The art of communicating with journalists: How to get your campaigns to cut through the noise

According to Muck Rack’s report ‘The State of PR 2024,’ the biggest challenge facing PR professionals working at agencies is receiving responses from journalists (54%). This was also the second biggest challenge cited by brands (42%).

Communicating with journalists forms the cornerstone of our work as PR professionals. Getting this wrong can result in several issues, from how your agency and brand are viewed and represented by the media, to your campaign’s performance and brand positioning. 

To equip PR practitioners with more confidence in approaching journalists and to help them generate successful coverage placements, I asked our PR team for their tips on communicating with journalists and how they ensure our campaigns cut through the noise.

Personalisation

Gideon Katz – Digital PR Strategist

Personalising your outreach emails can help your pitch stand out in a journalist’s crowded inbox, which is often overwhelmed with thousands of emails a day. Journalists will scan their email subject lines for buzzwords that will give credibility to a story such as: ‘FOI’, ‘expert shares’, ‘report finds’ and ‘data reveals’. Adding the format of the story in the pitch email will also increase your chances of engagement, as the journalist knows immediately what to expect in the contents of the email. Examples include ‘press release’, ‘study’ and ‘industry response’. 

For the contents of the email, ensure that your tone is friendly and professional. Including a link or referencing their work to a specific topic will show that you engage with their writing and that the story you are putting forward aligns with their specialism. 

A call to action at the end of the email will encourage a reply, opening the door to further communication.

Be timely

Florrie Mills – Digital PR Executive

Being timely in your communications with journalists is important for successfully generating coverage placements for your brand or clients. Being timely and responsive in your communications will enable you to build lasting relationships with journalists who in future, will come to you for quotes, insight and data, as they know they can rely on you to turn their stories around in time. An example of this in practice recently was with the online lifestyle magazine, Sheerluxe, for our client in the consumer health space. The journalist was writing a piece on sexual health ahead of Freshers Week. Initially, we sent content across we knew would align with the publication and position our client favourably ahead of the awareness day. The journalist asked for further information from our client which we had answered swiftly. The journalist was grateful that we could action this so quickly for her and ahead of her deadline. Responding quickly and linking the journalist up with the content they require to write their story has led to a solid relationship with the journalist.

Relevance

Ella Grappy – Senior Digital PR Strategist

Due to the timely nature of journalists writing stories to a deadline and reporting on key events that are happening immediately around us, the relevance of both your campaign and your communications with the journalist needs to be present. 

If your campaign isn’t topically relevant or newsworthy, sending it through to a journalist could damage your connection with them, leading them to question your credibility as a PR professional. Relevance is the bedrock of effective communication with journalists, providing the foundations for any successful PR campaign. Asking ‘Why Now?’, will ensure relevance is the central pillar of your campaigns and how you communicate this to a journalist.

Adaptability

Nathan Moorley – Digital PR Executive

Clarity

Flora Hutchison – Digital PR Executive

Clarity is paramount in your communication with journalists. Reviewing the language used in your outreach email, the structure, the intent and the information provided will help your campaign cut through the noise, leading to more successful journalist communications and placements. Keep your outreach email to the following structure will enforce clarity:

• Why are you getting in touch? How does your story relate to the wider media landscape? Why now? 
• What does the story I’m pitching include? Can you include 3-5 top-level findings in bullet point format? 
• What am I sharing with you in response to the above? A press release? A comment? A report?

Organising the information above effectively will help journalists understand the point of your communication and establish the core of the story quickly.

What do journalists look for from PR professionals?

Joe Shread – Homepage Editor at Sky Sports

“It may sound obvious but always proofread your email before sending it across. Sending communication that includes spelling or grammatical errors undermines your pitch. Secondly, try to provide something the journalist or their organisation doesn’t already have or know. This could be information, data, access – whatever is likely to help grab their attention”.

Sophie Bird – Audience Development Manager at Marie Claire (Formerly Editor at PetsRadar)

“When PR professionals reference an article or existing piece of content on the publication’s site they think is relevant, this will increase their chances of communication back from the journalist. Any mention of “I loved your blog post” is too vague but any mention of similar content to the press material they are pitching will grab my attention. Mentioning the names of authors on the publication and the content they are responsible for writing will also go down well as it shows you’re actively engaging with the publication and its writers.

Assets included in the press release such as imagery, graphics and visuals are really important. There’s nothing worse than adding that extra layer of communication in your pitch email stating: ‘If you want to use any of our images, please email us back”, I understand this might be a way to try and build relationships with journalists but when you are on a deadline, you just want the images so that you can use them. 

Following the point above, checking the rights for the images is key. This is a huge issue we are seeing at Future at the moment in that PRs are supplying us with the images but they aren’t checking that we have the rights to use them, so we are getting penalised. 

Interviews are generally really useful content formats for us to use. Exclusive time with an expert is really valuable. As a digital-first publication, content that has been SEO optimised is a huge plus. We are looking for content that helps us incorporate Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) guidelines. If you have an expert who can help us build authority in this area we’d be keen to feature them.

Essentially, rounding up the above, showing the journalist what they already have on the website and how you can add to it with authority and relevance, including or attaching the assets to an email (but not in a PDF format) and not asking us to email back for an image and finally, offering up expert comment which is exclusive. Just being a human that is warm and friendly will go a long way!”

Check our digital PR training for more in-depth tips on outreaching to journalists.