Why PR pros should hold off on the follow-ups
Reporters are inundated with requests, and your ‘just checking in’ call or email might damage your media relationships. Here’s why you should take a breath and be patient.
The more success you have as a writer, the more people want you to quote or profile their clients.
So they bombard your inbox asking when something will be published, whether you used their client’s quotes and whether they can see the piece before it goes live.
PR pros often forget that a journalist is basically a middle man. Reporters will gather information from sources, put it into their own words, and pass it along to their editors. After that, they rarely know where a given article stands in the editing/publishing process.
These insider tips can smooth the interactions between PR pros and journalists:
1. When reporters promise to be in touch, believe them.
Journalists are busy, so it may take some time, but they will reach out to you if and when they have information about publishing.
Most of the time, a reporter has no idea when something will be published. Some things take a week to go live; others take months. It all depends on the publication’s content plan, the editing staff’s workload and the emergence of timely stories that take priority over evergreen topics.
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