Event Coverage Highlight
OPC Hosts Session on How to Make the Most of Muck Rack
by Chad Bouchard
On July 23, the OPC hosted a training session with Andrew Mercier, senior director of editorial at Muck Rack, who walked participants through steps for setting up a profile on the platform, getting verified, and curating links to their work. He also covered filters to help track coverage from competitors and analyze news topics.
Muck Rack is a free online platform, launched in 2011 as a way for journalists to track news and create portfolios. It also became a resource for public relations staff to find reporters covering relevant beats and pitch stories.
Mercier, who has been with Muck Rack for more than eight years, highlighted Muck Rack’s role in consolidating journalists’ bylines into a single, automatically updating profile, which is “easily shareable with friends, family, and prospective employers.”
Mercier discussed how to set up a Muck Rack profile, starting with the platform’s landing page for journalists.
Once registered, journalists can claim their existing profiles. “Many of you may have noticed that you have [Muck Rack] profiles that come up quite high in Google,” Mercier said. The journalist profiles are already automatically generated from online data, but can be claimed and “verified” using an email address or a social media account.
Mercier demonstrated how profiles can be enhanced with personal touches, such as uploading top clips and including a detailed biography. “You can upload your own clips… featuring your favorite work, your top pieces things that you’re super proud about,” he said.
Verified profiles feature a green check mark and have access to additional tools. “Verification is manual, applied by folks on my team who follow a strict set of criteria,” Mercier said. The criteria are outlined on Muck Rack’s website and focus on full-time working journalists.
Once verified, journalists get expanded access to search functions, and a tool called “Who Shared My Link,” which tracks who shared or commented on an article and provides engagement metrics and sentiment analysis.
Mercier also highlighted Muck Rack’s “Trends” tool, which analyzes the coverage of specific topics over time. “Trends does an overtime comparison of coverage,” he said. This tool helps journalists identify spikes in coverage and track media trends.
Mercier addressed how Muck Rack can aid in job searches, complimenting profiles on other platforms like LinkedIn. He said the organization plans to launch a job board, which will aggregate job postings similarly to how it handles articles. “We’re actually ingesting jobs the way we’re ingesting any other article,” he said. This feature will display job listings with details like location, salary information, and remote work options.
Until the job board is live, Mercier recommended using Muck Rack’s existing resources, such as the database of journalist associations and publications.
Mercier also recommended subscribing to Muck Rack Daily, a newsletter offering insights into industry news and trends. The link to subscribe is here.
OPC members are welcome to contact Mercier directly for questions or help setting up a profile, via email at andrew.mercier@muckrack.com, on X at @Andrew_MuckRack, or LinkedIn at amercier88.
Click the window below to watch a recording of the program.
