Media Relations for Craft Chocolate Makers: Maintaining Relationships and Communicating New Stories

Once you've established a line of communication with a media member, how do you maintain that relationship and communicate new story ideas to them? That's what we're going to talk about in this new episode in Bean to Barstool's Media Relations for Craft Chocolate Makers series!

In part 5 today, food and beverage journalist David Nilsen talks how to maintain communication with members of the media, how to communicate story ideas in an informal but helpful way, how stories come together on the freelance journalism side, and much more.

David's been a full time food and beverage journalist for about a decade now and Melinda Guerra has been a freelance PR professional helping brands tell their stories and connect with media for even longer than that. In this series, they share what they’ve learned over their careers to help craft chocolate companies of any size identify their stories, communicate them to media members and outlets, gain new customers, and keep the ones you have curious.

Media Relations for Craft Chocolate Makers series:

Podcast Episodes
Why You Need a Media Plan
Identify Your Company's Stories
How to Build and Manage a Media List
All About Press Releases
How to Maintain Media Relationships and Communicate New Stories
How to Get Started, and Common Pitfalls

Blog Posts
Why You Need a Media Plan
How to Identify Your Stories
How to Build a Media List
Adding Industry and Unexpected Outlets to your Media List
How to Write and Send a Press Release
How to Maintain Media Relationships and Communicate New Stories
How to Get Started, and Common Pitfalls

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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Sign up for host David Nilsen's beer newsletter for regular beer musings, and the Bean to Barstool newsletter for pairings, collaborations, and maker profiles.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 1:00

