Algeria AgencyDigital marketing
Being reachable: what happens when somebody finally wants to quote you
The useful work in press relations is not pitching, it is readiness. The file that has to exist, the five contacts, and the hour that decides.
The article accompanying this one explains what public relations is here: getting somebody else to say it, distrusting audience figures supplied by the seller, and understanding that the best placement is not an article about you. It describes what to look for.
This page describes what has to be ready. Because the part that actually produces results is not the pitch, which fails nine times out of ten, but the far shorter moment when somebody — a journalist, a creator, an event organiser — needs somebody like you, now.
That moment has one property that decides everything: it is opened by somebody else and it closes without warning you. A journalist finishing a piece calls three businesses, takes the one that answers, and does not call the other two back — not this time, and not next time.
So this article is about preparation: the file that has to exist before it is asked for, the five relationships that replace a list of five hundred, what actually counts as news, answering within the hour, the interview, the distorted quotation, and what to do with a publication once it appears.
You do not do press relations, you are reachable
The usual model is the campaign: prepare a release, send it to a list, follow up, observe that nothing happened. That model fails for a structural reason rather than for lack of talent — it assumes interest arises at the moment you solicit it, which is almost always false.
Interest arises at the other end and on their schedule. A journalist works on a subject they chose, a creator looks for an example for a video they are preparing, an organiser needs a speaker for a panel in ten days. None of the three was waiting for your release, and all three have a precise, dated need.
So the inversion required is complete: the work is not to provoke those moments, it is to be findable and available when they come. That takes far less effort and far more consistency, which is exactly the opposite of what suppliers sell.
A practical consequence follows immediately and is counter-intuitive: half the work of press relations is preparation addressed to nobody. A file, photographs, a biography, a number that gets answered. None of it shows, and it is what separates being quoted from being replaced.
The other half is relationship maintenance at very small scale, described in section 3. Neither resembles a campaign, which is why this work is almost always badly sold and badly bought.
The file that has to exist before it is asked for
When somebody wants to quote you they need precise things and they need them now. If you take two days to gather them, the piece has gone without you. That file fits in a shared folder and is built in half a day, once.
It contains six things and no more. A description of the business at three lengths — thirty words, a hundred, three hundred — because whoever is writing does not have the space you imagine. The name, the exact role and the spelling of the spokesperson. Two or three usable photographs.
Then three things nobody prepares and which make all the difference. The verifiable facts about the business: year founded, number of people, cities covered, precisely what you do. One or two concrete examples of work, with the client’s agreement obtained in advance. And a telephone number that gets answered, not a general contact address.
On photographs, one detail that costs coverage: they must be high resolution and horizontal, and you must have the right to distribute them. A photograph taken on a phone in a corridor will not be published, and an image whose rights you do not hold puts the newsroom in difficulty, which makes them drop it.
Finally, the prior agreement of the clients named is what separates a usable file from a theoretical one. Asking for that agreement while a journalist waits is impossible; asking calmly six months earlier is a two-minute conversation almost nobody refuses.
Five people, not five hundred
The distribution list is this trade’s emblematic tool and it produces almost nothing for a business of this size. A send to three hundred generic addresses is treated as what it is: a send to three hundred generic addresses.
What produces something is a very small number of real relationships. Five people is enough: two or three journalists covering your sector or your wilaya, one or two creators whose audience overlaps yours, and somebody in a trade body or a fair.
Those five are found in an hour and without a tool. Look for who has written about your sector in the last six months, in the publications your customers actually read. The name is on the article. That is all the sourcing you need.
The relationship is then built by a gesture almost nobody makes: being useful to them without asking for anything. Flagging news in your sector that does not concern you; correcting a figure kindly; offering to explain a technical mechanism in the background. Three exchanges like that in a year create something no distribution list creates.
The outcome is not that they will write about you. The outcome is that the day one of them needs a business in your sector for a piece, your name comes to mind — which is exactly the moment described in section 1.
What actually counts as news
Most releases fail because they announce something of interest only to the business itself. A new site, a new logo, a new office, an anniversary: those events matter internally and are news to nobody else.
The criterion is blunt and applies in ten seconds: does somebody who does not know you learn something useful? If the answer is no, it is not news, whatever the quality of the writing.
Four things pass that test in our experience. A figure only you hold about your market — a volume, a trend, a distribution observed across your own operations. A concrete consequence of a regulatory change in your sector. A documented client case with figures and the client’s agreement. And a position on a subject where you are willing to say something unpopular.
The first is by far the most effective and the most neglected. You hold, without thinking about it, data nobody publishes: real supply lead times in your trade, demand by wilaya, the distribution of faults. Published honestly, with the method and the limits, that data makes you a source rather than a subject.
And if nothing passes the test, the honest conclusion is to send nothing. A send without news consumes the only resource that counts in this activity, which is the attention those five people give you when your name appears.
Answer within the hour, or do not answer
This is the shortest section to write and the hardest to apply. A journalist’s request has a lifespan measured in hours, because it arrives with a publication deadline.
