

This step is all about approaching the media. It's the fun bit!
We’ll take you through the etiquette of contacting the media to give you the best chance of success, we’ll show you how to find the right journalists who love gift guides. Some of contacts may be on the media list we gave you when you first signed up, so make sure you check that list before you start your research.
We’ll also quickly teach you about the different types of media, how they operate and we’ll prepare you for any interviews you might have.
Once you’ve worked through this step, you will be ready to go out to the media.
TYPES OF MEDIA

Print magazines and online magazines are the most likely to do gift guides for each occasion. Think women’s mags, men’s mags, health and fitness mags, food and travel mags etc.
Newspaper supplements are the mags you get in the daily and weekend papers. They also tend to do gift guides.

TV shows don’t often run gift guides as such. The ones that might are the magazine shows like Today Extra, but they are very few and far between.

The radio shows that might choose to do a gift guide are those with segments that relate to a specific topic, eg the food & drinks and health & wellbeing shows on both Talking Lifestyle and the 2GB network.
You should concentrate on print publications primarily.
MEDIA DEADLINES

You also need to be aware of the timelines that media work to. All media work to lead times but not all their lead times are the same.
Monthly magazines are known as long lead publications because their lead times are three months – this means that they write their stories and send the issue to print three months before you get it in your hands.
It follows that you will need to find out if they are running a gift guide about four months in advance. Remember also that they are always a month ahead, so the Christmas issues will come out in November.
Weekly magazines and newspaper supplements are known as medium lead as their lead times are approximately 4-6 weeks. Their guides will come out a month before the occasion so you need to get your product to them roughly a month before that e.g. mid October for Christmas.
There are a number of handy tools that PRs use that you might want to consider using too.

Another free of charge service. You can set up alerts via your gmail that will monitor the web so you know when your brand has been mentioned online.
Click here to set up

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a popular sourcing service for the English-speaking world. It connects journalists and bloggers with relevant expert sources. It sends out alerts every day from reporters looking for content for their stories.
Click here to set up

It’s a call out service that media use when they are looking for story content. There are often call outs for small business owners and entrepreneurs to share their stories.
You can sign up to get their alerts for free. You can also put yourself forward as an expert so that when a journalist searches for a person to speak on your topic, your name comes up.
Click here to set up
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