The most common first-week mistake in PR is trying to get covered in the first week. It feels like the obvious goal, so people write a release on day one, find a list of email addresses on day two, send on day three, and spend day four refreshing an inbox that stays empty.
The takeaway up front: week one cannot produce coverage, and it is not supposed to. It produces the four things that make coverage possible later — an honest read on what you actually have, a set of facts written down once, a short list of specific people, and enough reading to know what those people cover. Do those in order and your first send has a real chance. Skip them and you will spend months sending well-written emails to strangers who have no reason to open them.
What is the first week actually for?
Every piece of press coverage requires two separate things: something worth reporting, and a reporter who believes it is worth reporting to their readers. Beginners spend all their effort on the first and none on the second, then conclude that PR does not work.
So the first week has one job: get you to the point where you can send one email to one named person and have that email make sense. Anything that does not serve that is a later problem.
Day one: decide whether you have news or a company
This is the decision the whole week hangs on, and it takes an hour of honesty rather than a day of work.
News is something that changed on a date: you raised money, you launched something people can buy, you hired someone whose name means something in your industry, you signed a customer big enough to name, you published original data nobody else has, you were acquired, you shut something down. News has a clock on it and it belongs in a press release.
A company is everything else: you exist, you have a product, you have opinions about your industry, your founder has a background, your customers are happy. All of that can earn coverage — but never as an announcement. It earns coverage as a contribution to a story a journalist is already interested in writing.
Write one line: "The thing that changed is , and it changed on ." If you cannot fill that in without stretching, you do not have news this week, and that is fine. It simply means your first send is a pitch rather than a release. The two formats fail in different ways and suit different situations — press release vs media pitch walks through which one your situation calls for.
Getting this wrong is expensive. A company dressed up as news reads as an advertisement, and reporters remember the domain that sent it.
Day two: write the facts down once
Before you write anything persuasive, write the boring version. One page, plain, no adjectives:
- What the company does, in a sentence a stranger could repeat correctly.
- When it was founded, by whom, and where it operates.
- The size figures you are willing to state publicly and can stand behind.
- Correct spellings and current job titles for anyone who might be quoted.
- One or two sentences from a named person that say something a competitor could not also say.
- A contact address a human actually reads.
This page is not marketing. It is the thing you copy from for the next two years, and its real value is that it stops you inventing a slightly different number every time you write. A reporter who has to fact-check you once will not do it twice.
Put it somewhere public if you can — a plain page on your own site. A journalist who is half-interested will look for exactly these facts, and finding them in ten seconds is worth more than the prettiest press kit.
Days three and four: build a list of ten
Not a database. Not a thousand addresses bought from a service. Ten people.
Find them by reading, not by searching for "tech journalists". Look for the specific writers who have covered something adjacent to you recently — a competitor, a customer's industry, the problem you solve, the funding stage you are at. For each one, write down four things: their name, the outlet, the specific piece of theirs that makes them relevant, and the one sentence explaining why your thing connects to that piece.
If you cannot write that fourth line, they do not belong on the list. That is the whole quality control mechanism, and it is the difference between outreach and spam. Ten researched names beat a thousand unresearched ones, because the unresearched thousand actively costs you — filters, blocks, and a reputation as a sender to ignore. The mechanics are in how to build a media list.
Day five: read before you write
Spend a couple of hours reading the ten pieces you just noted, properly. You are looking for three things:
- The shape of what they publish. Do they write news briefs, interviews, analysis, roundups? Your angle has to fit a format they actually run.
- What they clearly do not cover. Every reporter has a boundary. Pitching across it is the fastest way to get filtered.
- What they seem to be circling. Reporters return to themes. If someone has written about the same problem three times, they are interested in it, and a genuine new angle on that problem is welcome in a way a launch announcement never is.
This is the step everyone skips, and skipping it is why so many first pitches open with a paragraph about the sender. A pitch that opens with the reporter's own interest reads as a colleague; one that opens with your funding round reads as a form letter.
The first send should be small
At the end of the week, send to three of your ten. Not all ten — three. Short, specific, one angle each, the connection to their work in the first line, and the facts underneath rather than on top.
Three is deliberate: enough to learn from, small enough to change. If nobody replies, seven people have still not seen a version of your pitch that did not work. Send to all ten and you burn the list to learn the same lesson. The craft of the send itself — subject lines, timing, follow-up that is not nagging — is in media outreach that gets a reply.
What you can safely ignore for now
Almost everything a beginner worries about is a month-three problem. In your first week, you do not need:
- A newswire. Paid distribution puts a release where it can be found; it does not make anyone want to read it. Useful later, for announcements that need to be on the record. It has never rescued a story nobody wanted.
- A press kit. Logos in three formats and a founder headshot on a dark background are not what is standing between you and coverage. One plain facts page is enough until someone asks for more.
- A measurement dashboard. With three sends there is nothing to measure but replies. Counting reach before you have coverage is bookkeeping for an empty ledger — how to measure PR is the month-three read, not the week-one one.
- The agency conversation. You cannot brief an agency on a story you have not articulated yourself, and you cannot judge one either.
- Going viral. It is not a plan, it is a weather event, and treating it as a target produces the exact tone reporters filter out.
The unifying principle: ignore anything that assumes you already have a story working. Build the story first.
How to tell whether week one worked
Not by coverage. Judge it on four things, all of which are in your control:
- You can say in one sentence whether you have news or a company, without flinching.
- Your facts exist in one place and match everywhere they appear.
- You have ten names, each with a written reason.
- You sent three emails that a stranger could read and understand why they received it.
That is a real week's work and it compounds. The list grows, the facts get reused, and by the time you have genuine news, you already know who to tell. When you are ready to turn that into something that runs quarter after quarter, how to create a PR plan is the next step, and press release writing covers the format itself when your first real announcement arrives.
FAQ
Do I need a press release in my first week? Only if something actually changed on a date. If nothing did, a release will read as an advertisement. Write a pitch instead, and save the release format for real news.
How many journalists should I contact at first? Ten on your list, three in your first send. The constraint is research, not ambition — if you cannot write a one-line reason each person should care, the name is not ready to use.
Is it worth paying for distribution straight away? Rarely at the start. Distribution makes an announcement findable and citable; it does not create interest. It becomes worthwhile when you have news that needs to be on the public record.
What if I get no replies at all? That is the normal result of a first send, not a verdict. Check three things before changing anything: whether the reporters actually cover your area, whether your first line was about them or about you, and whether the thing you announced was genuinely a change.
Week one is not a campaign. It is the setup that makes every later campaign cheaper — an honest read on what you have, a fact base you stop re-inventing, a short list of real people, and one small send you can learn from. For step-by-step guides to each of those pieces as you get to them, read the PR playbooks at PRWHero.
