Meet #12

1. Who to target in the newsroom
During my time as a journalist, I received many misguided pitches from PRs who had either not glanced at my Gorkana profile details or were confused about what my role entailed. From whether to pitch an Editor, Reporter (or both), to which section editors are relevant for your campaign press releases, I want to share my pitching tips to help ensure that your campaign gets the coverage it deserves.

2. How to target journalists
Using both the outreach strategy tactics I have learnt at Verve Search, along with my experience from the other side of pitching, I’ll explain what methods we use. Such as: how to choose subject lines, opening lines, what angles to take from a campaign that are the most likely to be successful, the importance of using expert comment, what images to use etc.

3. When to target journalists
From the time of day to email a journalist, to how much importance to give to ‘special’ days in the calendar, I’ll dispel common myths from the industry about when the best time to target a journalist is, along with the best ways to ensure your email is seen on the day of outreach/the time the campaign is launched.

I’ll be explaining the above with a range of real-life examples from my time at Verve Search so far, in order to leave the audience with actionable changes they can make to their outreach and link-building strategies that should hopefully increase their chances of acquiring links!

From the organiser: One of our regulars asked for a talk on this subject, so it’s great that Surena is able to deliver it – and from one of the most well-renowned SEO agencies in the UK to boot.

Given that improved customer experience is listed as the number one priority for the vast majority of major organisations by their shareholders and boards, you’d have thought organisations would be great at it. And yet according to every survey done, most people loathe interacting with most organisations. So why is that, and how do we fix it?

The big problem is that organisation’s departments are often siloed, and Google and Facebook and co are getting more and more aggressive with keeping users on their own properties. This leads to organisations being incapable of working holistically to deliver good customer experience, at the same time as the landscape they’re in shifting faster than they can adapt.

Addressing this means changing how organisations operate and make use of digital tooling to operate, and how they present themselves through digital platforms to the world. We’ll be looking at how both can be delivered effectively to deliver a better run organisation which people actually like.

From the organiser: Pete’s background is in technical SEO but in recent years has shifted to CX – and it looks to be a really informative talk.