When most startups think about Public Relations, they think about press media coverage in magazines, newspapers and similar caliber online platforms. The process to garnering organic—without advertising costs—news coverage in these media outlets with a positive tone, is media relations. The general consensus on definition of media relations is the informing of journalists, editors and producers about a brand, company or entrepreneur in efforts to produce organic media coverage in a positive light. When a company stays on the radar of journalists and editors through email updates [pitches], in person meetings, event activations that bring the meaning of your brand to life, the press will remember your name in a way that they will continue to feature your brand.

The name media relations can be misleading, because some press coverage comes with little to no relationships at all. A journalist can write about the brand from research on their website and social media, quoting past newsletters or videos, and even writing a secondary report of an interview a founder did in another publication. 

That said, media relations, when done right, can produce consistent press coverage over time with minimum effort to maintain. 

Some publicists and brand founders doing their own PR may reach out to a journalist once, work with them on a story, and then never speak to them again. Now, some journalists won't revisit a certain topic. However, by ignoring the opportunity to foster a relationship with a journalist who was interested enough in a brand to feature it once, you're leaving press coverage getting cold on the table. 

Now as a sex publicist, you know I have a lewd comparison to drive this point home. Think of going on a first date. If your goal is to have sex, we know from hook up rates that it's very likely that you will succeed. However, focusing on sex, rather than a person themselves, may leave them feeling without a real connection to continue seeing you in any capacity, let alone intimately, leaving the total times you have sex with that person at one. Now think about first dates when your focus is on getting to know someone. You may not have sex on the first or second date. But especially in the case of those first dates that turn into long-term relationships, the frequency of sex is higher when sex isn't the primary goal. 

The same goes for press relationships. When you're incessant for coverage with a journalist or editor, they may follow through with the interest just to get you off their back. The experience may leave a taste in their mouths that prevents you from having future pitches accepted. Rather, if you're gracious in your timeline, and think about being informative rather than begging for press, there's a greater chance your target media will enjoy working with you instead of dreading it. 

Patience over pushing is always appreciated in press relationships. I don't really care if a journalist I connect with over a client wants to feature my client or not right away. They may have six other commissions to finish up before they can consider pitching an editor a new story. I'd rather work with their schedule. Keep them updated on my client, and maybe even reduce consistency as to not clog their inbox. When they're ready for my client, I am there with bells on with an available interview time, links to recent pictures from the client, and if it's a product brand, offering samples of recent launches. Think of your friendships. If you've had a moment in your life when you're unavailable to make plans with friends, you appreciate the friends who graciously acknowledge your boundaries rather than the ones begging you to change your mind. 

When you focus on relationships over one-off media coverage, you build a network of journalists and editors who love a brand or product. Each relationship may have multiple opportunities to cover your company in some capacity. A commerce editor is always looking for affiliate-friendly brands to feature. If you have a plethora of products, you could have sever placements per month from a single journalist. I'd estimate for each month of media relations efforts, you could have one to five new journalists interested in a brand. That interest turns to interviews or product sampling which usually leads to feature coverage. Now after averaging three new relationships per month, after three months, there's almost 10 people who want to feature a brand when they can. Over six months that number is closer to 20. If each journalist can feature a brand one to two times a year, after once year, that could lead to 160 stories a year to follow if the relationships are maintained. Most people spend time with more than one person: Holidays with family, vacations with sweethearts or college friends, happy hours and lunches with colleagues both current and former. Just as you wouldn't expect one friend to be responsible for all your plans throughout a year, having more relationships with journalists will keep your brand busy in the press and maximize individual efforts. 

How long will you take to see results? I usually anticipate that after six to eight months of dedicated media relations outreach, brands will see consistent placements, ranging from two to eight or even more, per month. This varies based on the brand of course. A brand with a single product may not have as many opportunities as brands with multiple product categories. Medical devices, pharmaceutical products and supplements will have a longer timeline to receive consistence, about three extra months, since these topics can be harder for publications to greenlight often due to legal red tape or content restrictions. 

You’ll know when your media relations efforts are bearing fruit when journalists and editors want to repeat feature your brand or your insights. My clients are often surprised when they’re speaking to a journalist again, even though I make sure to cover that expectation and explain the goal of our media relations. With strong outreach strategy, media relations will yield opportunities from new and known journalists and editors. There of course will be time where there are lulls, but that is natural for any organic strategy.

