📣 #017: A prompt to boost your journalist relationships

The next edition from the 52 PR Tips challenge: prompts, tips & templates to help you Hype Yourself.

Hiya 🌊! I’m Lucy from Hype Yourself. Pop your email in to receive a selection of posts from the 52 PR Tips challenge, personal essays and other good things on self-promotion and creative living.

🏠A couple of pieces of housekeeping:

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Claire Venus

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Thursday | September 5th 2024 | 19:00 pm BST | Zoom 

💵 August Class Announcement: How to successfully run a crowdfunder 💡

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WELCOME TO THE 52 PR TIPS CHALLENGE - TASK 14

Top of the journo pops 

Who are your top five journalists? The ones that always write about your line of work? Engage with their writing and become an active reader 

If you think getting PR for your business is getting hold of a list of editors and wanging out the same press release or pitch to them, I’m here to save you from your pitching sins.

❌ That is called spam.

It has never been easier to find journalist contact details who cover your industry, but that means you need to be even more focused on who you pitch to.

✅ You are much better off nurturing a small list of relevant press than spreading yourself far and wide.

Why?

Getting press takes time and momentum, and sending out a press release is not a silver bullet to landing a lot of articles.

You don’t have time to work full-time on PR. So, pick the places that are most important for your business to appear. Start with a few and nurture relationships with the media who write for that space.

You want to get a masters degree in their columns, the topics, the themes and what they cover.

Being written about in a newspaper is of huge benefit for you (not for them). Have the courtesy to make sure you are benefitting the journalist by being relevant to their audience.

Once this relationship has been built, you can become the go-to person.

For myself and many of my former agency clients, many more significant articles come from repeat journalist requests. Most recently, I see it with people in the paid membership - it can happen for you too!

Let’s just refresh ourselves of our PR goals first?

Don’t forget to check out the goal-setting workshop and ensure your business goals are laid out.

REPLAY: Setting PR goals & Q&A

It might be that your media list is actually:

• Five brand partners that you want to collaborate with

• Five event programmers for conferences you want to speak at

• Five radio producers for shows you want to speak on

Your top five list needs to align with your business goals.

With that said, if we are looking at making friends with journalists, let’s dive into the best way to do this.

This week, in the paid membership, we are going to take a look at the following:

• ChatGPT prompts for finding relevant media

• Three places I connect with journalists to secure coverage

• Paid-for journalist databases

• Easy ways to build connections

Note: It takes momentum to become the go-to expert in your industry. If you want to raise your profile and look at alternative ways to make an income, save 40% by joining me for a year