Pitching app seeks to be Tinder for PR pros and reporters

The importance of building relationships with journalists has always been crucial for PR pros looking to land media coverage.

In the digital age, those relationships have become harder to cultivate—but now there’s a Tinder for PR pros and journalists.

It’s called UPitch, and it’s available now in the Apple App Store. It will become available for Android devices in July and Windows devices later this fall.

With UPitch, PR pros have 400 characters and up to five images to catch a journalist’s eye. If reporters like what they see or read, they swipe right, bringing up a message feature that connects them directly to the PR pro.

UPitch co-founder Allison Kugel wrote about the app recently for The Huffington Post:

We’re embracing Instagram images and tweets and rolling our eyes at long form declarations.

So why are businesses, brands and people still using 700 word press releases and page-long PR pitches if it doesn’t suit today’s current communicative mindscape? Why are we still jamming up email inboxes when we could be telling our stories more concisely, and to an audience who wants to view them?

Journalists have the ability to filter the types of messages they see—and PR pros can only contact them if the journalist has swiped right on a pitch.

[RELATED: Learn new techniques to boost placements.]

For PR pros, the challenge (and opportunity) is to parse down their pitches to 400 characters. It barely leaves room for the who-what-when-where-why basics. However, a pitch from a PR pro’s pitch about a mom-and-pop shop has just as much chance to be seen as one about a global behemoth.

Kugel says the app doesn’t aim to eliminate the traditional press release or change anything that’s already good about the journalist/PR relationship.

“We aren’t changing the industry, but rather being the first to adapt to an industry that is already changing,” she says. “We’re helping people along the way while we’re at it. We also understand the value of the PR rep and journalist relationship and hope our app will foster more of those relationships. And at the end of the day, a journalist’s best relationship is with their next great story.”

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