This guide walks through building a media list with the JournoFinder AI assistant from scratch.
It applies whether you are using the assistant inside JournoFinder or connecting from your own AI tool.
1. Give it your brief
Start by telling the assistant what you are working on.
The single most useful thing you can do is paste your actual press release, pitch, or campaign summary. The more concrete detail it has, the better the list, because it matches journalists against the real angle rather than a one-line summary. Helpful things to include:
The story, product, data, or announcement you are pitching
Your target geography or market
The beats or angles that count as on-topic, and any that do not
Hard exclusions, such as outlets, regions, or named journalists to avoid
Roughly how many contacts you expect
The assistant may ask two or three quick questions to fill any gaps before it starts working.
Need tips on writing a good brief - check out this article.
2. It picks the right angle
Before searching, the assistant works out which type of list your story needs, for example a data-led pitch, a reactive newsjacking angle, an expert-commentary beat list, or a local story.
3. It searches and builds the list
Once the assistant has all the information it will start searching the database. Which searches it uses depends on the brief.
You can check the side panel to see the searches it is making, along with which searching capabilities it is using. It will make a few initial searches for the most 'obvious' search terms, and then expand the searches based on the initial results to ensure it's finding as many relevant journalists as possible.
For each contact it finds will evaluate them against your brief and decide if they are likely to cover your story or not. If it deems them relevant enough, it will add them to your list along with:
Article evidence, any specific recent coverage that makes them relevant.
A written rationale, why this journalist fits your brief.
4. Review your live list
Your list is live in your account from the moment it is created.
Open the link the assistant gives you and you will see contacts appear within a few seconds of being added.
You can expand each journalist on the lists to view the rational behind adding them along with any relevant articles.
You can export the list into a CSV file at any point after the initial build.
5. Refine it
This is where most of the value is. Most lists wont be perfect after the first build, so you can talk to the assistant and guide it on how you want to refine the list.
Some examples of what you can ask the assistant to do:
Segment the list: You can ask the assistant to add tags to each journalist based on things like, are they a national journalist or trade press, what market they cover, or what angle they are . You can add up to three custom tags.
Narrow the list down: You can ask the assistant to remove groups of journalists from the list. For example you can ask it to remove anyone added from a particular search it made, from a segment you have created, or from national outlets.
Expand the list: You can ask the assistant to do more searches. For example, you might notice no Google News searches were done, so you can prompt the assistant to do some. You can also tell it specific searches you want done, to find more people who might cover a particular angle, or to find the most relevant person from a particular outlet.
Review the current list: You can ask the assistant to go back over previous decisions it made and review them in more detail, or you can ask for a gap analysis of the current list to identify potential gaps.
See Refining, segmenting, and exporting your list and Searching journalists and articles through the assistant for how to push further.