Journalists and content creators are the ultimate influencers. Targeting the right people is critical to succeeding in pitching and converting earned media coverage. To succeed, we must start with performing adequate media research and intentionally developing relationships with members of the press, including journalists..

Research helps you identify with whom your pitches will resonate, and also helps you tailor your outreach to the right people. No doubt, this is hard work, but research says it pays off. Graduate from spray-and-pray and stand out from the crowd. Connect and build relationships with the most relevant people, protect your reputation, and earn more coverage by following these guiding principles.

In this article, we introduce performing media research in Meltwater to discover relevant journalists and publications.

To get started:

Unless you are looking for a specific person or publication, we recommend starting your research with a topic that is relevant to your media campaign or pitching initiative. Media contacts that have written extensively on topics that are central to your pitch are likely to be much more receptive.

Choose the option "All Contacts writing about" from the dropdown to search our content library and display people who have written about this topic in the last 14 days. Adjust the date range if you need to go further back by clicking the calendar icon.

If you are looking for a specific person or publication, start typing in their name. If you don't find the right result in the "top results" preview (see below), click on "All Contacts named" to see more results.

Tip: The “top results” preview will display information about the journalis’s profile type, location, source, and email address.

In Source search, we display the editions that match your search query. An edition is the main publication and will list all journalists for that publication, regardless of the writer's location. On source profiles, you can learn who works at that source via the “Staff” tab.

The bureau is a smaller, local office and will only list the journalists for that specific office. For example, the New York Times is a very large, international publication, and in addition to the main New York office, there are also bureaus in cities such as Atlanta and Chicago. In the database, the edition will typically have circulation numbers, unique visitor numbers, and beats while the bureau will typically be labeled as such in the publication name. You can learn more about the bureaus associated with an edition on the source profile via the “Bureaus” tab.

'Filter by' helps you narrow your focus. If your pitch will be regionally focused, the 'Filter by' helps you narrow your focus. If your pitch will be regionally focused, the Location filter will likely be relevant. If reaching a large audience is part of your objective, try the Reach filter. If you’re only interested in seeing your private contacts, you’d use the Profile type filter. Different filters are available to assist your media research. Consider your goals when making your selections. Details for each filter can be found by hovering over the information icon.

To help you keep track of the choices you have made, context is offered below the search bar that explains what you are currently searching for. Click on the filter category to understand what is selected in each filter.

Toggle between a contact and a source search above the search bar. Click the text in blue to display the drop-down menu.

As you refine your search and start to identify contacts you are potentially interested in, you will want to vet them further, before adding them to your lists.

Click on a contact's name to open their mini-profile from the right side of the screen. In the mini-profile, you will see the following details:

There is also a link to view the full profile for this journalist, which will open in a new tab. Additionally, you might choose to email the person directly from their profile or profile preview.

On the full contact profile, you will have more details to view, including:

Profile header

Overview tab

Interactions tab

For further details into using the Search bar, refining by Filters, and adding a journalist to new or existing lists, please review our How to Create and Organize Media Lists article.

Your current media lists can be found on the My Contacts page.

Note: adding a source (publication) to a media list isn't supported…yet.

Did you know that you can also find people of interest from within an Explore search? When viewing the results of a search in Explore, navigate to the ‘Media Contacts’ tab to learn who is writing relevant articles.

Did you know that you can catch up on recent content published by journalists in your media lists easily from Monitor? To do so, you can power Monitor’s content streams with media and author lists. Read more in this article.

💡 Tip

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