The Many Ways to Reach Magazines for PR

If you’re looking to build your company’s brand awareness and reputation, public relations should be a key part of your marketing plan.

At Relevance we handle traditional PR, sending our clients’ branded news to magazines and news outlets, as well as Digital PR, where we place articles on external blogs to boost the ranking of specific keywords.

When your company has a new service or product and you want to make sure the whole world knows about it, the best way to communicate is through news and magazine PR. Not only will you reach your desired audience, but you will be able to reach entirely new markets and get your company brand name out there. There are a few ways to go about it.

How to Contact Magazine Editors and Journalists With Your News?

The News/Magazine PR

The obvious first step is to write and send a Press Release out to magazines and newspapers. However, this is not as simple as it sounds. You’ll need to make sure your text is pertinent and captivating to ensure that it will catch and keep the magazine editors’ and journalists’ attention.

Then, you’ll need to build your list of recipients. Source out the names and the email addresses of ONLY the persons you feel will be interested in your news. Make sure their field of activity corresponds to the topic of your PR.

Then send it out through your CRM or any other tracking emailing system. This is important as you’ll want to check who’s opened your email, and who’s clicked on the link to download your imagery. This means that when you follow up with people, you’ll already know who read the press release and who didn’t.

It’s always good to know who opened your news/magazine PR more than once but didn’t do anything with it. Call that person up and brainstorm with them to find the right angle for their publication to cover your news – this extra push often makes all the difference.

Social Media

It’s quite simple to communicate via social media; most of us do it every day on our private accounts. But how do you contact magazine editors and journalists on these platforms?

Start by becoming part of their community, or make sure they’re part of yours. You’ll find most journalists on all of the most popular social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), but the most commonly used in the news industry is Twitter. It’s perfect for posting a short (up to 280 characters!) and punchy quote or news bite.

Follow the key editors and journalists in your industry, read their articles, and share and comment on some of them to start building a relationship.

When you’re about to send your magazine PR, drop them a message on Twitter to find out if they’d like the exclusivity, giving them a day ahead to react before your offer expires.

Remember that when you launch your email campaign, you can couple it with a Twitter campaign with the title or an eye-catching quote from your PR, tagging up to 10 editors or journalists in your Tweet. Make sure you include the #PRrequest hashtag.

Email Alerts

The hashtags #PRrequest and #JournoRequest are widely known and shared on Twitter. It’s also possible for journalists and marketeers to receive these as email alerts, so they are definitely worth including in your Tweets.

Editors and journalists also regularly send out requests with the #JournoRequest hashtag because they’re working on a specific topic and need a comment or additional information. Take the time to browse through them: oftentimes, you’ll see a request that your company can respond to, such as an expert view on a specific topic. This is a great opportunity to make your company into an authority within your industry, and can sometimes see your business featured in national publications.

You can also register for email alerts through other specific platforms which enable marketeers to be in touch with journalists – for example, TravMedia is the go-to in the world of Travel, and Homes 4 Media is brilliant within the interior industry.

Press Trips and Press Conferences

Press trips and conferences are very useful because they enable you to make direct contact with magazine editors and journalists. In-person (or over video!), you can learn more about the type of topics they’re most interested in and can build a more personal relationship.

Remember, you want them to write about your story, but you also want to make sure that they remember you in the future when they’re writing an article to which you could contribute.

If you want to learn more about Relevance’s magazine PR expertise, please get in touch with a member of our team.