The biggest mistake publicist and entrepreneurs doing their own PR make is treating a journalist as if their only job is to write about them or their client.

Like your personal friends, Media relations is a two-way street. You wouldn’t ask for something over and over again without reciprocation. And you want to make your communications about more than what you want from them. Acknowledge the moments in their life: did they get married? Experience a loss? Buy a house? Write a book? Take time to congratulate and comfort when you can. You wouldn’t ask a friend to help you move if you forgot to send your condolences when their dog recently died.

Be respectful of their time; there is a person behind every headline. Some writers cover other industries, and sometimes are covering breaking news while your industry is stable. Think of healthcare and travel writers during the pandemic or political reporters amidst election season. You wouldn’t push for sex from someone who just gave birth, got in a car accident or lost a parent. The same is for a journalist during a busy time. Instead, offer any support. Maybe they need a source that you might know, or a strong drink after work.

Once it’s established, show deference to each relationship by personalizing your interactions. Journalists and editors aren’t mean: they understand that for large company news you aren’t going to write 100 separate emails. But if you take time to send someone who wrote a great profile about you a personalized one-off here and there, they’ll see you care about them as more than an email address on an excel spreadsheet.

Sometimes a journalist or editor will inform you that they won't be able to cover your company; maybe they just featured. your brand or they plan to visit your industry in a long-form special package in coming months and don't want to dilute the content. If your company has a new launch, partnership, or executive move, you should still keep that person updated, especially if they have published you before. Their once-stated rules may only apply to evergreen stories, which that is not. Even if they can't cover you, they'll usually appreciate the opportunity to celebrate your news. 

Relationships with press are relationships with all people.​ When built genuinely, respected, and nurtured, can maximize results of pitching and storytelling efforts.  

If you've ever written and published a press release on a wire service, you may have heard the term "Boiler Plate." In this instance, a boiler plate doesn't have to do with food or cooking. Instead, it's basically a company's "About Me" that follows any press release. Boiler Plates are also handy to include at the bottom of email marketing, cold outreach, and I often use them at the bottom of my client's press invites.

A boiler plate is typically five to eight sentences that answers the questions of who this company is and what they do that makes them worthy of attention. The details included in a boiler plate are facts about the brand or individual that you'd like everyone to know: potential customers, potential partners, potential investors. 

In a boiler plate, you are going to want to answer the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, and HOW if any of those questions are relevant. While this is a guideline, not every question necessarily needs to be answers. Where may not be important if the brand is a product that can be shipped world wide. 

Your goal is to answer all the questions a journalists may have about the brand in the boiler plate. 

Top Line: The top line of your boiler plate should include a broad strokes overview of the company. This is not the time to get into the nitty gritty. Journalists and consumers just need to know whether or not the paragraph that follows is going to be relevant to them. You'll want to set the tone for the information that follows. If you remember back to writing classes in high-school, this is your introduction or opening statement.

For my boiler plate, I would start: "Founded in 2017, Melissa A Vitale PR is a Public Relations Practice specializing in Plant and Intimate wellness brands with a focus on education over sensation." 

The Meat: Your Boiler plate really doesn't need to be longer than eight sentences and even then, that's only with short sentences. The reader will stop reading at a certain point because boiler plates aren't supposed to be a long-winded story or report. With one sentence for the opening and one for the closing, your meat should be about three to six sentences max. Because you have limited time to share all the wonderful things about your brand, you want to be concise and only focus on the most important aspects.

While I'd never recommend a brand to slice up their story, there is a way to combine multiple facts about a brand into one sentence. Isolate the 10 most important features of your brand, including your call to action for customers or clients and your competitive advantage. Find the repetitive and similar aspects, then find a way to meld those two points into one succinct thought. With a limited attention span of the reader, you'll want these sentences to be more powerful than if you were writing a pitch [which we'll cover in a future blog post in this series]. This is addressing anyone who could be a stakeholder in your brand: a customer, investor, potential partner, celebrity endorsement etc. Each sentence you write in the body should be impactful. 

If you're a consumer packaged goods company, you could list a bit about the prowess of your product, along with the price range of the products. This is not the time to individually list products or even launches unless they were noteworthy. 

