Community Discussion - Pitches from content marketers versus publicists: any difference?
-
Howdy, Moz community! Hope you're all having a fine Friday so far!
Tuesday on the blog we featured Samuel Scott's superpowered "Advanced Guide to Online Publicity Campaigns." One interesting tidbit stood out to me as I was reading; the author states:
On online marketing websites and blogs, I see pitching often being discussed by "content marketers" as a way to gain shares of and links to one thing or another. They should stop. I receive e-mailed pitches from PR executives and "content marketers" all the time — and I can tell within three seconds which one I'm getting.
How? Here is the difference between the two.
"Content marketers" pitch me:
1.) To share or link to some random article, and they do so often when
2.) I have no connection to or interest in the topic at allPublicists pitch me:
1.) To write about an idea because
2.) They already know that I have a connection to or interest in that topicI ignore or delete the pitches from "content marketers." Following the pitches from publishers, I may choose to include their source, study, or idea in some future piece in the publications to which I contribute. Most "link earning" methods are poor imitations of traditional publicity practices.
Pitch in a way that will genuinely interest the people who you are contacting. Do not pitch thinly-veiled attempts to get links and shares for you or your clients.
I definitely get these emails fairly regularly, but I've never given thought to just what it is that makes me respond positively to some and decline others. So here's my discussion question for the week:
What's the distinction for you? Have you noticed that, in your own pitches, you've had a better reception to a certain strategy? Does the "publicist" angle work better in your experience, or have you had plenty of luck with the "content marketer"-type pitch? What do you actually find yourself responding to, in these situations?
-
Always happy to see an EGOL response. For me the issue really is one of credulity. When regularly I am approached by those who want to put something on one of our websites or client's websites I am always struck by how blatant they are and how assumptive they try to be. These we can call content marketers, but I like EGOL's reference - they are solicitors. They are not unlike when I was in another business and had a lot of customers; regularly people would approach with the world famous ... "VALUE ADD!" We were supposed to let them market to our customers for free because there world changing product or service was so massively valuable. I think my sarcasm tells you my answer to them was the same as my answer to any content marketer, good bye. Please stop the spam.
With requests to write something I am fairly cautious but do have a couple of known business or marketing blogs that I infrequently contribute to. Since they are publishing media on the web, I am fine with calling them publicists.
Interesting discussion you started Felicia,
Robert
-
I have gotten many hundreds of solicitations over the past 12 years of running a growing content site. A solicitation is simply a query that asks if you are open to publishing an article written by someone else. These are a total waste of my time. Delete.
So, here are my standards. You might not like them and you might not agree with them. But, this is what I use because I am done wasting time on spammers who wear suits to work, people who spin rubbish, plagiarists, and people who think that fluff is substantive.
I called them "solicitations" in the first paragraph. I didn't call them "pitches". The difference, in my opinion, is that a "pitch" reveals the topics that you are qualified to write good substantive content about. A sign that you are qualified to write about a topic is that you have access to the places, people, equipment and materials needed to get good photos - which are required for a good article. Another sign is that you can - in one sentence - explain why you have experience to write about the topic. It could be formal education, substantive work history, or other experience that required you to spend a lot of hours engaged with this topic. If you don't do that. Delete.
If you say that you can write about anything, then I know you are not telling somebody the truth - you are either BSing yourself or trying to BS me. Delete. Ban your email from my inbox.
If you are still in the running and tell me you can write about atomic emission spectroscopy we will speak by phone. In a few sentences I will probably be able to tell if your selection of words and care of speaking reveal a person who knows what they are talking about. Gossip, prattle and blather are no substitute for factual technical content published for experienced audiences.
So, after about 12 years and hundreds of solicitations, only a couple dozen people have submitted something that I have been willing to publish. Most of them have work experience or teaching experience about the topics that they wrote about.
