If I had a dime for every time someone has asked me exactly a publicist does…
One of things we do: read newspapers, stay on top of world news, read magazines, subscribe to RSS feeds, and use Google alerts to stay on top of breaking news and
media trends. Being the reader I am, I wish reading was all I had to in my daily
activites… it’s not. It is a very important piece to my professional acumen though.
Authors and experts who want publicity need to do the same thing although most can’t afford to spend hours everyday reading, you can add to your media acumen simply by subscribing to Google alerts with the top 5 or 10 keywords in your area of expertise.
Google will then email you alerts when your keywords are used based on your initial criteria.
This will allow you to watch current trends, hear others thoughts, and concerns within your field. This kind of pulse taking helps you stay relevant in your field AND…develop valuable media pitch articles and sales and marketing strategies.
Bonus: You will become familiar with journalists that write about your expertise. Priceless!
It was a Google alert that landed one of my clients air on an ABC affiliate TV morning show. The producer loved that I supplied her with an expert that could talk to their audience about a hot and widely covered media topic. The client was thrilled!
Even if you aren’t actively pitching the media, I strongly suggest you set up your own alerts here www.google.com/alerts to stay on top of your market.
If you find a trend that you would be a great media source for and want help with the pitch…contact me! Ladat (at) Comcast.net
Nothing is quite as rewarding as supplying media a fantastic expert on a hot media topic, and a client a high value lifetime placement!
I agree that using Google Alerts for mentions of your client is a great way of finding places to pitch story ideas, but you can get even more specific than that. You can use Google News alerts to get copies of every article written by specific reporters. For example:
“Daniel Taub” source:bloomberg
The source: operator only works for news search, so be sure to use it for News alerts.
If you don’t know which reporters cover your client’s beat, you can search a source for the right keywords first and then find the reporters who appear most often:
“real estate” source:bloomberg
I have a lot of tips on this type of PR work with Google Alerts in my marketing tutorial:
http://www.alertrank.com/google-alerts-marketing.html
I hope you find this useful
Excellent insight Adam, those are indeed hard hitting PR tactics that can serve people well in finding the right reporters to pitch. Also, using this method will allow a person to read several recent articles which is always advisable PRIOR to pitching.
Thanks for taking the time to post. Laura