Successfully pitching your story.

The Bad Pitch Blog has provided yet another tidbit of useful information for novice PR practitioners.

When you pitch a story to the press, it is always difficult to decide how many times to follow-up with your pitch.

If you call too many times, you run the risk of becoming a nuisance, and earning yourself a reputation as a pest.

If you call too few times, you run the risk of your story not getting picked up regardless of how newsworthy it is and how well you pitched it.

According to the experience of the blog's author, a story that is followed up 1-2 times after the initial pitch has a 25 percent change of being picked up. Following up 3-5 times has a 50 percent chance, and 6-8 has a 25 percent chance.

Hopefully this takes some of the guess work out of making follow-up calls. It is important to follow up pitches multiple times, and follow-up calls should be made more than once.

I've learned that even though it feels kind of needy, and desperate, it's worth it to get your story in the news.