#2. Becoming best buds with your favourite journo
Media meets can be tough to get, but they're not impossible
One of my most memorable media breakfasts, around 5 years ago, was where me and the PR spent the whole hour chatting about our dating lives. We quickly realised we had that one thing in common and exchanged bad date stories over eggs benedict.
It felt like I was having a casual breakfast with a friend, rather than a PR - and yes, she squeezed in a quick 5 minutes about her clients, but it didn’t feel like a formal breakfast about work. It was the start of a great relationship with her - and went from a PR breakfast to lots of PR dinners, meeting some of her colleagues and coverage for her clients.
You probably all want to know the secret to becoming best friends with journalists, heck, even just prising them away from their desks for a 30-minute coffee would be good. It does happen - a PR friend of mine became best friends with a Cosmo writer, I do Peloton classes with one PR, a friend I know parties with a great PR, and I regularly do coffee shop working with another.
But, how do you go from virtual strangers to best friends?
Randomly selecting journalists because you know your bosses have budget for ‘media meets’ probably isn’t going to cut it, well not if you’re going to build a long-term relationship. It takes research, time and probably a bit of rejection to start with.
When I worked in PR, I remember asking a Shortlist journalist for a coffee - he’d given me a full page spread for a TV show I was working on and of course I just wanted to say thank you - but he ignored my invitation like I was asking him out on a date. Oh, the shame.
Like a bad Tinder date, some journalists will ghost you faster than you’ve realised you haven’t reached your monthly KPIs, some just aren’t interested in meeting face to face and others simply think PRs are their worst enemies - if their Twitter feeds are anything to go by…
“It felt like I was having a casual breakfast with a friend, rather than a PR”
There’s no right or wrong way to start building a relationship with a journalist, but more aligned you are, client wise, to the type of stories they write and the more open you are to meeting them for a spin class/drinks/manicure/at their office - then the more likely they are to say yes. Plus, a little bit of personalisation doesn’t go a miss - compliment them on their latest story or show them that you’re following them on social media (of course without sounding too stalkish).
Photo by Farhad Ibrahimzade on Unsplash
When you’ve finally got that fought for meeting make it worth their time. Most journalists want to create strong relationships with PRs, we just don’t want it to feel too much like work. A journalist friend recently told me someone took [detailed] notes while they were having lunch and spent the whole hour quizzing her about her job - she said it felt like she was in an interview.
I’ve also had plenty of media lunches where it feels like I’m in the boardroom - we know we’re there for work, but if you spend the whole hour listing your clients, like time is running out, then we’ll leave feeling overwhelmed. Yes, we want your stories and to hear about your clients, but we also don’t want to regret giving up that one extra hour in bed or our lunch hour.
Then, just like any relationship you want to sustain, keep pruning it - and it’s all about the little things. One PR I know sent me a soothing muscle gel from one of her clients, after she saw on Instagram that I’d done a half marathon, and another did regular online fitness classes with me during the pandemic. It’s the little things that you remember.
You may not have a story for them now; but in a month’s time when they want an expert or a story to fill a gap in their pages you’ll probably be at the top of their list. Happy relationship building…
Loved reading this? This is a fortnightly email where I’ll discuss how you can get ahead in the PR world and into the inboxes of the journalists and editors that matter. Need more advice? I also run monthly Zoom PR workshops on Eventbrite.
Who am I? I’m a freelance journalist and started PR Secrets 2 years ago - a consultancy where I teach PRs what journalists want. My aim is to try to bridge the gap between journalists and PRs, to give you a window into how we brainstorm and create stories, what the process looks like and why we (sometimes) delete PR emails without even opening them. For more information on how I can help you visit my Instagram account or slide into my DMs.