Saturday 26 July 2014

How to get press - great piece by Jason Calacanis

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:
  1. 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"
  2. 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
  3. 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
  4. 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. 
  5. 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 :-)


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