In July, the Fish team’s monthly professional development session focused around building accurate, targeted media lists. From learning new ways to navigate popular platforms like Muckrack and Qwoted to uncovering how to leverage social media to our advantage, the team came together and shared best tips and practices for building relationships and connections with reporters. Below are some key factors the team identified that will help us secure even more media wins for our clients.
Identify Pitching Goals
Before starting to draft a pitch or build media lists, we identify the results our client sees as a win. Is the client looking to have their brand name appear in a top-tier publication? Or are they more excited to see brand messaging appear in a key trade outlet within their industry? The answer to that is crucial in how we build out our strategy. Top-tier outlets typically have a long roster of reporters, so it’s important to find the one whose coverage/beat matches best. For trade outlets, the publication already specializes in the area that the client/spokesperson is an expert in, and therefore, we must sell their credibility and talking points to stand out.
Utilize Resources to Connect with Target Reporters
Once we identify our pitch goals, dive into platforms like Muckrack and Qwoted that are designed to help PR professionals and journalists connect efficiently.
Muckrack comes with a variety of uses, including identifying reporters at key publications for our clients, even so much as noting which beat they cover and recent articles they have published. Diving into a reporter’s beat and recent coverage is super helpful because it allows us to gain a better understanding into what type of stories they write, spokespeople they look to interview and topics they focus on covering. With this in mind, we can get a sense of whether they would be a fit for our clients or spokesperson.
Qwoted is another platform that is just as important for PR professionals as it is for journalists. Within the platform, journalists post stories/topics they’re working on, and seek credited sources who can provide insights that can help build out their stories. Seeing in real time what reporters are looking for is crucial for building relationships and securing coverage because it allows us to connect our clients with reporters for topics that are relevant for their upcoming articles. Within Qwoted, we can also build profiles for our clients’ key spokespeople to directly offer them as a source for journalist queries, helping us to easily connect them with targeted journalists and publications.
Always Do Your Research
To be the best PR professionals for our clients, it’s often necessary to get a little scrappy. Meaning: do your research! Sometimes the best way to identify if a journalist is a fit is by looking at their social media pages. Here, you can get a sense of topics they’re interested in based on the content they post and interact with. Platforms like LinkedIn especially are important because we can accurately keep track of media moves and journalist title changes.
Not only is research important to uncovering journalists, but also for discovering new pitch angles. As PR professionals, we must always keep a keen eye on the latest breaking news and trending topics so that we can brainstorm creative angles. By connecting with reporters also interested in these current topics, we can place our clients in outlets that they may not have been in before, helping them to continue build brand awareness in new verticals.
Build and Maintain Media Lists
And lastly, a media list is never stagnant – it’s important to continue researching new reporters and building out lists beyond initial outreach. If the initial contact doesn’t express interest, that doesn’t mean the idea is dead. This gives us the opportunity to re-visit the publication’s work and identify a new reporter within the outlet that may be a fit.
