How to Do Media Relations the Right Way

The competitive environment among businesses and organizations grows each day, and for this reason, it is crucial to always stay ahead of the game. It is true that social media plays a major role when it comes to sharing your company’s mission with its audience; but, although it might help to reach more people in less time, we, at Greenberg Communications believe that depending on social media is not enough.

Being active on social media and maintaining good media relations with journalists is what will help your business to be ahead of the game. Therefore, we have gathered four tips that you can use to enhance your media relations practices.

1. Approach media relations with a selling approach. Remember that the media is always looking for what is newsworthy, so you must sell the media on what’s newsworthy about your business. Focus on the benefits of your company instead of its features. In other words, focus on what your company offers, instead of what it does. Journalists want to know what’s newsworthy about your pitch, and how it will benefit them by attracting readers. Write your pitch focusing on the uniqueness of your business and how it can benefit the journalist.
2. Engage with the journalists who are in your circle. Become their followers. Follow them on social media, read their stories, like, share and/or comment them. Let those journalists know that you’re present. Let them know that you admire their work, and that you enjoy it. By doing this, you show the journalist that you not only care, but that you care about it enough that you’re willing to save some time from your busy agenda to engage with it. In case you didn’t know, the media value consideration, and this is a perfect example of how you can show it.
3. Establish a personal connection with the media. Learn about how and when journalists like to be contacted. Be respectful of journalists’ schedules. By having in mind the amount of pitches journalists receive per day, personalize your pitch to the journalist’s style or interest to make your story more likely to be written and to be more likely to resonate with them in the future.
4. Keep it simple. Pitches should be brief and to the point. Have in mind that it’s all about the quality of your words, not the quantity. Keep your press releases short, ideally no longer than a page, add links to websites and don’t forget about visuals.

If you like these tips and would like to learn more about media relations, feel free to contact us at any time.