1. Not understanding the publications and its guidelines
By not contacting the Editor, or editorial team and establishing a relationship, or even understanding what features and editorial that the publication or the Editor of the publication want to receive is one of the biggest mistakes that many people make when submitting editorial for a publication.
A simple call into the Editor prior to planning a press release is the first move that you should make and one where you should tell them what you do and who you do it for, what kind of stories you have available within the business and whether those kind of stories would fit into the preferred criteria for the publication and it’s editor.
Having this communication in the first instance opens up dialogue and would avoid your email with a press release attached would from being deleted upon receipt. Once you have built trust with the editorial team they often come back and ask you to produce editorial for them.
2. Submitting a sales pitch
If you write about your own company, it would generally sound like a complete sales pitch. This is hard to rectify when you are “in the business” rather than an outsiders point of view, such as a PR agency, where they can take a holistic approach to press releases and stories.
If you can imagine a typical publication probably receives between 30 and 50 news pieces per day for submission, all believing that they have the divine right to be published in the chosen magazine. The Editor needs to make a quick judgement on the stories that they receive and often these are skim-read and some are deleted are looking at the subject line. Think about what the target audience of the magazine want to read – do they really want to read about how good you are in your own words? They would be more interested in a recent case study with a client, remembering to get the clients input at the same time to add weight to the piece and not make it all one-sided.
3. Not following up
Once the piece has been submitted to the press there should be a follow up call within 48 hours to the editorial team to discuss whether the piece is good to go, or if it needs more attention. By making it easier for the editorial team by giving them clean, concise copy, which is compelling in its story, would create a trust between you and the editorial team. When this trust has been reached, your stories are often printed without amendment, and you are making their job easier by submitting such good quality collateral.
