After the Interview: How to Stay Connected with Your Media Contacts
Don’t let that journalist you just met fall through the cracks. Follow these tips to establish long-lasting media relationships.
You’ve spent hours writing your pitch and painstakingly curating your media list; agonized over the details to avoid typos and mistakes. And today, the PR gods smiled upon you: A reporter wants to speak with your client.
This is one of the most exciting moments for any public relations professional. It’s the sort of dopamine rush that fuels people who work in PR, and nothing feels better than sharing the news with your client.
But, after the interview happens, what do you do next? We’re going to share some relationship building tips to help you keep your contacts organized and engaged.
Add your new media contact on social media
LinkedIn, Twitter, Threads, and even Instagram are great tools for staying connected with journalists. This is where you can tap into the topics, trends, and breaking news that get their attention. Social media creates opportunities to interact with journalists regularly, even when you don’t have a story to pitch or a tip to share.
There’s a reason why this functional area of PR is called “media relations”: You are literally building a relationship with a stranger. You were lucky enough to get the reporter’s attention with your pitch; now, it’s your job to engage with them and keep track of what they’re working on… or where they’re going. With newsroom shake-ups and shrink-downs happening regularly, reporters move around a lot. You’ll want to know where they’re going and even see if you can help them along the way.
Follow up on your media interview
It’s OK to touch base with a reporter about an interview they did with your client. Now, I would recommend that you exercise caution with that advice: The amount of follow-ups should be commensurate with the urgency and timeliness of the story.
For example, if your client did an exploratory interview, that’s not materializing into a story within a week. On the other hand, if your client just released their Q3 financial results, that story has an expiration date, and your goal is to get coverage across the finish line. Or, maybe it’s the end of the month, and you want to report on the opportunity status to your client.
When you’re trying to decide on a follow-up email, put yourself in the reporter’s shoes. You’re juggling multiple stories, tasks, interviews. How often would you want to receive prodding emails from the PR person you just met? Follow-up as needed and always be respectful of a reporter’s time.
Published coverage? Send a thank-you note
It feels good when a story runs with your client in it. In this case, it doesn’t hurt to share the love. Reach out to your new contact and thank them for speaking with your client and including them in the story. Offer your assistance on relevant future stories—you can even give a sneak preview of what’s coming down the pike where applicable.
You can also share the coverage on social media, tagging the reporter and the outlet. Some outlets are entirely online, while others have print and digital operations. Traffic matters for these news sites because it is directly tied to ad revenue, so amplifying the story on social media and driving additional traffic is a great way to thank a reporter for covering you.
Earned media, which is exactly that—earned—is getting more and more competitive. There are smaller newsrooms, fewer reporters, and shrunken bandwidth for your client’s story. I recommend showing some gratitude to the reporters who do take the time to start that relationship.
Organize your contacts for streamlined media relations
There are a few ways to curate media lists and keep track of your contacts. Most public relations management (PRM) software allows you to create multiple outlet and individual contact lists that you can use to stay on top of coverage—and moves between newsrooms.
For example, MuckRack allows you to create alerts for your media lists that send you an email digest of newly published stories from the reporters or outlets on that list. You can get granular and refine those alerts by specific keywords.
Some social media platforms allow you to curate and organize lists of accounts with content you want to see, including what was formerly known as Twitter. Instagram allows you to create a list of “Favorites,” and LinkedIn has post notification features that send you an alert when selected profiles publish new content.
At this point, most of us are overburdened with notifications, but defining a process for tracking new content from journalists will help keep you organized and on top of opportunities.
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