Five Media Resolutions for the New Year

By Lisa Kovitz, Executive Vice President, New York

While experts say most resolutions are doomed to fail, I think you can often succeed with ones you make related to work where you tend to be more “goal oriented” than you might be in your personal life. For the past four years, I’ve made some very public “media relations resolutions” as a way to motivate myself and inspire my Edelman colleagues.

Here are five really simple “resolutions” you can do that will help you be better at doing media relations in today’s 24/7/365 environment.

• Start or Keep Tweeting: If you think Twitter is only for Kardashians or for people who like to tell you what they had for lunch, you‘d be wrong. Twitter is the social media of choice for journalists all over the world and where many of them not only keep track of news, they also source experts and eyewitnesses to events through this channel. Journalists are trained by their newsrooms how to increase their followings and be more efficient. In the same way they tell journalists to “Tweet their beat” – to become subject matter experts, we like to Tweet or re-Tweet good content from our clients or related to our clients’ expertise. We like to make the “lists” of different journalists (e.g., small business, CNN, arts & culture) so it’s easier to remember who we might want to pitch. Learning to Tweet well also will make you a better writer – writing briefly with style is a tremendous achievement.

• Think Visually: The New York Times just did a spectacular multimedia feature called “Snowfall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek” which had tremendous engagement as well as media industry chatter – creating a new kind of “book” (an e-single). The Times also trotted out their “year in graphics,” which shows you the variety of visuals it puts forward through the election and other events. You should always remember – “Could I tell this story with a single image or graphics versus hundreds of words?”. Visuals like video or photos are like candy to the Google spiders and your story will be more findable, and, often shareable.

• Be “Content”-ed: “Content” is one of those buzzwords you hear but you’re not sure what it means. Often, it can mean video (or photos or graphics) but in our world, it can also mean pieces you write specifically for other outlets. For instance, pieces you write for the HuffingtonPost.com, Forbes.com or CNN.com. We’ve linked to a few we created for our clients last year. But there is an art to writing letters to the editor to respond to an issue or even the classic “op-ed” in more traditional media. A good way to do that is to start very local; if your company is located in Denver, focus on the Denver Post.

• Work on the “Relations” Part of Media Relations: I am on the board of the Publicity Club of New York, which hosts regular “meet the media” luncheons (here’s a link to one we did with top tier tech media and audio of their remarks). While many of the panelists tell us they are “too busy” to go to lunch or to attend events during the day, sometimes, they can make 15 minutes for you to come by for a cup of coffee when they are not on deadline. A number of our colleagues from the West Coast come to New York a few times a year to arrange such meetings and come out with good information and opportunities for their clients. If you can’t make that trip, develop a great email or phone relationship, maybe by complimenting a reporter on a story you really liked that had nothing to do with your client or pointing out something you noticed in the community. For example, I commute through Grand Central Station every day and noticed they completely re-built a restroom just for women. I told one of the NY TIMES’ top metro reporters and she wrote a great piece for their CityRoom blog with over 100 comments (and a quote from yours truly). It had nothing to do with any client – I just knew she’d write a great story.

• Improve Your 24-Hour Media Diet: Try to get more and different kinds of media into your “daily diet” so you can be more literate in both new and old media. You can do this through RSS feeds of the most important blogs, podcasts from top tier media (like NPR or ABC News) to make better use of your commuting time. Set up Google alerts for the key reporters who cover your clients so that even though you might not have time to read the Wall Street Journal or USA TODAY every day, you’ll know what your key contacts have been writing about. Read newsletters like MediaBistro’s Morning Media Newsfeed or Cynopsis, which aggregates news about TV news and entertainment programming from a variety of sources.

Will you keep all of these? Probably not all of them every day…but having a few key goals in mind when you have that nice clean slate of a new year to work with can be inspiring.