I spoke to 11 people in media and learned how startups can get better media coverage

Photo credit: G. Crescoli.

Andrew is a star contributor for Tech in Asia and publishes exclusive, high-value content that serves the Asian tech community. Read more from star contributors here.

Media relations is an important aspect for any startup. With their millions of readers and thousands of social media followers, media companies are a good place to introduce products or services to the public. This is why big companies pour a lot of money to hire media relations agencies to make sure they get positive coverage.

But how can smaller companies without much funding do this? Is there any way they can also get positive media coverage? The answer is yes.

In my experience as a content marketer at my current company, I’ve realized that it is possible to get media coverage for free. In the past year, we’ve been able to get Southeast Asian media to cover us over 500 times without having to spend anything and also got featured in Forbes.

I recently interviewed some prominent media personnel in Indonesia on building sustainable media relations and getting content published. I wanted to share what I learned from them in the form of four actionable strategies.

Find the right person

The first step we need to do is to find the right person in each media company.

I didn’t have a PR background when I first became a content marketer, so I didn’t know any of the editors or journalists in the local media. So, it was a great challenge for me.

But both Ratna Dewi from Jalan Tikus and Mehulika Sitepu from BBC Indonesia told me that contacting the right person is key to getting published.

What you can do

The first step is to create a list of the top 50 media companies you’d like to reach out to. In order to decide the size and authority of the media company, you can use several tools such as Similarweb to check monthly visits and MOZ to check domain authority. The bigger the monthly visits and domain authority, the better the websites. After compiling the list, you need to find the best person in each company.

Based on my experience, most big media companies are generalists. This means they cover a lot of stories—from politics, economics, to technology—and usually have a different person responsible for each section.

Since I’m assuming that most of the readers here, including you, are working for a tech company, you might want to get in touch with tech editors. But the more people you know, the better, really.

How do you find this person?

Build good relationships

Send a good email

Just send good content