Emilie Gerber: recommendation

Transcript context

…And oftentimes I just reply, "Here's my policy." And then, "Okay, good to know." Kind of along these lines, something I wanted to ask earlier, you mentioned a few publications to go after, and then how to pitch people. Obviously the way that you're describing takes a bunch of time. How many people are you often emailing, DMing per attempt to get a story? Because it sounds like it's not a ton, and so you have time to do these sorts of custom pitches. Or is it a lot higher than it sounds? I would say for hard news, funding, the startup launch, those sort of things, less, and I try to really stagger it because we're offering exclusives, and I highly recommend offering exclusives. So the worst thing that can happen is two reporters reply, and are both interested, and you have to go back to one and say, "Nevermind." And sometimes that's okay if they left you, if it's been a week or something, they hadn't gotten back, and they'll understand. So it's fine to move on without getting an answer. So I would say, yeah, with the funding story, it could be anywhere from one to six reporters on average, sometimes more. With stuff like general just outreach, relationship building, trying to get on podcasts, it kind of is a numbers game, and you really have to balance quality and quantity. And that's why I love starting with the first note and not saying much, and just saying, "Hey, you open to guest ideas?" Because it allows you to do more. I'd rather do that than send a bad pitch, and not have it be targeted to the right sort of audience. And so that's kind of a way to play the numbers game while still being respectful. But yeah, I mean, with some clients maybe they get one opportunity for every 20 or 30 things that we send. And so yeah, we try not to do... We don't do blasting media, it's not about sending the same pitch to a single list of people. It's figuring out, which ones do I want to really double down on because they're the perfect target? And you'll keep trying, you'll be really custom, which deserve maybe a slightly higher level note, which deserve a DM, and just figuring out your strategy from that. Awesome, okay. Do you have examples of pitches, announcements that were not as effective as they could have been, and advice for how they could have been better?…

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