Building & Maintaining Media Relationships
Media relationships are at the core of the PR world. Regardless of who or what you’re PRing, pitching the appropriate people is paramount. So paramount, in fact, that maintaining meaningful relationships with media contacts should be right behind landing your clients placements in terms of your priorities. After all, without media relationships, it’s difficult to effectively represent your clients.
We’ve successfully built a large network over the years by putting respect and restraint at the forefront of our media communications.
Respect
We must realize that everyone has a job to do. Respecting the fact that writers and editors work at odd hours on tight deadlines, goes a long way. Doing whatever we can to help, no matter the time of day, can go very far in building longstanding relationships.
Restraint
Knowing someone is not an immediate “in” for your clients. Firms that constantly ask their contacts for special favors quickly find that their emails and calls are no longer returned. In fact, this is one of the easiest ways to ruin long-term relationships for you and your clients.
Thankfully, we’ve spent the last 20+ years successfully navigating the waters using these principles. While the game has changed, psychology hasn’t. Letters have been replaced by emails, and phone calls have been replaced by texts, but the age old principle of treating people that way you want to be treated is still intact.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns, feel free to contact us at jessica@janicemccaffertypr.com. We are more than happy to discuss anything related to the PR world with you.
Best,
Janice McCafferty PR