Keep the love alive: 3 ways to sweeten PR pitches

Media relations is about more than just pitching the press. It’s also about building valuable relationships with reporters.

Here are three timely ways to “keep the love alive” with your press contacts this Valentine’s Day and beyond:

1. Practice greater transparency. Fake news isn’t going away. It will continue to hijack headlines, public consciousness and social media feeds this entire year.

“One reason is that social media platforms don’t move quickly when making changes,” says Mashable deputy tech editor Damon Beres. “That means we’ll hear about their attempts to control misinformation throughout the year.”

A recent example is Facebook’s partnership with the Poynter Institute. It’s just one component of the Facebook Journalism Project, a longer-term initiative to establish stronger ties between Facebook and the news industry.

The focus on fake news clearly affects PR. “Reporters are now more suspicious of information they receive,” Beres says. “That includes everything from pitches to company articles, posts and tweets.”