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Comment by nlh | Hacker News Reader

Please pardon if this is a stupid question/comment as I'm not a PR professional:

My first reaction to searching a phrase for my industry was "great!" -- I found 5 articles written by reporters over the past few months.

My second reaction was "Wait -- these are stories they just wrote. If I reach out to them, their response is going to be 'Thanks - but would have been great to know about you before I wrote the story!'"

One of the things our PR firm did very well was have a connection to reporters so that they knew about us before the story got written.

If the story's already done, unless they have a beat on the same topic, then isn't it already too late?

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If they wrote about the topic once its probably because either they're interested or their editor thinks readers are interested. It's highly likely they will write on the topic again.

Introduce yourself and tell them briefly what you're doing. Then do quick checkins with them every ninety days or so. When they write the follow up story it's highly likely they will reach out to you. You will probably accomplish more than you could with a limited PR budget.

Sure. The idea is that you will reach out to them about similar articles to your topic but not exactly about you, you will spark their interest. They might not write about you right away but you will develop a relationship with them.

You will be creating connections of reporters instead of your PR firm, and you will maintain those connections.

Shoot us a note through contact link, be happy to explain more.

The implication is that if they've written about it once, they may write about it again. However, as you point out, a personal connection goes a long, long way. The personal connection lets you know whether the writer wrote about it once because nobody else was covering or if it's a topic they're looking to dive into and cover more.

You're right. In my research I've talked to dozens of reporters and they all told me they are less likely to right about a competitive product soon after the original piece. Reporters gets dozens of "me too" pitches after every article they publish.

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