Taking Your Relationship to the Next Level

April 20, 2012

Pitching a new media contact is a lot like an awkward first date. You don’t know enough about the other person to know what buttons not to push or what will score you major points. Just like when trying to start a relationship with a new reporter you may not know that they are more likely to give you a briefing if you start by only asking for 10 minutes, that they only want product information when you have an available customer or that they are just plain difficult (or delightful!) to work with.

Now Pitching Notes, a newly launched site geared at PR pros, gives us the chance to share our experience with reporters, both good and bad, and even rate them using a Yelp-style star system. Best of all – it’s free.

I know I get excited when I Yelp something and find out it has 900 reviews and a 4.5 rating. It fosters the anticipation that I am about to have a great experience. So I am all for a site that lets us share our journalist interactions with each other. If I know that a bunch of my peers have worked with Joe Reporter, and that he really likes short pitches, hates to be contacted on Tuesday mornings and is most responsive to email on Wednesday afternoons that only helps me create a custom, targeted pitch to maximize the potential of establishing a long, mutually beneficial relationship.

At Gutenberg we already leverage each other’s knowledge of media personality quirks, but the concept of having a site where all PR professionals can share their experiences is exciting. Like any site that relies on user’s feedback, it will take Pitching Notes a while to build up its database of reviewed reporters and become a reliable go-to resource, but as the site gains traction it will be a complementary addition to the big database tools like Cision and Vocus.