Ditch the Media List. Do This Instead.
✏️ This One Simple Visual Hack Transformed My PR Game
Hiya! I’m Lucy from Hype Yourself. I’m rebuilding my archive after this happened. Join to receive a weekly email with creative ways to promote your work and make an income. Get Seen. Get Paid.
This week I wanted to share something I do in my business that I think will help you hype yours. You might have seen me share about it on my socials, but I wanted to go a bit deeper with you, my lovely readers….
What I used to do?
When I worked in big PR agency land, and we got a new client, we would create a new media list. This would be a list of all the journalists we would intend to contact about the business.
Often, the larger the agency, the worse the list was.
It would be a cut-and-paste from an old master that was probably outdated.
It was about having as many journalists as you could hit as possible and it made for a terrible practice where people would mailmerge a “spray and pray” generic press release.
I started securing a lot more press coverage when I focused on a bespoke pitch instead of a press release.
Then it wasn’t about who I knew. It was about how well I told the story.
Why big lists are terrible
The question I hate: Can you give me a list of *editors / podcasts / brands I can work with?
I need to know your full story. What are the angles? Who is your target audience? What are other trends in this space? Have you coined a phrase? Is there new research coming out? Are there upcoming newshooks of seasonal dates? How much has that story has already been featured?
Large lists can lead to lazy PR and overlook the above considerations.
The better question is: here is my story (in a few bullet points) where could this fit?
Why I moved over to logo boards
I do like a pinch of manifesting and visualising.
I created a moodboard of logos of the places I wanted to be seen in and it made me get even more focused on landing dream opportunities for myself.
It helped me think about the full holistic picture. Part of hyping yourself is being fully aware of where and who you are showing up with.
For example, the shock of Leonardo Dicaprio showing up at the Bezos / Sanchez wedding spectacle this week, when it seemingly goes against his sustainability credentials, instantly lowered his credibility in this space.
Consider every invite professionally and personally, and if this aligns with your values and how you want your presence to be seen.
Let’s take a look at a few things you can consider to make your own and why this changed things for me.
Things for your own:
Podcasts
I talked about how to find podcasts to pitch for in this class.
