PR@ctical {Issue #38}
a boring diatribe about how to build a media list
Good morning/afternoon/evening wherever you are. Let’s get practical.
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Build Your Media List: Tech Stack and Workflow
It costs money to have access to great intel. I often post about free or freemium tools here because I like to be mindful of budget. However, for the sake of building a great media listening and research stack, it is going to require an investment. Many boutique agency owners I know often pool resources together and share subscriptions to minimize the monthly cost burden (so find a friend to share).
TECH STACK: MuckRack + Talkwalker Alerts + SparkToro + Podchaser Pro
I like to keep all of our proprietary media lists (because even WITH all of the tools, we still have to hand curate, research and distill them to create a perfect match) in Google Sheets (or another Cloud version).
We organize like this:
Main tab: Master Media List (all of the potential journalists organized by genre/niche/topic)
Sub-tabs: By campaign, built from a combination of the Master Media List and any niche research required
Last Two Tabs: Influencers, Newsletters
This minimizes the number of spreadsheets we have to use per client and ensures we always have single document from which everyone is working.
TIP: I also leave in columns within the spreadsheet that lead back to where we initially found the information (e.g. MuckRack, SparkToro, etc…) so we can validate contact information and beat if it’s been some time since it was used.
TIP: On the sub-tabs I add in two additional columns on the left to include “shared” and “secured” to that everyone involved knows the progress.
In service,
Sarah