There are moments when a certain story simply takes over the world. Or a country, or a city or a small town. The scale really does not matter, the effect is the same: every media outlet will cover that major event. It’s a journalistic rule you learn in the first year of journalism school. If something is really big, it takes over and becomes the most important piece of news, regardless of anything else.

Such events are the royal wedding we’ve just had, big elections, the earthquake in Japan, or Osama being killed. For a longer or shorter stretch of time, they have the spotlight and no one can compete. And it’s not just lifestyle magazines or political newspapers that cover them! Tech blogs and magazines will talk about the Twitter user who live tweeted the attack on Osama, financial newspapers will analyze the cost of the royal wedding or analyze the impact on foreign markets a natural disaster has. Travel outlets will talk about the travelers taking over London or the travel warnings issued after the Osama bin Laden death. 

Sure, all these outlets will still need other stories to publish, you cannot fill an entire edition with one story and the related ones you can think of! But will the other stories matter as much? Will anyone notice them? Those who are interested in the main event will overlook everything else, those who’ve had it with it will simply log off for the day. Therefore, at times like these, the best approach is to postpone your pitch unless it is directly related with the main event and strong enough to make it through the clutter. For example, if you’re the company providing the wedding flowers or designing the dress, you could pitch your story and actually get tons of attention. If you’re a small restaurant that decided to celebrate the wedding and are throwing a party with a longer than usual happy hour, the BBC will probably not publish your press release!

So instead of fighting for 5 seconds in a day where it means 5 seconds of being ignored, but on the air, it’s better to postpone your announcement. Plus, in case of major disasters, if you also have the bad luck of them occurring in your country or city, you and your client might be perceived as heartless. Unless you have a big event planned for months ahead, with press conference, partner meetings and people expecting you to show up, just put it off for a while!

You might see it as a hassle, but it’s not all bad. From each event, there is something to be learned. Don’t believe me? Have you read or heard President Obama’s speech on bin Laden being killed? If not, read it now, and also read this article by the Bad Pitch Blog providing valuable insight on what events like these can teach you.

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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The first time you meet a potential client is crucial. If you start on the wrong foot, you’ll never see them again, as they probably have 10 other competitors to choose from. Don’t kid yourself that you’re the only company doing what you do in your area or country. The cruel virtual reality is that in most cases, you’re competing with the world.

With so many opportunities, second chances are a rare commodity in business relationships. So making sure you never hear from them again is rather easy. If the potential client called the meeting, some of these five issues might not be so devastating (maybe they’ll brief you on what they do), but if you asked them to hear you out, take these easy steps and they’ll work hard to forget you ever wasted their time!

Photo credit: Engin Erdogan

How to never get called for a second meeting in 5 easy steps

1. Come utterly unprepared – If you don’t know who they are and what they do, they won’t expect you to come up with great ideas or services. They’ll instead spend 30 minutes to fill you in and then another 30 to answer your questions. Never mind all the info is already up on their site, that they run a blog and so many of their employees are on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. Never bother to find out more before the meeting. Cause what would you talk about then?

2. Say nothing relevant about yourself – Tell them everything you can about where you’ve worked, lived and what you do for other clients, but make sure it is in no way relevant to their business. If they’re in IT, talk about the car manufacturers, if they’re not interested in an IPO (and let’s face it, who is in this economic environment), talk about sucessful IPOs you’ve helped with. Laughing alone at your own jokes is a nice touch at this point.

3. Don’t listen – Listening is overrated anyway! You’re the expert, so there’s no point in listening to what they have to say. When they’re trying to explain particular traits of their line of business, ignore them. All businesses are the same, there’s really nothing new out there and you’ve seen it all!

Photo credit: Tiare Scott

4. Never adapt to their requirements – Obsessively push your solution, no matter how many times they say they’re not interested, they want to go in a different direction, they don’t believe it is the best solution for them. As an expert, you have the Perfect Plan that Never Fails! They should change their business to fit the plan, and not the other way around!

5. Make sure not to give them the slightest hint you could actually help them – if they want to get to a common ground and get some value from what you have to offer, help them fail! If they’re asking about similar companies, you must no nothing of them. Search through your printed PowerPoint three times before telling them the closest you’ve got is not exactly in their field, only slightly connected. It helps a lot if what you did for that other company can never add any value to their business.

See, it’s extremely easy! And the bonus? You don’t have to spend any time getting ready for such an important meeting. Just get some general info about yourself, don’t do any research and go there to be your charming little self! That should do the trick. You’ll never see that potential client again and you won’t have to worry about fitting them into your already busy schedule.

This entry will be part of a series of more, based on bad pitches I experience or hear of. Turning them into tips and tricks will probably help those pitching do a better job in the future.

Some blogs have moved, some are simply abandoned. Whatever the reason, the owners are clearly not interested in writing on them. So pitching to these people would be a waste of time and a full scale proof of lack of research skills or of not paying that much attention.

MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, Google blog search, all are great at helping you find blogs writing on a certain topic. But everyone of them has to be visited and checked as profiles are sometimes rather old, blogs are misplaced in a certain category or their administrators have shut them down a gazillion months ago.

Let’s analyze an example. Someone found my profile on MyBlogLog. I rarely log on to MyBlogLog so my old blog is still on my profile. It’s been closed since January. The only post on the homepage is my goodbye post. There’s a link to my new blog in that post and in the header. So why would someone pitch and mention my old blog? Do they want any sorts of exposure? I don’t think so!

So my advice is, when pitching bloggers, stop worrying about a number of contacts you need to check on your daily list. Just think of results and try to maximize the return on your effort and time investment. There are millions of blogs out there and not all interest you , especially if they are no longer updated. Just take the time to do your homework and then click the Send button.