Finding editorial sources
To make a media business successful, you need great content.
Your content decides whether you succeed or fail. To stand out, you need insider information that nobody else has.
Luckily, your audience data can help with that.
How Matt Brown does it
Matt Brown is the founder of Extra Points, a newsletter covering the business of college sports.
The college sports industry is always changing. Matt, being the great reporter that he is, wants the latest information straight from the source.
Matt has really detailed data on what his subscribers do for work. He knows their names, their job titles, their employers, where they live, and more.
Ad: Matt uses Megahit to get this data. You should, too.
For example, a while back, he was working on a story about international hockey.
As Matt puts it, “It’s easier to reach out to people if there’s a connection.” So he went into his subscriber database and checked:
- “Do I have relevant subscribers in Canada and Europe?”
- “Do I have anyone who works at the big hockey leagues?”
He tried to find anyone with insider information on the hockey story.
Then he reached out to those subscribers and asked if they could help him with the article.
Matt’s great success
Matt told me this usually gets him a response rate between 33% and 50%.
Reaching out to his subscribers gets him access to people who otherwise wouldn’t speak to journalists. Because these people read his content, they trust him and know that he is a great guy with integrity.
As a result, he gets to publish stories nobody else publishes.
This gets him TV appearances. His business is thriving. He is on a hiring spree. And he has been acquiring other publications.
Use your audience data to find sources
To Matt, this has been a super helpful use case for his audience data.
Other publishers have told me similar stories. Reaching out to subscribers got them access to sources who usually wouldn’t talk to journalists. But these sources had been long-term readers and trusted those publishers, so they made exceptions.
Try it yourself! Search your subscriber database for people who can help you with your story. You’ll be surprised by the results.
Besides that, Matt has also used his audience data to find sponsors, persuade those sponsors with statistics, and sell group subscriptions.
Ad: Use Megahit to grow your business
Matt uses Megahit to get data on his subscribers. He uses that data to find editorial sources, drive ad sales, and sell group subscriptions.
I’ve been building Megahit for over two years. My goal is to make it the best data tool for B2B media companies.
Matt and others have used it to make a lot of money. Matt, for example, took their ad deals from 4 figures to 5 figures using Megahit.
Check out Megahit! I’d love to give you a demo.
(This content is meant for the US market. If you process EU data, comply with the GDPR.)
