Building an Effective Media List

Looking to secure media coverage for your brand? We’re here to help! Building media lists best prepares you to start reaching out to journalists, freelancers, producers and other members of the media to get them to cover and share their story with their audience. In this week’s blog post, we break down a few simple steps to get started! 

Before you dive into creating a master list of email addresses, social media handles and LinkedIn profiles, it’s important that you identify your target audience and which outlets work with them the most. This will help you to narrow down your search for only relevant journalists and those who are most likely to benefit and respond most positively to your pitch. Do your homework - run some key word searches to see what types of articles show up covering your area to get an idea of the types of articles these journalists cover.

Cision: A PR staple and one of the largest databases. Cision has over a million influencers, journalists, producers, editors and more from both top tier national outlets and local markets. 

HARO (Help a Report Out) has been acquired by Cision, but started off as a simple listserv for journalists, PR pros and business owners to connect on specific opportunities every day.

Muck Rack: An inclusive database for all kinds of media contacts. Muck Rack has gained extensive popularity in recent years as more journalists are doing freelance work, and they even compile the journalist’s latest work so that you can make sure they’re a good fit for you. 

IMDB Pro: Celebrity representation and industry data. IMDB Pro helps to expand your network to talent and agents. In addition to this data, IMDB also provides key industry stats like in-progress work, box-office rankings and more so that you can make informed decisions on where you want to collaborate. 

WhoRepresents: From the top celebrities to emerging names, WhoRepresents is a user-friendly site that provides talent and representative contacts in the entertainment industry. Whether you’re looking for a popstar, professional athlete or major media company producer, WhoRepresents has all the contacts. 

Social Media: Look at their bios and contacts! Sometimes micro-influencers or more private journalists aren’t available in the bigger databases. Head to their Twitter or Instagram for more contact information and start engaging with them politely and professionally on social media. 

Once you’ve selected all of the contacts that you want to reach out to, it’s vital that you store it all in an organized, comprehensive manner. We recommend using Google Sheets or Excel for easiest use so that you can keep the name, email, outlet, social media handle and any other notes about that contact that may be helpful when creating a relationship with them. For more helpful tips on how to pull together a great list, check out our workbook - Operation Exposure - for all of the Do’s and Don’ts on media lists and pitching. Next up, how to nail a perfect pitch!