4 Approaches For Building Your Media Support Network You Can Start To Use Tomorrow

The bigger the network, the more visibility opportunities.

Photo by Fox, amended by author

Media relations are the fertilizer for your business.

Imagine your business as a plant. Maybe a sunflower or bonsai.

A proper social media profile and a website are the soil for your plant. Having strong relationships with the media is the water needed to grow it. Without water, plants die.

You might be thinking I’m exaggerating. But I’m actually convinced that having strong connections to journalists, creators and multiplicators is indeed a significant asset in growing your business — quickly.

Why The Heck Should You Care?

But, maybe you’re an entrepreneur, solopreneur, or business owner wondering why this should be on your busy agenda.

In that case, it might be a good idea for you to read up on the importance of doing active external communication for your business.

Before moving to the 4 easy ways you can start to grow your media relations tomorrow, I’ll give you a short overview of the positive and negative effects a media network can have:

1. If you don’t connect to journalists, you miss out on a big group of multiplicators.
2. Articles written by journalists about you build trust in your personality, expertise, products, and services.
3. The media increases your reach because the medium will likely have a larger audience than you.
4. They know what’s going on in their area and are a great source of inspiration on your topics.

The same is true with creators of course, which I see as extended media.

If you don’t connect with the media, you as an expert, and your business won’t be mentioned in the news, on podcasts, or on blogs and you’ll have a harder time attracting and converting customers.

Now that we’ve established the importance of media relations, let’s look at the best places to build them.

Actively Meet Them At Events

It will not come as a surprise to you that networking is important in business life. But there’s a common mistake many people do:

They go to an event unprepared and wait for interesting people to show up. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.

If you do it this way and wait for interesting people to show up and speak to you, you're simply wasting your time. Instead, you must actively build connections.

If you decide to go to an event, do some research in advance. Look at the guest list and google people’s names to identify those that match your cause and interests.

If you already know a press contact you want to connect with, you can also try to find out to which event this person goes and show up there too. This is actually how I build part of my media network in Austria.

To help you get conversations started, prepare a few honest questions for each person. Once at the event, simply walk up to them and start a conversation.

On top: many media houses also organize events themselves. Like the female entrepreneurship day from Wienerin, which is an Austrian lifestyle magazine. Going there, I was able to meet not one but four journalists from that specific medium.

LinkedIn & Social Media

We’re used to connecting to creators, potential clients, friends, and family on social media, but we rarely use this opportunity to bond with journalists or extended media.

That’s a pity — because you’ll find most press contacts on social media as well and they happen to be willing to talk to you. Why won’t they — it’s social media!

There are only two things you should look out for:

The platform you must be active on depends on your country and the industry you’re in.

For example, LinkedIn and Instagram are the most common social media platforms used by journalists in the DACH region. LinkedIn is a general representation of their business profiles and Instagram is used for private cases or by lifestyle journalists.

Twitter, on the other hand, is predominantly used by political journalists in my home country. I’m pretty sure, this is different in the US or UK.

Secondly, you must connect with them the right way. Don’t use LinkedIn & Co as a second sales channel for your products or stories.

Instead, start to interact with their content. Leave meaningful comments, like their posts, send them a customized connection request, ask relevant questions in a DM, do some more engaging, and only THEN — after weeks or months of constant interaction — you can think of pitching yourself.

This way, they might even recall your name and face when you send them an email.

Join an Association or Club

One more way to connect with media partners is by joining an association or club.

This might require you to do a bit of research to find out where journalists or creators hang out and it’s likely you will have to pay a membership fee to be able to join the events and/or email list.

In Austria, we have a club specifically for women working in the media for example.

This is a brilliant opportunity to connect with over 50 female journalists on eye level and, because of the entry requirements (you have to work in the media plus pay a membership fee), the environment will be less crowded compared to meeting them at events.

Over A Coffee

Going out for a coffee comes naturally to us when we think about activities we do with friends or even business partners. Yet again, very few people ask journalists out for an espresso or cappuccino.

Which means when you do, you’ll stand out.

If you’ve created your key media list, you’ll already have the name and contact details. You can proceed and simply introduce yourself and ask them if they would like to talk about their magazine and writing area over a coffee.

This was a very popular method of getting to know journalists ten to twenty years ago. PR people used to take journalists out for lunch, dinner, or coffee all the time to bond.

Now, with more and more press positions cut, which leaves more work for one person, journalists are sometimes tight on time.

So don’t be sad if someone declines your invitation. They will still be more likely to remember your name the next time they see you interacting with their work on LinkedIn or your email in their inbox.

Media Relations Are Relationships

No matter which method you use or if you come up with your own practices, never forget you’re aiming for a long-lasting relationship.

Don’t be pushy or salesy right from the start. In fact, try to not talk about your business and your intentions with them at all when you meet them for coffee or write DMs.

You want to build a personal connection. Be sympathetic and helpful. You want to build trust and that takes time.

So, be prepared to invest time and maybe money upfront (pay for that coffee, join that club) without expecting anything in return right away. Keep loosely in touch with them over the course of months and don’t write them every week.

This way, they’ll remember your name and face and will be more likely to listen to you when your pitch time has come.

Just starting out with building your brand or not getting any visibility? Here’s a FREE list of 5 common branding myths many entrepreneurs fall for at the beginning.

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