Tiny Pitch: An easy way to send simple, good-looking press releases to journalists

We see a ton of ugly, unreadable press releases come through our inboxes at The Next Web, so the new Tiny Pitch PR service from Pitch Engine has potential.

To get started, Tiny Pitch has you send your headline, text and images over email. It then generates a custom page that you can share on social media, link to or embed. There’s no need to create a profile since it’s all tied to your email address. Viewers of your press release can contact you through a message button at the bottom of your release.

Tiny Pitch envisions journalists using the service to take pitches on the service through a unique hashtag. Instead of flooding my inbox, startups could include tags in their releases for writers to search for later or have automatically compiled into an email digest. That’s not something I’d do on a regular basis, but it could be useful for handling batches of companies, such as a demo day.

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One key feature that’s missing from Tiny Pitch is an embargo feature. Once you email your pitch in, it goes live, so the service doesn’t really work for pre-briefings. The site also uses a mailto: link to generate a template email, so I ended up creating a test pitch from my iCloud account instead of my work email. For those of us who manage our email from a browser, it’s an extra step.

The site just started accepting pitches, so it has a few kinks to work out. When I went to embed my test pitch (Umber – Uber for Umbrellas), it only showed up as a compose button in WordPress. The release I created also include a broken image link at the bottom of it for some reason.

Pitch Engine says it will keep Tiny Pitch free, while continuing to offer premium services through its core brand. Tiny Pitch isn’t going to replace the traditional email blast anytime soon, and it’s not as full-featured as TNW sister startup Pr.co. However, it could gain traction as a lightweight solution for sending out quick hits while on the go.