How to Get Links & Features in News Publications The Easy Way
Getting yourself featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, and industry publications is a PR, social and SEO dream. If you want to be featured in these articles you have to provide something newsworthy (emphasis on provide i.e. not necessarily 'create').
Lets cut to the chase – hundreds of thousands of articles are written by journalists for publications every day, and those journalists are out there looking for people to contribute to their articles. Based on the concepts from Get Noticed about 'being in the right place at the right time, all the time' I've learnt some cool ways to get the attention of journalists when and where they're most accessible.
In this blog post I'd like to share a few of the techniques I use to find relevant opportunities to get news features.
Tip 1) HelpaReporterOut.com
HARO is an incredible concept that started out as a private Facebook group. Quite simply, journalists post queries when they're looking for public input and then people like you and I can 'pitch' our feedback to these journalists to help them complete their article.
However, the real gold in HARO lies in their newsletter. The website is great, but the newsletter is greater – every morning I receive a list of the latest journalist queries sectioned by industry that I can then pitch for.
Here is an example of what their newsletter looks like:
When you click on one of the links in the newsletter it shows you the journalists contact details, what the article brief is, whether they provide a link, and their writing deadline.
The trick is knowing when they send out their newsletter so that you don't miss the boat. HARO usually send out their newsletters at 10.42am and 10.42pm so it pays to be on your e-mail at these times to be able to respond quickly.
Tip 2) Monitoring Twitter Hashtags – #journorequest, #haro, #prrequest
Twitter is an invaluable tool for journalists and bloggers to carry out research for articles. Most journalists use the hashtags #journorequest, #haro, or #prrequest when looking for people to submit their thoughts. Below is a screenshot of some of the opportunities on the #journorequest hashtag.
However, since copying and pasting the above screenshot there have been another 20 tweets posted on it, so you're going to need to filter what's relevant and what's not. I recommend creating an RSS feed of a Twitter search for '#journorequest AND your keywords OR #haro AND your keywords etc' to pull out only journalist requests that are relevant to you.
Tip 3) Find journalists by Using Clever Google Search Queries
Not all journalists are going to be using Twitter, and if you're looking to scale up your efforts and get featured in not only news publications, but on blogs that are looking for input you're probably going to want to use Google to scan Q&A sites, forums, and blog posts for journo requests.
Here are a few Google search queries that can help:
I would advise searching for these queries with 'past 24 hours' or 'past week' selected to filter only recent results.
Tip 4) Lanyrd.com
Lanyrd.com is a search engine of conferences that you can attend. This is a bit of an odd tip, but one that is too good to not include. If you ask yourself the over-riding question of "where do journalists or bloggers spend their time?" and split your answers by 'online' and 'offline', you would probably find that many of the high-profile editors and journos you're trying to reach spend a large chunk of their time at conferences, and not only do they spend their time there but they're also most accessible in those locations.
Journalists are a nightmare to get the attention of when they're at their news desks or writing stories as quite often they have tight deadlines and mountains of work to get through, but at conferences and events it's quite likely that you could get their undivided attention for a few minutes to find out what they're writing about, what they're looking for, and of course, how you can help.
I strongly recommend using Lanyrd to follow which conferences the journalists in your industry are attending and then using plain old e-mail or Twitter to arrange a meeting at the event.
Understanding Journalist's Accessibility to Your Advantage
In Get Noticed, we came up with a concept called 'The ACE Process', which is a set of stages that you can apply to meet any person in the world, whether they're a celebrity, a journalist, or just someone who would be a good friend.
The ACE Process stands for 'align' 'connect' 'engage'. When meeting someone, you must first align with them where they're accessible to meet you i.e. be in the same place as them (geographically or virtually) where you are both able to connect.
It's easy to be in the same place at the same time as a journalist, especially virtually via e-mail, but these places tend not to be where they are most accessible. Learning more about the concept of spotting and creating accessible pathways to get people's attention can be really valuable when it comes to this sort of outreach.
If anyone is interest in these concepts, we're currently looking for advance reviewers of Get Noticed. You can sign up for your copy on WeGetNoticed.com.
Image Credit: shironekoeuro
