5 ms·

The short answer, I submitted a press release to GigaOm, they wrote an article based on that and the NYT syndicate their content. The long answer, I'm not a PR

The short answer, I submitted a press release to GigaOm, they wrote an article based on that and the NYT syndicate their content. The long answer, I'm not a PR professional, but what's been working for us is to find some headline hook. I'm not trying to write the article for the journalist but to pull out what's interesting. If it's an Australian blog, I'd make a big deal of the fact we are Melbourne based 'Aussie battler hits Top 20K sites globally in first month'. If it's someone like GigaOm, I'm trying to find some other 'cut through' that will grab the journalists attention. I think in this case, the headline I went with was 'New startup Trunk.ly bookmarks 5 million links for users in its first month'. The press release itself was basically the same regardless - a story about how we launched, what we do in the first paragraph, then facts figures and quotes. Overall I try to tell a story, but I make sure there is plenty of quotable things too. In practice this seems to of been working OK - what's interesting is that the quotes facts and figures rarely, if ever, get used, but I think what's going on here is that we are capturing the blogger /journalists interest enough to want to research more and write about us. I never tried to pitch the NYT, I think pitching a tech blog is a lot easier. The question I'd love to know the answer to is do the NYT curate inbound syndication - did some sub-editor somewhere make a decision to run the article, or was it purely automatic?

StavrosK 16y ago
I see, that's very informative, thank you.
bootload 16y ago
"... The question I'd love to know the answer to is do the NYT curate inbound syndication - did some sub-editor somewhere make a decision to run the article, or was it purely automatic? ..." Follow the flow of information. Who is the original author? Where was the piece originally published? Well the author is Simon Mackie from GigaOam. The piece was published in the "collaboration" section ~ http://gigaom.com/collaboration/ http://gigaom.com/collaboration/ an area of reader interest that gigaom has a separate category for. If we look a bit closer at the author we and we check his bio, I noticed Simon did a stint at SitePoint ~ http://www.sitepoint.com/about/ http://www.sitepoint.com/about/ Now I know that's a Melbourne company because I worked with Daks (Mark Harbottle) in a previous startup. I guess you should ask the author about the jump to the NYT ~ http://twitter.com/spiky_simon http://twitter.com/spiky_simon The point is, the product is in a growth category and the author knows the startup scene in Melbourne. So is it a case of luck? or making your own luck? I think the later is the case.
paraschopra 16y ago
Thanks for this answer. A minor question: how long was your press release and did you attach it as a document in the email or just copy-pasted the content in email? I'm asking because from what I read bloggers don't particularly like getting traditional press-releases.

StavrosK 16y ago

I see, that's very informative, thank you.

bootload 16y ago

"... The question I'd love to know the answer to is do the NYT curate inbound syndication - did some sub-editor somewhere make a decision to run the article, or was it purely automatic? ..." Follow the flow of information. Who is the original author? Where was the piece originally published? Well the author is Simon Mackie from GigaOam. The piece was published in the "collaboration" section ~ http://gigaom.com/collaboration/ http://gigaom.com/collaboration/ an area of reader interest that gigaom has a separate category for. If we look a bit closer at the author we and we check his bio, I noticed Simon did a stint at SitePoint ~ http://www.sitepoint.com/about/ http://www.sitepoint.com/about/ Now I know that's a Melbourne company because I worked with Daks (Mark Harbottle) in a previous startup. I guess you should ask the author about the jump to the NYT ~ http://twitter.com/spiky_simon http://twitter.com/spiky_simon The point is, the product is in a growth category and the author knows the startup scene in Melbourne. So is it a case of luck? or making your own luck? I think the later is the case.

paraschopra 16y ago

Thanks for this answer. A minor question: how long was your press release and did you attach it as a document in the email or just copy-pasted the content in email? I'm asking because from what I read bloggers don't particularly like getting traditional press-releases.