Networking In Public Relations

If you’re in PR and not paying attention to what AI is doing to search and news, you’re in for a rude awakening. AI-powered search isn’t just “tweaking the game”— it’s in the process of rewriting the rules. From how publishers decide whether to allow AI to crawl their content, to how your clients or company get discovered, this shift will change the way PR pros operate in 2025 and beyond. AI-powered search will reshape how companies and clients get visibility—and PR pros need to adapt quickly. Here’s what’s happening, why it matters, and how you can stay ahead: 1️⃣AI Search Engines Are the New Gatekeepers: Tools like Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s SearchGPT prioritize aggregated content from trusted publications over individual websites. Your beautifully optimized website? Irrelevant if AI search decides it’s not worth surfacing. 2️⃣Publishers Deciding If They’re In or Out Big outlets like The New York Times and Wired are currently opting out of AI crawlers to protect their IP, while others allow it for traffic. This means PR pros need to strategically target outlets that feed AI models—because your story only gets told on the likes of SearchGPT if the outlet carrying it is in the AI ecosystem. 3️⃣PR Is Even More Crucial for the ‘New’ SEO: Placement in trusted media is no longer just about audience reach; it’s about ensuring AI search engines authentically and accurately pick up your client or company’s narrative. Strong media relationships will be the difference between AI surfacing your story—or perhaps leaving your brand out of the conversation, or even worse, misconstruing it. 4️⃣Crises Are on a New And Faster Clock: AI prioritizes recency and credibility, so your crisis response needs to be swift, transparent, and authoritative. A slow or ineffective reaction could leave misinformation embedded in AI models, compounding damage to your brand’s reputation. 5️⃣ What PR Pros Need to Do Right Now: Focus more on media outlets that AI trusts: Build deeper and non transactional relationships with publications and reporters already working with AI search to ensure your stories are seen. Closely Monitor AI trends: Stay ahead of updates in tools like Gemini, SearchGPT, and Perplexity so you can adjust strategies as more info emerges. Be proactive with publishers: Understand which outlets are allowing AI crawling and how that impacts your clients’ visibility. This is going to change rapidly in the coming months. The bottom line: AI search isn’t just changing how people find information—it’s going to force PR practitioners to immediately rethink how we interact with media, manage crises, and position brands for discovery. This is an underrated but important trend that will accelerate in 2025 and beyond. Anything I’m missing here? Please put in comments.

✍ PR/Comms tip: As a journalist, I get dozens of email pitches a day. Here’s how to pitch to a reporter vs. an editor. 📝 For a reporter: - Get their name right. (The number of times I received “Hello, Narayan,” “Hello FirstName,” or—my favorite—“Hello Next Media Round,” during my reporter days was too many to count.) - The topic, including who/what you’re pitching, must be relevant to their coverage area. - Make sure sources are ready to interview (asap in some cases) if there’s interest. - Align with the news cycle as often as you can, but offer something unique. Oftentimes, reporters get pitches on stories they just wrote about.  - Offer exclusives or embargoes. - Localize it and/or go beyond the event. (What works for a national outlet is not going to work for a local or regional one.) 📝 For an editor: - Explain why it’s newsworthy. - The pitch is in their team’s area of coverage. - Understand that the pitch is just to get on the editor’s radar. If it’s a good pitch, it will be forwarded to the appropriate reporter or writer. Pitches may get assigned depending on how newsy the topic is, but sometimes (in the case of profiles, features, trend stories, etc.) it will be at the discretion of the reporter to write about it. - I can tell when a pitch is customized versus an email blast. Always customize—tell me why it’s relevant to me, my news organization, and our readers. ✨ Most importantly, having a professional relationship already established with a reporter or editor will always serve you better. Be proactive rather than reactive, especially in news. 

