#AskJon: How has the media landscape changed and how do I adjust my media relations efforts?

The short version of the answer is the media landscape has changed a lot over the last four or five years. It’s been well documented some media have shrunken, some media have gone away. The number of people at media that we can pitch is now far fewer than it ever has been.

So, you need to be patient, you need to be much more targeted with your pitches. You should do a lot of research online and on social, and if you have access to a database, on who is the right person to pitch to. And, on the agency side, especially, you need to explain all of this to your client ahead of time, because even more than ever, you can get that big hit tomorrow, or it could up to six months to get the type of coverage that you really need to get and that your client wants you to get for them.

So, patience is a virtue these days in a big way, and this is why a lot of agencies have gone to more of the Earned, Owned, Paid model, because The owned and paid buys you time to earn the earned media.

Jon Newman

In 2002 Jon cofounded The Hodges Partnership and has helped to grow it into one of the country’s largest public relations firms (based on O’Dwyer’s annual rankings). Jon has taught communications as an adjunct professor at VCU, speaks regularly at conferences and meetings and blogs and tweets about public relations and marketing issues.

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