How to Intro Yourself to a New Journalist
Plus: RSVP for our popular "How to Become a Journalist's BFF" group workshop
Happy New Year Top Tier Community!
It’s January of a brand new year. Hopefully everyone had a nice holiday break and is feeling refreshed and ready to get back to work. It’s a crazy time in the media world (a phrase it feels like we’ve all been saying lately a lot ::sigh:;). But a new year is a fresh start and a good time to make some big business waves.
One of the biggest steps you can make now is to network. January is a great time to:
Intro yourself to new journalists you’ve never worked with before
Touch base with journalists you’ve fallen out of touch with
Reconnect with your go-to journalists
Put yourself in positions to meet new journalists
Team up with new journalists to try new things for your clients
On that note — and before we dive into this week’s topic — a quick announcement: We’re bringing back one of our most popular workshops this month in a group format. It’s been an entire year since we’ve offered this and it’s been highly requested so here goes… and we’ve updated it for today’s ever-changing journalism landscape, of course!
How to Become a Writer’s BFF: Networking & Relationship Management session
Here are the details:
What: Some publicists seem to have a transactional “wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am” approach to their work, but highly successful publicists know that building long-term relationships with journalists is truly the gift that keeps on giving. Learn how to meet new journalists, and discover best practices for staying in touch, following up, and creating meaningful relationships.
Format: 1-hour workshop via Zoom with Jill and Nicole includes:
a formal 45-minute presentation of our best relationship-building and management tips:
Learn how to meet new journalists and develop a lucrative working relationship with them
Discover best practices for staying in touch
Learn the finer points of following up that will increase your response rate
Discover how to become a writer’s go-to source
Learn how to stand out when answering a writer’s call for sources (whether that’s on HARO, a FB group, Twitter, Substack etc) — there is definitely an art to this and we will walk you through our magic formula!
Discover how to avoid common writer pet peeves that may make someone want to pass on working with you again.
15 minutes for Q&A: Anything and everything is on the table for discussion here and you will walk away with your questions answered.
Opportunity to network with and learn from your colleagues
Date:
Tuesday, January 28th 10 am PST/1:00 pm ET. Can’t make it live? Sign up anyway and we’ll send you the recording to watch on your own time!
Pricing:
$99 per person for annual Top Tier Paid Subscribers; $149 per person for Free Subscribers (prepayment is required to hold your slot)
(Note to free subscribers: The TTC annual subscription fee is $99 — so, upgrading would save you $50 on this workshop, PLUS you’d get access to ALL our paid content — including our vast archive of content — and monthly Top Tier Talks.
Questions? Ready to sign up?
Reach out to us at info@toptierconsulting.NET today! We hope to see you there!
Keeping on the theme of relationships with writers, here are some of our best tips for how to do those January writer reach outs:
DON’T: Suggest the “let’s hop on a call to discuss our clients” thing
As our inboxes are filling up with people being full swing back to work, we’re getting lots of emails from publicists that say “would love to hop on the phone to discuss our new clients.” Writers often ignore those types of emails for many reasons. The main reason is we simply don’t have the time to do those calls.
Another reason is that the key to landing your clients in a story is to pitch writers your client in the context of a story idea. Simply telling a writer that you have a cool client is not often enough to help a writer with a busy inbox make the connection as to what they can do with that client article-wise.
Your best bet is to pitch your client and tie them to something timely. That will give you much more bang for your buck.
DO: Send out a pitch that showcases a client
If you want to pitch a writer, you don’t have to do a big hello email before the pitch. A pre-pitch isn’t necessary. The best way to dazzle is to put together a curated pitch for a writer who covers that beat with some story angles. You can introduce yourself as a publicist a writer has never worked with in that email.
It’s the same thing that happens when writers reach out to new editors. The emails where we say, “Hi I’m so and so and here are my clips and I want to write for you” largely get ignored. The ones where we do that PLUS send thoughtful pitches that make sense for that outlet are the ones that land us new clients and new work.
DON’T: Invite a writer to a coffee, tea or lunch date right off the bat
First off, many staff writers cannot accept these invitations. They have policies that forbid them from taking paid things from clients or colleagues.
And then there’s the busy factor. Writers can barely keep up with our email inbox, let alone drive somewhere to meet up for coffee. We love you for offering and consider it a very sweet gesture but it’s often just too hard to pull it off in this day and age. That doesn’t mean you won’t find writers who can do this but it’s likely that they aren’t the very busy freelancers working for the top tier outlets you want your clients in.
Of course, this is something you can do once you develop a rapport down the road if it makes sense.
DO: Include information about your other clients in a pitch if it makes sense for that writer
If you’re doing a first pitch to a writer you’ve never worked with and you have other clients that fit their beat, go ahead and tell them. We’d suggested doing your hello, hopping right into a pitch they can’t resist that showcases one of your clients in a timely fashion, THEN go ahead and say “I notice you write about tech a lot and have these other clients if you’d like more info…” and give a quick overview.
DON’T: Tell a writer about every single client you have in a spray-and-pray approach
On the subject of the above, don’t tell a tech writer that you have food products unless it makes sense. You want to show that you are trying to showcase your clients that make sense to that writer. If it’s a jack of all traders writer who covers everything and anything, however, that’s a different story.
DO: Invite a writer to an in-person media event you are hosting or a virtual one
These are still very much a thing — in person and virtually — and provide a great way to get to know other journalists. We have soooo many thoughts on the dos and don’ts of putting these on that we have an entire hour-long session where we help publicists nail down how to rock hosting these.
Recommended reading: In-Person and Virtual Events, Client Desksides, and Others Ways to Network with Journalists
DO: Creep them on social media and Substack a bit before reaching out (in a non-creepy way!) and look up their recent bylines
Don’t understimate the things you can learn about a writer through their online presence — tidbits of info that can help with your pitching. Maybe it’ll help you write a more clever intro (addressing the fact that their dog just had a birthday or they just tried making sourdough for the first time) or tie your idea into their personal life.
Another great way to start your intro is by mentioning a recent byline and relating it to your own life (now I know exactly what suitcase I’ll buy for my next trip!) or how it ties into your client (I saw you wrote about XYZ, and here’s an angle you may not have considered … my client can help!).
No matter how you approach this, be as authentic as possible. The goal is to build a trusted rapport, not get brownie points.
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Do you have any questions? Feel free to leave them in the comments below and we’ll answer them!
Thanks again for being a part of this wonderful community we’re building. If you know a colleague who could benefit from this, please share this newsletter with them. We’re putting so much time and effort into these weekly articles and are thrilled to be able to get them in front of people who are benefiting from them.
Jill & Nicole
PS: You can always email us with any questions: info@toptierconsulting.NET
*Note: Our consulting sessions, workshops, Zooms and Substack newsletters are strictly educational. Signing up for anything has no bearing on landing coverage in any of our outlets. Our role is to fine-tune your approach and tactics so that you can apply these learnings when pitching other journalists.
