I've been a big fan of Jason Calacanis' "This Week In Startups" podcast where he interviews entrepreneurs - thanks to Pedro C. who told me about it months ago. I really like Jason's incisive questions that are sometimes so blunt and to the point that I hold my breath to see if the person will answer.
On his podcast, @jason also does 15-20 minute pieces on "Startup basics" and I recommend to any early stage entrepreneur to listen to them.
The latest one concerned getting press and the salient points are:
On his podcast, @jason also does 15-20 minute pieces on "Startup basics" and I recommend to any early stage entrepreneur to listen to them.
The latest one concerned getting press and the salient points are:
- Identify what you want to achieve with an article mention - grow your profile to attract funding? Customer acquisition? Talent acquisition? And then target the right publication. Don't just do "raise awareness, that's lame"
- Build a relationship with the journalist - read what they have written about (you have no right to write to a journalist if you haven't read their last 10 articles), mention them in a blog post, tweet to them. No suck-ups, of course
- If you are pre-company, have some form of web presence (blog, social media presence) that the journalist can refer to, something to connect with that's a well conceived presence, ideally with a logo
- Do a press tour - "I will be in town, do you have 15-20 minutes to spare for me to show off our new version of product X?" Go yourself, the founder, and the journalist - no PR people.
- Do not do generic pitches to journalists - they land in the spam folder.
I'm looking forward to the "attending events" segment that's coming up. Follow @jason to know when it's out.
And follow me @mbohanes :-)
