All the times my pitches went wrong...

What I've learnt the hard way about common pitching mistakes

I have a confession to make. In my first ever post introducing Get Featured, I said I reckoned my pitches were successful “about 97% of the time”. I cringed when I wrote it, because it sounded like an awful brag - and the kind of figure that was too good to be true.

And on reflection, I’ve realised it is too good to be true - well, kind of. It’s probably accurate to say that pretty much all the ideas I pitch do ultimately get published. But does nearly every individual pitch email I ever send to an editor get me a commission? God, no.

I’ve realised that when I get a “no” - or the dreaded ghosting - it’s usually because I’ve made one of these really key common mistakes I’m going to share with you now. And we all make them: I’ve been a journalist for 15 years but sometimes I find myself falling into the same traps.

I think it can be helpful to remind ourselves of all the ways things can go wrong, so we can pick ourselves up from any bruising rejections and tweak our pitches until we get a “yes”.

This is the kind of stock photo you get when you search for “mistake”… (Photo by Francisco De Legarreta C. on Unsplash)

Here are my top three reasons pitches don’t work out - and my suggestions for how you can turn those mistakes around to successfully land national coverage: