Author: Dan Griffiths

It’s been two months since we launched the free journalist enquiry service for charities initiative. The uptake has been even better than we expected. As of today over 400 UK registered charities are receiving journalist request notifications – with new charities joining every day.

Media coverage opportunities

We’ve had some great feedback, for example: “Dot Star Media offers a simple, user friendly service which has allowed us to identify opportunities for our campaigns, which we were previously unable to benefit from due to limited resource to search for opportunities” – Franchesca Allen, Macmillan Cancer Support.

More feedback on the Dot Star Media ‘for charities’ page.

Keyword filtering saves time

Charities often support a single and specific cause. When it comes to monitoring #journorequest (and other hashtags and tweets by journalists) for media coverage opportunities, having a focus on a specific cause inevitably means that most requests are irrelevant. The keyword filtering option “is great because it aggregates all the journalist requests that are specifically relevant to you, so you don’t have to trawl through Twitter and wade through irrelevant content.” – Sarah Swaysland, The Volunteer idea

Journalists seeking comment

Journalists seeking comment from charities – and other organisations, such as universities, PR firms and businesses – can submit detailed and direct requests for free using this submit form: dotstar.media/submit (we also scan Twitter for requests posted there)

Charities looking for media coverage

Charities interested in trying the service for themselves can register here: dotstar.media/charities

The next step for Dot Star Media is providing an option for journalists who want to contact our growing network of charities, universities, businesses and public relations agencies without having to post requests on social media.

A direct journalist enquiry form means that journalists who want to send more detailed briefs than Twitter allows, or prefer to avoid the public nature of social media, can use Dot Star Media directly. The form is ready to use here: dotstar.media/submit

We know that building up a network of journalists will take time. While we promote the new service to journalists and build request volumes we have decided to distribute direct requests free of charge to all subscribers. The instant request notifications sourced from social media are still only available with a Dot Star Media subscription.

To receive Dot Star Media requests register at https://dotstar.media/register

Journalists can submit direct requests at https://dotstar.media/submit

Just a few months after launch Dot Star Media has improved the way organisations monitor social media for journalist requests. We’re helping hundreds of individual subscribers jump on the ‘quick reaction’ media opportunities available on Twitter, without spending all day on Twitter.

Innovation in media requests

We’re also pleased to have introduced these innovations to the journalist enquiry service market:

• Automated near-instant alerting for most requests, because speed is crucial
• Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations, to help press office teams collaborate
• Advanced keyword filtering and digest options, to remove irrelevant requests
• AI-powered keyword suggestions, to help capture more relevant requests
• A fully e-commerce enabled flexible subscription, to give our clients total control

We will continue to work with subscribers when developing further improvements.

Charity initiative

What Jonathan and I are most proud of, however, is the free ‘media request service for charities’ initiative. This is making a real and positive difference to the media relations activities of over 100 qualifying charities. Franchesca Allen from the press office at Macmillan Cancer Support said:

“Dot Star Media offers a simple, user friendly service which has allowed us to identify opportunities for our campaigns, which we were previously unable to benefit from due to limited resource to search for opportunities. It’s also allowed us to create and build new media relationships across consumer titles such as Refinery29, LadBible and VICE.”

Join us

To try Dot Star Media for yourself please register at https://dotstar.media/register

Jonathan and I are really happy that we’ve already reached a stage where we can provide Dot Star Media service to charities free of charge.

At the risk of sounding cheesy, we both want Dot Star Media to make a difference in the world. Everyone benefits from the amazing work of charities (some areas that are especially close to our hearts are education, health and the environment). So – although we’re a new business and still have a lot of growing to do – we’re taking the opportunity to give something back as soon as we can.

If you’re a press officer at a charity in the UK or Ireland, you can find out more about why we’re doing this and how your charity can benefit here: https://dotstar.media/charities/. We’d love to hear what you think of the service.

For more detail, here’s the text of a press release we sent out today.

