Digital PR 101 – How to get more journalists to accept your content

Jade Rattan 9 years ago

How to get more journalists to accept your content – the holy grail of digital PR! Despite seeming like a pretty basic pre-requisite for digital PR execs, this is not actually as easy as it sounds. The skills involved in securing regular quality placements set great digital PR execs apart from average ones.

There are two things that need to be done well to ensure journalists accept your digital content time and time again. These two elements go hand in hand – think of them as the yin and yang of securing great placements.

They are:

  • Quality content
  • Professional and targeted outreach methods

Without both, you will struggle to get journalists and site owners to regularly accept your digital content.

As, is often the way with digital agencies, content strategists will come up with the content that will eventually be outreached by digital PR execs. Joined up thinking is required right from idea conception to ensure the content stands the best chance of being picked up by journalists and site owners further down the line.

This blog post includes some quick tips and insight on how to nail these two elements and ensure journalists accept your content.

Quality content

To start with, the content needs to be quality, relevant, and relatable/engaging. Achieve these three important factors and you will have a running start when trying to secure quality placements.

Quality content doesn’t just spring from nowhere; content strategists need to put the groundwork into research and creative processes. Here are a few guidelines to ensure your content is something journalists will want to publish.

Do your homework:
Planning ahead is important. Researching events that are relevant to a client’s industry will help ensure you are talking about it before it’s happening. This industry knowledge will also give you the time to plan and prepare content so it is timely and relevant.

Tools such as Buzzsumo are a quick way to see what type of content is getting the most social shares.

Buzz Sumo 

Ahrefs is also a great tool that you can use to see what’s currently trending online.

Hrefs Trending Content

Google Trends allows you to see how often a particular search-term is typed into Google. This information is relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages.

 Google Trends

Use these helpful tools to inform your content. If certain types or are popular and getting attention online - look at ways you could make your content more like them. If a particular topic or theme is working really well, take inspiration from it. Remember, there is a reason this content is doing so well online - learn from it.

Involve the right people:

Involving key members of the wider digital team in the content creation process is important. PR execs, designers, developers, content writers all need to be consulted in order to ensure any potential issues are highlighted early on.

The digital PR team’s input is crucial at this stage as they will be able to advise whether a piece of content has the potential or a sufficient news angle for them pitch into journalists.

All to often, different teams work in silos. As quality content is so crucial to securing great online placements, collaborative contribution is essential to get the content right for pitching. No one knows what journalists are likely to go for more than the people who have direct contact with them every day - the PR execs. It makes sense to include them in discussions from the beginning.

Understand your target market:

An important part of creating quality content is understanding the people you are trying to target and the channels they use to consume content. A solid understanding of these issues through the creation of content personas will ensure your content is relevant and gives your target audience as many reasons as possible to engage with it.

The content you plan to pitch needs to consider these target consumers, their motivations in life and work, ages, hobbies, how they consume information, etc.

Without content personas you run the risk of jumping into content creation from a limited perspective, which will result in boring content. Without understanding what types of content your target personas engage with, and where, the information simply won't reach them, let alone be engaged with. Without agreeing on clear, personas content also runs the risk of being inconsistent and ineffective over time.

A great tool to help you do this effectively is Yougov profiler. Simply type in a brand and you can glean information on the brand's typical consumer’s age, location in the UK, political persuasion, typical profession, monthly spare to spend, etc.

YouGov Profiler

Professional and targeted outreach methods

Once you have the piece of quality, relevant and engaging content, it’s time to put targeted outreach methods in to play and get the fantastic content placed on high profile sites.

Below is a guide on how to do this, well.

Find exactly who you need to contact:

Thinking back to you content personas, you may have established some typical characteristics of your key audience - now it’s time to match these up to online sources they are likely to engage with.

Make the sites you approach fit with the content you have to pitch. Think, how or why will the content benefit the readers of this site? The answer to this question should determine whether the site is worth approaching or not.

Do your research and find the journalist or site contributor who edits the topic/s your content focuses on. Databases such as Vocus will help you drill down within a website’s journalistic team to find the right person to contact.

vocus

Social media is also a good place to locate site contributors and find out what they are interested in.

#journorequest is a simple but effective way of finding out what journalists are actively looking for right now. It's worth keeping an eye on this in case any opportunities crop up.

LinkedIn is often overlooked as an effective tool to find and connect with site contributors. Comment on group discussions, and add engaging comments to journalists’ posts to help you get to know the type of content particular journalists prefer. Knowledge of a recently shared article is also worth mentioning in any subsequent pitch. It shows you are on the ball and up to date with content produced by your target journalists.

Make them listen:

So, you have a great piece of content and a shortlist of site owners and journalists you want to target. Now you need them to take notice of you.

A succinct and personalised pitch with a hook will help. Sounds simple? It’s not as easy as you think and it’s definitely worth putting in the groundwork here too.

Tie in a relevant and newsworthy angle into your pitch. Is there a current or trending news story you could somehow work in? For example, if you are outreaching a piece of content that offers financial information or advice, do some research into recent financial news or announcements and reference these to add another layer of relevance.

Take a look at the site you would like to see the content placed on too. Under which tab or on which part of the site would it fit well? Making reference to this in your pitch shows you have done your homework and puts a case to the site contributor as to why their readers would be interested in your content.

Sit back and relax:

Only joking. You’ve pitched your great content well, now it's time to put the real work in.

Journalists are busy people and just hoping your content stands out from the rest simply isn’t good enough. Follow up with an email and a phone call. Phone calls often work better at this stage, as rather than clogging up an email inbox, you can speak to the person in question and get direct feedback.

Google Sidekick is a handy tool that allows you to see if the recipient of your email has opened it and clicked on a link within it. This can help you time your follow up calls to best effect.

A positive ‘no’:

If a site contributor decides not to use your content – use this as positive. No, they haven’t used your content this time but you have made a new contact or refreshed correspondence with an old one for future pitches.

Any feedback given as to why the content is not for a particular site is helpful to inform pitches you are currently working on, and any future ones too.

Background networking and meet-ups:

Part of a digital PR exec’s workload involves actively making contact with site owners and journalists – even if they don’t have any current content for them.

Finding journalists who work for sites within your current clients’ industries and any potential future client’s target lists is really beneficial. Arranging to attend networking events, which you know some key people may be at, or organising a coffee meeting with a journalist you would like to work with in the future, can go a long way in establishing a solid working relationship that could be mutually beneficial for years to come.

Summary

Both quality content and innovative, professional outreach skills are required in order to build and develop relationships with journalists. Without quality content, journalists will take one look at your pitch and dismiss it (and potentially any other future pitches you make) – no matter how well you sell it in.

Quality content is all well and good, but without an ever-growing black book of journalists with which you have good relationships to pitch it to, outreaching will be much more difficult.

Outreach needs to be innovative and tailored to your audience in order to be successful, two things that should also be mirrored in the content you are pitching. The longevity of relationships with journalists is based just as much on the quality of content you provide them with as the pitch you use.

In summary, ensuring you have quality content and innovative outreach skills will pay dividends over time, as together, both will breed mutually reliable, trustworthy and professional relationships with journalists.

Stay in touch with the Zazzle Media family

Sign up for our monthly newsletter and follow us on social media for the latest news.

Our website uses cookies for various purposes and to enhance the site’s functionality. This helps us understand how you use and interact with the website.

Settings Accept Cookies