Answer journalist source requests, 20 minutes a week
Spend twenty minutes weekly answering journalist source requests on platforms like Qwoted and Featured: two quotable sentences, your credentials, sent fast. The reporter already needs an expert — you’re fulfilling demand, not creating it — and each placement returns a citation, a backlink, and a byline that compounds authority.
By The Marketinque TeamReviewed June 2026
Step 3.2.13 Answer the journalist requests in your field in the SaaS launch checklist · phase 3, Authority baseline
The play
Watch the source-request platforms (Qwoted, Featured, Help a B2B Writer) for queries on your beat and answer fast with a tight, quotable take plus credentials. It’s PR without pitching: the journalist already wants the quote.
Watch out for
- Answer within hours; source requests die same-day.
- Give a complete, usable quote — not "happy to chat".
Best for
Make this concrete for your product
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Plays like this one
- Newsjack: the same-day expert commentWhen industry news breaks, publish a sharp practitioner’s take within hours — what it actually means, what happens next — and send it to the journalists writing the follow-ups. Reporters on a developing story need informed voices immediately; speed and a concrete angle beat credentials you don’t have yet.
- Pitch the decision that sounds wrong out loudPitch reporters the company decision that contradicts startup orthodoxy — refusing investment, deleting a popular feature, publishing salaries, doubling prices — with the reasoning and the real numbers behind it. Launches aren’t stories; tension is. A counterintuitive choice honestly told hands a journalist the headline half-written.
- Hand local press the hometown story they’re hunting forPitch your story to local newspapers, radio, and city blogs with an explicitly local hook: the neighborhood connection, hiring, a milestone, a first for the area. Local outlets must fill a business section weekly and say yes at rates national press never will — delivering trusted coverage, links, and customers nearby.
- Pitch one original statistic to a journalistRun a small original survey or mine your product data for one surprising, defensible statistic, then pitch that single finding to a journalist who covers your space. Reporters need data, not product announcements; an original number gives them a story and earns you an authoritative backlink plus a citation that AI engines reuse.
Sources
Compiled by The Marketinque Team to our editorial standards.