Talent

Read time 9 min Level Beginner Prerequisites An active Buzzscribed login

In a nutshell: The Talent Directory is your reusable roster of spokespeople -- one stable profile per person, used on many campaigns. Two tabs: TALENT DIRECTORY (the roster, with bios, headshots and agency details) and INBOX (requests from journalists who found your published talent on TheNewsWire). Publish the ones you want journalists to discover, triage anyone who has been used on a campaign but never saved, and let the Schedule portal carry confirmed interviews straight to your spokespeople's calendars.

What you will learn

What the Talent Directory does -- the inbound side of PR, where reusable spokesperson profiles live.
The fields a talent record carries, and the difference between On Newswire (public) and Private (internal).
How the Mentioned triage queue works and how the INBOX tab handles journalist requests.
How the Talent Directory and Campaign Builder's TALENT tab work together -- the stable profile lives here, the campaign-specific bits live on the Story.
How the Schedule portal carries confirmed bookings to talent and their schedule administrators.

The mental model

The Talent Directory is the inbound side of PR. Save a spokesperson here once and put them forward on as many campaigns as the work calls for. Publish the ones you want discoverable on TheNewsWire -- the public directory journalists browse -- and they come to you.

A directory record is the person's stable profile: name, title, location, contact details, bio, headshot, and (optionally) their agency rep and rate. The campaign-specific bits -- their availability for a Story's interview window and the single key message for that Story -- live on Campaign Builder's TALENT tab, where they belong to the Story they apply to.

Two tabs split the work on this page: TALENT DIRECTORY (the roster) and INBOX (requests from journalists who found your published talent on TheNewsWire). Find both under PITCH > Talent Directory.

The talent record

Add Talent (top-right) opens the new-talent form. The fields:

Name and Position (job title).
Country, Region, Timezone and Location (free text, for example "Sydney, NSW").
Primary Phone, Secondary Phone, Email.
Profile Bio -- a rich-text bio that journalists read on TheNewsWire and that Buzzscribed uses for topic matching.
Headshot Photo -- image upload (square, 400x400+ recommended, max 3 MB).

Editing a record opens an optional Agency Details section: Agency, Agency Contact, Terms, Rate (per appearance -- useful for third-party billing caps) and a free-text Notes field for anything else worth recording.

On Newswire vs Private

Every saved talent record sits in one of two states:

On Newswire -- listed on TheNewsWire, the public directory journalists browse. Journalists requesting access land in your INBOX.
Private -- visible inside the tenant only; not on the public directory. Use this for spokespeople where outreach is manually controlled.

Toggle the state from the talent's profile (the Published switch in the edit modal). The stats bar shows how many talent are On Newswire, how many are Private, plus a Mentioned count and an Inbox count.

Writing a bio that earns inbound interest

The Profile Bio is the single field journalists read when deciding whether to request a spokesperson from TheNewsWire -- and the field Buzzscribed reads for topic matching. A bio that earns inbound interest:

Leads with authority. Three to five lines maximum. Open with the spokesperson's title and their authority on the topic. "Dr Helen Ashworth is Chief People Officer at Globex Industries and lead author of the annual Globex Wellbeing Index, the UK's largest workplace mental-health study." Authority first, biography second.
Specifies the topics they can speak to. Two or three topic areas, in plain words. Not "thought leader" -- "workplace mental health, hybrid-working policy, employee benefits design". Topic specificity drives Smart Match and helps journalists know whether to call.
Includes a credibility anchor. A qualification, a prior publication, a notable engagement. One credibility anchor punches above its weight; three reads as showing off.
Avoids corporate boilerplate. "Passionate about driving outcomes" wins nothing. Cut every adjective that would read fine in a LinkedIn headline.

Briefing talent for media work

A great spokesperson is built, not born. Three habits the agency owes its spokespeople:

Media-train before the first interview. A half-day session covering bridges, headline messaging, awkward-question handling and on-camera presence pays for itself on the first slot. Repeat every two years.
Brief before every interview. Format, host, anticipated questions, key messages, bridges -- covered in detail in Bookings & Coverage.
Debrief within 24 hours. What landed, what missed, what to do differently. The debrief feeds the next brief.