A publisher who values his or her audience is able to say "thanks for trying out, but sorry, we can't use this". If your message was deleted, I didn't waste your time.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Updating Content - Make changes to current URL or create a new one?
I'm working with a content team on a job search guide for 2019. We already have a job search guide for 2018. Should we just edit the content of the job search guide for 2018 to make it current for 2019, which means the job search guide for 2018 would not exist anymore or should we keep the 2018 guide and just create a new web page for the 2019 guide that way both exist. We currently rank very well for the 2018 job search guide.
Content Development | | Olivia9541 -
Why is content getting longer?
I find it odd that with the way life is today -- the gotta-have-it-now, instant gratification, can't hold someone's attention span for longer than 3 seconds -- why Google is wanting content to be REALLY long?? I've read articles saying content should be as long as 2,000 words per page. This just seems nuts to me. No one wants to read anymore. Look at how short Twitter posts are and how videos are so prevalent now. Any thoughts?
Content Development | | SEOhughesm0 -
Content building: Ratio of blog messages?
What is a good ratio for publishing blog messages on our company website? Which ratio is "Panda-friendly"?
Content Development | | wellnesswooz0 -
Page Content?
So I have review pages for websites on my site, each website has a review around 400-500 words. Recently I had my writers write 2 additional articles on each site but about something they have there. My thinking was interlinking them allowing them to rank individually etc. However now after looking around etc.. I see that content that is upwards of 1000 words or more might be more powerful and the way this is all written etc.. I could easily put it all on one page.... So my question is do I go with 3 pages or 1 page. I can see strength in both
Content Development | | dueces0 -
How to make new content Indexed faster by google
I would like to know what can I do. Normally it takes google around 3 days to index my content. I got a site map, swiched the crawling rate to the fastest in my webmaster tools. I also tried crawling my homepage as google bot and sending it to the index with all linked pages but even if I do so my content takes around 3 days if not more to get indexed. I publish around 20 posts a week. My SEOmoz page authority is 48. Some sites of my competition seem to be getting their content indexed in the same day. What else can be done?
Content Development | | sebastiankoch0 -
Evergreen content: Dedicated section or blog posts?
As part of our content strategy we are creating an ongoing series of articles to help both our potential buyers and our users learn about our product and improve their knowledge of industry best practices in general. Internally, we've had some debate as to where we should host this content within our site. We've identified two approaches: Series of blog posts Dedicated knowledge section of the website If we go with the first approach, we would created a dedicated section that indexed all the blog posts. If we went with the second, we'd create blog posts for each of the articles announcing their addition. Is there any difference, SEO wise with the two approaches? What would you recommend? Thanks, Darren.
Content Development | | dgibbons0 -
How can i solve duplicate problem with different url needed?
My client is a big international firm with 10 websites with different url (.co.uk, .com, .com.au, .pl... etc). All websites are exactly the same except the price. I suggested them to only use .com and use region as a sub domain like au.xxx.com instead of xxx.com.au. However they cannot do that for some reason. I am trying to solve the duplicate issue. I dont think i can use 301 redirect or canonial link because all regions are making even traffics. Any suggestions?
Content Development | | ringochan0 -
Reusing Older content urls
Hi I have Windows Phone Games related site , we often post press release for various games as soon as they get released and later in a week or 2 we review some of these games . My question is , would it be better if I use use the old post and just delete the press release and post the review in that space . I will use an example to explain the situation Today I will do a press release : http://www.bestwp7games.com/infinite-flight-flight-simulator-for-windows-phone-7.html then say after a week I publish a review : http://www.bestwp7games.com/infinite-flight-windows-phone-flight-simulator-review.html My question is would it be better ( from an SEO point of view ) if I just delete the content from http://www.bestwp7games.com/infinite-flight-flight-simulator-for-windows-phone-7.html and add the review content in to that post ? PS : I am not a SEO guy so this might be a stupid question , if it is just go easy on me 🙂
Content Development | | Saijo_George0