6 Ways to Build Better Relationships with Journalists

By James Winfield

Guest Blogger

It’s super hard to build meaningful relationships with journalists. It takes a lot of effort – years and years of effort. But don’t worry, we’ve put a couple of great tips together that you can follow to help build better relationships with reporters. Remember, slow and steady wins the race in the PR game. Forming relationships takes time, so be patient and keep trying.

1. Read Their Work

The best way to get to know a journalist is to read their work. All journalists are different, each one has their own interests, opinions and writing styles. To build a really strong relationship with a journalist you need to get inside their head and the best way of doing that is by reading what they write. Simple.

2. Comment and Engage

Most blogs will have a comments section, so comment! Try and become an active member of a journalist’s “fan base”. Actively comment and participate in discussions. Be careful tho – this tactic is not about pitching, so don’t be too salesy. It is about getting on a journalist’s radar and showing you’re interested and engaged in their work.

3. Share the love

Help the journalist by spreading the word. Share their article on Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter. Don’t just simply retweet or share a standard post – write something unique and build-in a link to the journalist’s article. You could even mention the journalist directly (using their Twitter handle) – but don’t do this too much because it’s not very subtle.

4. Email vs. Phone

Email blasts (mail merges) are fast and efficient. If you’re tech-minded you can easily personalize them; but journalists aren’t stupid, they know you’ve used a mail merge. Sometimes a phone call is the best solution. However you’ve got to be very respectful of a journalist’s time, you’ve got 30 seconds to pitch to them (max) so keep it concise.

5. Smell the Coffee

Getting a journalist to meet up face to face is probably the hardest thing to do. They’re busy people after all. A face to face over coffee is probably the best thing you can do to build relationships with journalists. It is probably easiest to arrange a face to face meeting around an event, for example at a conference or exhibition.

6. Use Technology to Prompt You

TrackJo.co is a really cool web app that uses Big Data technology to improve your relationships with journalists.

Let’s say you’re trying to build a relationship with a target journalist – say John Smith from TechCrunch. TrackJo basically crawls the web every day looking for articles written by John Smith. When John Smith publishes something new (with the relevant keywords and sentiment) TrackJo will let you know.

You’ve now got a great opportunity to nurture your relationship with John Smith. Maybe you give him a call, send him a quick follow up email, comment on his article or just share his article on social media.