Reaching the Media
Press Release Blasts Effectiveness Fading
Aug 8, 2009 Patricia Faulhaber
While the press release remains the top way to inform journalists of company news and happenings, building relationships by pitching to the right news source matters more than ever.
Blasting a press release over news wires and online services may not be the best way to reach reporters. There are other types of online services that can help get the right topic with the right timing to the right type of media.
Best News Pitches
PR Tactics published survey results in the August 2009 issue showing that 92% of business reporters get their story ideas from press releases. That is a staggering statistic. One can only image the amount of press releases a business reporter receives on a daily basis. What helps a press release catch a reporter’s attention?
Relationship building has been proven to be a better practice than just blasting a release to hundreds of reporters that may not have any sort of interest in the information. Granted, it would take hundreds of hours of research to build media lists that are drilled down to just those reporters that cover the topics related to a particular company or organization. Add to that the hours it would take to keep up with reading the reporters’ writings.
And, with news resources changing personnel and reassigning beats because of economic troubles, reporters can be there one day and gone the next. There are online services that can help keep up with it all. One such service is MatchPoint by eNR Services in Norfolk, Virginia.
Building Media Lists
MatchPoint is an online program that public relations writers can copy and paste part of or all of a press release on the left side of the screen and the program returns a media list of news resources that have actually written on the topic or a related topic. The list can be filtered by location. Users can click on the reporter’s name and get contact information. There are also links for articles written by the reporter.
Users can research the reporter, click to add to a custom list, and then download the list to their own computer. The search results show the percentage of relevancy, the date the reporter last wrote about the topic, and there is an engage tab that allows the user to engage the reporter one-on-one through email.
Kay Guindon, VP PR Services at MatchPoint said, “MatchPoint searches by what the journalists have written about not just their beat. Users can look at the journalist’s own body of work to whom a particular pitch would be relevant.”
Guindon continued, “It’s an innovative tool that helps to begin that necessary dialog between PR and journalists based on mutual respect.”
List of Bloggers
Bloggers have gained much ground over recent years and have become a reliable, effective news resource. Building media lists of traditional types of reporters has always been a big job but building blogger media lists can be overwhelming.
The Wall Street Journal reported on April 21, 2009 that, “In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers.” Their research found over 20 million bloggers.
MatchPoint offers blogger lists that again relate to the topic of release. There is a contact button for each blogger that will take the user to the blog so that they can find the appropriate means of contacting the blogger.
Public Relations Tools
So much research shows that reporters want to communicate with public relations professionals; they just want it to be timely and relevant to what they report and write about.
Any tool that can help build those much needed relationships is invaluable. Online services such as MatchPoint meet the criteria of fundamental public relations tools.
Build Relationships with Reporters
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