The purpose of pitching a story is to get coverage for it. That means that if someone offers to write about the topic you’ve proposed and asks for the product you mentioned or simply for more info, you need to reply to their emails. Not keeping track of who you’ve pitched to is a bad idea in such a case. Especially if instead of following up, you resend the same pitch and fail to reply to the second inquiry.

If you don’t know how to keep track, here’s a simple idea: get a list of names and emails of people to contact. As you send your message to them, mark them in a different color. If they reply and need more info, use a third color. It’s easy and a bit playful. And if you’re good at mixing colors, it looks good too.

Following up is a must. For both those who have shown interest and for those who’ve not replied. Those interested will actually publish after you give them what they need to do so and a friendly reminder with some interesting details might help others decide to publish your story in the end.

Why is this such an important matter? As it happens, lots of pitches are released in the wild – as a recent comment by Karen Swim also shows – and bloggers’ emails are never replied to. For example, yours truly received an email asking her to review a business book. The book seemed interesting enough, so I replied, asking for a copy. Of course I never got one. Judging by the semi-standard message, I wasn’t the only one who received that email. And  I can bet I wasn’t the only one not to get a proper reply. Which translates into missed opportunities.

Pitching is not always a single-action task. Sometimes you need to follow up, provide more information, be able to answer additional questions. In all honesty, most times it’s not as easy as just sending out an email. If you’re not going to seize all opportunities and focus on getting as much coverage as possible, don’t do it in the first place. You’re not only missing out on something really good, you’re also making sure you get yourself and your client one of those nasty, negative  images.

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What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

Nice to see you all at a fresh new edition of our Monday Reading Roundup! I’ve prepared some cool articles from the week past for you to enjoy.

But I want to start on a hillarious note. We’ve all been dealing with spammers for a long time. They waste precious moments, never take no or an answer and basically are so many we can’t possibly add all the addresses to our blacklist…So here’s a little laughing of them and our own problems: Mihaela Lica discovered that spammers are stupid and can definitelly prove it!

When promoting your business on the internet, you will make some mistakes. Some might harm more than you could ever predict, so here’s a list of what not to do when promoting your business online from Cath Lawson.

Janelle asked a great question on Create Business Growth: while we know we are extremely dependent on the internet as individuals, have businesses become too dependent as well?

RSS subscribers come and some are lost along the way. If you’re thinking of getting them back, you should definitely read this guest post on ProBlogger by Glenn Allsopp.

When the winter holidays are approaching, we all think of the gifts we want to give to others. Karen Swim recommends a few gifts to give ourselves, to make us happier and stronger for the new year.

Thinking of pitching a blogger? Not all of them have personal “how to pitch me” guides, but if you use Diana Huff’s you’ll probably throw in a successful one. And here’s some advice from the other side of the border, the PR person’s view on pitching by Alan Weinkrantz.

And to end on the note I started with, here’s a little something from Jeff Pulver: The Twitter Girl Song!

Have a great week and see you next time!