While the OP raises some good points, the letter which got them mention (on Mashable) doesn't even talk at all about what "buffer" is.
For example this paragraph ("paragraph one"):
"We have some big news for you. With the new release of Twitter.com, we have just released a way to post retweets via Buffer right from Twitter.com at a better time. It works seamlessly via installing our browser extension. You will have now, next to "reply" "retweet" and "favorite" a new option to "Buffer"."
Well that paragraph makes the assumption that the writer already knows what buffer is (and I will assume the website address (bufferapp.com is located in the email header).
While the writer (if interested) will certainly visit the site, a short description of what buffer is is essential.
My experience with doing this over the years (with mention in the WSJ, NYT, (multiple times) as well as online media (and blogs) has yielded the following formula:
1) Send occasional emails to writers before you need them.
2) In those emails compliment the story and add your perspective.
3) Invite the writer to contact you if they are doing stories on (something you know about) that is, to consider you a resource. By doing #1 your name will be in front of them and they might remember you and contact you.
4) Do this over the course of time. Then when you want to pitch the company they will pay attention to your email and message (which of course still needs to be well written) because they are familiar with you.
Nope. Not clear enough for someone busy who doesn't want to think.
This, from their about page (it should really be on the home page as well) is the type of clarity you need when pitching:
"Buffer makes your life easier with a smarter way to schedule the great content you find. Fill up your Buffer at one time in the day and Buffer automagically posts them for you through the day. Simply keep that Buffer topped up to have a consistent social media presence all day round, all week long."
And, this is really the key point:
"Simply keep that Buffer topped up to have a consistent social media presence all day round, all week long."
SAI, former VentureBeat reporter here, few observations:
1) What is Buffer? If I don't know what the company does, I'm going to pass it off to the tips folder and it will probably die in obscurity.
2) The "saw the post you wrote yesterday" is not the approach you want. I cover social games — be aware that I cover social games and make it relevant to that. Reading my last three posts is not enough to tailor a pitch, because we write about a lot of things and they aren't all necessarily on our beat.
3) Seriously, introduce yourself. Don't do it with a pitch — let me know who you are and what you do. We do Q&As all the time with companies that have no news. You are 100x more likely to get published if I know who you are, what you do and why what you are doing is important.
4) How does this relate to normals? Most Twitter users don't actually Tweet. This is useful to me, but not necessarily my readers — who are of utmost importance to me.
5) Know the publication you are pitching. Blind pitching everyone is a waste of time — if you are a social game developer, go for Inside Social, GamesBeat, TechCrunch, etc. Fast Company is not going to listen to you.
6) We have to rush through literally hundreds of pitches each day. Just because we phrased something differently than you'd like, if it is still factually accurate, you're going to upset a reporter if you try to nitpick on wording. I once encountered a PR person that was yelling at me because I didn't call an online deals site a "mobile platform" and, instead, an "online deals site."
7) Also, we do want to know what you think. Entrepreneur and founder input is valuable in just about any story. If some big news happens — Steve Jobs resigns, for example — let us know what you think. When Jobs passed away, the first person I heard from was Box.net's Aaron Levie, who told me it was such a gargantuan loss and he was basically his idol and what made him want to become an entrepreneur. That, in of itself, is a story because Levie is running a company with a val of more than $500 million.
8) Don't be afraid to have a personal relationship with reporters — we aren't going to screw you, because blowing a relationship is worthless in this industry.
> Last night, one of my really good friends sent me a email and asked me if I could call up Mike Arrington over at TechCrunch or Pete Cashmore at Mashable to cover their new iPhone application.
> (Trying hard not to sound like a dick) I basically told him that is not how it works.
That is exactly how it works. A huge number of stories that bloggers write come from a small number of sources.
The best way to get published it to become a source and a connector, or to know one. It isn't that different to how getting an investment works - It is about being a participant in the ecosystem.
