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Welcome to another episode of The RN2writer Show, where we help nurses and other health care professionals become freelance writers. I'm your host, Elizabeth Hanes, RN and today we're talking about what is a pitch.
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Trust me, you cannot hang around freelance writers for five minutes without hearing the word pitch used or one of its other grammatical iterations. Pitches pitching are pitched.
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But what does pitch mean Exactly?
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Part of the problem with the word pitch is it can be used either as a noun, or as a verb. And it means different things in different contexts. Let's look at the most common ways to use pitch so that you can spout it like the pro you are.
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The first way to use pitch is as a noun. A pitch can refer to a query letter, a letter of introduction, a book proposal, or anything at all you're proposing to get published.
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A query letter or just query for short is a detailed article proposal that you send to an editor at a magazine or web publication. For example, you might send a query titled three essential supplies for a new moms first aid kit to a magazine aimed at parents.
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This query will be quite detailed and layout everything you propose to cover in that article, the editorial team will then review your query and get back to you with a yay or nay a
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way back in the day when I started freelancing in the mid 90s. We almost always called queries queries. But over the course of time, freelance journalists have trended more towards referring to these as pitches, either term perfectly acceptable.
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This can get confusing however, for new writers, because as I said earlier, the word pitch can refer to at least four different types of items. One is a query and the second is a letter of introduction, a letter of introduction, or loi, as we say in the business is not a query. It is not a detailed article proposal, and it is not sent to magazines or journalistic outlets. an LOI is a very brief introductory email that you send to prospective content marketing clients. A content marketing client is a company Health System insurer or health care brand that publishes various types of content, webpages, newsletters, blog posts, white papers webinar, and lots more stuff like that. The term pitch is often used to refer not only to the LOI itself as in, I sent a pitch to the Content Director at XYZ health system, but also to the act of pitching. So now we've moved from noun to Verb.
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To pitch simply means to propose an article or to offer your services. So you can pitch a pitch to a magazine, or you can pitch a pitch to a corporation. Clear. Okay, let me try that again. In freelance writing, pitching refers to the act of sending any kind of proposal to any entity. To get something published, you might pitch an article idea query to an editor at the New York Times, or you might pitch your services to Cardinal Health. You might pitch your book manuscript to an agent or publisher.
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Pitching simply means the act of sending something to someone else for consideration to be published. That's it in a nutshell.
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As a nurse writer, you will primarily use pitch in two ways, as a noun to refer to a query or an LOI, and as a verb to refer to the act of having sent the pitch.
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I hope you've enjoyed this little discussion of some of the jargon of freelance writing. If you'd like to see more videos of this type, let us know in the comments. And don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel The RN2writer Show or follow us on Spotify and Apple podcasts. Until next time, keep pitching
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
