About a year ago, I wrote about five common mistakes startups make when emailing journalists. But the truth is, there are more than five common mistakes, and if you want to get coverage, working on your email pitch is one of the best ways to increase your chances. Here are five more mistakes to avoid while you’re doing that:
1. Getting personal (when you don’t actually know me)
If we’ve never met before, don’t email me as if we were best friends. If you don’t actually know me, there’s a good chance that whatever research you did about me to try to appear personal is going to be a little off-base. Here’s an example: I get emails somewhat frequently in which the writers assume I have a deep passion for something (like food-focused coupon websites) just because I wrote an article or two about them recently. So when I get an email from someone who’s acting like they know me and trying to appeal to my love of restaurant couponing, it’s weird.
Instead of doing that, try actually getting to know me. Leave thoughtful comments on a couple of my articles, or tweet me about them. That way, when you email me to pitch your startup’s story, I’ll recognize your name and I’ll probably know a little something about you. That doesn’t guarantee I’ll pick it, of course, but it does improve the chances that I’ll bother reading to the end. (Sorry if that sounds harsh, but we get a lot of emails; there’s not time to read all of them).
2. Name-dropping other sites
I touched on this briefly in my first article on this topic, but it deserves its own spot on the list. Telling me that you just got featured on Techcrunch isn’t a selling point.
I understand the logic behind it: you’re thinking “this famous website covered my startup, and if they’re interested, that means other sites might be too. I can use their name recognition to make my startup seem more important.” You’re not wrong about that, but you’re also sending another message. It says that you value that other site above ours, and that you’re only willing to give us news after they’ve written about it. And no self-respecting journalist likes getting news late or writing stories that somebody else has already written.
3. Getting way too technical
Here’s a dirty little not-so-secret about the industry: tech journalists are, generally, experts in writing, not in technology. Yes, obviously we know our way around a computer and a smartphone, and we’ve got a deeper level of understanding than the average layman. But that doesn’t mean we’ve got a Ph.D in microchip design or are writing an operating system in Assembly in our spare time. If your pitch email is too technical, there’s a decent chance that I’m going to skip it because I simply don’t understand it – it’s impossible to write well about something you don’t understand.
That doesn’t mean you can’t pitch a highly technical product to journalists, but it does mean that you need to dumb it down to doesn’t-have-an-engineering-doctorate levels. Often, the easiest way to do that is by focusing on what your product or service does for your clients rather than how it works. If the “how it works” part is key to your pitch for some reason – maybe that’s what’s unique about your startup – then you need to figure out some way to communicate that simply so that regular folks like us can understand it.
4. Filling your pitch with buzzwords
Keep in mind that tech journalists at sites like ours are people who look at startup pitches all day. That means that if you’re using popular industry buzzwords, you’re probably describing yourself the exact same way as twelve other startups we’ve just been reading about. And those terms start to get on your nerves.
I could come up with a long list here – disruptive, game-changing, and serial entrepreneur are all high on my list of terms I wish would disappear – but my basic point is: be creative, direct, and honest in the way that you describe your company. Don’t fall back on industry buzzwords; they’re lame and they make you sound like everyone else. That’s not what you want.
Also, unless people are getting guillotined, your product is not “revolutionary”. I’m sorry, I know it’s metaphorical, but it’s a dumb metaphor.
5. Making it too long, too short, or too formatted
If you want to write a 10,000 word essay on why we should cover your startup that’s fine, but you should know that I’m never going to actually read it. In general, you want to try to hit a sweet spot with your emails to the press: long enough to explain what your startup does and why they should care, short enough to keep them from falling asleep or getting distracted. Exactly how long that’s going to be depends on your company, but if you’ve gone over 400 words, it’s probably too long.
That doesn’t mean you can’t include more information elsewhere, but keep the pitch email itself short. Include your supplementary information as an attachment or as a link.
On a related note, while a little formatting can go a long way towards making an email stand out, don’t take it too far. A couple of bolded words can help your pitch jump and hammer your points home. An image or two can help to illustrate what you’re doing. But if your email has text in five different colors, a custom background image, and four different font sizes, you’ve gone way too far. Keep it simple: that’s good advice for your content and your formatting.
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