My name is Monica Rosenfeld. I’m a professional speaker, and the founder of WordStorm PR. In this video, I’m going to be talking about when is the perfect time to ask that journalist that you’ve wanted to be asking out for coffee in order to build a mutually beneficial relationship. Now unfortunately, the days of journos enjoying long boozy lunches and coffee meet ups with everyone who wants their attention are over. More and more journos are being made redundant, which means those that are still in their jobs are busier and more pressured than ever. But if you can genuinely give journos what they need, which is content that will add value to engage their audience, you’ve got a really good chance of developing a long lasting professional relationship with them.
Start off with LinkedIn. Connect with those journos that you want to appear in their media outlets. Comment and share on their posts regularly, but without stalking them of course. Or, you can do what I’ve been talking about over several videos this year, and come up with a really great angle and pitch it to them through a press release and a pitch email. It’s once you’ve been interviewed by a journo, that it’s a really good opportunity to start creating a relationship. Ask them if they’d be happy for you to continue giving them content that would be relevant to their audience, and after you’ve shown that you’re great media talent, you’re reliable, and you’re available when they’ve interviewed you a couple of times, this is the perfect time to suggest a coffee meet up, so you can get to know each other better, and you can get to know what they’re looking for better, so that you can help them more and more.
At WordStorm, we have a system whereby we invite a journo to coffee every single week, and we pick their brains about angles that are hot or that they’re definitely not interested in at the moment, PR pitches that are getting cut through and those that definitely aren’t, and getting to know them on a personal level as well, which goes a really long way.
So I challenge you to think of a journo or two that you would love to get on a good relationship with. And start doing these things and see how you go. It does work. Thanks for tuning in and I look forward to seeing you next week.
