End-to-end outreach workflow
Vince Nero
Vince is the Director of Content Marketing at Buzzstream. He thinks content marketers should solve for users, not just Google. He also loves finding creative content online. His previous work includes content marketing agency Siege Media for six years, Homebuyer.com, and The Grit Group. Outside of work, you can catch Vince running, playing with his 2 kids, enjoying some video games, or watching Phillies baseball.
Read recent articles, not just bios.
Use headline keywords as shortcuts.
Never pitch the same story a journalist just covered (unless it's adding new value).
Check for a 30-day publish gap.
Track every journalist your team contacts.
Over the past ~12 years of pitching journalists, Read more
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Studying scammy and black hat tactics is one of the best ways to understand how platforms actually work.
If you're not actively occupying the online spaces relevant to your brand — especially Reddit — someone else will.
Since the Helpful Content Update, content quality is what burns domains, Read more
Front-load everything — all platforms pull 82-87% of summary content from the first half of your email.
Keep it simple — longer, complex emails are more likely to have critical information dropped from summaries.
Use bullet points — they're the most reliable formatting tool, influencing Read more
AI-generated pitches are immediately obvious to journalists due to telltale signs like bolded bullet points, capitalized subheads, and low overall quality.
Short, direct pitches that get to the point are paradoxically more likely to land than long, pasted-in press releases because they feel human Read more
Keep your media lists to 15–20 journalists max and make sure every single one is a genuine fit before you hit send
Target journalists who cover your topic regularly and have published within the last month — that's your Goldilocks zone.
Lead your pitch with one to two sentences setting Read more
Focus on earning a few high-quality links rather than chasing volume.
Use tightly targeted outreach instead of mass emailing journalists.
Lead every pitch with a clear, compelling story—not a link request.
Tie campaigns to timely trends, news, or seasonal angles.
Create original, data-driven Read more
“Google Zero” is overstated — traffic isn’t vanishing, growth has just leveled off.
SEO is now a zero-sum game — if you win the click, someone else loses it.
Many publishers mistake flat traffic for actual decline.
AI overviews reduce clicks, but they’re not the core problem.
Read more
There is typically a disparity between links and the bottom line. A lot of the time, a link-building agency may be contracted to just get links or drive organic traffic, but there's no clear throughline to how it impacts the company's bottom line.
And even if you are doing what you are hired for —building Read more
No single site dominates AI citations—Reddit leads at just 3.49%.
Prompt type drives citations more than domain.
Blog/content makes up 53.46% of all citations, far ahead of news (14.09%) and social (8.71%).
Owned content appears in ~40% of brand awareness queries.
Earned media accounts Read more
Stick to core PR and SEO fundamentals instead of chasing every new LLM trend.
Invest in niche sites and communities where your audience actually spends time.
Ensure your brand messaging is clear and consistent across your site and third-party mentions.
Regularly search your brand and category Read more
