Let's Talk About: A Publicist's Tweet That Made EVERY Journalist Shudder

And why you should ignore this publicist's advice except in these VERY specific circumstances

Happy Thursday, everyone!

Love it or hate it, Twitter is still a great place for writers to find pitch calls from editors and leads for sources/products to feature … so I’m still on there (follow me!). It’s also a great place for watching weird industry conversations go down. One Tweet caught my eye recently, as it got a LOT of attention from journalists … for all the wrong reasons.

It was written by a publicist who decided he would share what he must have thought was some great advice for other PR pros. The advice was about HOW to connect with journalists. And it fell flat because his advice was wrong. And writers were quick to point that out to him (myself included lol).

This Tweet provides an excellent teachable moment — not only about being careful about whose advice you take in this industry (just because someone is Tweeting, doesn’t make them an expert!), but also about why his suggestion was terrible advice that could ruin the relationships you’ve carefully forged with media over the years.

Here’s what the tweet said … and then I’ll dive into why you should ignore this advice EXCEPT in a few very specific scenarios: