Setting the search criteria
Agility’s Discover tab allows you to find media contacts in many ways. Here we are going to look at the most common targeting method, creating a media list of individuals based on their assigned subjects and the area that their publications cover. Then we will also go through how to match any keywords to the actual content published by the media, powered by Agility’s media monitoring software.
When searching for people, you’ll see three sections:
- Search for People
- and working for outlets…
- then narrowed down by…
I am targeting contacts writing about children’s products, so I type in the word children into ‘Writing about‘. Agility immediately shows me all of the categories with the word children in them, and also gives me the option to browse all subjects or view subjects related to children. If you don’t have a subject in mind, you can simply click into any field and select Browse All.
I have selected several subjects, now I can specify that I am looking for writers at outlets covering Canada and the US. I can target contacts that write for outlets in any specific format, with a local, national or international focus and with various audiences in mind. For a breakdown of the various roles and product definitions that Agility applies to the media, please refer to this article: http://help.agilitypr.com/en/articles/3772071-agility-product-role-definitions
For now, I simply going to specify that I want to target print media. The orange button updates each time I add or remove any criteria, currently telling me there are 358 matching results.
The orange button updates each time I add or remove any criteria, currently telling me there are 358 matching results.
I click this button to view the results.
Viewing and saving your targeting results
You can now see a list of journalists who write about the specified subjects and who cover the area of required countries.
It is advised to save your search criteria so that you can re-visit this search and check for any updates at a later date. You can do this by clicking on the actions button and selecting the second option to save search criteria, giving the search a name and saving it. If any new journalists are added to the database, or journalists change their focus and newly qualify for your search criteria, you’ll see this reflected every time you come back to check the search results.
You can also save the results as a list, but first you may want to check some of the profiles to make sure you are targeting the right people. The filters on the left include the fields on the previous search page, and you can also filter by audience reach. You can apply any of these filters to your search if you wish to narrow or fine-tune your results. Using the subject filter for example, allows me to show contacts that also cover subjects not originally in my search criteria, and include or exclude them from my final list accordingly.
Hovering over any name gives you a preview of the contact’s or outlet’s profile with key information:
By clicking into the profile, you get the full breakdown of detailed information gathered by Agility’s Research team for the contact
and the outlet.
On the results screen, you can either select all contacts or any that you wish to save to a list, click actions and ‘Save Selected as a List‘.
Your list is now saved in this state unless you edit it or a specific contact is removed from the database altogether. You can use it to distribute press releases to the media using Agility, or for any other outreach you have in mind. Your saved search results will present any new journalists that have matched the search criteria since you were last in Agility, and which you may want to save to your list.
Saved searches and targeted lists can be found under Discover.
Keyword Search
Agility’s keyword search enables you to search billions of past articles for journalists covering the topics important to you, by matching your search terms to their exact content. This means that you can identify who is writing about new or niche topics, specific industries or competitors, and also non-traditional journalists in our media list – like bloggers or Influencers – who may not cover a traditional beat or subject.
Step 1. Click on the Discover Contacts option, and change the parameter to KEYWORDS on the search page.
Step 2. Type any single word or phrase that is important to you (remember, It doesn’t have to be an Agility subject) for example “staycation”. Press enter on your Keyboard.
Step 3. Click ‘VIEW RESULTS’
Step 4. You can now see a list of journalists that have recently published content with the term “staycation” included in their articles. These results come from the billions of articles being picked up by Agility’s media monitoring tool.
All of Agility’s results filters are available for you to further hone in on the contacts you have discovered using our monitoring power. In this example, I have filtered the results to contacts whose Agility subjects include Travel and Tourism.
So now I have a list of Travel and Tourism writers that have recently published content specifically using the word “staycation”.
Step 5. In the ACTIONS drop down, you can choose to save these contacts as a list (new or existing), save the search criteria or you can distribute directly to these contacts.
