Welcome to your go-to guide on managing your Media Lists!

Media Relations is designed to help you organize relevant influencers (editors, journalists, and bloggers) into a set of lists. Media lists used for outreach to journalists should be targeted to a specific pitching initiative. You can learn more about how to do media research for targeted outreach in this article.

This article will walk you through the following:

Have your own list of Contacts you'd like to use?

The benefit of using contacts from our database over uploading your own is that we update the contacts in our database proactively and upon request from you. You can learn about how to request an update at the bottom of this article. You can also request contacts to be added to our database.

Learn how to upload your own media contacts to Meltwater.

If you have many lists (our customers have 12 on average) you can easily sort the set of lists to take relevant actions for your lists, such as updating the list to ensure that it continues to be relevant, rename it, or delete it.

In order to make it easier for you to manage your lists, we are exposing additional data about your lists so that you can quickly determine who created them, for what purpose, how often they are used for pitching, and also how effective they are (the more targeted lists are the higher the engagement metrics will be).

*Pro Tip: Follow relevant contacts on Twitter and engage with their content! Show that you exist beyond trying to send them unsolicited press releases. This route of introducing yourself is subtle and helps you build a lasting relationship with the contacts.

Filter by On my lists? to see contacts who are already on your lists or have not been added to any lists. Note that this filter is only available if you have less than 2,500 contacts across all your lists.

Use Beats to find contacts writing about a specific topic or topics. Adding additional beats will expand your search.

Reach is based on the number of visitors, audience, or circulation of the outlet. After the Top 5%, the Middle Tier is the next 15% and the Bottom Tier corresponds to the lower 80%.

Use the Role filter to search for contacts in a specific role. Roles are general categories based on the contact’s title. For example, Film Critics & Movie Critics are both listed under Critic. Pair this filter with specific beats to find specific critics.

The Location filter corresponds to the number of contacts who work in a specific country, state, or sub-region or city. Adding additional locations will expand your search. You can also use the Map feature to drill into specific regions, please see further details on when to use the map search via this article here.

The Source Name filter will help you find contacts at a specific outlet or group of outlets. Start typing the name of a publication to add it from the drop-down list.

The Geographic Region filter describes the news focus of a particular outlet (e.g., a national newspaper, an international online magazine, or a local radio station). Couple this filter with the location filter to find contacts in specific cities that write for national publications.

The Media Channel filter will help you narrow down your search results to a specific medium, for example radio or magazines.

The Language filter will help you to identify what language your contact publishes in.

The Frequency filter is used to find contacts associated with outlets that publish at a specific frequency. For example, daily versus quarterly magazines.

Use Email to search for contacts by their email address. Useful if you have the email of a contact and need to find their contact card.

Check out this short video from our Training Series about your media lists. All videos within this series can be found via our On-Demand Training Videos page here.

List management is extremely important as it can determine in part the efficacy of your outreach campaigns. Learn more about what happened when contacts unsubscribe from your lists and Meltwater's database via this dedicated article here.

One way to improve your strategy is to identify and replace journalists who have unsubscribed from your releases.

If journalists unsubscribe from your releases, their contact card will display Unsubscribed within your media lists. This badge appears on journalists who have requested not to receive email from your specific account. Occasionally, we unfortunately experience journalists who opt-out of our database. We are required to remove these journalists completely, which means they will no longer be visible within media lists or search.

What to look out for if you have a high unsubscribed or opt-out rate:

A high unsubscribe rate is a clear signal of low relevance. Since these metrics are for the last 30 days, this number should never be above 5 journalists. If it is, compare the content of your release's content vs. the contact's profiles & their areas of interest. Start with those that have unsubscribed.

Build a smaller, more targeted list and send your next release to this list. Analyze which reporters on the list may not be interested and which journalists you may have missed an opportunity with.

💡 Tip

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