Building Contacts
BUILDING CONTACT LISTS TAKES TIME, BUT… THERE ARE SOME SHORTCUTS.
Looking for a fit between projects and outlets is important. Is the work that you’re offering the right style, tone, and message? Is it relevant to a particular platform? Consider smaller publications as well as the nationals. You can reach out to The New York Times and National Geographic, but are there other organizations that might fit your niche also, outlets that aren’t quite so competitive to sell to, that you could contact in addition?
Research editors and producers as carefully as outlets themselves, look for the editors who’d be most interested in your story. A New York Times editor is not just a New York Times editor - one editor specializes in technology, another specializes in business, another specializes in fashion. Try to find the most relevant contact for your topic.
LinkedIn is a great resource for finding names. Search for an organization, then begin to look through their lists of employees. Press releases for film, photo, and literary festivals will often detail the names of judges and reviewers. These professionals are normally the cream of the crop at media outlets and are practiced at accepting pitches and offering feedback.
With relevant contact names identified, Hunter.io or Rocketreach.co can scrape email addresses from LinkedIn profiles. Or perhaps a company will use the same email structure for all employees, for example “first.name@mediacompany.com,” leaving you to change the names for each contact.
HERE’S THE BREAKDOWN:
Think hard about the types of outlets that your project will appeal to, the national companies but also the niche organizations.
Using LinkedIn search the company name.
Navigate to the “People” tab, to see all employees.
Now begin to look for anyone with a job title that includes “editor.”
Include a mixture of senior editors as well as junior editors. You’ll have more chance that junior editors will open your email, but seniors make the decisions.
Once you’ve found a list of potential editors at a company, begin researching each individually, to make sure your work is in line with the topics they’re publishing.
Then use Rocketreach.co with each editor’s LinkedIn profile, to find their individual email addresses.
If Rocketreach.co isn’t an option for you, a simple Google search of their name might yield an email address. Something like “John Doe @” usually works.