Hi, I'm a writer at TechCrunch. Because many entrepreneurs on this forum are going to eventually be reaching out to bloggers, here are a few tips that are probably better suited for 'new media' rather than traditional press. Note that I haven't conducted any kind of formal survey - these are all tips that make things easier on me, which may or may not be applicable to other bloggers (though I suspect they would be).
-Quotes are lame and I never look at them. They rarely say anything unique and often were never even said by the person being quoted (PR agencies generally just write the quotes and then have the person being attributed 'sign off' on them).
-Don't be afraid of talking about your competitors if it helps describe your product, just don't be overly arrogant.
Example: "We're an aggregation service that scours the web for all of your friends' updates, give you a place to talk about them, and then use location based technology to show you where they are!" could have easily been stated as "We're like FriendFeed, but we use maps too". This isn't a bad thing, and it's much easier for me to figure out what the heck you're actually doing. Just don't go around saying you're the "FriendFeed killer", because I'll immediately think you're full of shit.
-Stats are great if they're from a legitimate source and you can show us what they mean. Don't try to pull up some obscure metric showing you're incredibly popular when Compete, Google Trends, etc. haven't even heard of you. People try this all the time, and we're pretty good at figuring out when you're boosting your ego a bit too much.
-Put together a professional, 3 minute video showing off what your site does (I emphasize showing off - don't just talk about why your startup is great. Show us what it does). Videos are great because they show bloggers what they should be paying attention to as they browse your site instead of having to click around blindly. We can also embed them in posts in the (incredibly unlikely) event that we don't do such a great job describing your startup. And you can post the video on your homepage/help section to introduce new users to the site.
This is a welcome post, thanks. Perhaps you could also follow up with a more elaborate write up? One thing I would like to see covered is "5 examples of good videos and 5 examples of bad videos, with explanations of what makes them so".
For good reason. Numbers tell a story. Precise numbers tell a better story.
Good: Wrote software to save money.
Better: Wrote dozens of programs to help many people do a better job.
Best: Wrote 12 programs and refactored 6 database tables in order to help 143 call center agents turn around calls 18% faster, saving $41,500 per month.
-Quotes are lame and I never look at them. They rarely say anything unique and often were never even said by the person being quoted (PR agencies generally just write the quotes and then have the person being attributed 'sign off' on them).
-Don't be afraid of talking about your competitors if it helps describe your product, just don't be overly arrogant. Example: "We're an aggregation service that scours the web for all of your friends' updates, give you a place to talk about them, and then use location based technology to show you where they are!" could have easily been stated as "We're like FriendFeed, but we use maps too". This isn't a bad thing, and it's much easier for me to figure out what the heck you're actually doing. Just don't go around saying you're the "FriendFeed killer", because I'll immediately think you're full of shit.
-Stats are great if they're from a legitimate source and you can show us what they mean. Don't try to pull up some obscure metric showing you're incredibly popular when Compete, Google Trends, etc. haven't even heard of you. People try this all the time, and we're pretty good at figuring out when you're boosting your ego a bit too much.
-Put together a professional, 3 minute video showing off what your site does (I emphasize showing off - don't just talk about why your startup is great. Show us what it does). Videos are great because they show bloggers what they should be paying attention to as they browse your site instead of having to click around blindly. We can also embed them in posts in the (incredibly unlikely) event that we don't do such a great job describing your startup. And you can post the video on your homepage/help section to introduce new users to the site.