This blog hasn’t been commented on since May, but this information is so extremely valuable to us as students.

Jess explained in the previous comment that we are trying to pitch ourselves as employees and interns. This is probably the most frustrated I’ve been in my entire life. I am trying to lock-up an internship in New York this summer and I’ve sent out countless letters to PR firms and businesses in Manhattan, and though I have received positive replies from several of them, I’ve always wondered what an employer might see in a simple cover letter.

I’ve found that instead of trying to sell myself in a few short paragraphs, like Jess put it, I try to actually have a contact person within the company and keep in touch with them, setting up “relationships” so I’m not just another student hoping to get a call back.

I have tried to be creative and persuasive in my pitch letters, in hopes of catching the employer’s attention. I have to admit that coming up with a way to sell yourself to the person on the other end in just a couple of paragraphs is harder than I thought!!

Your advice to pitch without letting them know they are being pitched to is hard in a cover letter, but it sounds like it can be very effective. Considering the employer knows that you are interested in the job if you are submitting a resume and cover letter, if the cover letter is written exquisitely, the person reading it might not realize he/she is being pitched to!

I’m definitely going to use this advice in my next cover letters! Thanks so much!

I work in sales and people don’t like to be approached with a long pitch. I go into a business and they want to know exactly who I am, what I am selling, what it will do for them and how much it costs. After I get to know the client we will chat and I can suggest things, but at an initial meeting it is pretty cut and dry. Of course, being nice and easy to talk to is a plus when approaching someone, but after that they want to information.

This is how I try to conduct cold calls and visits, that way it is left up to the client to decide whether they want to buy or not and the salesperson knows that they told them all the information.

I am working at the Sports Academy this semester, where a lot of my duties consist of writing press releases and distributing them to the media. Since I do not have a long-standing relationship with media in the surrounding area, I have had to write numerous pitch letters to try and get them to run press releases and/or write stories on the business.
My biggest success came with the Auburn Plainsman. Luckily, the editor was a sorority sister of mine. She agreed to assign a reporter to the story, and sure enough, there was a brief write up about our event.

However, some of my other endeavors have been not so successful. I am thankful for your advice on good ways to approach a pitch letter. I will make sure that I am upfront and clear about what I would like, while still trying to maintain/build a friendly, positive relationship!

I recently attended the PRSA “Real World” conference in Atlanta, which was designed for up-and-coming public relations graduates. One of the first seminars to be presented included a panel of public relations practitioners and journalists, and was on the topic of pitching. The general consensus of the panel was that pitches will not get read by anyone if they are poorly written, not to the point, or directed to the wrong person.

What is hardest to master for pitching, though, seems to be trying to create a universal format that pleases everyone. What may be well written and to the point for one person, could seem too casual or poorly constructed to another. When Google searching “pitch letters,” you come across more than 15 million hits all telling you a different way to pitch a letter. To me the hardest part of trying to pitch a letter, is figuring out how to direct the pitch and how to write it to the specific person.

But, I do appreciate all your help on pitching, and I completely agree with you on the fact that a simple thank-you can speak volumes and go a long way.

In the first journalism class I took, I had to train myself to write like a journalist. This means cutting out extra words or using one word instead of three…basically cutting out the ‘fluff’ and getting right to the point. This showed me how journalists write, and also gave me an idea of how to pitch an idea to them. In order to successfully pitch an idea to journalists you have to understand their point of view.

People who I say like to hear themselves talk are the ones who like to use pompous, pretentious language… the ones who are going to pour out a ridiculous amount of information to you without one ounce of sensitivity to the fact that most of that information would be useless to you. It is reassuring to know that journalists help put some of those people in their place because obviously their pitch will not be used with this kind of lack of sensitivity to their needs.

People who use flowery language and are not straightforward make those around them distrust them. People aren’t stupid, they can tell when you don’t know what you’re talking about and not doing the appropriate research to fit the occasion is something that goes against what most journalists and PR professionals are about. So to do that to a journalist with a pitch that is too long, well I guess I am learning you might as well just throw your pitch out the window before they do.