My fortune teller told me yesterday that very soon I will be able to write on this topic based on my own experience. Until then, I humbly refer you to this great post on how to pitch to bloggers, written by Amit Knaani of Vikido.
If, like Amit or myself, your job description includes writing to people you don’t know and who don’t know you, in the hope that such lack of knowledge won’t stand in the way of them giving you a minute of their busy lives, not to mention the even slimmer thread of hope that what you have to tell them would be interesting enough for them to tell others about – then (a) congratulations, you’re an entrepreneur, and (b) thou shalt knoweth the truth of what Amit has to say.
As for me, I can definitely say that of all the outreaches I’ve recently attempted, the ones that elicited responses shared the following common properties:
- I learned enough about the recipients prior to pitching to them, so my message was personalized and relevant
- I was very clear about what I wanted from them
- They were all jolly good fellows!
One more thing: although Amit clearly says “No Templates”, I do use them when I work with Tout, a brilliant pitching assistant web app. Though, if I’m perfectly honest, none of my successful pitches were ever template-based.