I tried out MatchPoint, the new PR list-building web site, and I think it's very good and interesting. And I give the creators, Peter Himler and eNR, an A++ for thinking up something new and innovative to add to the PR Toolbox.
MatchPoint works as follows: you copy the text of your press release into MatchPoint's easy-to-use web-based software, and MatchPoint analyzes the keywords in your release and spits out a list of journalists and bloggers who have recently written articles using those words, along with headlines for the articles themselves.
In other words, instead of building a media list based on geography or "beat," you can actually build a list based on recent stories journalists and bloggers have covered. It pulls from six months of bylines (over 3 million) from 11,000 print, 25,000 online news, and 10,000 blog posts.
As I said, this is a real step forward, a new way of looking at media relations. I gave the site a test drive (anyone can sign up for a two-week free trial, after that it's $65/month), and came away impressed with the service. The lists I got back (bloggers and mainstream media are listed separately) included both journalists and bloggers I knew about, and some I didn't. And of course, it gave me recent clips that I could reference in a custom pitch to these targets.
My only reservation about MatchPoint is that it gives you a media list based on past coverage, including some one-off coverage that may not be representative of what that journalist covers. While I think journalists may be more willing to give a PR person a break of they pitch a story based on this past coverage, it's still not going to get you future coverage if the story you are pitching isn't really close to their beat.
Which brings us back to the truism of media relations: it's all about the relations part. If you blindly pitch a story based on your MatchPoint results, and you get a lot of rejections, it's not MatchPoint's fault. But if you use MatchPoint as high quality media relations intelligence, it will likely increase your pitching success.
Does Match Point have permission from publishers to excerpt sections of their content? Also - I'd be curious to hear how this is "patent pending" when it is merely a different way to package up common news search with a different UI approach. I seriously doubt a patent will be awarded.
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