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Dot Star Media launches free journalist request service for charities

Monday 12 April 2021

Media request monitoring and alerting service Dot Star Media announced today that it is making its service free of charge to UK and Irish registered charities.

Charity press officers use the Dot Star Media request service to receive and respond to journalist requests for comments, quotes, case studies and statistics for news articles and features.

Journalists and the media benefit from a media request service that provides access to a wide range of sources with a good balance of commercial and not-for-profit organisations participating.

Charities will have access to the full set of features, which include keyword filtering, digest options and delivery to Slack or Microsoft Teams. Dot Star Media allows charity press teams to receive a relevant feed of journalist request notifications without having to spend hours scouring social media.

Dan Griffiths, co-founder, said: “Journalists tell us they need a diverse range of voices. Charities (especially smaller ones) are often denied a voice because they can’t afford the fees for traditional media request services. By offering Dot Star Media free to registered charities, we want to make a difference to as many people as possible.”

Jonathan Tullett, co-founder, said: “Right from the beginning, we pledged a percentage of Dot Star Media’s profits to green causes, because we want to build a socially and environmentally conscientious organisation. I strongly feel we should always be trying to do more and this is another step towards that goal.”

Free access to Dot Star Media for charities will initially be limited to the first 1,000 qualifying charities registering.

Registered charities can sign up to try the service at https://dotstar.media/charities/

About Dot Star Media

Dot Star Media supports professional journalists and broadcasters by distributing their media requests to a diverse range of organisations. Charities, universities, businesses, and public relations professionals all benefit from an efficient way of monitoring, receiving, and responding to the best journalist requests shared on social media – without having to spend hours wading through noise and spam. The company was established in January 2021 by PRTech industry veterans Jonathan Tullett and Dan Griffiths. For more information visit https://dotstar.media/about

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Nov 2022 update: There is a newer method for building apps in Slack. The newer method for getting journalists requests into Slack is documented here: https://dotstar.media/getting-your-journalist-requests-in-slack/

Dot Star Media ‘gold’ tier subscribers can receive noise-free journalist request notifications in Slack.

Receiving media request notifications in a Slack channel offers some advantages over receiving alerts by email: delivery to Slack is quicker than email and it’s easier for your team to collaborate on the best way to respond to a request.

How to set up alerts in Slack

In the Slack application, add a new channel and call it something like ‘journalist-requests’. Once the channel is created press ‘Add an app’.

Search for ‘ Incoming WebHooks’ and press the install button. This will take you to the Incoming WebHooks app in the Slack App Directory.

Press the ‘Add to Slack’ button.

Choose the Slack channel you created earlier (or you can create a channel from here).

Slack will then provide a WebHook URL. Copy this URL to your clipboard.

Then, as an account administrator, visit the Dot Star Media website and navigate to the distribution channels page. Paste in the endpoint URL created in the previous step. Click the checkbox to enable the service.

You’ll now receive journalist requests in Slack, making it easier to work on replies with your colleagues. Please let us know if you would like support setting this up or if you have any feedback on receiving requests in Slack.

Hello! Dot Star Media launched today.

Have you ever missed out on a good media request?

Journalists use Twitter to post media requests all the time – but the platform can be noisy and chaotic for both journalists and sources. This can make identifying the best media coverage opportunities a difficult and time consuming task. Both businesses and the media can miss out as a result, and we want to help fix that.

Making media request monitoring less of an effort

Our aim is to provide an efficient way of monitoring, receiving and responding to the best requests on Twitter without having to spend hours wading through Twitter noise and spam. We’re solving this with a blend of automation technology and human oversight to identify, classify and deliver quality media coverage opportunities from verified journalists – at warp speed.

Helping journalists

Making it easier, and quicker, for communications professionals to find and respond to journalist requests helps journalists from outlets like this get their jobs done.

We’re on Twitter at DotStarMedia

Dan and Jonathan.