All our publicists have great relationships with the media and understand who to go to with what type of message. This requires an in-depth understanding of who covers what, where and when. There's so many outlets and they all serve different niches and here's where your database will come in handy.

All our publicists have great relationships with the media and understand who to go to with what type of message. This requires an in-depth understanding of who covers what, where and when. There's so many outlets and they all serve different niches and here's where your database will come in handy. It can be as simple as an excel spreadsheet or word document or could use different online tools.

Each list starts at the same place - research.

Sally Woodfield says 'Research the media you are targeting and this will give you a good indicator of who you should approach.' Angela Radford echos that saying 'carefully select the appropriate contacts'.

Look at all the media that cover your sector. Think widely, look at magazines and specialist publications, search online. See who is writing features, do they have regular columns you could appear in? Do the same for newspapers, radio and TV. Then think about bloggers, event sites, online media publishers...

Build your list.

In our list we know the following:

• Who the outlet is - their name
• What they cover
• How often they 'publish'
• Who are the specialised journalists and writers and what they specialise in
• Editors, journalists and writers contact details [email, skype, mobile]
• Editors, journalists and writers online presence [their column, articles, twitter account, facebook account, other social media they might use]

It's a slow process but some of those people on your list will be interested in what you do and have to say. Understand the angles they are interested in and you may be able to pitch a story to them successfully. Deliver it in a format that suits their needs - remember each of these journalists is time-poor and deadline driven. If you can't deliver on-time, they will move on to someone else, it's just the nature of what they have to deliver.

Do all this and keep it up to date - then you'll truly be prepared when you have a campaign you want to roll out.