Technology has fueled the consumer-driven society, resulting in a hot pursuit among companies, organizations, and key public sectors to chase, win and influence the people. This has given the public relations (PR) sector a central role to play, with the aim to:
- Introduce an entity and its brands to the public;
- Establish a relationship;
- Make awareness; and
- Educate the people
In the process, the PR agency and the client company bond well to have a sustained relationship on the basis of mutual understanding, respect, and benefits. An interplay of several elements like proper communication, the right content, and the media list, ensures such a relationship. A media list holds key to a PR agency for it enables the professionals to widen their work interests and also to play an important and meaningful role in establishing a company’s brand.
What is a Media List?
A media list is an essential tool to make a strategic relationship with media houses. It’s an important database that includes the contact details of journalists, reporters, media influencers, bloggers and other media contacts. This helps a PR agency decide the target audience and create long-lasting relationships with reporters and relevant media contacts.
Seemingly an easy job, it’s rather a hard piece of in-house work and the fruition of a sustained relationship with media persons and influencers, ever updated and accurate. When it comes to strategizing a smooth media plan for a client, the list serves as the beginning point. Such media lists are created by the PR team to identify the media outlets that would fit a certain activity and best suit the client’s business nature and the activity itself. Therefore, the public relations team uses its expertise and knowledge to create the best media list.
A Database
Clients understand the finer points of such a specially-tailored database, too. Their interests in a PR agency are in fact driven by the very database because it is the data file that becomes the agency’s wide media network tool and one of the strong components in media relations. The agency keeps expanding this data forte over a considerable period of time, requiring years of solid work and hard-earned relationships. Along the way, the agency develops a delicate art of using the databank to suit a particular event for a specific client.
It’s important to understand that a mere media list without the actual relationship —that a PR professional develops with media persons and influencers over a considerable period of time — is useless.
PR is a sensitive job
Dealing with media for publication and promotion is a sensitive matter. Depending on one’s approach to media, it could be a make-or-break story for the company. It’s not an advertising agency where one can drop by any day, any moment; pay for it, and get your product or event publicized.
The media list is, therefore, not a “shopping list” as a PR expert observed and therefore it cannot be taken for granted. It is not a mere database of media persons and influencers whom a PR professional approaches to pitch and push for the publication of a story whether it is a press release, an analytical story, or an interview. It is much more than that. It’s a personal contact groomed over years to establish a relationship. Therefore, PR professionals do not take media lists for granted. Such a list saves time and pays dividends in the long run.
When it comes to brand promotion, a PR agency takes time to sift through the list and customize it as per the nature of a client’s needs — considering, for example, if a client is looking for a media invitation to an event or needs to arrange a press conference, etc.
PR involves strategy
In keeping with the requirement of a company, a PR identifies the right audience and then goes for smart targeting. Media lists are then customized for that particular activity like introducing a product, arranging a press conference, or shooting up a press release to media houses.
