Journalist requests are a key reactive Digital PR tactic for many agency and in-house teams. It’s a quick way to utilise your experience and expertise to build yourself as a topical authority within your own niche.
Needless to say, that means it’s a great tactic for those who want to increase their rankings and organic search traffic.
As a company, we keep tabs on the various PR and journalist request platforms that journalists are actively using every day. If you don’t know, they are in search of an authority they can quote in their upcoming articles. In return, journalists often include a link or brand mention for you and your website, and that’s something we do for companies across all industries that we work with.
However, some industries do get more journo requests than others, and it’s useful to know not only what is being requested, but the specific expertise being requested per month, so we know what volume of requests to expect for each client.
Our data, analysed by our very own Data & Research Lead, Aashmi, uncovers the media publications that are putting out the higher volumes of requests.
This is the first in a monthly series we’ll be doing, where we’re crunching the numbers and making them publicly available, so you can see if journalist requests are something you should be actively engaging or investing in for your own Digital PR and SEO efforts.
Top Industries for Requests in July 2023
First things first, you want to know if the industry you operate in is likely to be one that is going to provide you with enough opportunities to land coverage. Our analysis for July 2023 trawled through the different groupings to summarise the sectors where journalists were requesting expertise the most.
Here are the results:
| Industry | # of Requests |
| Healthcare | 723 |
| Home Improvement | 288 |
| Finance | 281 |
| Travel | 181 |
| Technology | 178 |
| Business and Management | 177 |
| Food and Beverage | 146 |
| Fashion | 108 |
| Lifestyle | 99 |
| Real Estate | 96 |
| Marketing | 94 |
Through July, the most requested expertise was in the healthcare field, with 723 related requests. There was a notable number of requests around dermatology within this. With it being summer in the northern hemisphere, logically journalists are going to get a lot of traction with in-depth articles on how to take care of your skin, and the number of requests here reflects that.
Next up was home improvement – another activity that peaks in July according to search trends:
In Demand Expertise for July 2023
Although industry data is useful, and you can no doubt adapt your own expertise to suit various requests, part of what we want to uncover through our monthly data scrapes is the specific expertise that is in demand.
As of yet, we don’t have monthly or yearly data to compare with, but for July 2023, nutritionists were in high demand:
| Experts | Number of times requested |
| Nutritionist | 44 |
| Health Expert | 22 |
| Tech Expert | 15 |
| Medical Expert | 9 |
| Marketing Expert | 8 |
| Real Estate Expert | 8 |
| Financial Expert | 7 |
| Vet/Pet Expert | 6 |
| Media Expert | 4 |
| Social Media Expert | 4 |
| Human Resources Expert | 3 |
It’ll be interesting to see how this data adapts over the next few months, and as the global news cycles shift. For instance, if we are to see a collapse in the global commercial property market, I can imagine the number of requests for property experts will skyrocket accordingly.
Top Requests by Publication
July was a great month for high authority publications utilising journalist requests to add value to their articles.
The large US finance publication GOBankingRates led the way with the most activity, submitting 157 requests for use in their articles.
| Publication | # of Requests |
| GOBankingRates | 157 |
| Homes & Gardens | 155 |
| SHEfinds | 147 |
| Pinkvilla | 141 |
| Forbes | 75 |
| Best Life | 68 |
| Famadillo | 59 |
| ClinicSpots | 48 |
| Yahoo | 41 |
| Lifewire | 39 |
