{"id":4288,"date":"2010-11-05T10:37:04","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T09:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uk.cision.com\/?p=1744"},"modified":"2010-11-05T10:37:04","modified_gmt":"2010-11-05T10:37:04","slug":"pitching-tips-for-prs-ruth-prickett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/pitching-tips-for-prs-ruth-prickett\/","title":{"rendered":"Pitching Tips for PRs – Ruth Prickett"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, we posted our Journalist Spotlight on Ruth Prickett, Editor of Financial Management<\/a>. Today, Ruth offers some practical advice for communications professionals.<\/p>\n

Ruth’s Pitching Tips for PRs<\/strong><\/p>\n

Financial Management welcomes suggestions for features that are relevant to its readers and that offer expert or in-depth analysis on suitable topics. Ruth asks PRs to bear in mind that she receives hundreds of emails a day and many of those are irrelevant and therefore not read. Furthermore, she expects PRs to know something about the magazine\u2019s audience and to have thought about what affects them.<\/p>\n

The best way to approach Ruth is to send an email with a brief synopsis of the story. She says \u201cIf I don\u2019t respond, it really isn\u2019t worth phoning me to ask whether I got the email! Good stories involve innovations or best practice in management accountancy in an interesting or complicated business environment (public or private sector) that could be relevant to readers across national borders. Subjects can be anything from sustainability and business ethics to legal issues, mergers and acquisitions, cross-border currency transactions and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ruth reminds PRs that Financial Management is a global magazine. \u201cA story about a small firm in Wiltshire would have to be exceptionally important to get a mention. Global or significant surveys or research projects can be of interest if they come up with something useful for our readers.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you suggest an expert who can write for Financial Management, Ruth asks you to ensure that they actually do it. \u201cI have several times commissioned interesting-looking pieces from PRs, only to have them phone up at the eleventh hour to say that their client is too sick\/busy\/forgetful to produce it. This is hugely annoying and I won\u2019t use the piece in future (or anything else by that client). It\u2019s also important that the expert does actually write it (or at least contribute the main information) \u2013 I don\u2019t want a generic piece written by a PR who doesn\u2019t know the subject but has once spoken to the client. I\u2019ll just send it back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, Ruth requests: \u201cDon\u2019t send me press releases addressed to the editor of a rival magazine or with the name of the magazine spelt wrongly. Similarly don\u2019t send me ones with horrendous typos, grammatical errors and\/or factual howlers. It doesn\u2019t inspire confidence and will, at best, simply be passed around the office to be mocked. (Honestly, it happens all the time.)\u201d<\/p>\n

Ruth does not wish to receive high-res photos. \u201cYou may say \u2018but it\u2019s only 6mb\u2019 but remember how many emails I get each day. It adds up. Similarly, however, please be aware that it\u2019s useful to have high-res pictures of the key person\/place\/event in your press release to send us if we request it. It\u2019s irritating when you email for a picture on news press day and find that the PR has phoned the client for a picture, but he\u2019s now on holiday for the next six weeks shooting buffalo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis may sound negative, but noting these points could save everyone loads of time and effort. We really do welcome good stories from efficient PRs who understand who our readers are, can put us in touch with the right people, produce well-written copy on time and respond to queries quickly and intelligently. We will use these people repeatedly, so it\u2019s worth getting it right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Download Cision\u2019s Finance Briefing Book \u2013 50 UK\/US premium profiles for key finance influencers, including Ruth Prickett<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, we posted our Journalist Spotlight on Ruth Prickett, Editor of Financial Management. Today, Ruth offers some practical advice for communications professionals. Ruth’s Pitching Tips for PRs Financial Management welcomes suggestions for features that are …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":322,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3532],"tags":[138,3059],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4288"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/322"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}