Getting Ink

Shameless plug: new PR training workshops

This summer, what could be more fun than coming to London and enjoying a lovely training workshop with the folks at the:101? Okay, so strictly speaking, there are lots of things more fun than PR training, but as far as training goes, this is pretty good:

We're offering spots on our Nationals&Broadcast and Journo:101 summer masterclasses for just £99 per person in July and August, plus in-house workshops and copy coaching sessions from £50 per person. Bargain.

These courses are ideal for anyone who wants first hand tips and advice on selling business or consumer clients (on indeed, your own business if you're an entrepreneur) into national print or broadcast media. Our friendly trainers all have years of experience working with PRs, and can provide fantastic advice on working more effectively with journalists, and putting together fantastic pitches for all kinds of publications and programmes.

If it might be of interest, check out our shiny new 101 website here for more details.

Thanks

Sally

Things I have said to PR execs today...

I know, I know. Someone could do an even funnier version from the PR's perspective, I bet.

• Yes, it’s Sally Whittle. Can I speak to Clare?
• Whittle. W-H-I-T-T-L-E
• I’m writing a story about the XXXXX server
• The XXXXX server? I think I got a release about it today. Yes, it came from your agency.
• Yes, it’s from today.
• It’s for ZDNet.
• ZDNet
• It’s an IT website.
• ZDNet-dot-co-dot-uk
• I’d like to have a quick chat with the client if I can, please.
• Just a bit more background, why customers should care, improvements in the product, that sort of thing.
• I can put that in an email if it’s easier, sure.
• As soon as possible, please, I need to file by 4pm.
• Yeah, it would probably need to be today. 
• No, I think tomorrow would be too late.
• Yes, I’ve got the press release. We just can’t use quotes from press releases.
• Because I need someone who can explain why my readers should care about hyper-threading in a dual socket server.
• Well, not off the top of my head, no.
• No thanks, I don’t need a photo.
• Sure, you can email it to me.
• It’s mail at sallywhittle.co.uk
• Not Little, Whittle.
• Yeah, Whittle. W-H-I-T-T-L-E
• Do you know if the client’s available?
• Oh, he's in a meeting?
• A meeting at a trade show?
• On the West Coast?
• Fantastic.

Pitching News - some tips for PRs

I'll start this post by admitting freely that I enjoy coffee as much as the next person, if not more. I am one of those sad people who gets caffeine withdrawal symptoms if I haven't had a double skinny latte by 10am.

Since I took on a gig writing regular news stories for a technology industry website earlier this month, I've been inundated with coffee invitations. I do wholeheartedly believe this is A Good Thing, since it presents me with more opportunities to drink coffee. I've also been given some cracking stories, contacts and interviews, which I'm really grateful for. Honestly.

However, with some invitations, there are some teeny downsides. If you're kind enough to invite me to meet with your client, you might like to bear some of these points in mind:

• No, I don't want to schlep all the way out to Heathrow to meet your US client, thanks. I'd rather not feel like I'm something slotted into a gap in his schedule in between Frankfurt and Stockholm. Especially because Heathrow? Is about 300 miles from where I live.
• I love meetings in Central London, so I can bundle lots of meetings into one day in town. Dragging myself from Euston to Paddington then out to Heathrow and back again is a whole day out of my life. Athough it will feel like longer.
• If you're inviting me to meet with your client, it's a good idea to give me an indication of what your client wants to talk about. When I was a junior reporter on staff, I often met people over coffee for a general introduction to SANs or their company's software widget - as a freelance, I need to know I'll get something I can write about out of every single meeting. Yes, to an extent, it's my job to dig that information out of your client, but a little hint in advance is always helpful.
• Don't invite me to something you've already invited my commissioning editor to without telling me. If they've accepted the invitation, my pitch becomes redundant. If they've declined the invitation, I look like the loser who picks up stories they deemed to boring to bother with.
• If I'm writing news, send me news. Don't send me an invitation to talk to your client about their last press release, which was issued 'recently'. I know 'recently' is code for "about three weeks ago". In the web world, something is news if it happened (or at the very least it was announced) in the last 48 hours. Ideally, it's something that will happen in the NEXT 48 hours and you're sending it to me early or exclusively.
• I mention this a lot in my 101 training courses, but when you're pitching news it's a HUGE help if you know the analysts who have been briefed on your client's product. I might get the 'yes' on a news story at 11am, and I have to file by 2pm. That gives me three hours to contact analyst press offices, find someone who knows the product, and track them down for an interview. Anything which makes this process easier is a good thing. 
• With this in mind, it's always good to send over a news release as early in the day as possible, or even the evening before. Big papers and websites will set their news agenda by 11am, and if you miss out, tomorrow might be too late for your story to be considered fresh news.

