DIY PR: Making Media List Magic

I recently met with a small business public relations client and she told me she didn’t know what a media list was when she first started her business. So glad she mentioned this…an easy way to start this week’s post…



What is a media list? A media list is a list of journalists or producers from newspapers, magazines, blogs, radio or TV shows. This list includes their contact information and, in some cases, a bit of information on the outlet and journalist. This list is used when "pitching" the media. For example, if you want to get your product in the editorial pages of Real Simple magazine about a new food product, your media list would probably include the Food Editor at Real Simple. But, wait, maybe the Food Editor only handles recipes. What now? Well, you’ll need to find someone who handles new products, or a holiday gift guide, perhaps? You won’t know until you do the RESEARCH (muy importante). More on that to come. Just keep in mind, a solid media list is about quality and not about quantity.



PR professionals like me typically subscribe to a database, which provides contact information and profile information for journalists. However, even with a database, you need to create a media strategy and research is required in order to choose the correct journalist and the column/beat. A subscription for a database is a big expense for the DIY PR peeps who are looking for affordable public relations solutions so here are a few tips if you are going to go it alone…



Target Outlets & Shows - Create a list of target publications (blogs, magazines, newspapers, etc.) based on your target audience. (A quick note about blogs – there are freaking TONS of them. Not all of them are going to impact sales or give you the 3rd party credibility you’re looking for in a blog. Stick to picking the top 10-15 in your category)



Read up & Research! - Read these publications online or in-person (why, hello, Barnes & Noble. no I don’t mind if I do stay for awhile. Not endorsing but I’m just sayin…). It’s best of course to regularly read the publications you are going to pitch. However, it’s a tad unrealistic to think you can read all of the publications you want to pitch. Here’s what I recommend. Use Google Reader to follow your top blogs and do a quick scan of them daily. Choose your top 3-5 magazines that are your dream publications and subscribe to them. The rest can be researched on your own time as I mentioned above.



Contact Information – Once you have found the right section and journalist to add to your list, it’s time to find the contact information. For blogs, it’s usually one person writing the blog and you can retrieve their contact information from the blog itself. For magazines and newspapers, it requires some online digging. Do some searching on the publication’s Web site, try LinkedIn or just a general Google search. Another trick is to find the email formula of the publication and give that a whirl.



Putting it all together - Suppose you are launching a kid’s clothing store in NYC. The target lists I’d recommend are: NYC online outlets and NYC print publications. Look online for the top Web sites in this category and visit a book store to see what local publications you could be pitching. Soon, you’ll start to develop your target list: Daily Candy Kids, Stroller Traffic, Time Out New York Kids, etc. You get the idea. Once this NYC-targeted list is in order, look online and flip through the magazine to see which writer is covering any of the following beats: kid’s fashion, store openings, events (if you’re having one), etc. Then start your hunt for the contact information.



Many small business public relations clients ask me about "blasting" out a press release to a list they bought of 200+ names. No No No!! I don’t even like getting a mass email from my friends, never mind a stranger so you can imagine how a journalist might feel. I’d rather use a small list of five key target publications and journalists than a list of hundreds of random journalists.