MyCroft – Find the right journalists

MyCroft is Newsmachine’s own developed tool for finding the right media contacts for your press releases. It works by selecting one of your press releases and letting MyCroft analyze the message and generate a list of suggested media contacts.

• Click Press releases in the top menu
• Click Mycroft in submenu
• Select a Press Release
• Select time period, use to filter out journalists we have not observed since the selected date. This ensures that you are not given addresses to inactive journalists. The default value is 12 months, which usually works well for most subjects.
• Click on the Review button

In this step, you will see key terms that Mycroft has identified in the draft press release. These form the basis of the analysis. You can also add key terms from the text.

• The feedback page allows you to fine-tune the Mycroft search (optional step)
• Add additional search terms in the box at the top right (optional step)
• Click once to show that a word is extra important. Click twice to ignore a word in the search. (optional)
• Click Create Distribution List to view the list of media contacts

List of media contacts that match the press release. Use the filter box to narrow the result by keyword, county, media type, or publication.

• Here is a list of media contacts, arranged in order of how likely they are to be interested in your press release.
• Use the search function selected to search by keyword, county, media type or publication.
• This opens a list of terms that the journalist has used. Click on the word to see the articles where the term is mentioned.
• Click on the latest document to view all the latest articles written by the contact.

In the example above, we have selected a contact by clicking on it in the list. This opens up the Save to Distribution List menu, where you can either choose to create a new list or save to an existing list. You can name your list here too.

• Click on the contacts you want to save to the Distribution List
• Select an existing list or select an appropriate name for a new list
• If you tick “Include editorials”, the editorial address of the media outlet will also be added to the distribution list.
• Click “Save x Contacts” to save your selected contacts
• A modal will pop-up with your list name. To view the list, simply click on the name, and you’ll be taken to the corresponding list.
• Clear!