May: Top 100 Parent Blogs and Bloggers

On the basis some of you might find it useful, here's the latest index of UK parent blogs and bloggers. There aren't too many places to find out about these sorts of blogs, but I think Mummy Blogging is becoming increasingly influential in the UK - for example, Disney recently flew seven UK parent bloggers out to its theme park to score lots of publicity.

Also, this is a very good opportunity for me to show off that I've learned to make tables in HTML. Feel free to step back from your computers in awe:

The Tots10 top British Parent Blogs and Bloggers:

Rank	Blog	Score	Change
1	Molly Chicken	682	NEW
2	Wife in the North	634	=
3	A Modern Mother	605	+5
4	Petite Anglaise	596	-3
5	Babyccino Blog	592	+2
6	Woman of Experience	592	+9
7	Alpha Mummy	578	-3
8	Crystal Jigsaw	578	-2
9	The Potty Diaries	566	+2
10	Notes from Inside my Head	562	=
11	Single Parent Dad	557	-2
12	Bringing up Charlie	524	+4
13	Nappy Valley	524	+23
14	Sticky Fingers	521	+4
15	Are We Nearly There Yet, Mummy?	520	+25
16	Little Mummy	517	+5
17	Jo Beaufoix	516	-14
18	Frog Blog	510	-14
19	Menopausal Old Bag	505	+9
20	Bambino Goodies	489	-8
21	Millennium Housewife	484	-4
22	Noble Savage	483	-3
23	Flower Fairies and Fairy Cakes	470	-1
24	More Than Just a Mother	468	+12
25	My Boyfriend is a Twat	465	-20
26	Diary of a Desperate Exmoor Woman	460	+3
27	Give Me The Booger	460	NEW
28	Nunhead Ramblings	449	+10
29	Bedside Crow	443	-16
30	Mother at Large	434	-5
31	Single and Surviving	413	+18
32	Motherhood: the final Frontier	412	+29
33	Cotton Pickin’ Days	407	-7
34	Keir Royale	401	+25
35	Breastfeeding Mums	399	-3
36	The Bush Babies	399	+6
=36	Maternal Tales	399	NEW
37	Man About the House	398	-23
38	Family Relationships Magazine	388	+34
39	You've Got Your Hands Full	388	=
40	Home Office Mum	384	-9
41	Dulwich Mum	380	-21
42	3 Kids No Job	377	-18
43	Family Affairs and Other Matters	374	-16
44	Being Lucy Diamond	363	+23
45	Mrs Trefusis	351	+19
46	Good Enough Mum	341	+7
47	Dulwich Divorcee	334	-6
48	Don’t Panic - RTFM	332	-3
49	Mum on the Verge	325	-16
50	Violet Posy	328	-13
51	Not Supermum	324	+3
52	Thames Valley Mums	319	-18
53	Nixd Minx	317	NEW
54	Midwife’s Muse	310	-29
55	Musings of a Juggling Mother	301	-25
56	Some Mothers Do Ave Em	300	+29
57	I Promise that I will do my Best	297	-11
58	A Confused Take That Fan	296	-10
59	39 and Counting	287	+1
60	Totsy’s Place from Talking Tots	282	+20
61	The Brinkster	279	-11
62	Live Otherwise	268	NEW
63	Smell of Little Pong	248	-7
64	Positive Parenting = Confident Kids	247	+9
65	WAHM BAM	242	-21
66	The Teen Coach	233	+3
67	The Baby Juggler	231	-1
68	Suffolk Writings	222	-13
69	Most/Least	221	-17
70	Posh Mum	220	-14
71	Brits in Bosnia	216	NEW
72	Married with Four	215	-9
73	Family of Five	205	NEW
74	Rosie Scribble	204	+8
75	Mom or Mum Wars	201	-24
76	Tales from the Naughty Step	198	-14
77	My Life Now	195	-30
78	Chelltunes	189	NEW
79	Family Treehouse	184	+8
80	London Mums Blog	179	NEW
81	Family Friendly Working	178	-21
82	Is That Me? How did it happen?	178	-7
83	Lemon Drizzle	171	-13
84	More to Life Than Laundry	163	-9
85	Mothers on the Verge	161	-20
86	Miss Meep’s Guide to Living	151	-18
87	Little Sheep Learning	137	-8
88	It’s a Mum’s Life	136	+3
89	Mothers Who Work	135	+11
90	Adventures of a Sleepless Toddler	130	-2
91	Diary of a Surprise Mum	127	-10
92	Milky Moo Moo	111	=
93	Pink Fairy Cake	110	-10
94	Mummo Mia	103	-5
95	Music Bugs	102	-5
96	Motherworld	78	-11
97	Jessica’s Trust	64	-4
98	Mum’s the Business	61	=
99	Perfectly Happy Mum	53	-4
100	Home Corner	7	NEW

