What is news to one media organization is not necessarily news to another. Before embarking on an effort to get publicity, ask yourself whose news you are.
One of the biggest on-going tasks for anyone who looks after media relations, professional or volunteer, is maintaining an accurate list of e-mail addresses for news releases. This list should reflect your target market.
Whether you are an individual, or a representative of an organization or special event, ask yourself, “Whose story am I?” or “Whose story are we?”. That’s why it is important to know how to think like an editor. Are you or your organization weekly newspaper material? Are you national news? Is your story more suited to magazine features? Whatever, the answers to these questions, you may determine that you are targeting more than one market on different occasions. If that’s the case, that job of maintaining an accurate and up-to-date e-mail list just got bigger.
Determining your target market is one of the key initial steps in making your media relations plan.