Hey everyone, welcome back to our Media Relations for Kraft Chocolate Makers series. I've been a full-time food and beverage journalist for about a decade now, and my wife and business partner, Melinda Guerra, has been a freelance PR professional helping brands tell their stories and connect with media for even longer than that. And in this series, we'll be sharing what we've learned over our careers to help craft chocolate companies of any size identify their stories, communicate them to media members and outlets, gain new customers, and keep the ones you have curious. In part one of the series, we talked about why media relations is so important no matter the size of your chocolate business and why you need to have a strategy for this. In part two, we talked about making a storylist for your company. In part three, we talked about how to begin building a media list. And in part four, we talked all about press releases, when to send them and when not to, what to include and leave out, who to send them to, all that good stuff. All of those are currently available to listen to, and there are corresponding blog posts on the site for each of those as well. In this episode, we're going to talk about fostering ongoing relationships with members of the media and how informal communication can be used to share story ideas and keep those media members informed of what you have going on so they can cover your stories. This is going to be looking more at earned media coverage rather than the types of news stories and announcements we talked about more in the press release episode. I want to talk a little bit about how stories come together for me as a freelance journalist. So you have a little better idea of how this half of that relationship operates. I think this will make the guidance I'm going to give you a little easier to have context for. One of my all-time favorite authors is Madeline La Engel. She's best known for the YA novel A Wrinkle in Time that probably a lot of you have read. She was a prolific author, though. She wrote children's books, young adult, adult fiction, memoirs, nonfiction, and wrote dozens and dozens of titles. And she got asked at some point, how did she decide what her next book was going to be? When she finished one, how did she know what she was going to write next? And she gave the analogy of a cook in a kitchen who has multiple pots on the stove. And as they go throughout their day, they're cutting up vegetables or adding spices and dropping them into one pot or another. And when it comes time to actually finish dinner, whichever one is closest, that one gets finished for dinner and the others get moved to a later day in the week. So when she was working on a book idea, it wasn't just that she had one project she was working on. She was constantly adding ideas to different notebooks, different projects. And when it came time for her to start her next book, she took the one that was the closest to being ready and she went ahead and put the work into polishing that book. This is a lot like how freelancing works for me. Sometimes stories are assigned to us as journalists or they come to us whole cloth, but most of the time we're looking over a massive pile of story ideas we have and trying to see which ones have the pieces they need or are timely and appropriate or catch our attention in a moment. And those are the ones that we're going to uh pitch to editors so that we can actually write and publish those stories. I am a maker of lists. I have notebooks full of lists, I have Google Docs with lists, I have spreadsheets that are filled with different ideas, and uh, I have several documents that are just exclusively for potential story ideas I could explore. I have a lot of story ideas, dozens and dozens that need more examples to go with them before they'll be ready for me to actually pitch them. Single producer stories happen. That's where you're I'm writing a story about a chocolate maker or a brewery, something of that nature, but they aren't super common, especially not anymore. More often, our articles are looking at multiple sources. We're covering a trend, not in a gimmicky way, but you know, examining how something within a given food or drink segment is done or how different people are doing it, uh, new ways to do things, ways ingredients are used, things like that. And those require multiple sources for them. So I did one recently for the chocolate professor that was all about chocolate bars featuring smoke flavors, so smoked cacao. And I had multiple different craft chocolate makers interviewed for that who were doing using different techniques and uh creating different products. I've uh did an article a year or two back about breweries that host unusual side businesses within their tap rooms. So there was one that has a record store in their tap room and one that has a running shop on their property because they have a lot of runners who come to their location to use the trails near them. So they actually partner with a running shop for running shoes and things like that. So covered that and looked at all these different examples uh as a way to give other breweries ideas for uh maybe partner businesses that they could bring in to work with. Tons and tons of examples I could give you of stories like that, where there's a central idea and I need lots of different sources that can provide different perspectives for that. I am not waiting until I have a story greenlit for a publication before I'm beginning to do that work. When I'm pitching as a freelancer, when I'm pitching story ideas to editors, I need to have those ideas, those details, those sources, a rough outline. I need to have that already in place to be able to show them what the story would be so they can decide in an educated way if that is right for their publication or not. So I have lists of story ideas where I am underneath that, I am adding just little notes and possible sources and different angles to explore with that. And I'm casually doing that on an ongoing basis as I come across new potential sources or places that fit with one idea that I have on that list, and then I'm starting new ones as something else noteworthy comes to my attention. And each week, as I'm looking at the pitches that I'm going to send out, I'm looking at those ones that are closest to being ready and seeing if I have what they need, and then I'm finishing them up and crafting them into pitches and sending those out to editors. Or I'm taking an idea that I'm really passionate about and I'm patiently taking the time to research and find those different pieces and then getting that ready and sending it out. Something similar happens for the grassroots media members within craft chocolate that I talked about in a previous entry in this series, where we're talking about podcasters and bloggers and content creators that are uniquely relevant within Kraft Chocolate. They aren't pitching stories, but they're doing content planning and they're still doing that same kind of thing where they're looking through ideas and figuring out who they're going to use for those. When we talked in the last episode about press releases, we were primarily looking there at news stories. So those are timely announcements that have a call to action associated with them. When it comes to earned media coverage, these tend to be longer lifespan stories that we hope will hook a reader or listener or viewer's curiosity. And we can be a little bit more patient in developing them. This is where having an ongoing relationship with media members comes in handy for both parties, you as the chocolate maker, me, or