4 Ways Social Media Impacts Media Relations

Think about media relations a decade ago. We’d send press releases to news desks, schedule one-on-one briefings with journalists, hold well-attended press conferences. While some of those tactics still make sense today, technology has forced media relations to evolve. Journalists are crazy busy, newsrooms are shrinking, anyone with a camera has the ability to create news.

Technology, economic shifts, and social media has forced the PR industry to evolve, especially how we conduct media relations. For starters, there are more outlets to pitch, we can more effectively research reporters, build better relationships (before, during and after the pitch!), bypass traditional gatekeepers … and so on. Nevermind the fact that the “media” is a crowded field. In addition to traditional print and broadcast journalists, bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, Facebook page admins, contributing writers/freelancers, and citizen journalists are all part of this media. Really, anyone with an audience is part of new media. Thanks to social media, anyone can be media. (That doesn’t mean all media are journalists, but that’s a different discussion.)

All that said, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Before you ever pitch media, ask yourself these questions:

• What’s the story?
• Why is it newsworthy?
• Who cares?
• Why am I (or my client) a resource?
• What’s my specific, relevant expertise?
• What other resources/assets can I offer a reporter?

Once you’ve answered those questions, then you can start thinking about the pitch. I’ve written previously how to pitch reporters, but let’s review these four ways social media can improve your media outreach:

• Build better media lists. Research blogs, Twitter, online forums and other spaces where online conversations are happening to create highly targeted media lists. By following media online, we can develop a better sense of the types of stories they cover and what kinds of pitches would be appropriate.
• Cultivate stronger relationships. Media relations is not a “one and done” approach. Before you pitch, find ways to interact with journalists/bloggers online. Read what they’re writing. Follow and interact with their tweets. Check out their Facebook pages. Look for shared likes or dislikes and start a conversation about those. Or, leave a comment on something they’ve written (in a way that adds value).
• Spot trends to create new story opportunities. One of my clients is Madison Electric Products. They have a thing called the Sparks Innovation Center, the industry’s first crowdsourced approach to media relations. They’re all about innovation, so we’ve created various searches for people talking about innovation and collaboration for small businesses. One day, we saw a few tweets about a new study from GE that said innovation in the next century would be led by small businesses collaborating with each other. That’s exaclty what Madison is doing. So, we took that study from Twitter, used it as the “hook” for a media pitch and landed a major story in a key business publication. If we hadn’t been monitoring searches on Twitter, we likely wouldn’t have seen that study, nor would we have been able to create this media opportunity.
• Participation leads to media coverage. I recall reading a study last year that said 89% of journalists research blogs when they’re writing stories. If you’re blogging about timely, relevant topics (that show high in searches), this can help you generate additional media coverage. I wrote a blog post about social media and crisis communication, specifically the parody account @BPGlobalPR, which helped me land in this BusinessWeek story. Because I was participating in social media, I fell into a media opportunity. Your company and your clients can create these situations, too.

I got to thinking about this topic as I put together my slides for a presentation on media relations in a social world for the Ohio Growth Summit. If you’re interested, my slides are below:

I’d love to hear from you. How do you think social media has impacted media relations? Share in the comments …