Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Insights from the Inside

If you’re already in the habit of contacting the press, great! Keep it up. But here’s a little tough love. If you contact a reporter or worse respond to a reporter’s query through a service like HARO (Help A Repoter) or Profnet, and send them an unsolicited link to your web site you are wasting your time.

We The Media)WILL NOT follow our links. The primary reason is time. My weekly radio program has to field between 600 and 800 queries a month. Can you imagine what Fox News deals with?

I cannot tell you how many times I get something like

“Hey Michael check out my web site”

AND THAT’S IT! It’s insulting, amateurish, makes you appear lazy and implies you do not respect the reporters time. There are thousands of people that pay PRNewswire thousands and get little or no response and wonder why. This is why.

The link is okay at the conclusion of your query response, but should be preceded with the line:

“For more information go to”

Reporters are looking for answers. As the expert that’s your job. Don’t make reporters do even more research they don’t have time for in the first place

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