somebody else as the media member, freelance journalist, a TV reporter, whatever it might be. In the episode about building a media list, Melinda and I discussed how to make contact with media members. So we discussed how to find contact info. We emphasized the importance of social media in this and being able to find media members and establish a beginning communication with them. You can follow media members on social media, interact with their posts, learn about learn a little bit about them. And that can help you familiarize yourself with the ones you think are the best fits for you and also keeps you from just coming out of nowhere when you do actually reach out to them formally. When you do that, you'll recall, you're keeping it personal and brief, and it can always be helpful to share what you've appreciated about their work. If you read an article and enjoyed it, drop that journalist a line and let them know and introduce yourself. Once that communication is initiated, you now have an ongoing open line of dialogue, and you can send along low pressure, uh, longer lifespan story ideas in a little bit more informal way. Press releases can be great and they don't have to be intimidating, as we discussed in the last episode, but they also have limited applications. So, what do you do with all those story ideas you created on your story list that you brainstormed that we talked about a few episodes back? Most of those are not going to fit for a press release. You'll recall press releases are looking at some kind of timely news story, an event, an announcement. There's some kind of call to action associated with them. Most, the majority of the story ideas that are on your story list do not are not applicable there. So what do you do with those? How do you communicate those to media members? As a freelance journalist, one thing I wish more folks in Food and Beverage felt comfortable doing is sending me informal communication letting me know about their story ideas and what's coming down the road. This does not need to be a formatted press release or even a super formatted professional email. Just something, you know, a brewery could email me and say, hey, David, not sure what stories you're working on right now, but here's a few ideas if you're interested. Here's some products we have coming up. Here's something outside the brewery that one of our staff members has gotten involved in. Here's a nonprofit we've started working with. Uh Hop Harvest is coming up. Not sure if you want to piggyback with us on anything related to hop selection or uh wet hops or, you know, whatever it might be. And they might send a series of ideas there. That email takes 60 seconds to write and less than that for me to read. It's respectful of both of our times, but it gives me a list of ideas I can scan and say, yeah, I can't do anything with that right now, can't do anything with that. That's interesting. I might have a place for that particular idea. And then in that email, they can say, you know, if you want to follow up on any of these, I can get you in touch with whoever at the brewery you need to talk to, love to work with you, whatever it might be. Obviously, the better and more consistent ongoing relationship you have with a media member, the more casual you're able to be about this. The first time you do something like this after establishing initial communication with a journalist or other media member, I would recommend selecting a handful, maybe four to six high-level story ideas that might get their attention. And then going forward, you can share others as they come up or just periodically bundle some of those and send them over. Some of the same guidelines apply that we've talked about in the previous episodes about keeping things very brief and being respectful of the uh the media members' time. But once we know each other, I would love for more chocolate makers and brewers and other producers to send me ideas as they have them. Info about new and upcoming products, collaborations they're working on, uh longer term or even historical story ideas that maybe aren't about anything related to commerce. You know, we hey, we discovered a new historical detail about our building. We've been playing around with a new ingredient, and this is the story about where we're getting that from and why it's significant to us, whatever it might be. Doing this does mean, like with all the other communication we've talked about, uh including press releases, that you do need to know a writer's beat and what they cover. The once you're within as narrow a niche as the craft chocolate industry, if this is a journalist who has expressed interest in that or you have communication with them and they're interested, you're kind of already within those boundaries. The better you know an individual media member, maybe the more specific you can be in stories that you think will uh apply to them, but you're mostly safe as long as they've already expressed interest about craft chocolate because this is a fairly narrow interest to begin with. Doing communication in this way with media members for most of those earned media story ideas is a much easier lift for you, and it provides me with what I need for my work story ideas. In the press release episode, Melinda and I talked about the fact that you won't get a response to most of your press releases, and that's okay. Similarly, I won't be able to use most of these story ideas that you send me informally. Most journalists are not going to be able to use most of those, but most of them are not time sensitive in any way. They might give me an idea for a story that I develop over time and include you in, or they fit in a story that I'm already working on but isn't ready yet. Sometimes a brewery or chocolate maker has let me know about something they're doing, and a story has come to fruition from that six or 12 or 18 months down the road. As long as that story idea was not time sensitive in some way, that just means that there's a longer on-ramp to get that story ready, but it is just as valuable as uh something time-sensitive that you send out. So even though I won't be able to use most of those story ideas you send, uh let letting me know a long list of those things that you have going on allows me to see if any of them do fit with what I'm working on rather than sending formal communication with one big idea on it that is either complete hit or miss, either I can use it or I can't. I know it might feel unprofessional to do communication in this way, and it is important to already have a relationship in place with a media member before you begin this kind of uh dialogue, but I would love to see more chocolate companies doing this. This also applies to working with those grassroots media uh within craft chocolate that we talked about a couple episodes ago. The bloggers and podcasters and uh newsletters, content creators uh who have a small but dedicated following specific to craft chocolate, you can have that same kind of ongoing informal communication with them. So introduce yourself if you don't already have a relationship with a journalist or other media member. Start there. Tell us a little bit about what you do in as efficient and succinct a way as possible. I know I've said it multiple times, but reach out when you liked a story. You're rarely going to have more goodwill than when you're sincerely complimenting someone or expressing appreciation for their work. So that is a that is a golden opportunity to begin communication with a media member when you have sincerely appreciated something about their work that can begin that