Brave New World of Media Pitching: LinkedIn
FollowIn late April, I wanted to start exploring different ways that we can now pitch media. Besides my page about how to pitch bloggers, I looked into the new way of pitching via Twitter in my post titled,”Brave New World of Media Pitching: Twitter.”
Social networking is a new avenue for public relations professionals. From my perspective, LinkedIn has some interesting opportunities. Here’s my look at LinkedIn in the brave new world of media pitching:
Make Connections: LinkedIn’s core purpose is to make connections – either with people you know or people you want to know. If you’re seeking to connect with a journalist, you can request a “linkedin” connection to make an introduction. Rather than send a blind pitch to a reporter, what’s better than a friend making the pitch on your behalf?
Research Media: I was recently searching for a reporter to create a briefing sheet and found the reporter’s LinkedIn page. Doh! I can’t believe I didn’t consider this in the past. LinkedIn is rich with information about a person’s background. Leverage LinkedIn to research reporters – where did they work in the past, titles, and other pertinent information. This provides incredible insight before you pitch the reporter as well as to prep your spokespeople.
LinkedIn Answers: LinkedIn Answers provides an opportunty for PR to participate in or start a conversation on relevant topics. Certain topics can also show up high on a Google search, which helps if a reporter is searching on a specific topic. In the end, you never know how a reporter gets her inspiration for a story and if she needs sources.
What other ways are you using LinkedIn for media outreach?
UPDATE: Just saw this post by Lewis Green of BizSolutionsPlus regarding value of LinkedIn.
Other posts in the “Brave New World of Media Pitching” series:
Brave New World of Media Pitching: Twitter
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All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.
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About
Cece Salomon-Lee is director of product marketing for Lanyon Solutions, Inc. and author of PR Meets Marketing, which explores the intersection of public relations, marketing, and social media.
This blog contains Cece's personal opinions and are not representative of her company's.
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[…] 10. Brave New World of Media Pitching: LinkedIn […]
Naymz is also a decent way of connecting. Linkedin’s interface does leave quite a lot to be desired – but then again so did myspace, but then again who uses myspace anymore besides kids?
Thanks for this post.
It occurred to me that if PR professionals can find use LinkedIn to provide insight when making a pitch to a journalist then I could likely use LinkedIn to connect to PR professionals. Before doing so I thought I should test the waters with a question on LinkedIn itself…
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/public-relations/MAR_PRR/273139-3456800
I wanted to share the answers so far because it seems to show that PR professionals appreciate the use of LinkedIn to get in touch with them as well.
I must admit, I’m connected to a few journalists via LinkedIn but I hadn’t even thought about using info from their LinkedIn profiles to help with tailoring and pitching stories to them. Now it seems like such a no-brainer. Thanks for the great tips!
@laurent that’s a great tip. I’ll have to start using that =)
You can also use linkedin to find bloggers in a particular industry. Use the advance search feature of LinkedIn, then type blog as keyword and, for this industry, you will get all the people in your network that have a blog listed in their profile. Makes it handy to get to know them or to build a list of relevant bloggers for a particular need.
This mini-series is great! It provides helpful ideas to using new media for business in addition to the obvious social uses. Instead of just making observations about the use of new media, these posts actually serve as a guide. We like it.