There’s been a lot of discussion about the popularity of Twitter and its growth over the past year. Twitter’s popularity has extended into the media with many high profile and prolific journalists (think CNN’s Larry King, NBC News’ David Gregory and Wall Street Journal‘s Walt Mossberg) using the micro-blogging site to interact with their readers and colleagues. Given this, we thought it would be helpful to share some insights on how to leverage Twitter to reach key influencers and reporters.

Here are a couple tips on how to pitch reporters on Twitter and forge relationships with key influencers, such as industry analysts or bloggers:

1.  To find key influencers and reporters, you can use Twitter directories like twellow.com or search for relevant keywords on search.twitter.com. Muck Rack is also a great resource that allows you to follow online, real time reporting by journalists.
2. Follow targets and monitor their conversations. In order to build a successful relationship, it’s important to continuously monitor Twitter conversations, share information through tweets and comment on general posts or questions. This will also present a great opportunity to share information with a reporter about your organization or product that is relevant and may be of interest to them.

For example, if a reporter posts a question regarding an article he/she is working on and you have built a relationship with him/her, you could send a tweet offering some data or statistics or offer to put him/her in touch with your client to offer their perspective. You can look for specific topics that people are tweeting about by searching for Twitter hashtags.

Visit our previous blog about hashtags by clicking here to learn more about how you can leverage relevant topics to pitch reporters.

As with any media relations initiative, building relationships before pitching is crucial. It’s also important to remember to follow Twitter guidelines and practice proper etiquette, or “Twittequette”. Read our past blog about Twitter etiquette by clicking here.