Amir’s 10 Unwritten Rules of Engagement – How to Actually Get a Response Every day, people reach out for advice, connections, or opportunities. Some requests stand out. Others – they disappear into the void. Why? Based on my observations and data, here is what separates a quality request from an ignored one and how you maximize your chances of getting an answer: 1️⃣ Spelling and grammar. Spell their name correctly. And don’t have any spelling or grammar errors in your note. If you can’t take five seconds to check, why should they take five minutes to reply? 2️⃣ Don’t send a copy-paste form letter. People can smell it a mile away. If it looks like spam, it gets treated like spam. 3️⃣ Show basic courtesy – and don’t just disappear after getting what you need. A little warmth goes a long way. A cold “Can you refer me?” isn’t it. And if someone helps you, keep them posted on how it went. Relationships matter. 4️⃣ Make it easy for them to say yes. The less effort required, the more likely they’ll help. Be specific, clear, and to the point. 5️⃣ Get to the point, do your homework, and don’t make them do the work. Don’t write a novel – most people won’t read it. If you’re asking for a referral, attach your resume. If you need advice, ask a clear, direct question. If Google can answer it, don’t ask them. 6️⃣ Don’t get upset if they can’t help – a ‘no’ doesn’t mean forever. A request is not a demand. No one owes you a response. Handle rejection well, and doors may open later. It's a small industry - you can't imagine the damage that one sharp note can do. 7️⃣ No guilt trips – and limit desperation. I deeply empathize, but playing up how tough your situation is – how many months of money you have left, how desperate you are – does not work in professional outreach. Most people, for good, bad, or in-between, focus on whether they can help, not the full context behind your need. Keep things short and professional – it gives you the best chance of getting a response. 8️⃣ Offer something in return – and be memorable for the right reasons. A thank-you costs nothing but means everything. If they don’t reply today, leave an impression that makes them want to help you later. 9️⃣ Know who you’re asking. If you’re cold messaging, at least show you know why they’re the right person to ask. This is why I always start with safer, more junior reach outs first. Think like a BD and map an organization. 🔟 Follow up – but don’t badger. One polite follow-up? Sure. Three messages in a row? No.

I was a business reporter before moving to PR. 10 things I’d tell anyone in media relations. (Save this before your next pitch call) I remember being on the other side of PR pitch emails. Deleting some in seconds. Saving others to use later when writing stories. I made this for anyone just starting out. To help you create more value for your clients. 01 Find the story Remember, if there's a story, it will sell. No amount of follow-up calls help if you don't have a story. 02 Know the journalist Meet journalists when you don't have an immediate need. Get to know their workstyle, best ways to reach out, kind of news that interests them. Build trust. 03 Personalise follow-ups After sending a press release, ensure your follow-up communications are tailored to add value. You won't say the same thing to a business publication and a B2B magazine. 04 Create unique pitches Avoid sending the same pitch to numerous reporters with "exclusive" in the subject line. Invest time in crafting unique and relevant pitches. Know the publication’s audience. 05 Allocate time to update your media list Keep your media list up to date. Clients expect you to be well-versed in the media landscape, and outdated contacts can hinder your efforts. 06 Manage client expectations Do not chase a journalist just because your client insists. If a story can't fit a certain publication, be polite but firm in your pushback. But be super cautious because if the work can be done, it will be done. If you don't do it, someone else will. 07 Read more, find trends Read newspapers daily to stay informed about industry trends where your client can fit in. 08 Invest in training, self-learning PR agencies and schools should train professionals on how newsrooms work before they make their first media call. Understanding the news cycle is important. PR professionals should also invest in self-learning, especially in content and the use of AI. 09 Use social media to stay up-to-date Check LinkedIn and other social media platforms to verify if the journalist is still with the same publication and covers the relevant industry before making contact. Avoid making calls that resemble those vague credit card sales pitches. 10 Be patient Be patient when contacting journalists or PR colleagues. Wait before reaching out to others if they don't answer, and refrain from immediately complaining about unavailability to the corporate communications team. Bonus tip: Think of Gmail as a search engine. Your subject line should help you show up when a journalist searches the topic even weeks after you sent the mail. Those are the 10 really basic things I keep coming back to.  Hope you find them useful. ✨ PS: By the way, where do you get your news these days?

