How do journalists prefer to receive story pitches?
One of the core responsibilities of a public relations professional is pitching stories and maintaining a strong relationship with journalists. With digital channels proliferating, the opportunities to maintain this contact have seen a corresponding increase. Recent research from Business Wire has revealed exactly how this shift has taken place, and what the change means for individuals who…
One of the core responsibilities of a public relations professional is pitching stories and maintaining a strong relationship with journalists. With digital channels proliferating, the opportunities to maintain this contact have seen a corresponding increase.
Recent research from Business Wire has revealed exactly how this shift has taken place, and what the change means for individuals who are looking to develop a stronger relationship with journalists.
The research into which avenues people prefer to have stories pitched to them showed that over two-thirds (68 per cent) of respondents prefer email pitches over other communication methods. Press releases also featured highly, being popular among 21.9 per cent of respondents.
Respondents went on to state that press releases were also a staple when it came to running a story. In fact, 90 per cent of those surveyed had used a press release as the basis of a story in the last week, while 53 per cent used one or more press releases every day.
None of the other measures included in the survey recorded more than 3 per cent, including telephone calls, social media and text messaging.
While social media is clearly one area where journalists aren’t interested in receiving story pitches, there was still some value to come from these avenues. Almost three quarters (74 per cent) of respondents are conducting research through social media, even if they aren’t interested in receiving a story pitch through this channel.
The most popular avenues for receiving these updates were Twitter and LinkedIn, with these two avenues accounting for over 50 per cent of the social media channels that journalists are relying on.
The study also emphasised the importance of social media for demonstrating the relationship a company has with the general public. By demonstrating a relevance between news and a journalist’s readers, it is more likely that a journalist will run with a certain pitch.
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