Headshots: high-resolution, neutral background, eye contact with the camera, no logos, no group shots. The headshot is what journalists run alongside the quote -- treat it as the spokesperson's calling card.

The Mentioned triage queue

A spokesperson added to a campaign on Campaign Builder creates a campaign record whether or not the person is in the Talent Directory. Someone used on a campaign but yet to be saved to the directory appears here as Mentioned -- talent used somewhere but never formally rostered.

Click the Mentioned card on the stats bar (or the triage banner) to open the triage queue. The queue clusters by name -- one person mentioned on five campaigns shows as one row. For each, you can Save to the directory (Private), Save & Publish to TheNewsWire, Dismiss, or Merge into an existing directory record. Bulk-select handles several at once, plus sort and filter controls (most-mentioned, recently used, has email, 3+ mentions).

Run the triage at the end of every campaign and your directory stays accurate without separate maintenance time.

The INBOX: journalist requests

INBOX handles requests coming in via TheNewsWire. When a journalist browsing the public directory requests access to a talent you have published, the request lands here -- with the journalist, their outlet and the topic. Approve and the talent's contact details flow to the journalist; decline and the conversation closes. Declined requests stay under a separate filter for audit.

Booking interviews and the Schedule portal

Buzzscribed handles interview booking through a deliberate, well-controlled flow:

The PR team books interviews in Bookings & Coverage -- who, when, which outlet, which presenter.
Booked interviews surface to the spokesperson and to schedule administrators through the Schedule portal ("Interview Schedule"), shared via a portal link. The link is per-campaign, so the spokesperson sees the schedule for the Story they are working on.
In the portal the spokesperson sees the interviews booked for them and can Accept / Confirm each one, plus subscribe the schedule to iCal, Outlook or Google Calendar.

Your team owns the booking. The Schedule portal is a read-and-confirm surface that pushes the booking into the spokesperson's calendar -- one disciplined motion from your booking to their diary.

Try this: On your next spokesperson, add a Talent Directory record with the full Agency Details section completed -- rate cap and all. Toggle On Newswire and check the stats bar -- your On Newswire count just went up. Then open Campaign Builder for a live Story, head to the TALENT tab, and put that spokesperson forward with a key message for the campaign. The directory record holds the stable profile; the campaign record holds the specifics.

Frequently asked

Is a talent record campaign-specific?: The directory holds the stable profile -- one record, many campaigns. When you put someone forward on a campaign, that happens on Campaign Builder's TALENT tab, where the campaign-specific availability and key message live.
Where do I record a spokesperson's topics or expertise?: In their Profile Bio. Buzzscribed uses the bio for topic matching when journalists search TheNewsWire, so a strong bio earns more inbound interest.
How do journalists reach my spokespeople?: Two paths. Your team puts a spokesperson forward on a campaign and pitches their availability through your normal outreach. Separately, journalists browsing TheNewsWire request access to On-Newswire talent -- those requests land in the INBOX for you to approve.
What is Mentioned?: Talent used on a campaign in Campaign Builder but not yet saved to the directory. The triage queue lets you Save, Save & Publish, Dismiss or Merge them so the roster stays clean.
What does the Rate field do?: Records the agency rep's rate per appearance -- the third-party billing figure on the spokesperson. Sits in the optional Agency Details section on the edit form.
Do I need Admin rights?: CRM management, including the Talent Directory, is open to all roles.

Key takeaways

The Talent Directory is a reusable roster -- one record per person, used on many campaigns. Publish to TheNewsWire to bring inbound discovery.
Two states per talent: On Newswire (public, drives INBOX requests) and Private (internal). Toggle on the profile.
Mentioned = used on a campaign but not yet rostered; triage to Save, Save & Publish, Dismiss or Merge.
Per-campaign availability and key message live on Campaign Builder's TALENT tab. The directory record is the stable profile.
The Schedule portal pushes confirmed bookings straight to the spokesperson's calendar.