If you have been written about by a blogger or reporter before don't be afraid to introduce other startups to them that you find interesting - most good bloggers will press you on doing this. This is how people become sources and connectors.
This is actually exactly his point...The best way to get coverage is to nurture a real relationship with that reporter.
You are focusing on the self-serving part of this post, which is Shoemoney doesnt want and wont put his relationship on the line for your product or company...Especially because he gets a million requests just like that.
Sure, you can try to convince your friends who have the relationships to get you coverage, but your best bet, and the way your friends probably developed the relationship is by nurturing a real relationship with these reporters.
I think he means just knowing a person with connections doesn't guarantee you coverage. No reporter worth hissalt will do a story just base on "who you know." the product, and story has to be solid on its own. A contact might mean your product certainly makes it to the reporter rather than getting lost in emails.
But yes, reporters do have to have people who tell them about things that they might have missed otherwise ;)
Does anyone else find the whole process of engaging the tech "media" a giant distraction from developing their core product and trying to engage real customers? Chances are if you have product that sounds "cool" to these companies you are going for a market that you are unlikely to win.
You are are far more likely to be successful targeting a business that is outside the consumer "cool zone". The consumer markets are so heavily saturated there's little chance for new products to really be noticed, and individual consumers aren't as profitable as targeting businesses unless you are lucky enough to be the next Facebook (you aren't.)
Unless your product customer is likely to be a hacker/geek/tech biz type that would read Mashable/Techcrunch/RWW/etc.. Don't waste your time trying to get coverage there, instead find reliable channels to talk directly to your customer and route them to your service.
Find heavy's in that vertical and appeal to them, especially ones that have a lot of influence (online or IRL.) Find blogs that match your vertical and get them to cover you, they will probably be happy to do it, and they probably will send you more link juice because they don't post 100+ articles a day.
Unless your PR is sending you real SEO heavy links, and/or putting a giant dent in the collective consciousness of your potential customer base, its worthless.
"Really loved your post yesterday on how..." There's useful advice in this post, but recommending people turn the first paragraph in their email to a blogger/reporter into something akin to comment spam may not be your best bet if you want to get media coverage.
As far as who to pitch and who not to pitch, I think it's worth a mention that a startup will have more success pitching the blogs in its own niche before going after general tech blogs.
For example, if your startup is a service based on WordPress, go to some of the popular WordPress news blogs and influential WordPress people before you try to pitch Techcrunch and the like.
Excellent article, very beneficial with some good tips. Plus it brings out some actual writers here to give their insider knowledge which is really nice.
However, I wonder if this will cause the strategy and tactics to become less successful, at least in the short run. And by that I mean, if every entrepreneur that reads the article goes out and those this, it's just going to become the same noise that the reports see every day and they'll learn to ignore it...
What I expect to happen is that there will be an uptick of this type of activity by start-ups that are looking to get some publicity for their companies. It will probably last a month or so, and then die down as they realize that no, it's not really easy to make these connections and to make them be really successful you have to be genuinely interested in the writer and his stories, Think of it as the HN bump.
Any writers seeing this already? Or am I way off base?
The article mentioned getting contacts in the press. I'd like to mention that I run a news site that also gets published in Google News, and often write and post all sorts of press releases.
News stories about your startup are possible too. Contact me via my email address in my profile for details.
Solid advice. I launched http://blisscontrol.com a few days ago and it's been covered by Lifehacker, TechCrunch, Cnet and plenty more blogs. Most of the tactics mentioned in this post were ones that I used so definitely recommend using these tips.
this was a great post, and the fact that much of the information is repeated elsewhere in posts indicates that 1) there is a scalable strategy for pr that works and 2) not enough people are using it! i covered some of my advice for pr for startups here, as an extension to my post on mixergy on pr for startups http://startupstella.com/2011/10/14/dos-and-donts-of-pr-for-...
Love the detail in this. Nailing the pitch and finding who to send it to are so obvious, yet most people don't know how to properly do so. Great advice here.
