Check out this amazing post by Elana Zak from our Muck Rack editorial team. As someone who blogs a lot and pitches a lot I constantly feel the need to answer every single pitch I get no matter how horrible (see terrible pitch examples below in her post). It’s mostly out of pity since no matter how lazy, long and non-targeted the email is, I know how difficult it is to provide information with a journalist or blogger that compels them to want to write a positive story. I also know what having clients is like (which full-time bloggers and journalists don’t always know too much about).

My response, is always, “what’s the social TV angle?” Social TV is the main topic that the blog I write for covers and the meaning is obvious, social media meets traditional TV. I love writing about lots of different topics, even if they might seem vague. All I need is to be convinced that there is a tie-in to my beat if I haven’t already seen one. If you can’t come up with a compelling answer after I ask the question, what’s the social TV angle, it tells me I probably shouldn’t consider pitching the story to my editor.

Personally, I use Muck Rack (where I work) to uncover those tiny little angles that could actually very well turn into something big. If you use Muck Rack’s Pro search, you can take a term and search all the tweets of all the journalists in our database and pinpoint if they’ve ever tweeted or linked to an article that’s relevant to what you’re trying to pitch. Then, even if it’s a long shot, you’ve at least tried to get them to see they’ve show some interest.

muckrack:

Peter Kafka, a senior editor at The Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital, recently sent out this tweet.

Dear Nirvanix: Congrats on the big C round, and your “continuing momentum”. But I don’t know what you do. Also, my name is not Michael.

It got us thinking about bad PR…