Building a PR media list allows you to reach out to the media quickly and keep all your key contacts in one safe place. Depending on the content you want coverage for, a media list allows you to outreach to your contacts en masse, appeal to multiple audiences at once and ultimately save you time and money.
However, if you want to build a PR media list that gets results, it’s vital to be well organised with your media. Don’t waste time creating amazing content that won’t get seen by the right people, or worse still, won’t get seen at all. These top tips will help you create an organised media list, find relevant and quality media contacts and ensure you gain PR coverage.
Before You Build…Choose the Right Tools
How you choose to build a PR media list all depends on the content you have and how widely you want to outreach. For example, if you’re specifically looking to get in the local and regional news, you’ll already have an idea of the publications you want to feature in. You can therefore build your media list manually.
However, if you’re doing “mass outreach” and looking to appeal to multiple publications in different sectors, then a media database like Vuelio, or Cision will be your new best friend.
A good media database allows you to search for contacts by industry, find key outlets and identify multiple contacts at each publication too. You can also filter by country and search for publications specifically online, in print or even by profession. When you’ve compiled your list, you can save and export it and send out a press release to all your contacts without having to switch screens. Choosing the right tools will save you precious media management time.
What Are You Offering?
The content you are offering determines your audience. It’s impossible to build a targeted and relevant media list if you don’t know who your content is actually for. Your audience could be obvious of course, for example, an article on renovating will be suitable for consumer publications that deal with homes or DIY. However, before you start building your list, review your content and ask yourself, “who will want to read this?”.
You can now start building a more targeted list of publications. Research writers and publications that write about your topic, or have readers that will be interested. If you’re looking to target a set industry or readership, look at the tone of voice they use. Is your content more suited to industry or consumer publications? Are you looking for bloggers, news websites, or both? There’s also budget considerations to consider. If you can’t pay for sponsored content, then it’s pointless outreaching to publications that charge for submissions.
Taking the time to do your research will help ensure your media list doesn’t contain any pointless contacts – another big time saver!
Putting a Name to the Place
If you’re outreaching to journalists, editors and bloggers, try to give it the personal touch. Make sure your media list is packed with personalised email addresses for outlets. Try to avoid “editor@ info@”, these emails will go straight to a centralised inbox and you might get missed. Do some digging into the publications and find a relevant contact who is in charge of content, or the website, then add them to your list.
If you’re using a media database, it’s more simple. Search for your outlet and, depending on the size of the company, you can view a list of relevant editorial contacts. While it’s tempting to add the editor straight to your media list, consider assistant editors and editorial assistants too, you may get a quicker reply from them.
Avoid contacts that have nothing to do with content creation like the editor-in-chief, who looks after the business side of the publication.
Getting the Right Media Mix
If you want to conduct outreach that works, then it’s important to mix the right media cocktail. Think outside the box when it comes to your industry or sector. For example, if your content or article is written for the events industry, you could try outreaching to marketing or hospitality publications too. Let’s say you’ve written an article on the benefits of double glazing, you could aim for publications that deal with home building, renovations and even the environment.
Being more creative with your media list ensures you’ll have a larger reach of quality publications and hopefully get more results.
A Quality PR Media List Is Vital
If you’re working in PR, online or offline, don’t take your media lists for granted. Rather than just building a database of random contacts, from every industry, it’s important to be more methodical with your media. Research your targets, find good quality contacts that you can reach directly and ensure the content you’re offering is angled correctly. Ensuring you have a media list that works, before outreaching, will save you time in the long run and help produce those all important results.