Sorry for sending you this

I know you’re busy 🙂 I just wanted to reach out and hopefully offer something that might help . . .

Insert tires-screeching-to-a-halt sound. Do my subject line and opening sentence feel right to you? If you’ve been reading me for any length of time, you noticed a difference. Or at least felt a difference from how I usually approach you.

It’s true – I do know you’re busy. And I do want to help. But I’ve learned – over a long period of time and through my own emotional growth – that the best way I can help is to not devalue what I have to offer by quasi-begging you to read it.

That’s what subtle words like sorry, just, hopefully and might communicate. That I’m not sure of myself enough to expect you to pay attention based on the value of what I’m about to give you.

That previous sentence was hard to write because if you go back to my original pitches, and even to the early days of me sending these emails, that’s how I used to express myself. I was basically bleeding insecurity all over the page.

In the same way, many PR pros let uncertainty they are feeling in their gut creep into their language in the emails they write to media.

Those “softening” words communicate that you’re not sure of yourself. And that you don’t expect your contacts to pay attention based on the value of what you’re about to give them. So they usually don’t.

For example, when following up with a journalist after initial interest appears to wane, here’s a common approach:

Sorry to bug you. Just wanted to check in and see if you might still be interested in this idea?

When you tell a journalist that you’re “bugging them,” that’s often how they end up feeling about you! But you convey the same point with more power, and without any rudeness, when you simply write:

Checking in to see if this idea is still alive?

If that specific example helps you, great.

But really, the principle is not in the granular semantics of the email you send. It’s about how you feel when you write it. If you feel like a reluctant pest who has nothing of value to offer, that’s usually how you’re going to come across. If you cover up that feeling by choosing more powerful words, that helps a little.

But the real change happens when you realign the way you view the dynamic between you and the journalist. When you know you have something of value that will help her do her job, that sense of intention will jump off the screen and make you stand out.