How to save time on your media outreach

I know one of the biggest challenges you face with your media outreach is finding the time. Despite having all the tips and tricks at your disposal, it can still feel like a daunting task.

I totally get that. I often feel the same about pitching new ideas to editors.

That’s why this week I’m going to be focusing on little tricks you can use to save yourself more time.

I always love to hear from you guys so do feel free to email me and let me know which one you found the most helpful!

Anyway, here we go.

Focus on building relationships

I know I bang on about this a lot, but, honestly, this is one of the best ways to make the efforts you put into your media outreach worthwhile. Because when you have a list of journalists who already know you that you can send a targeted email to, you’re far more likely to get a yes.

I know that this, in itself, can seem like a daunting and time consuming task, but the best way to make the relationship building as hassle free as possible is to keep your journalist database updated and to:

Set up notifications on your social media feeds

For the journalists you’re looking to target, you can set up notifications on your Instagram and Twitter feeds, so that every time they post something new, you get notified. This saves you having to remember to keep checking their profiles and means that when you see a notification of something new, you can hop onto the app and quickly like/ comment/ re-share. Of course, only do this with posts that you genuinely want to connect on. All you need to do to set this up is look for the little bell icon on each journalist’s social media profile - 🔔 - and from there, you’ll be able to choose whether to receive notifications on their posts, stories, reels, videos or lives (or all of the above). On Twitter, you can just receive notifications of their posts.

Set up Google Alerts for your niche

Responding to current trends and stories within your niche makes for easy-to-put-together pitches that can quickly be sent out to journalists within your database. Similar to the social media notifications, you can set up Google alerts for key words or phrases within your niche, so that you can keep up to date with everything that’s being discussed within your niche and respond with a pitch to a journalist (more on this next week!).

Use pitch templates

As you know, at the beginning of the year I shared my pitching template with you. I suggest you keep a skeleton version (with your ‘about me’ section already filled in) ready to go so that you can edit it quickly and send the pitch out when you have an idea. In the new Scoop membership, I’ll also be sharing other templates, so you have a variety to work from.