However, this is not to say…once a genuine relationship has been established with a particular individual…that I won’t inject the thought into the conversation somewhere. But not at the beginning.

Subject line and first two sentences are exactly how I read PR pitches.

Another rookie mistake I see: Starting the pitch with background that I already know. “Cloud computing is changing the face of enterprise IT.” Once I see that, I stop reading and start skimming the first paragraph for keywords. If I don’t see any interesting keywords in the first graf — if it all looks like more background, more stuff I already know if I’m interested in your client’s story — then I just close the email and move on. And I don’t even look at the second paragraph, or anything else.

Also, the pitch should never, ever include an attachment. Never, never ever.

But hey maybe I’m wrong. If Twitter can fix their web product and improve some of their internal structure maybe they’ll be around in another ten years. Either way, the Twitter community we once knew is gone, evolved.