What Do The Scores Mean?

100 blogs were  included in this month's index. Each blog was assigned a score from 1 (bottom ranked) to 100 (top ranked) in seven categories:

1. Technorati Authority: number of blogs linking to this blog in the last six months
2. Technorati Inlinks: number of inbound links, excluding self-referring hits
3. Yahoo Inlinks: number of inbound links in last six months (excl self-referring hits)
4. Google Blogsearch Hits: number of posts/links/weblinks in Google
5. Google Blogsearch Hits Recent: number of links from the last 30 days
6. Readers: number of subscribers based on Google Reader
7. HowSociable: the blogger's visibility outside the blog, measuring activity on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

This meant a blog scoring the highest score in each of these categories would achieve a maximum score of 700 points. The lowest possible score was 7. They aren't perfect metrics but we thought that combining measurements from Google, Technorati and Yahoo ensures an accurate reflection of a blog's influence, while the inclusion of HowSociable clearly showed how the top bloggers use social media to boost their blog's profile

There are a couple of blogs on the index that haven't been updated in a few months, but still scored highly because of high numbers of residual links. We'd expect these links to reduce over time, and the blogs will fall down the index.

I do welcome suggestions of how to improve the Index, as well as suggestions of new blogs to include in the next index. The criteria for inclusion are simple: the blog must be by/about parents, be written by a British parent or a parent in the UK, and you need to score higher than someone already in the index.

Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now (contd)

It's been a while since I blogged, partly because I'm struggling to feel interested in journalism at the moment - everyone just seems so pessimistic and down about everything that I am avoiding talking to other journalists most of the time. Which is good for your mental health, but less good when it comes to finding things to blog about. Hey ho.

Still, over at a journalist forum I read yesterday, Sarah Drew Jones made me laugh out loud with a comment on the Gorkana Daily Alert - if you don't get this, it's a daily email newsletter with details of new journo appointments, job opps, magazine news etc. Lately, it's not made for the most uplifting reading. I hope they won't mind me posting this, an alternative version of the "Gloomy Gorkana" alert:

* blah magazine
will close at the end of the week, with the loss of 50 jobs. Fifty more freelancers will, from Friday, be out there taking your work, because they're better than you and you know it

* so-and-so magazine
will decrease its frequency from weekly to bi-monthly, from next week, before no doubt giving up completely by the end of the summer. for details, email lostcause@whyfreakinbother.com

* Changes at The International Times
John Hardworker will this week take over the business desk, as well as continuing to run the travel, money, property, fashion and beauty desks. John will be assisted by 12 interns

* Freelance update: Beth Bitter
Beth wishes it to be known that she has left her position at Glossy magazine to go freelance, after 35 years' faithful service to those grasping bastards who think the definition of a great magazine is 90% advertising, competitions to win incontinence pads and talc-based diet pills, and a rehashed bag of lies about Victoria Beckham. Beth specialises in real-life stories and health but has long ago given up hope of a decent living wage and will now work for cake.