Secrets to Success in Earned Media - Lesson 2

Get to know your essential reporters, beat writers, editors and publishers. It is crucial to success in earning media coverage for your stories and your clients' stories. It's pretty simple, if you stop and think about it. Reporters and writers are people, after all. And people like dealing with people they know.

At Maple Creative, we treat our media reps like customers or prospects. We court them. We take them to lunch. We send them notes. We compliment them on a job well done. We build rapport and stay in touch with them.

On our team, all of us who deal with the media have a goal of meeting with one media representative each week. We seek personal relationships with the writers, reporters, editors and publishers, who are so critical to our success.

Once you get to know them, it is infinitely easier to reach them. Imagine, calling a writer to run a story idea through his or her "filter." How about calling an editor to see if something is "newsworthy?" Not only is it a relationship approach, it shows respect ... and it works.

Viewing and treating media professionals as people, and not a means to an end, is a fundamental shift in the practice of earned media and public relations. Try it--you'll see!