02nd Jun 2016 by Harriet Dalwood

10 Yetis Insight Blog - How To Approach Journalists

When working in digital PR, enticing journalists is one of the most important aspects of the job. There’s far more required than just having some great content to push out – you need to maximise the outreach if you’re going to get the best results possible and ensure those journalists sit up and pay attention.

So how do you achieve that perfect outreach strategy, the one that will get your message across and ensure it’s listened to by as many relevant journalists as possible? It can be a nerve-wracking experience for a newbie and even some of the most experienced pros can get their approaches wrong from time to time, some even ending up on the receiving end of a tweet or two for their troubles!

Here’s the tricks of the trade that we’ve learned, to help guide you as you outreach your story.

Segment your journalists

This may seem obvious to some, but you’d be surprised how many people working in public relations forget to do this. Whipping together a release and then sending it out to every Tom, Dick and Harry isn’t going to work. Instead of risking sending journalists irrelevant content, which could damage your relationship with them, make sure you take the time to categorise your contacts according to their interests and patches.

For example, here at Yeti towers, we keep meticulous records of journalists according to their sector, for instance; technology, online consumer, health and fitness, etc.

Do some revision

Although this can be a time consuming task, clueing up on the journalists before you send them anything is beneficial. Even if you are aiming for a broad push for a campaign, it’s worth identifying your top targets and working out what kind of style they prefer – Listicles? Long form? – and what they have recently covered, to see if this can help to steer your pitch.

If you have a few targeted publications that your client REALLY wants to get into, find the perfect journalist at that establishment, read up on some of their existing articles and drop these articles into conversation, for example you could say:

“I read the piece you wrote for *PUBLICATION* on *TOPIC* recently and I thought that you might be interested in hearing about …”

Seamless.

Don’t give up so easy

Even though you might have found the perfect journalist for your campaign, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are the only person you should be going to at that publication.

Equally, just because someone at a certain publication might have declined your story does not mean that everyone there will say no. It may seem sneaky, but if you go in from all sides there is a higher chance of success and different editors will see different hooks and angles to your story.

Connect, socially

If you want to keep in closer contact with the journalists, it’s time to start connecting with them on social media channels. If you have a client that mostly wants to target the lifestyle pages of a publication, for instance, find the lifestyle editor and follow them on Twitter.

Don’t be weird about it though; there’s no need to start liking every single one of their posts; desperation will put anyone off, including journalists. Instead just follow them, maybe like the occasional post and interact every now and then. This will be a great chance for you to watch out for any requests they have, or mentions of any topics that they are working on, as well as getting more of a feel for their interests.

Plan ahead

If you have an event coming up in a few months’ time, start telling journalists about it as soon as you can. You have the chance to use this opportunity to build up the relationship, and keeping in touch early will also get journalists excited for when the date rolls round. It will come sooner than you expect!

Some journalists also plan their editorial quite far in advance, so they will appreciate the warning ahead of time.

Maintain your connections

Once you’ve had a successful campaign, it can be easy to close the case and consider it finished. If you can keep you connections open ended, however, it can be really advantageous when it comes to future campaigns and outreach to have a handful of contacts that you have maintained a relationship with. You never know what campaigns are just around the corner, after all!

It takes no time out of your day to check in with a previous contact, so email them every now and ask if they need anything from you. A great platform to keep in touch on is Twitter or social media, so keep an eye on their accounts and engage every so often, for instance, tweeting with any information they might find useful for an article they are writing.

This can result not only in a friendship, but also in a productive ‘if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch your’ situation, leaving everyone a winner.

Journalists are very important to us PR lot and, although they can seem intimidating, if you follow these steps and treat them well, you’ll be reeling off successful outreach campaigns in no time - and could make some lifelong friends, too!

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