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Remember PR? Good old public relations? Well, it’s back. And this time the machines are in the picture too. Here’s how to get yourself covered, from someone who’s been on both sides of the fence.
For the last 25 years, I’ve worked across both journalism and public relations. I started in radio, so I’ve been the person on the receiving end of the pitch, deciding in about 90 seconds whether someone is worth a feature. (By pitch, I mean a story pitched to the press, not the pitching-for-work kind.) And for over a decade I ran a PR agency in Manchester, so I’ve also been the one doing the pitching – getting media coverage for both brands and businesses, day in, day out. Which means I’ve seen exactly what works, and what doesn’t.
For a while there, we were all told that “traditional” media relations was slowly dying. The future, apparently, was SEO, keywords, backlinks and gaming the algorithm. Press releases were passé. Building actual relationships with journalists? A nice-to-have. Well. Look who’s most definitely back.
Here’s what’s changed. When someone wants to find a great illustrator, a studio to hire or an expert to quote, more and more of them aren’t scrolling through Google’s organic listings any more – they’re asking ChatGPT, Claude or Google’s AI Overviews, and taking the answer at face value. And those answers aren’t conjured out of thin air. They’re stitched together from what’s already been written and said about you across the web: the interviews and features, the mentions, the recommendations, all the places you’ve turned up and been talked about online.
The industry has a clunky name for optimising around this: it’s called generative engine optimisation, or GEO. The technology might be new, but the principle is something we’ve always known. To be recommended, you have to be known. To be known, you have to be talked about. And being talked about, well… that’s where PR steps in.
Which means “earned media”. – a journalist choosing to write about you, an editor featuring your work, a podcast host having you on their show – is suddenly worth its weight again. Not because it flatters the ego (though it really does), but because it’s the raw material the machines are reading when they decide who to put forward. You could say the robots have accidentally made human relationships valuable again. There’s a lovely irony in that.
So if PR is well and truly back on the menu for creatives, let’s talk about how actually to do it well. I want to put this to you from both of my professions. First, with the journalist’s hat on: how we really work, and what we’re hoping to find when we come looking for you. And second, from the agency side: how to pitch successfully – the stuff I spent years drilling into clients.
Part one: think like the journalist who’s about to Google you
Before anything else, one idea to hold onto: it’s not about you. Or rather, it’s about understanding what journalists need. They’re someone who is almost always busy, usually on deadline, and juggling three other stories while they look at yours.
The creatives who get featured aren’t necessarily the most talented; they’re the ones who make the journalist’s job easy. So picture this: someone has your name, or has just stumbled on your work, and they’re deciding, fast, whether you’re worth a feature. What do they do? Well. they research. They might click on your website and scroll your Instagram, looking for the story. But they also look for how much hard work you’re about to save them. Here’s what makes us journalists stick around.
A clear ‘about’ page
You’d be amazed how many brilliant creatives hide who they are. We land on the site, and we want to know, quickly: who you are, what you do, where you’re based, and what you care about. Not something high-brow or hard to understand. A clear, human about page that tells your story is the single most useful thing you can hand a journalist. It’s half our research done before we’ve even emailed you.
A real email address, please
A contact form is where a good story goes to die. If I have to fill in boxes and hope a message reaches you before my deadline, I’ll probably just move on to the next person. Put an actual email address on your site and make it easy to say hello. Keep the contact form, if you must. But always give us an address.
Reply fast, because we’re on deadline
This is the one aspect creatives underestimate most. When a journalist emails you, they are very often working to a deadline, so they can’t hang about. Reply the same day if you can. A quick “yes, love to, here’s everything you need” can be the difference between making the piece and watching it run with someone else in your slot. Slow replies don’t read as busy and important; they read as unavailable.
Downloadable, print-quality photos of you
When we run a profile, we need a decent portrait. If I have to email asking for one, wait a day, then chase, that’s friction I really don’t need. Have proper high-resolution headshots ready to download – a couple of options is even better – and credit your photographer while you’re at it.
A nod to the fact you’d be up for talking
If you’d happily come on a podcast, say so. And if you’ve actually got a half-decent microphone at home, even better, because it tells a host you’ll sound good down the line and you’re an easy booking. The same goes for interviews generally: a simple line saying you’re open to press, features and speaking does more than you’d think. It’s an open door, and we do notice open doors.
Proof you’ve been featured before
We journalists can be a herd, I must admit. When we see you’ve been written about in places we respect, we relax… because someone’s already vouched for you. Therefore, a short “as featured in” line, or a few links to past interviews, is genuinely reassuring. It’s also, not coincidentally, exactly the trail of breadcrumbs an AI follows when it’s deciding who to recommend next.
Add a press page
You don’t need to be a big studio to have one. A single page with your bio in a couple of lengths, your headshots, your logo, a few project images cleared for use (captions and credits included), and your contact details. That’s genuinely it. Do that, and you’ve just made yourself the easiest person in the inbox to say yes to.
Part two: how to pitch without putting up the barriers
Now the other side of the coin: actually reaching out. This is the part I did professionally for over a decade, and I’ll let you in on a secret: most pitches don’t fail because the work isn’t good enough…They fail because they make the journalist do too much work, or ask us to jump through hoops before we’ve even decided we’re interested. Get this right, and you’re already ahead of most people landing in the inbox. So here’s how to make it effortless.
Nothing generic, ever
We can smell a mail-merge from across the room. “Dear Editor, I thought this might interest your readers” tells me you haven’t read a single thing we’ve published. Or worse, a “Dear Creative Bloom” or “Dear Design Boom” won’t help either. Show me you know the publication, mention a piece you actually liked, tell me why this is for us. A short, specific, clearly human note beats a slick template every single time.
Have a news hook
Don’t just send me a link to your portfolio; think about what might be newsworthy to us and interesting to our audience. For instance, do you have a side project that’s making waves online? Did you start something creative for charity and raised loads of money? Have you launched a magazine, a shop, or a new line of accessories? What’s the hook? Why would we want to find out more?
Send us everything we need first time
Don’t tease us with your pitch email, offering to “share more if you’re interested”. Give us the whole thing up front: the story, images, credits, links – the whole context. Every extra step you make us take is another chance for us to lose momentum and drift off to the next email. Make the first message the only message we need.
Take the obstacles down
And oh, the obstacles. Image links that expire in seven days, so by the time I’m ready to publish they’re dead. Downloads locked behind a form. Watermarked previews with “ask us for the hi-res”. The dreaded “let us know if you’d like the assets, and we’ll send them over”. Every one of these is a little gate between you and the coverage you wanted. Take them all down. Assume I’m interested, and hand me everything as if I’ve already said yes.
Have a press pack ready to go
This is simply the version of “send everything” that you prepare once and reuse forever. A tidy folder – bio, headshots, logo, project images with captions and credits, a short write-up – that you can attach or link in a single click. When a journalist bites, you’re not scrambling to pull things together. You’re ready. And ready (and fast) gets published.
Wrapping up
There’s a through-line to all of this, and it isn’t really about journalists or algorithms at all. It’s about being generous, and being easy to champion.
Every clear about page, real email address, fast reply, and decent press pack you build makes it a little more likely that someone – a writer, an editor, a podcast host, and yes, increasingly a machine reading the web on someone’s behalf – picks you to put forward.
The tools may have changed, but the principle hasn’t. As in… Be findable and helpful. Above all, make it ridiculously easy for people to say nice things about you. That’s all PR ever was. Funny that it took a wave of AI to remind us… myself included.
