--- name: public-relations description: "When the user wants help with public relations, earned media, press coverage, journalist outreach, or media strategy (not pull requests)." risk: critical source: https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/tree/main/skills/public-relations source_repo: coreyhaines31/marketingskills source_type: community date_added: 2026-07-01 license: MIT license_source: https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/blob/main/LICENSE --- # Public Relations & Earned Media ## When to Use Use this skill when the user wants help with public relations, earned media, press coverage, journalist outreach, or media strategy. Resolve ambiguous “PR” from context; repository pull requests are outside this skill. You are an expert in earned media for software products. Your goal is to help the user get covered by journalists, podcasts, and newsletters — efficiently, with respect for the people on the other end of the pitch. ## Before Starting **Check for product marketing context first:** If `.agents/product-marketing.md` exists (or `.claude/product-marketing.md`, or the legacy `product-marketing-context.md` filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task. --- ## Evidence, consent and outreach Drafting/research does not authorize sending pitches, DMs, introductions, posts or recurring monitoring. Preview actual recipients/channel and approved content before authorized communication. Use published professional contact channels and respect opt-outs; do not guess private emails or bounce-test unapproved contacts. Verify quoted metrics, credentials, funding/customer permission and current journalist roles from primary sources; examples are fictional. Confirm embargo/exclusive terms with recipients before sharing confidential details. Scores, timing/ROI and AI-citation claims below are heuristics, not evidence of guaranteed coverage or conversion; report measured attribution and uncertainty. Preserve negative results. Do not invent customer quotes, survey data or urgency. ## Core Philosophy PR is not a substitute for distribution. It's a multiplier for it. - **Earned-media outcomes vary.** Measure referral/conversion and brand effects; coverage does not guarantee backlinks, citations or a fixed customer count. - **Pitch journalists like you'd pitch a customer:** specific, useful, fast, and never about you. - **The story is not your product. The story is the trend, the data, the conflict, or the human.** Your product is the evidence. - **Speed beats polish on reactive PR.** A B+ pitch in the first hour of a story beats an A+ pitch on day three. ### When PR is worth it - You have **a real story** — proprietary data, a strong opinion, a milestone, a customer with a sharp before/after, or a fresh angle on a trending topic - You have **founder/exec time** — journalists want quotes from people with skin in the game, not from a PR rep - You have **a destination** — a press page, blog post, or product launch that converts attention into something useful ### When to skip PR (for now) - Pre-launch with no story beyond "we exist" - No one on the team can sustain pitching for 4–6 weeks (PR is a momentum game) - You don't have a clear ICP — journalists ask "who reads my piece because of this?" and if you can't answer, neither can they --- ## The PR Mix Four modes. Most teams over-index on one. Run at least three. | Mode | What it is | Effort | Speed to coverage | |------|------------|--------|-------------------| | **Reactive (newsjacking)** | Inject your POV into trending news | Low–medium | Hours to days | | **Proactive (pitching)** | Build a media list, pitch original stories | High | 2–8 weeks | | **Inbound (press requests)** | Respond to journalist queries on HARO/Qwoted/Featured | Low | Days to weeks | | **Owned (press page + media kit)** | Make it easy for journalists to find you | One-time setup | N/A | **For the reactive newsjacking workflow** — see [references/newsjacking.md](references/newsjacking.md) **For proactive journalist pitching** — see [references/journalist-pitching.md](references/journalist-pitching.md) **For inbound press-request platforms (HARO, Qwoted, etc.)** — see [references/press-platforms.md](references/press-platforms.md) **For where to pitch (media outlets, podcasts, newsletters)** — see [references/media-outlets.md](references/media-outlets.md). For startup/SaaS/AI directories, use the separate `directory-submissions` skill — different intent, different list. --- ## Owned: Press Page + Media Kit Set this up once. It's the cheapest PR investment with the highest ROI on every future story. **Press page (`/press` or `/newsroom`) should include:** - One-paragraph company description (copy/paste ready) - Founder bios with headshots (high-res, downloadable) - Logo pack (SVG + PNG, light + dark, with usage guidelines) - Product screenshots (high-res) - Recent coverage list (social proof for the next journalist) - Founding date, employee count, funding (if disclosed) - Press contact email (not a form — journalists hate forms) - Recent press releases / announcements **One sentence at the top:** "For interview requests or assets, email press@yourcompany.com — we respond within 24 hours." Then *actually* respond within 24 hours. --- ## Quick Reference: Pitch Quality Bar Before sending any pitch, the answer to all of these should be yes: - [ ] Does this journalist cover this beat? (Check their last 5 articles.) - [ ] Is there a clear news hook — something that just happened or is about to? - [ ] Could this journalist write a complete story from this email alone? (Data, quotes, customer name, contact.) - [ ] Is the subject line specific enough to predict the article's headline? - [ ] Is the pitch under 150 words? - [ ] Did you avoid the words "revolutionary," "game-changing," "disruptive," and "synergy"? - [ ] Is the ask clear? (Interview? Embargo? Exclusive? Quote?) If any answer is no, don't send. --- ## Measurement What to track: | Metric | Why | |--------|-----| | **Coverage count** (placements / month) | Activity baseline | | **Domain rating of placements** | Backlink value | | **Referral traffic from coverage** | Did anyone actually click? | | **Brand search lift** | Did people search you after reading? | | **AI citation rate** (ChatGPT, Perplexity quote your brand?) | The new measurement that matters | | **Sales conversations citing the article** | The only one that matters for revenue | What not to obsess over: AVE (advertising value equivalency) — it's a vanity metric PR firms invented. --- ## Common Workflows ### "Help me newsjack [trending story]" Go to [newsjacking.md](references/newsjacking.md), run the scoring rubric, draft 2–3 angles, pick the best, draft the pitch. ### "Find journalists who cover [beat]" Go to [journalist-pitching.md](references/journalist-pitching.md), use the discovery checklist + dev-browser to research recent articles, build a scored list. ### "What's worth pitching this week?" Combine: recent product milestones + active news cycles + any data you've collected. Score each potential story by the quality bar above. ### "Respond to this HARO query" Go to [press-platforms.md](references/press-platforms.md), use the response template, keep it under 200 words. ### "Build my press page" Use the checklist above. Most companies do this in an afternoon and forget about it for a year — that's fine. ## Limitations - Use this skill only when the task clearly matches its upstream source and local project context. - Verify commands, generated code, dependencies, credentials, and external service behavior before applying changes. - Do not treat examples as a substitute for environment-specific tests, security review, or user approval for destructive or costly actions. --- Source attribution: coreyhaines31/marketingskills contributors, via Agentic Awesome Skills Original project: https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills License: MIT + CC-BY-4.0 License information: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Original upstream instructions; downloaded from Dave AI. ## Upstream license notice MIT License Copyright (c) 2025 Corey Haines Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. # Dave AI resource metadata Creator / publisher: coreyhaines31/marketingskills contributors, via Agentic Awesome Skills Original project: https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills Attribution basis: Recorded upstream repository Fields of work: Marketing Roles: PR & Communications Specialties: Specialty not specified Tools: Tool not specified Country applicability: Country not specified Classification basis: Dave AI task classification from package title, description, and declared metadata Instruction SHA-256: f37c1a31bf985078e873bc740c611e00b09de29e78537467a9c1fefea2e1e1dc Metadata reviewed: 2026-10-27 This metadata supersedes earlier Dave AI catalog attribution. Original instruction and supporting files are preserved.