OpenAI’s Commerce announcement today is a turning point for how we think about earned media, trust and ROI in PR. Comms leaders have long argued that media coverage, brand reputation and word-of-mouth validation are foundational to long-term influence. But until recently, it’s been challenging to causally connect earned media to direct purchase behavior. We know that earned media fuels the vast majority of LLM citations, and now ChatGPT has removed any friction on the path of discovery to checkout. Here’s how we’re thinking about it at Muck Rack: 1. Earned media immediately becomes more actionable. Mentions, features, reviews and product roundups in trusted media are now direct gateways to transactions. A consumer reading a review on a product in ChatGPT might click “Buy” directly, turning a story into a sale. That shifts the balance: media is no longer just awareness or credibility– it becomes part of the purchase funnel. 2. Attribution and ROI gain new clarity in PR. Historically, PR’s impact on revenue has been indirect and hard to trace. With agentic commerce, we can quantify how many media-driven discussions led directly to completed checkouts. That means PR investments can be benchmarked against tangible outcomes, more like paid or performance marketing. 3. Comms plays a direct role in commerce. PR teams can identify which mention types (e.g., “best of,” feature comparisons, product spotlight, gift guides) are likely to convert in a checkout-enabled environment. Pitch with an eye toward conversion: think ahead to how media content can feed into discovery inside ChatGPT agents. 4. Measure reach, sentiment, share-of-voice AND conversion lift, checkout volume and per-mention ROI. This is where leveraging Google Analytics with your earned media measurement tooling can offer great insights.

(A note to all my overwhelmed comms managers who are doing it all!!) If you’re in a comms role and suddenly expected to “do PR,” you're definitely not alone. Press isn’t just an extension of marketing, it’s a completely different discipline with its own rules, rhythms and relationships. Over the years, I’ve worked with lots of comms managers who were expected to “just send a press release” and instantly generate coverage. Often, they're given KPIs that simply don’t work in press, because media coverage doesn’t follow the same logic as campaign impressions or email open rates. Below are a few common mistakes I see (as a former journo), usually driven by pressure to deliver arbitrary amounts of coverage, that can actually backfire (and what to do instead.) ❌  𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝘀 𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲 I know your internal stakeholders think it’s a big deal, but unless it’s a senior appointment, a substantial survey (2k+ sample) that has something new to say, or a genuinely new product/service, a press release is overkill. Focus on the story, not the format. 𝗦𝗽𝗿𝗮𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗮𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 Sending a generic release to 200 journalists isn’t outreach, it’s a lot of unnecessary noise. Offer an exclusive where you can. Build fewer, stronger relationships. 𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮 𝗞𝗣𝗜 Press releases aren’t monthly deliverables. Only send one when there’s actual news. It’s better to pitch strategically than tick a box. Focus on outcomes, not output. ✅ 𝗧𝗮𝗶𝗹𝗼𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 (𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗰𝗵) I rarely pitch to more than 10 target titles. And each one gets a slightly different version - based on what that journalist actually covers. Spend the crafting your pitches, instead of pushing out hundreds of emails. 𝗞𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗳𝘂𝗹 Open with: why this matters and why now. Then add three concise bullet points max. You’re aiming to save the journalist time, not take more of it. 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽 - 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆’𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗰 If the story isn’t strong, even the best contact can’t place it. The story always comes first. Showing that you care about a journalist's time and respect their craft, also leads to better relationships in the long run anyway! 𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝘂𝗽 𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲, 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗼𝗻 Polite persistence is fine. Pestering is not. If it’s a “no,” consider reworking the angle or holding it for a better moment. Or if they do respond with a no, ask them what they are working on and how you can actually help. This has led to me securing whole op-eds for my clients as a result! Personally, I prefer the little and often method. Pitch one smart idea a month - a comment, insight or news reaction. If it’s not picked up = save it, repurpose it as a newsletter or post, or pitch it later when there’s a relevant hook. Would love to know how other comms managers have managed to strike this balance!

Ever freeze up at the thought of a media interview? You're not alone. My first one was an accidental disaster! In 2005, I chatted away with a journalist, not realizing it was an actual interview. Talk about a rookie mistake! But fast forward through 1000+ media interactions for a listed company, and preparing hundreds of CEOs for high-level media interviews, I've cracked the code. Want to nail your next media appearance? Here's my battle-tested 7-step checklist: 1️⃣ Prepare and Rehearse: Never wing it. Get clear on your goals, key messages, and potential questions. Practice on camera. 2️⃣ Give it Your Full Attention: Don't rush. Allow time to compose yourself before and debrief after. 3️⃣ Body Language, Presence, and Energy: Bring your A-game and connect with your interviewer. 4️⃣ An Interview is not a Conversation: Take charge. Be a spokesperson, not just an "answerperson." 5️⃣ Stick to the Battle Plan: Have a clear objective and guide the conversation back to it if needed. 6️⃣ My Story First: Frame the interview by getting your narrative out early. 7️⃣ Reiterate Your Key Message: End strong. Repeat your main point - it's what people will remember. Don't let media interviews intimidate you. With the right preparation, you can turn anxiety into opportunity. ❓What's your biggest media relations challenge? ♻ Please share to help your network and follow me Oliver Aust for daily tips on leadership communication.

