Your client’s news didn’t get covered—now what?

PR has earned a spot on CareerCast’s annual list of America’s most stressful jobs for the last three years, and I expect we’ll see it again in this year’s list.

PR pros dedicate hundreds of hours researching our clients’ markets, defining their messages, identifying the right publications, building relationships with those editors, building new relationships when those editors change, and more. Ultimately, even with all this preparation, we don’t know for sure what the result of a pitch will be until after we’ve we hit send.

I’m sure most seasoned PR professionals have been there at least once: You pitched an announcement and heard nothing but crickets. Some might be tempted to send repeated follow-ups to your contacts, much like this woman, which resulted not in coverage for her client but an embarrassing (but free) lesson in PR from none other than David Pogue.

Don’t be that PR person. Instead, follow these tips to see if there’s another way to get legs out of your announcement.