Are you still sending out press releases and waiting for the media to publish your story? With thanks to social media, the PR game has changed, and not only is it no longer necessary to send out random press releases, you can contact journalists directly using Twitter and that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
Traditional media and PR channels are no longer restricted to those that hold a magic black book of contacts. Instead, journalist, editors and publishers can be found and contacted online.
Twitter is a great platform for this. Journalists rely heavily on Twitter to source and research stories.
Twitter is like a giant search engine with lots of resources out there that are used daily by PR and Media organisations. Twitter is also growing its stakes in the live news field. Think back to the US Presidential Campaign. More stories broke on live on Twitter from former President Barak Obama as well as current President Donald Trump. If they’re using Twitter, doesn’t it make sense that the news outlets will be using it too?
The only drawback is that there is A LOT of noise on Twitter, an awful lot! So how do you cut through it to get to the conversations that matter to you?
- 1. #journorequest OR #PRrequest
- Perhaps you already use one or both of the above. They are both as relevant today as they were when they were first introduced in 2008. These hashtags are used when a journalist is trying to find someone to comment or be interviewed for a story. This could be for a magazine, newspaper, online news site, TV or radio. By searching for either of these terms, you’ll cut out the noise and get straight to the chase.
2. Filtering #journorequest
Of course you’re still going to see a lot of stuff that isn’t relevant to you, so drill down even further. Add keywords to the search bar to filter out non-relevant tweets. Watch the video for examples of how this works.
3. Search by Twitter Account
If, for example, you’re looking to reach out to Red Magazine – in the search bar you’ll enter ‘journalist’ ‘red’ magazine. Twitter will then show you the magazine account and any related accounts. Be sure to click on People for this part of the search.
You can try this on any area that you’re working in; politics, gardening, travel etc
The great thing about the account search is that you’re going to find contacts that are outside of traditional media such Youtubers, bloggers etc.
4. Search by intent
Twitter is becoming more and more a resource for help. Often you’ll see tweets that include the phrases ‘I need help’ or ‘Can anyone help’ – indicating intent to find assistance.
If you match this with secondary keywords, relevant to the media and to your area of expertise you can laser focus on finding the right journalists and contacts. So for example, looking+for+expert+interviews would only bring the results of the journalists that were looking for experts to interview, followed by the areas of expertise.
Once you’ve gathered all the journalists that are relevant to you, you then need to sort them into lists. There is no way I could write a blog post on this as I would be here all day! So instead I’ve made a handy little video guide for you to watch. Just click below to watch
So go on, watch the video, have a play around with Search and see who you can uncover. In the next post we’ll chat about how to respond to a #journorequest
Enjoyed this post? Why not sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share all kinds of tips on connecting with the media and getting your story published. Sign up below.