Once you've got your story angle, you're now ready to start pitching it to the media. But you need to know which journalists to contact. I can't emphasize enough how worth your while it is to put some effort into creating a really solid MEDIA list. So many media relations campaigns fail because of poor targeting. But good news is that digital media has made it a lot easier to find the journalists that are relevant to your overall PR MEDIA list should be illustrative of the best, most relevant targets you can approach updated on an ongoing basis and expanded for each new campaign or story. As great as online media databases are they really contain every single artist and they often don't have much information on the artists that you're trying to target.

So do use them but use them cleverly. Use them as an organizational and research tool and use them to supplement your list building activity, but don't think that they're going to answer all of your PR prayers. Before you start thinking about what are you pitching? What angles are created by the latest story, what vertical markets or industries might be interested and who won't be interested, you should start to develop this list using the following approaches a keyword search on a media database such as go Connor, video or session. These are all paid databases, and they will save you a lot of time. But you don't have to use them.

You can do your own research as well. Ask some of the people in your target audience such as your customers which media they follow. Ask some of your colleagues which outlets they think will be relevant. Conduct a Google News search for articles on the subject to see which outlets have covered it before. Your list should be in a spreadsheet at a minimum. Although once again, there are so many tools out there for managing databases, that it seems crazy for anyone working in digital PR not to use them.

I would therefore highly recommend you invest in a CRM tool, which will make it vastly easier to manage and update your database. Here's the information you would need to include on each media context. outlet, journalists name, you might have multiple journalists PR outlets, email, telephone number, job title, media type, print, broadcast online and notes. Go through the list entry by entry and make sure you understand who they are and why they're in the list. Read the About Us section on the publication. Determine the best contacts at the outlet and note that there may be more than one.

Search for the journalists on social media. Make sure they're covering similar topics and update the notes section. read their articles without inappropriate context and find new ones and understand the job role. For example, news editors will what press releases features editors will want longer form pieces. photo editors will want good images, production or video editors will want video content later pages editor's will want letters. editors at large or publishers don't deal with individual stories.

It's vital to carry out research and understand who the best people are to approach. Have they covered your subject before? And what was their angle on it? Remember to include freelancers These are people who work for themselves, but contract are two different media, but approach them differently. freelancers play a huge part in the media, from magazines, to newspapers and blogs, so don't forget them. One prominent Freelancer might write for 10 magazines you're interested in.

To find them, leave the database behind completely. Instead, search on social media for people who have freelance writer or freelance journalist in their profiles, and build your list out from there. Once your initial MEDIA list is in a good place, updated constantly to avoid needing a complete rebuild in the future. Did you receive a bounce back email, find another email addresses and update the list. Have you written announcement about someone new at a key awkward add that Contact? Did you stumble across a new blog that fits your business perfectly, add it.

Remember that a lot of media databases won't include blogs. So you might need to search for these manually. You'll still need to check contacts and outlets the next time there's a story to be put out, but you won't be building the list from scratch. These are some tools of the trade media databases like Akana video session, PR Max, Google News, social networks, broadcast databases, like radio station world social listening tools like buzzsumo pulser, and mentioned CRM tools like HubSpot, or pipedrive, and spreadsheets like Excel or Google Sheets. The key to a good MEDIA list is to combine your research abilities with time saving technology to create a perfectly targeted list of people who would be interested in your story. embrace the fact that a good MEDIA list takes time to build.

Do your research. Don't overlook freelancers, they're becoming more than norm for websites. And print off. Let's understand the list. use social media to help constantly update your list and don't rush it. So now that you've got your media list and your story, you're ready to take that story to the media.

The next lesson contains a step by step guide to building better relationships with journalists.