The real sequence is this: they contact three businesses, the first to reply gets into the piece, and the other two receive a mention at best and usually nothing. There is no making it up the next day, and there is no reproach either — it is simply how the trade works.
The organisational consequence is that you have to decide in advance who answers and how they are reached. A general contact address checked the next morning is a guarantee of never being quoted. A number given in the file, ringing on a phone somebody carries, is what makes the difference.
Answering does not mean knowing everything. "I can answer on A and B, not on C, and I will call you back in twenty minutes with the exact figure" is an excellent reply, given within the hour. A complete and perfect answer given two days later is not one.
You also need to be able to decline quickly, and that beats silence. Saying "this is not our subject, but you should talk to so-and-so" takes thirty seconds, does a favour, and makes you somebody who gets called again — which is the real objective of all this work.
The interview: three sentences, not a speech
Once the request is accepted, the preparation that works is short and counter-intuitive. It is not preparing a speech but choosing three sentences you want to see quoted, and accepting that the rest of the conversation serves to bring them out.
Three, because an article will give you two or three lines. Forty minutes of preparation covering the whole subject produces an interview where you say many correct things and the journalist chooses which to quote — often the least important, because it was the most vivid.
Each sentence has to stand alone, without the question. Quotations are extracted, and an answer beginning "yes, absolutely, and that is why…" is not quotable. Repeat the subject in the answer, which feels heavy aloud and reads perfectly.
Two practical rules, learned the hard way by many. Nothing is off the record: if you say it, it can be published, whatever formula preceded it. And if you do not know, say so — a figure invented during an interview is printed, archived, and follows you for years.
You can ask to check your quotations, and that is asked at the start rather than at the end. Many newsrooms accept it for technical reasons; the request is legitimate and it covers the accuracy of what you said, not the angle of the article, which is not yours.
When it appears
The publication arrives, often without warning and rarely as you imagined it. Three things to do and two not to, and the order matters.
To do, immediately: archive the publication yourself — a copy, a screenshot, the date, the link — because sites reorganise, articles disappear, and a lost mention is a mention that never existed. Thank the person, briefly, without commenting on the content. And warn your team, because the phone may ring.
Not to do: request a correction for a secondary detail. An approximate job title, a date a year out, a phrasing you would have turned differently do not justify a message; they make you a tiresome contact, and the cost is not being called again. Keep that capital for an error that genuinely matters.
Also not to do: republish the mention across all your channels for three weeks. Once is enough. Repetition turns outside recognition into self-promotion, which removes precisely what gave it value — the fact that somebody else said it.
One thing is worth doing and nobody does it: make contact again two months later, with no commercial purpose, with something useful to the person. That is what turns an isolated appearance into a relationship, and a relationship is what produces the second appearance.
The distorted quotation
It happens, and three cases have to be distinguished, because they call for three very different responses and confusing them does a lot of damage.
The first is compression. What you said is summarised in a way you would not have chosen but which is not wrong. Do nothing. That is how an article normally works, and intervening here is the fastest way to become impossible to interview.
The second is a factual error: a wrong figure, a wrong date, an attribution to the wrong person. Point it out, once, pleasantly, in writing and with the exact data. Most newsrooms correct, and those that do not will not do so any more if you insist three times.
The third is a distortion that has you saying the opposite, and it is the only case that justifies insisting. There, ask for a visible correction rather than a quiet edit of the online text, and supply the exact wording you used — that is what makes the correction easy for the newsroom to make.
In every case, one absolute rule: never reply publicly in the comments or on your own channels before writing to the person. A public reply freezes positions, turns a correction into a conflict, and is noticed far more than the original error.
Creators: where the audience actually is
You will be offered partnerships with creators regularly, and the offers do not reflect the market: they reflect the commercial activity of the creators themselves and the agencies representing them. One platform in particular is pitched far beyond what its real weight here justifies.
The figure alongside puts the order of magnitude back in place, with a limit that has to be stated before using it: it measures referrals to pages viewed, not audience size and not engagement. So it does not say which creator to choose; it says on which platform a partnership has a chance of sending people somewhere.
Read that way it settles a common question. A partnership meant to make your existence known can be justified anywhere; a partnership meant to bring people to a page, fill a form or place an order is judged first on the platform’s ability to send traffic, and that ability is very unequal.
Two rules complete this and depend on no figure. A paid partnership is advertising and must be presented as such: the law requires it, the audience recognises it anyway, so concealment costs more than it returns. And a creator’s engagement rate is worth more than their follower count, because the second can be bought and the first is visible in the comments.
Finally, look at what they have done for businesses like yours rather than at their figures. A creator who has already presented three services and whose comments ask serious questions beats an account three times the size whose audience scrolls past.
Statcounter Global Stats, Algeria, July 2026
The spokesperson, and what happens if they leave
Press relations personalise naturally: journalists call a person, not a business. It is effective and it creates a dependency nobody measures until it shows.
