# The 90-day PR plan for a lean team > A concrete, month-by-month plan a founder or lean team can run to go from zero to first coverage and real AI visibility in a single quarter. Source: https://citesx.com/blog/90-day-pr-plan-for-a-lean-team Media relations # The 90-day PR plan for a lean team November 8, 2026 · 6 min read Most PR advice assumes a team. A budget, an agency, someone whose only job is press. You have none of that. You have a product to run and a few hours a week. The good news: a focused quarter is enough to go from no coverage to your first real clips, and to start showing up when buyers ask AI who to trust. This is the plan, month by month, that a founder or a lean team can actually run. The moves build on each other, so order matters. Month one makes you legible. Month two puts you in front of the right reporters. Month three turns the first results into something you can repeat. Skipping ahead is why most solo PR stalls. ## What 90 days buys you Set expectations first, so you measure against the right line. A quarter earns you first coverage and a clear read on what works. It does not make you dominate your category, and anyone promising that is overselling. Aim for a handful of real placements, a sharper story, and the first signs that the AI assistants have started naming you. The time budget is small and fixed. A few focused hours a week, protected like a customer call. Two hours to do the work, one to follow up and record what happened. An hour every week for twelve weeks moves further than one frantic weekend. The tools are cheap. Your own email inbox. One spreadsheet for the list and the results. The AI assistants you already use, as your baseline instrument. You do not need a paid database or a wire service to start, and buying them first is a common way to waste the quarter. ## Month one: foundation Month one is unglamorous, and it decides everything after it. Three jobs. - **Nail one line, then a short message house.** Write one plain sentence that says what you do and who you serve. Under it, put three points you want every pitch and page to repeat. That is your spine. If you cannot say it in a sentence, no reporter will say it for you. - **Set a baseline.** You cannot show progress you never measured. Search your own name and note what comes up. Then ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini to describe you and your category, and save what they say. That record is your before picture. - **Build a first ranked media list.** Find the reporters who already cover your space by their recent bylines, not by a label in a database. Twenty to fifty names, each with the outlet, the beat, a link to a story they wrote in the last few months, and one line on why they fit. Rank them. The top ten are month two. ## Month two: outreach Now you pitch. The work is narrower than it sounds. Develop one real story. One angle you can stand behind: a genuine number from your own data, a sharp view on where your category is going, a customer result you can show. One is enough. A single honest story, cut for different desks, carries a whole month. Pitch it from your own inbox, tailored, to the top of your list. A short subject line, two or three sentences, the angle made specific to that reporter's beat, and the facts they need to say yes. Send to your top ten first, a few a day, so you can personalise each one. A real email from a founder lands better than any blast. Work reactive requests as they appear. Reporters put out calls for sources every day. Answering one fast, with a usable quote and no padding, is often the easiest first win on the board. Watch for them, and reply the same hour. Follow up once, and follow up well. If a reporter goes quiet, send one short, useful nudge a few days later, then let it rest. When the first yes arrives, move fast: the assets, the facts, the quote, all within the hour. The source who makes it easy is the source who gets used. ## Month three: compound Month three turns effort into a system. Measure honestly first. Count replies, count clips, and check your share of answer: run the month-one prompts again and see whether the assistants name you more often now, and for which questions. Write the numbers next to your baseline. Some will be flat. That tells you where to push next. Then publish. Put up a clear, dated facts page on your own site, the one place a reporter and a model can both verify you. Link the coverage you earned. Keep it as a web page, not a PDF, so a model reads it as easily as a reporter does. Feed the results back. The reporters who replied tell you who to add next. The angles that landed tell you what to write more of. Re-rank the list, sharpen the story, and plan the next quarter from what worked. ## How Cites X runs the loop This is the whole 90-day loop, and Cites X runs it as one system, so a lean team does not have to stitch it together by hand. It sets your brand clarity first and holds it as a living message house. Its reporter archive and media-list builder turn plain English into a ranked list of the right journalists, matched on recent bylines. It helps you pitch from your own inbox, so the email still comes from you. Its outcome loop records every reply, clip, and result, and feeds them back into your targeting and angles. And it reads how ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini describe you after each placement, so you can watch your coverage move the answer. Your first step takes one afternoon this week. Write the single sentence that says what you do and who you serve. Then ask each AI assistant to describe your company and your category, and save what they say. That sentence is your foundation. That saved answer is the baseline you will beat over the next 90 days. ### Become the answer AI gives Join the Cites X private beta. We open seats to selected teams, with a short walkthrough when yours is ready. Double opt-in. We only add your email once you confirm it. No spam, no wire blasts. Prefer to talk first? [Message our team →](https://citesx.com/contact-us.php) ## Keep reading ### The teams that win are the ones who can instruct Instruction is the scarce skill of this era: judgment, communicated clearly. It works the same on a model, a person, and a team, and your brand is its highest form. ### Building a founder's authority: the profile, the byline, and a point of view In a small company, the founder is the most credible and quotable voice of the brand, and the one AI samples most. Build that authority on purpose. ### What PR agencies get wrong about AI, and what to do instead A fair take on why the PR agency model is mismatched to the AI era, and what a founder should do to become the answer AI tools cite. This site uses essential cookies only by default. No third-party tracking, no personal data in URLs. [Read the privacy note.](https://citesx.com/privacy.php)