Mon, 2020-03-02 10:17
Sam
Maryfran Johnson's Advice on Pitching C-Title Edit
A veteran of IDG and TechTarget and now on her own as consultant to CIOs, Maryfran Johnson discusses how best to pitch editors who serve C-title executives, in the first SWMS video teleconference of 2020. Visit MFJ Media to learn more about what Maryfran is up to these days.
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Will Covid-19, better known as the coronavirus, change how tech and business reporters spend their time? Yes, and the changes have begun. We're querying tech and business editors and will update this article throughout coming days. Here's what we've learned from the front lines so far.
[Please welcome back SWMS contributing editor Lindsay Ciulla, a senior VP with (SWMS subscriber) Weber Shandwick Worldwide. --Ed.] Well friends, in what feels like the blink of an eye we’re somehow halfway through the first quarter of 2020 -- in a decade that (at least when I was growing up) promised flying cars and travel via teleportation.
We recently conducted a video meeting with a subscriber who sought SWMS POV on the following media relations questions. With the subscriber's permission, here are the questions and our responses. Hope you find them useful. 
[We asked PR vet Alex Shapiro to contrast the worlds of agency and in-house PR. He knows both. Enjoy the read. -Ed.] For agency PR pros, the grass may seem particularly greener right now on the in-house side and there's no shortage of hot companies hiring. We're all told the job market's hot, and that can often feel true for the revolving doors of PR.
[We asked Matthew Lynley, a former journalist with VentureBeat, TechCrunch and the WSJ, what makes for a great comms professional. Here's what he had to say. -- Ed.] 
[We asked veteran tech reporter Mitch Wagner to deconstruct two of his recent news stories, explaining why he wrote them the way he did. Mitch has done so -- you will enjoy his contribution. --Ed.]
[Enjoy this true story from SWMS contributor and PR pro Anton Molodetskiy -Ed.] You may think that journalists would rather talk to a telemarketer than answer your phone call, but the phone is still a key tool for both reporters and PR. I learned this hard way a few years ago while managing outreach for a B2B startup coming out of stealth.
Placing contributed content ideally comes without strings -- "pitch it, place it, forget it" -- but that's not how it works at Third Door Media, publishers of Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. Third Door is in the community business. Community editor Wendy Almeida wants to help but you must help her too.
Paid content is more important then ever. Here are pathways to get the dialog going with the Tier 1 shops that offer it. The rates change constantly and it's all negotiable. Here's where you start.
Podcasting is more than 15 years old now and tracking the good ones is darn near impossible but we'll try anyway. Here's a list of 26 media brands that offer at least one tech podcast, and another 18 indie tech podcasts worth listening to and pitching. We also point you, more broadly, to hundreds more.