Ah, a post I can comment on with authority. I'm a local reporter with a heart for tech. Perhaps I should blog a little more about getting media coverage for young (and not-so-young) entrepreneurs.
At least for local papers (and probably TV too), if you're not local, don't bother with emailing them. They'll pretty much disregard your email altogether (You probably WOULDNT be surprised by how many emails we get in a day begging for coverage for this or that. But it is a lot. Probably a few dozen for a midsized paper).
Find some way the product is really cool. And I'm talking, COOL. You might get a business reporter to give you a brief mention or a two paragraph something or another, but if you want a full shebang write up, you have to paint a picture as to WHY your product is the bomb. And don't give us your pre-written media shpeal. That might get you an article, but being organic is going to be a much better bet. Personally, I like to HEAR the enthusiasm for your product come through in your email. People who are extremely passionate about their product usually make for good stories regardless of the product. The folks at mashable write on tech for a living. So if you have a novel idea there, they're probably going to write about it. They may not be excited about writing the story, but they'll still do it; it's their job (kind of like whether the education reporter LIKES any given story they're writing about, they still have to do it because it's their job).
I guess if i could sum it up, I'd say talk to a reporter in an email or a phone call like you would tell your best bud about this awesome new thing you've got going on. In short, why are our READERS going to give a crap about your product? Keep in mind, we write stories. So we like to hear interesting stories. Maybe how you and yoru cofounders found each other or how you came up with the idea (a big maybe). yes you're trying to sell us on covering your product, but don't approach it that way.
(And as a PS, if you have journalist friends, DON'T beg us to write about your product whenever you see us. Just forget we're reporters. If you have something going on that we know about and think our readers might be interested in, We'll ask you about it) ;)
"At least for local papers (and probably TV too), if you're not local, don't bother with emailing them."
If you're not local then you need to find a user of your service that is local and base the story around them as the reason to write about it.
Say before twitter was famous the story would be "After the fire in her hotel room, Megan stayed in touch with her family in Topeka by a new service called "twitter" which allowed her to..."
You'll note that on traditional media when someone appears on a national TV show from the home town they almost always do a feature in the local paper.
That's the angle that I have taken which has worked in the past.
Yes there is a lot of truth to this. But you'll need more than just "so and so in your area uses it." in the sense tho that there has to be a local connection, you're right. But like I said before, there has to be a good STORY behind the pitch for coverage.
National Tech news blogs are a little different. They're going to focus on products and services. Local news outlets want stories the readers will like. (after all, we're in the game to keep readers, which is the bread and butter for our advertising rates).
Edit, now if your idea has a local business angle, pitch it as a business story. Also, logical moron above has excellent advice. I wholeheartedly echo his point number 6, the one about phrasing (I think it was 6)
Well I can't speak specifically for news orgs or reporters. But in my humble opinion, if they're in the tech news industry and they're not checking HN at least once a day, they're not doing their job right :D
For example this paragraph ("paragraph one"):
"We have some big news for you. With the new release of Twitter.com, we have just released a way to post retweets via Buffer right from Twitter.com at a better time. It works seamlessly via installing our browser extension. You will have now, next to "reply" "retweet" and "favorite" a new option to "Buffer"."
Well that paragraph makes the assumption that the writer already knows what buffer is (and I will assume the website address (bufferapp.com is located in the email header).
While the writer (if interested) will certainly visit the site, a short description of what buffer is is essential.
My experience with doing this over the years (with mention in the WSJ, NYT, (multiple times) as well as online media (and blogs) has yielded the following formula:
1) Send occasional emails to writers before you need them.
2) In those emails compliment the story and add your perspective.
3) Invite the writer to contact you if they are doing stories on (something you know about) that is, to consider you a resource. By doing #1 your name will be in front of them and they might remember you and contact you.
4) Do this over the course of time. Then when you want to pitch the company they will pay attention to your email and message (which of course still needs to be well written) because they are familiar with you.
That is what has worked for me.