So designate a principal person — one, because two spokespeople produce different messages and the journalist will pick whichever suits them. But prepare a second, able to answer on technical subjects, and introduce them at least once in an exchange where they are not indispensable.
What transfers badly is not the content but the relationships, and they only transfer explicitly. A notebook — name, publication, subjects covered, date of last exchange — is worth more than any communications document, and it almost never exists because everybody keeps their contacts in their own phone.
The consequence when somebody leaves is immediate and severe: requests stop arriving without anybody noticing, because a request that does not arrive is not visible. Six months later you observe that you are no longer quoted, and you put it down to the market.
The folder, and the only honest measure
This work produces few events and it is easy to conclude too early that it gives nothing. The only protection is a record, kept lightly, that makes what accumulates visible.
The folder holds two lists. Appearances: date, publication, what was said, with a copy of the content kept by you. And exchanges: who, when, about what, with no judgement on the outcome. The second list is the one that counts, because it shows real activity when the first is empty.
The honest measure is neither the number of mentions nor an advertising equivalent, which is a commercial invention. It is the number of incoming enquiries that name a source: "I read the article in…", "somebody mentioned you in the video by…". One question at reception is enough to record it.
That number is small and it is true. Three enquiries in a year naming a source does not look like success and is nonetheless exactly what this activity produces at this scale — and it costs, against any paid channel, a fraction of the price.
Expect a long lag, finally. One appearance produces enquiries for months, sometimes more than a year later, because the article stays findable. That is the reason for archiving everything, and it is also why judging this work over a quarter makes no sense.
What we do, and what we refuse
What we do is bounded. We build the file and obtain the agreement of the clients named, we identify the five people and prepare the approaches, we prepare interviews down to three sentences, and we keep the folder and the measure of incoming enquiries.
We refuse to buy an article presented as editorial. The practice exists and is offered routinely; it misleads the reader, and for the business it is a bad purchase, because what is being bought — a third party’s credibility — is precisely what disappears when the reader understands. Paid content can be excellent: it has to be labelled as such.
We also refuse to answer a journalist in your name. We prepare the answer, we stay available during the exchange, and you do the speaking — because a quotation attributed to your business commits your business, and because an intermediary answering for the owner is noticed within three questions.
And we do not promise appearances. Nobody can promise what an independent newsroom will publish, and a supplier who promises it is selling either unlabelled paid content or a disappointment. What we commit to is preparation, availability and consistency. There is also one thing only you can do and it decides everything else: give a number that gets answered.
Frequently asked questions
Should we send press releases?
Rarely, and only if you genuinely have news: something a person who does not know you learns and finds useful. A new site, a logo or an anniversary is not. What passes the test is above all a figure only you hold about your market — real lead times in your trade, demand by wilaya — published with its method.
How many journalists should we contact?
Five people, not five hundred. Two or three journalists covering your sector or wilaya, one or two creators, and somebody in a trade body. They are found in an hour: look for who has written about your sector in the last six months; the name is on the article. A generic distribution list produces almost nothing at this scale.
A journalist has written to us. How fast must we reply?
Within the hour, not the day. They contacted three businesses, the first to reply gets into the piece, and there is no making it up tomorrow. Replying does not mean knowing everything: "I can answer on A and B, not on C, and I will call back in twenty minutes" is an excellent reply. Declining quickly also beats silence.
How do we prepare for an interview?
By choosing three sentences you want quoted, not by preparing a speech: an article will give you two or three lines. Each sentence must stand alone without the question, so repeat the subject in the answer. And hold two rules — nothing is off the record, and a figure invented during an interview is printed and then archived.
The article contains an error. Should we ask for a correction?
It depends on the kind. A compression that is not wrong: do nothing. A factual error: point it out once, pleasantly, in writing, with the exact data. A distortion that has you saying the opposite: there, insist and supply your original wording. In every case, no public reply before writing to the person.
Which platform should we pick a creator on?
If the aim is bringing people to a page or a form, look first at the platform’s ability to send traffic — in Algeria one network accounts for 71.28% of those referrals and another for 8.21%, while the second is pitched far more often. That figure counts referrals, not audiences: it settles the platform, never the creator, who is judged on their comments.
Where we come in
A file ready to send is worth more than ten approaches. What it does not cover is the hour somebody calls and your contact is in a meeting.
- We assemble the material and get written consent from the customers named.
- We put a second reachable name, with a number, into the same document.
- We prepare the answer inside the hour, and you send it yourself.
If nobody at your company can speak to a journalist without sign-off, do not start: the delay will lose you every occasion.
Read next
Public relations: getting somebody else to say it
This whole pillar deals with what is already said about you. This page deals with the reverse: obtaining a third-party mention, and at what price.The week of an incident: what to do hour by hour
An incident is handled in time, not by channel. The first hour, the holding line, the third day, and what actually changes afterwards.Comments and crisis: the first hour decides
Past a certain threshold the ordinary method becomes harmful. What matters then is one voice, one place, and three sentences written quickly.
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