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How To Get Media Coverage Without Contacts

– Do you want to share your news but don’t have media contacts?
– Do you think you must have good contacts to get good PR?
– Are you unsure how to build good contacts?

If any or all of the above relate to you then this video will help to guide you and give you some top tips on getting you the coverage you want.

Sign up for my ‘What’s Hot in the World of PR’ newsletter and get free resources at https://www.catherinkellypr.co.uk

I’m Cathy Kelly and I’m a former journalist and PR consultant with more than 20 years’ experience of writing for and working with the media. A recent campaign with a client resulted in a film on a prime-time terrestrial TV channel and in leading national and international media outlets including The Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Forbes, Al Jazeera and CNBC among others. We specialise in PR that works.

You can watch some of my other videos here:

FULL TRANSCRIPT

I’m going to be sharing with you how you get good coverage when you don’t necessarily have the media contacts that you need.

So don’t panic if you don’t have the media contacts. That’s the first thing to say, because it is helpful if you have them, but it doesn’t mean that you still can’t get the coverage that you need if you don’t have those relationships to start with.

If you are a business owner, or somebody responsible for communications and you want to share your message but you don’t know how to get it out there, then you’re watching the right video.

I’m Catherine Kelly, and I’ve got more than 20 years’ experience of either working as a journalist or as a PR consultant writing for and dealing with the media and getting coverage on prime time TV and in international and national publications including Forbes, Times, the Telegraph, and various leading trade publications.

One of the best ways that you can actually engage with the media is to hit them with the right story. So your story needs to be good, and you can tap into good tips about how to actually identify a good story and to put it together by watching my first video, “How to write a press release”. You can also access various blogs and other materials from my website www.catherinekellypr.co.uk, and I’ll be adding other videos and materials over the coming weeks and months.

The first thing you should do is to start putting together a media mailing-list and you can insert helpful details such as deadline dates for journalists because it’s no good contacting journalists on a day when they’re really busy and haven’t got the time to talk to you or read your email. So I’ll be sharing with you towards the end of the video ways that you can actually do this and also I’m going to insert links so that you can actually download free materials like the template and you can actually get cracking on that yourself.

So start working on your media contact list. You can start putting together details of publications and journalists through Googling different publications within your industry or the industry you want to target. You can also use free resources like journalisted.com, which details information about journalists and sorts of subjects they’re writing about. And then you can target them with your press release at a time of the week which is actually better for them.

You should also get professional quality photography and actually issue that with your press release because publications and news channels are always short of decent images. And you should always follow up with a phone call to make sure the journalist has got everything they need, that they received your press release. Do they need any other images? They might need a landscape-shape photograph and you’ve sent them a portrait one. Little details like that can make all the difference in getting you the coverage that you need.

Hopefully, now you’ve realised that you don’t need to have the contacts to start with to actually get your message out there. It’s just a case of putting in the time, creating your list, and giving them good stories that they need, and to keep on giving them those stories so that you’re hopefully issuing a press release about once every one to two months, but only issue them if they’re really good stories.

How to Get Media Coverage Without Contacts

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How to Reach The Media

How to Reach the Media – Approaches to PR

Get ready to share your news by following my top tips. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel to view forthcoming videos

Catherine Kelly PR

Cathy Kelly has got more than 20 years’ experience of working within the industry, first working as a journalist, and then as a London PR consultant specialising in crisis management and PR for hospitals and health trusts.

She has written for and dealt with many media, setting up filming and various media interviews – most recently BBC’s The One Show. She’s worked with international and national publications and media outlets including The Times, The Telegraph, The Engineer, Business Insider and many green and sustainable media.

FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Approaches to PR – getting started

• Do you have a good story?
• Do you feel overwhelmed by the task of sharing it?
• Are you unsure how to collate your media list?
• Do you want to know how to contact journalists?

Hi, I’m Cathy from Catherine Kelly PR, and I’m going to be helping you to solve some of your PR pains, and one of the most common ones is how you actually get media coverage when you haven’t done it before.

You might be a director or communications manager or somebody responsible for communications within an organisation wanting to raise your profile or reach the media, and you just don’t know how to do it.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to search for publications online. You might want to start with something like Google and start looking at the industry that you’re trying to target. It might be the industry you work in, or it may be a related or parallel industry.

Another good free resource you can use is journalisted.com, which lists details of journalists and the sorts of subjects that they’re actually interested in and writing about at the moment.

Type of publications – look online – make a list

• Google is a good place to start
• Call media outlets for specific journalist’s contact details
• Search and connect with journalists on Twitter
• Look at your industry publications – online or hard copies

Research these by searching for publications- start on Google – you can also search and connect with journalists on Twitter – target the right journalist and then either looking up or calling for specific journalist names. Write to each journalist – with a summary at the top.

Top tips

• Call journalists if you have time
• Research what they have written about on Journalisted.com
• Prepare – have an ‘elevator pitch’ – be succinct
• Explain your story and ask if you can send it to them
OR
• Explore a press release distribution service like Newswire, these are expensive
• Use a PR firm, which will have or can create media lists and do the job for you

Writing it

• Make it appealing, different and unique – is it really a story?
• If you’re no good at writing – delegate to someone who is!
• Always include a good, high resolution photograph with your press release
• Email your press release or piece of news to each journalist with a summary in the ‘Subject’
field.

The other thing you need to think about doing is actually getting good, professional quality photography because publications and TV stations are always short of good images. So if your story carries a good image, you’re halfway there.

You also need to have a killer idea for your press release. If you’re not sure whether the idea you’ve come up with really works, then talk to a colleague or a team member or a family friend or somebody that can give you a good, honest opinion on what your strongest story should be, or you can consult an expert.

Do subscribe to my channel because I’m going to be adding new resources and publications all the time, and I’m also going to share with you towards the end of the video a link to a free template for a press release so that you know how to actually go about sharing the news with the media and presenting it in a format that they understand and feel reassured by. Journalists are busy people, so you need to make it as easy as possible for them and not make it feel like you’re just hitting them with a blanket email.

My name’s Catherine Kelly, and I’ve got more than 20 years’ experience of working within the industry. I’ve worked as a journalist, and I’ve also worked as a PR consultant writing for and dealing with the media, setting up filming and various media interviews. I’ve worked with international and national publications and media outlets including prime time television channels, publications such as Forbes, The Times, the Guardian, all the major ones.

I’ve got the experience, and I’m going to be sharing my top tips with you over the coming weeks and months because I know that these things work because we’ve tried and tested them over and over again.

I’m going to be sharing now with you a link to a template, and that is going to help you to actually start to put together your own press release and in another one of my videos, I’m going to be running through step-by-step how you would actually construct a press release and how you know whether that actually is a proper story.

Learn how to write a Press Release using my proven formula by downloading my free template at www.catherinekellypr.co.uk or visit my YouTube Channel to access more free resources over the coming weeks and months.

How to Reach The Media – Approaches to PR – where to start