Media Relations
During my time at Murray Paterson Marketing Group, I was a part of many media relations campaigns from the beginning stages of brainstorming news-worthy angles and culturally relevant points, to pitching local media, tracking coverage, and compiling final reports. Putting this into practice for approximately two years, here are a few key takeaways I have always come back to.
Following up doesn’t hurt
News coverage is highly-coveted as limited space is often made available without media buys. This is particularly resonant for arts coverage. Thus, being tenacious on behalf of your client to seek out interviews, preview article opportunities, or roundup inclusions is imperative in order to see results. Therefore, it is important to prioritize following up whether it be jumping on the phone, or sending another email so that you are doing your due diligence.
Make yourself relevant
Thinking of the reader or viewer, I’ve realized the importance of positioning a client as relevant to the popular or political cultural context the campaign finds itself in. As a result, the only way to answer why a campaign is important to cover is by applying it to the contemporary moment. By doing deep research into community connections, the personal stories of your client’s mission, or relating your campaign to a current event, media are able to see how your efforts relate to their intent to share important and relevant stories in their community.
Relationships are key
In my experience, I’ve found that the media landscape is highly saturated with pitches, so much so that your go-to contact probably receives 4X as many email as you do a day. With respect to this, it is important to build relationships and awareness with whom you are pitching. In getting to know a journalist by looking at their past coverage or twitter page, you are able to identify how your client relates to their area of expertise, and what they truly would be interested in covering. In this effort, soon the journalist will come to know that you’ll only reach out to them with good stories specific to their kind of writing, proving you’ve done your research.
“As a marketer, Angela tirelessly excavates numerous stones to turnover for the client. She isn’t afraid of kindly following up, or pushing to get a story placed or interview booked. I appreciated her phone skills, email etiquette, and great public speaking and presentation capabilities. Angela’s character is strong and she also looks out for her team members, never taking anyone for granted.”