As experienced authors know, a book publicity campaign can have short and long-term benefits. When you build good relationships with the media, they'll cover you and your book. The short-term PR is connected to your book release, and the longer-term benefits are for you. When you do well in interviews and provide comments and quotes for articles, they'll return repeatedly. Investing in a publicist when you write a book is a wise move. It helps when someone introduces you and opens doors. Once you're in, you can demonstrate your knowledge and skills as an expert source.

Be available if you'd like to cultivate good ongoing relationships with interviewers and journalists and their editors and producers. The news happens 24/7, and audiences expect immediate coverage. There's a mad scramble to find experts to speak to when something happens. If you answer your phone and keep an eye on emails, you can quickly respond if asked. Once you become known as someone easy to reach and will respond, you can expect more calls and emails. The PR and personal visibility benefits can be significant. Your visibility will bring new client inquiries if you own or run a business. 

Another tenant of excellent media relations is following the guidelines. For example, keep your response brief if you're asked to comment. Keep your words on the subject if you're asked to comment on an event. When you receive inquiries in writing, as is increasingly common today, reply in writing and offer two or three sentences directly answering the questions. Remember the value of providing just enough and not too much in your answers. You'll find yourself quoted often when you provide insight and comments that are easy to use. Once you appear in one story, you'll also receive other calls.

While the media is your primary audience, keep their audiences in mind. You'll want to be yourself and give answers that are authentic to your knowledge, but consider who is watching, reading, or listening. If you're speaking to a trade or technical publication, you might go into more detail about a complex topic than you would for a general audience. You don't need to be overly simplistic to general media because you want to demonstrate your knowledge, but you don't want to go over the audiences' heads. Lastly, be respectful of the media's time. They work on deadlines and cannot easily stop for a long chat.