. No pun intended.
