While I don’t subscribe to bashing folks in regard to outreach or posting voluminous bad PR queries on my blog, this one was too “bad” or “good” to pass up.
Today I got a real press query that had the subject line of “My vacuum cleaner needs a software upgrade”.
Seriously.
I was pretty sure it was spam, but I opened the email and it was from a PR person and the content of the email was about one company’s acquisition of another company in the content management space. (I used to write for Publish.com and this was one of my main topics of coverage so thus the query.)
Vacuum cleaners and content management systems are a bit of a stretch, there are better ways to tell the story that fit within the terminology of the company’s products and the journalists covering the beat.
So here’s the takeaway – don’t write pithy subject lines that have no real relevance to what you’re trying to get news covered about. Espescially, if honestly they have nothing in common with the possible story’s topic focus.
Pitching to people is a really important skill to know if you’re going to keep engaging PR, bloggers and journalists about your product, book or service.
So if you’re a book author and you’re trying to reach out to a potential journalist to review your book, here are five subject lines you never want to use:
Top 5 Subject Lines…Not To Use:
1. Read This Book
2. My book is not unlike Faulkner, Chaucer, Chekov or Drucker
3. THis book is all you’ll ever need to know the real scoop on “”"”"”"
4. My kids need a college fund and here’s the book to get it.
5. This book is groundbreaking and you’ll be left out if you don’t read it
Good Ones to Use:
1. Review Copy Available – Book Title
2. Lloyd Dangle – Liberal Cartoonist Releases New Collection of Cartoons and Still Evades Gitmo
3. Blog Schmog – (title of Bob Bly’s book – had I been his publicist I would have only used those two words all the time in the subject line when trying to garner reviews or comment.)
4. Reviewers Copy – Book Title – Jack Welch called this book, “The greatest book ever written.” (Only if he really did, but you get the example.)
5. Possible book for your Review – Title of Book -
And while we’re at it, and I know I’ve posted this before, but go and read “The Care and Feeding of the Press” by Esther Schindler at Netpress.org.
Interview with Bob Bly here.
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