One thing about PR that always intimidated me was the “service” aspect and finding the right balance between too fast and too slow. It’s kind of like when you go get a haircut and three minutes and a couple of short layers later you have what is called a haircut from hell aka too fast (I seriously want to chop off all my hair now #hate!!) but then when you get your nails done and the lad takes like a million hours for one coat of clear aka too slow (yes, even spa treatments can’t please us females… we know this and accept and embrace it. You should too.)

Similarly, in PR I have learned the value of time. Clients don’t like it when you spend 8 hours building a media list or 5 hours on the first draft of a pitch. Those long heavy duty hours should be for the hard work known as media relations or even research for campaigns that show results slash win awards… but its so easy to get wrapped up in finding Ronald McDonald’s contact info when building the basis of any campaign (hint media list.) That’s when I came up with the “two minutes to go” rule. You may be asking…

If you must ask, two minutes to go basically means if you can’t find the best contact info for an outlet on your media list within two minutes, skip it, come back later or put the contact you think is the best for now and see what your team has to say. This way you are making ground by not getting stuck on one contact and spending too much time (but not too little either i.e. curly mullet on my head). And hey, if you finish the entire list faster than originally planned for come back to the ones that made you pull your hair out and spend a little bit more time (seriously, I’m obsessed with my hair right now. I’ll stop eventually when it grows back out.) Other quick tips for media lists: don’t be scared to look on Facebook for a contact’s email (its like a hidden gold mine in there! Social media it up!) and also don’t be scared to add more then one contact for an outlet.. Two people just might be equally relevant. Maybs even three.

What other tricks do you have to build media lists?

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