If there's patenting and proprietary intellectual property, these descriptors should be included but may not warrant an entire sentence depending on how transformative the IP is. If the patent is an update to an existing product, maybe not, though if it's a brand new, life-changing product, it may require a dedicated sentence. 

If you do any charitable partnerships, this would be a good time to include that as journalists, partners and customers are more likely to form loyalty to brands that align with their personal morals. 

Final Closer: 
The closer is going to be the easiest sentence to write: and it's going to be where to find your brand. You'll want to list your website and any social media accounts. If you have a newsletter, you'll also want to include the subscription link. 

For my boiler plate, I might write something along the lines of: "Learn more about MAVPR's services at www.melissaavitalepr.com and follow along at @MelissaAVitalePR in instagram, @MelissaVitalePR on X/Twitter, and connect at @MelissaAVitalePR on LinkedIn."

​
For examples of Boiler Plates, all you need to do is look at a few press releases. Because every industry structures their boiler plates differently, look at press releases from companies that are in similar spaces as your brand. Don't think this counts as cheating (unless, of course you're copying someone's boiler plate and just changing the name and details, in which case, this is plagiarism), most publicists writing a press release or boiler plate for a new industry will often look at press releases and boiler plates in that industry to make sure they're using a format that is familiar to the journalists they are targeting. You don't want to write a boiler plate that a beauty company would use for a motor oil company as the editors and journalists you're speaking with likely will have questions that aren't answered.

Once you have a Boiler Plate, you're ready to write your first Press Release, which I will cover in a future blog post. 

While a boiler plate isn't the highest priority when it comes to launching your own PR campaign, having one BEFORE your start your solo PR efforts will save you time if you plan to write press releases, or if a journalist asks you about your brand: all you have to do is copy and paste, saving you time and effort. 

PR Your Self delves into practices for earning media coverage without a Publicist
​

If you're a new brand that doesn't quite have the budget for PR yet, it doesn't mean you're unable to achieve your own press placements. In fact, it's usually quite easy for a brand to drum up excitement in the press without a publicist. Because a new brand hasn't been written about before, it's very existence is exciting, new and noteworthy. With an active social media presence, and reading a little bit about your industry, you can find journalists to interact with on instagram and X, formerly Twitter. To make your life easier when speaking with press, having a media kit will move the conversation along because it'll provide all the relevant stats that press look for when considering a brand to feature or an executive to cite in their trend piece. 

Once you've started partnerships, influencer seeding, marketing campaigns, social media strategy, or even got your first press coverage, you may find other journalists and editors visiting your website to feature you themselves. If that happens, you'll want to have a Press Portal or Page set up. 

A Press Portal is a dedicated page on your website that is linked to your homepage. Most brands put this beneath and separate from "Contact" or "About Us" in the footer of their website. Many journalists will look for these on websites of brands they want to reach out to, because it shows that you are open to the potential coverage they could provide. Believe it or not, some brands don't want coverage, especially in the nascent stages. Without a press page, some journalists and editors may assume that you are not friendly to press and won't even bother to send you a note even if they're dying to feature you. 

Press Pages range from simple to elaborate. A basic Press Portal should include a contact email dedicated for press and the top-lines of the brand so journalists can easily reference why your brand is worth a feature or consideration.

When you're creating a press portal, you'll want a dedicated email for press that is different than your general "[email protected]" customer email. If journalists think their request is going to end in a stuffed inbox that is rarely-monitored, they may not take the time to write the email requesting an interview. Press research hundreds and thousands of brands. They've developed a system to figure out if a brand is open to interviews or coverage before even sending an email. Without a press page or a dedicated email, you could be missing out on press opportunities without realizing it. 

If you'd like to create a full-service press portal, there are a few additional add-ons that you can feature. 

​If you've already have some press-coverage, including past coverage on your press page can be helpful for journalists hoping to profile the brand without double dipping angles that were already covered. 

Another helpful feature for journalist and editors is having images available to download in addition to featured on the page to help journalists visualize the assets you have available for publication. 

Features that always attract journaliss include forms for requesting samples. Ask them for their address, email address, phone number and color, style and size preferences if relevant. Journalists love receiving samples, especially if it's from a brand that hasn't been reviewed yet. 

A press portal on your website shouldn't take more than a couple hours to set up and the benefits are more than worth it. ​