The surprising reasons journalists aren’t replying to you

Have you spent hours coming up with great stories and crafting perfect press releases, only to find that journalists aren’t replying to your emails?

Well, you’re not alone. This happens to most business owners in the beginning, (except for the lucky few that are just those annoyingly brilliant people) and in fact, when this happens most people give up early on.

But if you’re willing to push past this and adapt then you’ll likely get some great results.

And I would bet that the reason you’re getting no response is likely to be one of the following:

Your story is not interesting enough.

Don’t think for a second that this means that you won’t ever find a story – it just might mean that the current one is just not cutting the mustard. 

If you are writing about your business and not offering any kind of angle then you’ll need to add more. Angles can be anything from case studies, tips or trends and a great way to come up with angles or stories is to visualise the finished piece going into a magazine and think about how interesting that is for the reader. You’ll often find that it doesn’t quite work!

You’ve lost the journalist in smoke and mirrors.

A journalist needs to know enough about the story to make a decision within the first few lines and you need to use those lines wisely. Get rid of all the fancy adjectives and story-building and get straight to the good stuff early on.

You haven’t followed up.

When you email a journalist and they have decided (very quickly) that they want to explore your story further, they will flag your email and move on to the next hundred and it’s possible that this flag will drop down the long list of other flagged items, never to be seen again. That’s why it’s so important to chase up your email with another email. Just once and not by phone!

Want to learn more?

If you are a female founder or small business owner and you want to learn how to get yourself, your brand or your products featured in the press, check out my online world where you’ll find lots of support, free guides, courses and my online community.