It’s All About Media Relations

What is media relations? As simple as it sounds, it’s when clients, agencies, or brands deal with the media in efforts to land hits for their clients, gain positive press coverage, or try to rebuild their brand image. But there’s more to media relations than what’s explained. 

Media Relations: What is it?

Chapter 2 of Social PR Secrets talks about the contributions of media relations and its primary methods of contact are. These methods include but aren’t limited to phone, email, in person interviews, and mailing methods. If you have ever had to talk to someone or a group of people about something or an issue and spotlight your clients then you would have done media relations before. The chapter also talked about how social media potentially offers a direct line to mainstream media, in which they do. As PR practitioners we think “go viral” on a daily basis and if the story is interesting enough, we would like to attach our brand, company or cause to that issue generate publicity.

In comparison to the early 90’s journalists can be found almost anywhere. Whether you’re up and coming or an established journalist, people hold you accountable and value what you have to say depending on your niche. Journalists can be extremely helpful especially when a story is interesting, not only is this a great opportunity for you, but for the goal you are looking to achieve when you land the media placement. Moving forward, more users are going to want to learn more about your story which generates more clicks for that specific story.

You might be asking yourself, well how can I connect with people through social media? Great question, there are over thousands of communities that are interested in your niche or learning more about what you have to say. It’s all about how you go about finding them on social media and how you can connect with them, leaving a positive mark for them to find and invest in you in the future. Not only for journalists, but for the media as well, you have to be willing to collaborate with people or groups to achieve goals and reach a common ground to land that story you want.

Twitter is an exceptional platform to do this. While characters are limited to 200, journalists have a unique way of keeping people invested in their own stories for the benefit of the public leading to more followers, bookmarks, likes, and shares. Another way to generate publicity is by using #hashtags or tagging direct news outlets.  

It’s essential to think about what your audience would want to read. Put yourself in their shoes and focus on the key details and what’s important to your readers. Think about the following questions to help guide your next arable or news spot:

• Is this story important?
• How will I make an impact by telling this story?
• How does this story serve my client or company? 
• Will this story contribute to society’s teachings? 
• Is this story interesting to listen to or read about?

When a story builds transition on social media, you want to begin developing relationships as the chapter mentioned. It’s great that you are able to pitch and land the feature, but it’s about what maintains the relationship that will help you grow as a storyteller and public relations professional.