7 PR tips from a Financial Times journalist

“I’m always on deadline.”

That’s one of the warnings Stacy-Marie Ishmael, editor of FT Tilt, the Financial Times‘ site for news on emerging markets, gave a lunchtime audience of public relations pros at a Ragan Communications conference at Con Edison headquarters in New York.

Ishmael emphasized that reporters’ time comes at a premium, told PR people to be more attentive, gave an overview of how she uses Twitter and shared some tips for how not to use Twitter.

Here are the highlights:

1. Reporters to PR: Be more accessible. “People don’t appreciate that you have reporters in multiple time zones that are always on deadlines,” Ishmael said. She related a story of how a PR person didn’t respond to a reporter in a foreign bureau, so she had to contact that company’s PR representative in New York the following morning. That led to an “outrageous” nine-hour turnaround, Ishmael said.