Creating a Media List

Posted by admin in Effective public relations, High-tech public relations, Introduction to public relationsApr 14th, 2010 | no responses

You only have to view the products that sell on Amazon – they’re based on customer reviews, to see that people tend to listen to honest 3rd-party reviews by people not benefiting from a sale.

Talk about instant credibility. When your product or service is talked about on the air or written up in a magazine or newspaper, you get instant power status as a product that can be trusted and in a noisy marketplace; this is a value that is invaluable. With a position of authority talking favorably about you, a story becomes a product endorsement and suddenly your sales are soaring. So how important is credibility? Super important. If 60 Minutes says Shark Cartilage is good, shark cartilage will fly off the shelves until the shelves are bare. If your local radio talk show says a book is good, sales for that book will increase. If Oprah likes a book, consider it a bestseller. We call this effective public relations –Creating Credibility through 3rd party endorsement.

So when you want to create your own effective public relations and 3rd party endorsement, start by rolling up your sleeves and investing some time into your media list. Your media list will become a valuable, comprehensive database of media contacts at newspapers, magazines, television stations, radio stations and bloggers who would be interested in you, your products, services or ideas.

Steps to Creating a Media List

1. If you can afford to purchase media lists, this would be the easiest way to compile your media contacts. To find these, do an online search for media lists.

2. Visit your local library’s reference desk and go through the reference books with media outlets and their contacts.

3. Newspapers.com and other free online resources can help you find local, regional and national media contacts.

4. The Yellow Pages is another resource for obtaining local media contacts. Look up “Radio Stations & Broadcasting Companies”, “TV stations” and “Newspapers”.

5. You can usually find magazines on a specific subject if you type in the subject followed by the word magazine, such as: “health magazine”, “men’s magazine”, “women’s magazine”, “sports magazine”, etc.

6. Search for radio and TV shows by using “radio show”, “TV show”, “cooking show”, followed by the city name for local shows, but type in the city name outside of the quotes. For example: “radio show” Boston Health, will get you health radio shows in Boston.

Good luck in creating your own media list!

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