Although e-mail is the best method to contact journalists but being this direct is often understood as spam and on Twitter, the messages have a chance of getting lost. However, Twitter is yet a potential site to find and contact Journalists by following these steps.
Work On Your Target Journalist
Before starting, find and pinpoint your target journalist by researching and reading through your field of work on Twitter and other social media sites and then enlist your potential targets by their profiles and email addresses and follow them on their social sites. Add on to the list through continuous research and finding their interests, until you decide upon the one.
Work On Your Own Profile
You need to be presentable when continuing to converse with your finalized journalist because just like you, they would now likely judge you by your bio and profile. Your profile should portray your brand image and values. Adjust your recent posts according to the demand with a blend of content you share of others, your own content that stands out with its visual creativity and fun items to add the fun element.
Engagement
Now since your profile caters a list of the journalist, you need to engage with them gradually, not by being a stalker and annoying them on a daily basis but in a natural way. Read their columns and their work to get an in-depth understanding of the way they work.
Now formulate a strategy in order to build up a smooth relationship through effective and natural communication. Now invest some time liking and retweeting content that concerns your niche. Your hashtags to make your post visible out of the many others who are doing the same. Gently hop into conversations every now and then without being nosy and share ideas to represent yourself.
Direct Contact
Directly making contact is however essential as a means of courtesy and the chance of your messages being lost in the void that Twitter can be. The formal and professional way for this to work is via email. Journalists generally get an average of 75 press releases which they would most likely consider hence your email and what you are proposing needs to grab the attention.
Maybe address the topic of their latest work or catch up on one of their most interesting topics. Keeping every journalist in mind and then formulate the proposal customized for each, according to how little you know them from their social site profiles. Do not forget to be genuinely interested.
Careful To Follow-Up
Try to follow up only once since more than that can be viewed as being intimidating and irritating, in the context of how critical it is, it cannot be ignored either. You need to however make sure that you do not harm a good relation with your journalist in any way, because they have tones of proposals lying, and ignoring yours is not an issue.
Being careful and not too intrusive while communicating with the journalists is as critical as it is to find a journalist in the first place, but these tips will come in handy.
Rodney S. Gibson