Meaningful partnerships are important to me. Lately, a significant portion of my work has involved connecting professionals in the healthcare innovation sector. My trip to Dallas last week started with organic introductions I made in 2024. Some may view making business introductions as a simple and quick process. The process takes time, and time has a cost. In healthcare, innovation doesn’t thrive in isolation; it takes the right connections to move ideas forward. But real impact happens when we prioritize relational partnerships over transactional exchanges. It’s about building trust, fostering mutual respect, and creating opportunities that solve real problems. Here are my thoughts on how to make meaningful introductions: ✅ Lead with Value, Not Ego. Don’t focus on what’s in it for you. Prioritize how both sides benefit from the introduction. Relationships built on genuine value last longer and go further. ✅ Know the Gaps Before You Fill Them. Understand the pain points of both parties. High-impact connections happen when you address a critical need or opportunity. ✅ Vet Ruthlessly, Introduce Thoughtfully. Not every connection is worth making. Be selective and introduce only when there’s a clear alignment of values, goals, and capabilities. Protect the integrity of your network. ✅ Do Your Homework. Before making an introduction, ensure you have a thorough understanding of both parties to effectively explain why the connection is significant. ✅ Frame the Introduction with Context. Set the stage. Provide both parties with sufficient background information to understand the relevance and potential of the relationship. Clarity upfront fosters respect and avoids wasted time. ✅ Stay in the Loop (But Don’t Hover). Follow up to see if the introduction was valuable, but don’t micromanage the outcome. Relationships that thrive are built on trust, not control. ✅ Be a Problem Solver, Not Just a Connector. Your role doesn’t end with the introduction. Be available to offer insights or guidance if needed as the relationship develops. ✅ Protect Your Network’s Trust. Introduce only when it makes sense. One mismatched connection can erode trust and weaken your credibility. Guard your network’s reputation as carefully as your own. ✅ Build for the Long Game. Relational partnerships aren’t built overnight. Consistently show up, add value, and nurture trust over time. Sustainable impact comes from authentic, long-term connections. ✅ Celebrate the Wins. When a connection you made leads to something great, acknowledge it. Recognize the impact and reinforce the power of trusted relationships. Relational partnerships move healthcare forward. When trust and respect are the foundation, introductions become catalysts for real change. If you’re serious about advancing innovation, be intentional with your connections. It’s not about quantity. It’s about quality, trust, and lasting impact. 🔥 #healthcareonlinkedin #partnerships #innovation #sme

The other day I wrote about how brands need to rethink their media relations programs. Here's where I'd start, and what I've learned. Find the voices that influence the influencers. Last week at the IMM travel media conference in London, one of the world's leading travel editors mentioned that they look to trade media for their story ideas. Trade media is a perfect example of what I'm talking about here: niche, trusted, deeply read by exactly the right people. Before you go wide, understand who the core few are that shape how the influential think. Those are the relationships worth building first. Do your homework. But really do it. That means subscribing, following, reading, engaging — and doing it over time. There are no shortcuts here. You cannot decide someone is worth approaching without actually living in their world for a while. It might take months. That's ok. Find the genuine intersection. There has to be a real reason for your brand and this person to be in conversation. Not a stretch. If something in your gut says it won't work, trust that. One or two real relationships is worth more than twenty weak ties. Spar with them. Test your thinking. Debate and build on their ideas. Learn from their community. This is what separates a transactional relationship from a real one and it's what makes it possible for them to create something valuable for their readers. Treat them the way you'd treat anyone you're genuinely trying to build a relationship with. Make it worth their time in a way that respects who they are. Not a press release. Not an unsolicited send out. An experience, unique access, a conversation, a room they'd appreciate being in, something specific and considered that lets them encounter your brand on their own terms and form their own view. Play a long game. The goal is a relationship that goes in both directions. The brands that win are the ones that show up consistently, generously, and without an agenda attached to every interaction. Stop thinking about this as media relations. Use the same muscles you use when you're forming a genuine friendship: ask questions, get to know someone, build rapport, do nice things for them, be thoughtful. The brands that get this right aren't running a comms plan playbook. They're just being human.