How to supercharge your media relations strategy with social

Of all the emails you receive per day, how many do you ignore?

If you’re like most people, chances are you ignore more than half of what reaches your inbox. Journalists, as you might assume, are in the same boat. If they read and responded to every single email they received, there’d be no time to actually write.

So to get a journalist to read your pitch, it needs to stand out. Cold outreach may have worked in the past but now securing coverage from target outlets requires a more intentional approach.

That’s where your media relations strategy comes in. There’s an art to forming successful, mutually beneficial relationships with outlets and journalists. It relies on keeping your efforts compelling, creative and personal. You don’t need to be well connected or have access to a fancy database to pull this off. You just need to spend more time on social media.

Social can take your media relations efforts and elevate them so your brand becomes impossible to miss. Keep reading to find out how social is changing the media relations game and for tips on how you can use it in your strategy.

What is media relations?

Media relations is the art of developing and managing relationships with reporters and media outlets. These contacts are a crucial link between your brand message and the public that you’re trying to reach. Making sure these relationships are healthy and mutually beneficial can help your pitches stand out in inboxes and DMs.

To create a mutually beneficial media relations strategy, aim to make reporters’ lives easier. Scrap anything that's too self-serving and focus on crafting interesting, culturally relevant pitches. As you continue to build relationships with reporters, you'll be able to refine your outreach strategy for more success.

Why social media needs to play a role in your media relations strategy

Social has become a center point of people's daily lives. It's where they go for information, entertainment or to share what's on their mind.

To put it simply, social is where culture happens.

Just having a PR agency doesn't get you organic coverage!

To get PR today, you have to:• Create moments as a brand• Insert yourself into culturally relevant conversations• Do things that another brand hasn't (yet)

If it's not relevant to culture, no one cares anymore.

— Nik Sharma (@mrsharma) October 26, 2021