Any Publicity Hound who wants to build a strong relationship with a journalist should first find out if that journalist blogs.
Many reporters blog because they want to. Others blog, grudgingly, because they have to.
A reporter’s blog will tip you off to sorts of insider stuff you wouldn’t otherwise know if you read only the reporter’s printed and online articles. Their blogs also give you a great chance to interact with reporters by posting comments.
I just read some great tips on how reporters can blog more easily. It’s called How to Feed the Blog Beast, courtesy of Amy Gahran, a conversational media consultant and content strategist, who posted the tips at Poynter Online. They’re excellent, and they’ll give you an inside look at all the ways you can start to form a relationship with reporters by interacting with them at their blogs.
As I mentioned on my CD “How to Pitch the Best Bloggers & Create a Publicity Explosion,” commenting at someone’s blog is one of the very best ways to catch their attention and let them know who you are. In the case of a journalist, commenting at their blog several times can lay the groundwork for a pitch that you can email a few weeks later.