conversation. It is also entirely appropriate, if the media member is geographically close to you, to invite them for a tour of your factory or your shop. I have a colleague in beer writing who got invited to tour a nearby brewery to her that she knew by name but wasn't terribly familiar with. And while she was there, you know, they took her all around, showed her the brewery, let her taste some things. At the end of the tour, they said something just kind of toss-away about a water reclamation project that they had where they were reusing wastewater from the brewery to be able to reduce water waste. And that stuck in her brain. She ended up working on a bigger story that looked at water reclamation projects within the brewing industry and used them as a primary source within that. That wasn't why they brought her on site. They didn't even realize that was a story idea. But if she hadn't been there in person, she never would have found out about it. So uh bringing somebody on site, just letting them kind of be in your space and feel the vibes and see the building and see ingredients and equipment and talk to you and your people, that can often do a lot to not only build a relationship, but to bring out story ideas that maybe you were not even aware of. Uh, this does not have to be a mercenary thing. I mean, there should not be any ever be any strings attached to that of come on site and now you're you owe me coverage. This is just a way for you to build a deeper relationship with a media member, invite them to come and see what you're doing. Here's the thing that you really have to understand. There are thousands of businesses in the craft chocolate world, chocolate makers, cacao farms, cacao importers and brokers, chocolate shops, etc. Those of us who want to cover the industry, or those who might be interested in doing so, but maybe don't cover it exclusively or don't even know much about it yet, we can't tell the stories we don't know about. We aren't ignoring great stories that are sitting right in front of us, but we need your help to let us know what's going on and let us know what those stories are. So feel free to practice on me. My email is beandobarstool at gmail.com. If we don't already know each other, send me an introductory email. Let me know about what you do and what some of your company's stories are. Let me know if you'd like help in evaluating what some of those stories might be. I am not selling anything. I don't have a consulting business attached to this. I'm a journalist, and it benefits me to have chocolate makers and other companies who know what media needs and how to work with us. So I want to hear from you. Please practice on me as a starting point and then branch out to the other media members on the media list that you are brainstorming. In the last episode, looking at press releases, we discussed that most of the places you'll be sending those to will be legacy media that is most likely local or regional to you. The benefit of that kind of coverage, especially given that it has a specific call to action attached to it, is pretty clear. You're hoping consumers make a direct decision based on seeing that coverage and they're in the position to do so. You might be wondering, though, what the benefit of coverage is that is not in your area. So for national or international publications that are not in your local geographic area. So these stories don't have a call to action. And this goes back to what we discussed in the very first episode of this series when we discussed why you need a media plan. Sales are the goal of your business, but stories are the paths that will lead current and potential customers to that goal. Your most valuable assets in building connection and gaining customers are not your products, but your stories. Good chocolate is necessary. You have to be making good chocolate, but quality is not primarily what is going to turn casual consumers into customers. It is curiosity and connection. Those are just as important as quality. When you're included in a broader story, so it doesn't have a call to action, someone isn't being asked to do anything, their defenses are lowered and they're able to allow their curiosity to flourish a bit more. So even though that article in a national or even an international publication isn't encouraging someone directly to purchase from you, and they likely aren't in a position to come to your event or shop physically, there are a couple ways that story can still help you. First, one of the great things about chocolate is that it can be shipped. I write about a lot of alcohol producers, and they have a lot more restrictions there when it comes to shipping direct to consumer. But temperature limitations aside, in the summer months, you can make customers anywhere as a chocolate company through your website. Second, though, if you get coverage in a major publication, you can use that article in your own marketing to your direct customer base. Share it in your newsletter or on social media to show your local fans or your existing fans, wherever they may be, who else has taken notice of you. Give them some pride and ownership in the fact that you've gotten this attention from a broader, you know, a bigger publication from somebody outside of your immediate area. Depending on the significance of the coverage, you can even share that with your local news or local websites or social media pages covering your area who might want to highlight that to their local audience to say, hey, here's a local business that is getting some big-scale attention, you know, and that can drive local attention as well. This is also part of the main value of winning chocolate awards. We can debate if the awards themselves mean anything. I think they do with caveats, but sharing them with local media who can then share that with your local audience and bring you some attention to show that you have been decorated from this national or international organization that is vetting the quality of Kraft chocolate, that can be really beneficial to use with your immediate customer base as a way to demonstrate that, yeah, you of course you think we're good. You're already buying our chocolate, but check out what somebody else said about us and that we've we've won this award and that can drive some renewed attention. Melinda and I are going to talk more in the next and final episode in this series about what to do after you've gotten media coverage to maximize the benefit that you can get from that. But in summary, begin relationships with media members and then feel free to send more informal communication about story ideas, things you have going on or coming up, etc. Still be respectful of this fellow professional's time, but don't feel the pressure to be hyper professional and formatted and formal in that kind of ongoing communication. We need stories. You have stories, we just need you to let us know about them. I hope this has been a helpful episode. As always, if you have any questions, please send those my way. You can direct message me on Instagram at BeingTabarstool, email me being to Barstool at gmail.com. And in the next episode, in addition to talking about what to do after you've gotten media coverage, Melinda and I are also going to talk about some very common pitfalls in media relations, and we would love to also be able to answer any questions that have come up in the course of this series. So please let us know if there's anything you'd like us to be able to address in that episode. Thanks so much for listening to Being to Barstool. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. Cheers.