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In Their Own Words: wikiHow's Favorite Muck Rack Features

Search and Media Lists

Before Muck Rack, it’s funny to think how many times I’d find the wrong email for a journalist (or couldn’t find any contact information at all). This lead to missed opportunities to connect with the right person to write a meaningful piece about the work we do and the impact we have. With Muck Rack, I basically have those opportunities handed to me on a silver platter. We’ve been able to connect with more journalists to write future pieces that share our mission, to correct inaccuracies, to pitch new ideas, and to get feedback.

Because wikiHow aims to help people with virtually every topic under the sun, the ability to find the right journalist based on industry and create organized lists has been crucial. With Muck Rack, we can simultaneously scale up our press outreach to cover an array of topics and communicate our mission, and share our how-to content with journalists across many topics. Muck Rack also allows us to manage several media lists for different teams with different goals. It’s been invaluable to be able to segment different kinds of campaigns and partnerships we want to share in the press across those media lists, and track them separately. Because we write on any literally any topic so the kind of press we get is so varied. Muck Rack’s media lists help keep us organized and focused on sharing our mission.

Using Muck Rack to build lists saves me at least 15 hours a month.

Media Alerts

Before we had access to Muck Rack, I used other slower alert systems that would sometimes fail to notify me until 48 hours after a story was published. We’d often miss news we were included in. I still have those alerts active, but Muck Rack has been so comprehensive and so instant in its email alerts to me on different topics that I now rely on Muck Rack’s media mentioning tools almost exclusively.

For example, we recently worked on a new partnership launch with a major well-known brand -- I wanted to know every time certain keywords about the launch came out, and I wanted to know right away. As a bonus, Muck Rack easily compiled those alerts for me into a list, so I wouldn’t have to track it manually. After the PR for the partnership was complete, I knew that this brand was in the news constantly and I didn’t want to be bombarded with irrelevant alerts, and it was very easy and manageable to adjust my alerts.

Coverage Reports

I love how automated Muck Rack’s coverage reports are.

I used to track everything manually when an article came out, including the name of the journalist and the sentiment of the article. We get a decent amount of press coverage every day, so this would take up a big amount of my time on a daily basis.

I experienced the most ‘aha’ moment when I started using coverage reports and Muck Rack did it for me. It was done exactly the way I would have labeled everything. That’s been a real time saver for me when it comes to reporting. Previously I’d spend about 20 minutes a day tracking coverage -- Muck Rack saves me about two hours a week just on reporting.

Team Collaboration

I recently brought on a new team member who is getting acquainted with Muck Rack.

The collaboration between the two of us on the platform has been so nice and seamless. It’s been great to bring someone else in with minimal training needed to create media lists and review her pitches before she sends them. I can help her craft a message and she can ensure each message is personalized without us having to go through hundreds of pitches together.

It’s going to be really nice in terms of managing large projects as a team.

Five Fast Questions

1. What made you decide to use Muck Rack?

Muck Rack hits every mark in terms of functionality. wikiHow subscribes to products and services very selectively, and Muck Rack passed our high bar. Ultimately, we decided to use Muck Rack because its tools allow me to find the right people to share our mission and tell our story on the right outlets. It really proved its value right away.

2. How would you describe Muck Rack in three words?

Game-changing, easy and engaging.

3. What has your experience been like working with Muck Rack’s customer success team?

They’ve been so proactive in terms of helping me before I even have the chance to reach out to them!

Right before we found Muck Rack, we were in a time crunch because we were using free tools for a big partnership launch and the free tools just weren’t doing the job. We were on a deadline to get everything set up (reports, alerts, lists), and Muck Rack’s team helped us set up everything so quickly -- it was amazing. They saved the day in helping me get things done and acclimate to the platform. We were able to meet the deadline.

Overall, wikiHow’s goals and strategies are unconventional. There are so many unorthodox ways we’ve found we’ve been able to use Muck Rack to tell our stories and share our mission, and the customer success team continues to step in to help -- it has been so invaluable for me.

4. In addition to results, what other benefits have you experienced from Muck Rack?

We’ve saved a ton of time! Prior to Muck Rack, we worked out of spreadsheets religiously. Everything had to be done manually. When our CEO asks to see a list of email addresses of people who have covered us on a specific partnership, I can super easily organize and deliver that to her. Compiling/curating reports and getting items ready for other teams at wikiHow has been a huge time saver.

5. What would you tell other companies considering using Muck Rack?

First of all, I’d tell them to definitely use it. I would tell them that Muck Rack has enabled the wikiHow team to do more with less. It has every feature and excellent support. Most importantly, it’s really easy and intuitive to use. Go for it!