Jillian Quint is the editor-in-chief at PureWow, which covers all things regarding women's lifestyle.
During the episode, Jillian discusses PureWow's coverage and mission to empower women, how she organizes her inbox as an editor-in-chief, effective pitching strategies, the value of expert opinions and more.
Follow Jillian on LinkedIn.
Click below to listen to the full conversation and read below for highlights from the interview:
[0:04:02] JQ: It does happen. In terms of the publicist pitches, when I'm getting these pitches coming in, I'm looking at them all in real time. I see all my emails come in and I'm opening the ones that make sense to me. Some do and some don't.
Of the let's say 100 emails that I'm getting in a day, I'm opening probably more than half of them. If something is definitely a no go or not relevant, I often will move on from it, but if something has any potential, I will open it.
I'll take a look and I'll do the relevant thing with it, which might be saving it for later. I do use folders for that. I save things a lot. I will respond if it makes sense to respond. I will forward it to the relevant editor if that's the case, because remember –
[0:04:56] BB: That’s right.
[0:04:57] JQ: I'm overseeing the content, but I'm not – relevant and sometimes it's more applicable to the editor who’s be to this.
[0:05:04] BB: Exactly. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Traffic control is a big component for being the editor and so forth. I also imagine do you get freelance pitches as well? People who want to write articles?
[0:05:15] JQ: We do. Some of those we respond to, some of those, again, I would punt to the appropriate editor if we have somebody who reaches out and says, “I'm a beauty fanatic.”
I would forward that to my beauty director and have her take an initial call to see if there's a fit there.
[0:05:29] BB: Okay. How may Jillian, if any way possible, can publicists make your life easier besides just not pitch you?
[0:05:41] JQ: No, you should pitch me.
[0:05:41] BB: Yes. Okay. Good.
[0:05:44] JQ: I think that the caveat here is that most publicists are making my life plenty easy. I think publicists –
[0:05:50] BB: Oh, good. Yeah.
[0:05:51] JQ: I have very little to complain about. I think that the biggies are sending pitches in a way that is really readable and useful to me and we can get into what that looks like, but it's also a few other things make my life easier. One is being open to sending samples.
That's something we need to test just about everything we write about. Being open to providing experts and being responsive when we're trying to coordinate on a product review or an interview or something along those lines. Then finally, understanding if we say something isn't a fit.
[0:06:26] BB: That is good. Do you have any pitches right now that you're like, “Oh, yes. Thank you. That's a good one.”
[0:06:33] JQ: Yes.
[0:06:34] BB: We love a show.
[0:06:35] JQ: You want me to give you the specific –
[0:06:36] BB: Yeah. I mean, yes, yes. Most people don't share like the bad ones with naming names or anything. We don't do that here, but if you want to shout out anybody or just like anonymize it, however you wish.
That's great, because we want to know like what is it that gets that open, because you mentioned like 50%. I want to be on the 50% that gets open. So, that's what I'm going for.
[0:06:55] JQ: In terms of like what gets an open from me, to some extent, it's capitalizing on whatever we're working on at the moment, so if we're writing about something and a timely pitch comes in that's relevant, that's really, really helpful, but there are also a few other concrete things that I look at when I'm trying to vet what pitches to take and to move on.
I mean, one is if it like teaches me something that I genuinely don't know, like does it reference an enticing trend I've never heard of? Does it mention a product that I didn't know existed that clearly solves a problem? That's the type of thing I'm absolutely going to open and read.
Another one which I mentioned before is the idea of offering up an expert or the promise of samples, both of which we need for a lot of stories, so I know that a lot of the work has already been done for me upfront.
Then how direct it is, like do I need to do too much digging to figure out what exactly this pitch is about? I have a few examples. I have two good examples and –
[0:07:57] BB: Oh, yes. Share, share, share. Yes.
[0:08:00] JQ: Okay. So, a great pitch I got today, which I think is really useful is, this is the subject line. Amazon Prime Day. Summer pet essentials. Samples available.
[0:08:10] BB: Oh, nice. Tells me everything. Yeah, that tells me everything.
[0:08:15] JQ: Yeah. If we're working on Prime Day right now, we cover pets. We need samples. I guess, I don't know what the pet essentials are from this email, but I'm going to open it.
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[0:16:02] JQ: Yeah. Experts are interesting, because, and wait, this is not a rapid-fire answer. If you just want me to –
[0:16:07] BB: No, no, no. Yes, tell us. I actually don't know why that question is down there actually, because we need to – yeah, anyway.
[0:16:13] JQ: Experts are something that we need a lot more of now than we did six months or a year ago, because of, and I'm sure other journalists you've talked to have said as much, because of the Google algorithm.
They tend to prioritize stories with experts more, so we've always needed experts.
[0:16:30] BB: Oh, good to know. Okay. Ah, you have been the first to share that insight, actually. Yeah.
[0:16:34] JQ: We have always been the first to need experts for, I mean, we've always needed experts for certain types of stories if we're talking about a diet or something health wise.
We would talk to a doctor, of course, but now we're finding that we want to have experts for other types of stories as well, like we just did a story on how to dress well when you're pregnant.
We talked to a stylist who has specialized in maternity wear. That's the type of thing – we definitely want more experts than we've had historically.
We did a story on what to do when your dog is grieving. We talked to Cesar Millan who gave us tips.
[0:17:08] BB: Oh, yeah. When your dog is grieving.
[0:17:12] JQ: Bottom line. Project confidence.
[0:13:58] BB: That’s a bad copy, paste. Okay. I'm glad you say it's few and far between. Okay. That delights my soul a little bit. Publicist, we're getting better out there. Hopefully. Hopefully. Okay. Jillian, I have a quick rapid-fire question set here for you. If you're ready.
[0:14:13] JQ: I'm ready.
[0:14:13] BB: Let's do it. Phone or video interview?
[0:14:18] JQ: Phone.
[0:14:19] BB: Bullet points or paragraphs in a pitch?
[0:14:22] JQ: Both. Probably start with a paragraph to explain why you're here. If there's relevant bullet points, if it says like a product where you want to outline some of the things that it does, or it's a restaurant where you want to highlight some of the key things on the menu, then bullet points to follow.
[0:14:39] BB: Okay. Images attached or a Dropbox zip file?
[0:14:43] JQ: Attached.
[0:14:44] BB: Attached. Email or a DM of some sort somewhere? Instagram X, whatever, all the things.
[0:14:51] JQ: Email. That probably tells everybody everything they need to know about my age, but email.
[0:14:56] BB: No, literally, this is a 97% email rate. Yes, I'm still – very rarely where we hear someone who says like, “Oh, yeah, DM me.” It's extremely rare.
We could look in the backlogs to see if we got three people. Anyway, perfect. One follow up or multiple?
[0:15:14] JQ: It's okay to remind me as I've here disclosed, I lose things in my inbox sometimes, so it's okay to get a few follow ups once we're getting to five or six, that's probably too many.
[0:15:25] BB: That's too many. Okay. Direct or creative subject lines? We've covered this a bit, but just to emphasize.
[0:15:31] JQ: Direct.
[0:15:32] BB: Yes. Press release or media kit?
[0:15:35] JQ: It doesn't matter. Maybe slight preference for press release.
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