I posted the below on X the other day about my own experience of trying to live and work around poorly-targeted information overload and it's gone a bit viral. I've now got a lot of people saying "yes but how can we FIX this?!" The honest answer is I don't know! Perhaps in the near future AI will be the answer, but I don't think it's there yet. I know I'm fortunate to be part of a platform that everybody still wants to be on. But I feel like I can't switch off because the avalanche doesn't stop when I do. I'm already feeling anxious about my holiday next week. This was my post: I have around 4,000 unread PR emails in my BBC inbox. My LinkedIn private messages overflow. I get pitches via Instagram DM, WhatsApp, text message. I’ve don’t have open DMs on X but I get pitches there too. I am utterly overwhelmed by people digitally shouting at me for their client (or themselves) to be heard, 24/7. It’s out of control. I am only one person and I can’t usually do more than one story per day. Most of the comms I receive is not relevant to me but I am sure I sometimes miss good stuff in the constant deluge. I do tech news. This doesn’t mean I am interested in which video game 50% brits played last night (survey sample: 20). Or what your client has to say about a story I’ve already covered. It’s also lovely that your client is “in town” and wants to talk at me over coffee/lunch but I don’t have the time and also “town” for me, IE London, is often 400 miles away. Please think before you hit send. Some of us are drowning!
Zoe Kleinman it’s all about knowing essentially what is/and what isn’t a news story. When I left the BBC, I moved into agency as a head of broadcast and we taught our teams how content for TV and Radio works. Agencies still don’t target effectively and watch the programmes you contribute to. Journalist engagement is the most important part of PR. But also take into account that every client wants to be on the BBC or in The FT. Agencies have to be seen to be targeting you. Though the MO has to change and be as creative as those award winning agencies at Cannes last week.
Zoe Kleinman Hint: Set an automatic email reply: """Thanks for your unsolicited message. Please can you resend as text aligned to the prompt Im currently composing to help me writing my next article looking at ABC aimed at XYZ audience highlighting the need for/challenges for .... """ {*Zoe, edit ABC and XYZ as required each week} Furthermore, you can ask your GenAI to "group the following emails into clusters with high commonality and summarise the key issues and trends in one concise sentence with minimal verbosity". Here you can paste four or four thousand emails, asking to filter out emails not relevant to ABC/XYZ you defined above, and also suspicious spam sales emails (e.g., offering subscriptions or asking for your credit card details). Note that you may need additional prompts to be able to curate and carry out due diligence on the information emailed to you, and evaluate the output from GenAI. Disclaimer: Use the above advice at your own discretion. Human in the loop highly recommended 😀
The quality bar in the PR industry really needs to be raised. No business should be paying an agency to 'spray and pray' - and no agency should be teaching its employees that that's the way to do PR. I'm really not sure how so many agencies survive financially with that approach, it doesn't work and it brings the industry down 🤷♀️
Adnan Dawood
3w
Would something like this work ? A tinder like service for journalists. Swipe right to accept / swipe left to decline. The app will learn which stories you accept and which you don’t. Over time it will be every journalists best friend - your professional funnel where all your press requests are routed. No more WhatsApp/ email / cold calls / DMs. Genuinely asking - as Ive been reading about this problem for so long and even though there are tonnes of tools out there the problem seems to be getting worse.
Norval Scott
3w
I was a broadsheet journalist, and now am a PR. I probably used to get between 300-500 news releases and pitches a day. My honest response to journalists complaining of inbox fatigue is usually to say: yeah, but this is an important part of your job. These are all potential stories, and you therefore have to sort through them and find out what's newsworthy. Many you can shelve just from the subject line. Some you can ditch one sentence in. But doing the inbox sift well is a real skill.
Completely understand this, Zoe Kleinman. When I started in PR, we always had to PHONE journalists to pitch stories first - and it made us think about whether we were offering something genuinely newsworthy - it was terrifying and often I was told in no uncertain terms what the reporters thought. These days it really is too easy to send off a press release, knowing it isn't that great, and tick a box...
Apple announced AI-powered email summaries for iOS 18 at WWDC earlier this month but, like you, I don’t hold much hope that it’s going to be mature enough to be particularly useful for a while yet. I’m sitting on 7,000 plus items in my PR inbox right now, and had to declare bankruptcy and hit CMD-A/Delete last year when it hit 35,000 🫣 Perhaps the AI should also be employed on the PR-side to facilitate better targeting, not blanket campaigns.
This must be awful. Can you physically reduce the number of channels that people can pitch to you on? For example directing people on social channels to email? Any PR worth their salt should at least follow your requested route for pitches. And if they don’t, just delete them! I think it’s just rude of people to be WhatsApp and texting you pitches. Different if it’s to talk logistics of an interview or something and they’ve worked with u before, but a first pitch via text/what’s app… so intrusive…
I’ve started getting quite a few invitations to meet up for coffee when someone is in ‘town’. Obviously they’re talking about a different town. I’m in Liverpool. And I don’t drink coffee
Lifelong Learner | Change and Operations Leader | Delivers value through Vanguard Digital Transformation, Responsible AI, Electric Insights and Creative Problem Solving
3wAWWW. Pèlé (That’s ‘sorry’ in Yoruba)! I’m quite certain there’s a simple algorithm out there that can help you sift through the deluge.😊 When not well-managed, ‘downing’ can lead to burnout—or worse. The key’s getting through it with a smile: Your job’s your job you know!—And it’s a good job. The question now, I suppose, is, “How can technology help carry the upsetting load?” Have a nice day, Zoe!🌿