Image Credit: Follow The Leader by KaCey97007. Licensed through Creative Commons on flickr.com

If you’ve read my previous articles (How to Follow-Up in particular), you’ve seen the OvernightPR way to follow up on your press release. I’ve said this before a few times, but I’ll mention it here again: your press release is a tool for you to use to get PR coverage, not and end-goal of your PR efforts. In order to maximize your return on the investment of writing a release (or paying a writer to do it for you) and distributing it, you need to have your all your ducks in a row.

I’ve given dozens of tips away on how to line those little guys up to make sure that you don’t miss your opportunity with your press release, but I’ve also received a few requests from readers of past articles asking how exactly they should phrase their follow-up email. That’s largely a matter of personal taste, but I’ll share with you my template that I use when I’m doing follow-up emails.

The Template:

Subject Line: Pitch based upon your recent article [[HEADLINE / NAME]] or
Subject Line: Your recent article [[HEADLINE / NAME]] gave me the idea for this PR pitch or
Subject Line: I saw your article [[HEADLINE / NAME]] and thought that I’d pitch this idea by you

[[JOURNALIST NAME]],

I’ve been reading [[COLUMN, PUBLICATION, BLOG, ETC]] for a while because you write a lot about [[MY INDUSTRY, MY COMPANY, ETC]]  and your recent article [[HEADLINE / NAME]] sparked an idea for a press release that I’ve distributed about [[MY COMPANY, NEW TOPIC, WHATEVER]].  Your [[ARTICLE/ POST]] discussed [[IDEA, TREND, LEGISLATION, NEW PRODUCT, MARKET CHANGE, ETC]], and [[MY COMPANY /  ORGANIZATION]] is [[DOING SOMETHING SIMILAR, TAKING THE TREND FUTHER, BUCKING THE TREND]].

In case you’re interested in hearing my story–and maybe writing about it, too!–I’m including the first bit of my new release below. If you want to know more about [[MY COMPANY / ORGANIZATION/ THIS NEWS]], go to [[LINK]] or [[EMAIL / CALL / WRITE / SEND SMOKE SIGNAL]] and I’ll be happy to help.

Thanks for your time!

[[INCLUDE HEADLINE OF RELEASE AND FIRST PARAGRAPH, WITH A CLEAR LINK TO THE REST OF IT]]

[[CLOSING SALUTATION OR NOTE & CONTACT INFO]]

Using the Template:

As I said, this template is largely a matter of personal taste and circumstance. Unsurprisingly, there’s not a lot of text that I keep unchanged from follow-up to follow-up. That takes a decent amount of time, but it’s the only reliable way I’ve found of getting a release some attention. Do note: if you *haven’t* been reading that journalists’ column or blog and try to fake it in the letter, you will probably get caught out. They get a lot of pitches every day, and the main chance you have of standing out is to write a pitch that is truthfully related to what they write about.

Don’t try any linguistic gymnastics to explain how your story is related to a recent article. If you can’t pitch your release to a partricular blogger / journalist, let it slide. There will be other chances.

E*Releases.com states (and they’re not the first) that you can either look at your release as a shotgun or a rifle. I think that news releases are of more value to the company that they are released in behalf of when they’re targeted. Just blazing away at every journalist in sight gets you on black lists or–worse yet–mentioned somewhere like the Bad Pitch Blog.

There’s enough spam out there. You don’t need to add to it.

So what do you think of the template?  Got any questions? Leave a comment and let’s chat!