I often tell interns and PR newbies that the press list is the most important part of having a successful media outreach campaign. Of course, you also need to have an interesting story, concise pitch and relevant collateral information to land a story in a prioritized outlet, but if you are not sending the pitch to the right person, you are setting yourself up for failure. There is no point in having a great story if you are not telling it to the right person to report on it.
So how does someone put together the perfect press list? What is the right process for identifying a reporter to target for a story? And what resources are out there to help public relations professionals create a press list?
A Step by Step Process
The first thing I do when creating a press list is audit the existing media coverage around the story topic to learn who has previously reported on it. This is an essential part of the press list development process because the targets found during the audit are likely the “beat” reporters for your subject, meaning they are interested in most news updates related to your vertical. You will also find reporters who may not report on the subject as frequently as a beat reporter, but may still be interested in the topic based on their previous coverage.
To conduct the audit, I create a “key word” list related to my topic and use a combination of Google and Factiva searches to locate previous coverage. For those unfamiliar with Factiva, it’s website describes itself as “the world’s leading source of premium news, data and insight … with access to thousands of premium news and information sources on more than 22 million public and private companies.” In general, conducting Google and Google News searches to locate coverage is easier than using a program such as Factiva (and it’s free), but Factiva is helpful because it has access to media coverage for a longer period of time.
After the audit is finished you should have a core group of reporters to target for your outreach. At this point, I go to Cision to start building out a more robust list of media targets. Cision is the industry-leading database of media outlets and reporters that is used to capture contact information and actually build a press list. While it’s not as accurate as online searches for identifying reporters covering your topic, it does feature listings of every outlet type that could possibly report on your story.
I typically use Cision to figure out which outlets I want to target during my pitching campaign. For example, if I know I want to target tech-focused magazines and daily newspapers, I’ll use Cision to identify outlets that meet those criteria. This is particularly helpful if you are working on a story in a field you are less familiar with and do not know all of the major publications in the industry. At this point, some people also use Cision to identify specific reporters within the publications that they want to target – which is perfectly fine – but I’ve found many of the listings to be outdated and use a different approach.
Once I’ve identified all the target outlets, I visit each of their websites and search for past articles written about the subject and add the authors to my press list, ensuring that I’m contacting the correct reporters and journalists. This can be a very meticulous, time-consuming process, but the effort pays off when you start pitching. Not all account budgets can support this amount of research, but it is definitely the best and most accurate way to find relevant reporters.
Every public relations professional has their own tricks and best practices for developing a press list, but if you have never created one before this guide can help you through the process. If there is one thing you take away from this post, let it be this: You are wasting your time if you are pitching the wrong people. A well-developed press list is key to your campaign.