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Ask HN: How did you hack the press when you launched your startup(s)?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you hack the press when you launched your startup(s)?

#31

Post by mikeindustries »

At Newsvine, we capitalized on an opportunity when John McCain and his campaign people hijacked some graphics from my MySpace design tutorial without permission. He referenced/hotlinked images hosted on my server on his own MySpace page so one day I "hacked" his site by changing the graphics. The prank got us on TechCrunch immediately (no surprise), the local news in Seattle (kind of a surprise), and then featured on The Daily Show (huge f'ing surprise and still a career highlight!). Here is the coverage:

TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2007/03/27/john-mccains-myspace-page-h...

Local News: http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/king-5-co...

The Daily Show: http://www.mikeindustries.com/scratch/dailyshow.mp4

Re: Ask HN: How did you hack the press when you launched your startup(s)?

#32

Post by e03179 »

mikeindustries wrote: post #31

At Newsvine, we capitalized on an opportunity when John McCain and his campaign people hijacked some graphics from my MySpace design tutorial without permission. He referenced/hotlinked images hosted on my server on his own MySpace page so one day I "hacked" his site by changing the graphics. The prank got us on TechCrunch immediately (no surprise), the local news in Seattle (kind of a surprise), and then featured on…

OT: But wow at the blog spam on the old TC articles.

Re: Ask HN: How did you hack the press when you launched your startup(s)?

#33

Post by halcyondaze »

dudurocha wrote: post #21
espadagroup wrote: post #6

I launched a t shirt line a bit ago and got press in a decently hackerish way. The t shirts were geared toward gamers so I went to Alltop.com and scraped all of the blogs in the sections of gaming, t shirts, etc.. Used amazon turk to turk for the emails of those blogs, about 300 or so. Created a unique promo code for a percent off that was derived from the blogs name in the url. Used mailgun to construct and send the…

Please, expand in the amazon turk to turk for getting emails.

I actually just wrote a post about this exact process :)

http://www.supremestrategies.com/get-cheap-guest-blog-leads/

Re: Ask HN: How did you hack the press when you launched your startup(s)?

#35

Post by Jake232 »

halcyondaze wrote: post #33
dudurocha wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, expand in the amazon turk to turk for getting emails.

I actually just wrote a post about this exact process :) http://www.supremestrategies.com/get-cheap-guest-blog-leads/

This is a awesome post, thanks for sharing.

Re: Ask HN: How did you hack the press when you launched your startup(s)?

#36

Post by brokenlogins »

j45 wrote: post #5

It's not just about hacking the press. Sometimes it's plain just learning to interface with people and having a unique angle on a story. Most press I've seen from friends being TC'ed is minimal. Unless your customers are people who read TC, the effect is minimal to converted customers. They had a ton of visitors which might have increased mindshare. TC can be a vanity metric if you're not careful, especially if TC's…

Not to mention that sites like TechCrunch are run by shills and frauds: http://goldmanosi.blogspot.com/2012/02/mashable-shills-hard-...

Re: Ask HN: How did you hack the press when you launched your startup(s)?

#37

Post by aymeric »

brackin wrote: post #3

Just honestly build these relationships. I use Twitter and events to do it, just speak to journalists honestly about what you're working on without full on pitches. Roughly 25 useful tech journalists are following my progress via Twitter and I regularly reply offering my perspective on stories. With a few from time to time I'll ask for their advice when they can add value and eventually when I have something fit for…

How did you start? How did you get the 25 journalists to follow you? Did you start replyng to their tweets on Twitter?

Re: Ask HN: How did you hack the press when you launched your startup(s)?

#38

Post by bravura »

I'm building a tool that helps you figure out which journalists you should target.

It figures out which journalists write about your space / niche, and also figures out what their reach is and how busy they are.

If you're interested, shoot me an email: joseph at metaoptimize dot com.

Re: Ask HN: How did you hack the press when you launched your startup(s)?

#39

Post by larrys »

torrenegra wrote: post #25

We "hacked" Fred Wilson's blog for PR, which in turned helped us get to TechCrunch. Here is the story: Without the knowledge of Fred, we created an automatic podcast for his blog, AVC.com, using our API. We had no idea how he would react. It was weeks of effort, time, and money spent to build AVC.fm with the hope that Mr. Wilson would love us (or at least not send us a cease and desist!) And then, there was the tweet…

"(or at least not send us a cease and desist!) "

Actually being sent a cease and desist by Fred would have given you an angle to get publicity if things didn't end up the way they did. But I'm actually a little surprised that since you say "The VoiceBunny team is a big fan of Fred Wilson’s work and especially his blog" you should have known that it was highly unlikely he would have done something like that.

Outcome 1: What happened, you got what you wanted

Outcome 2: Cease and desist - if that had happened, may hay with it. Mentioning if anyone else has this outcome.

Outcome 3: Ignore your "hack". The worse outcome. But in that case you have to be more proactive and approach him, several times (once again if you understand the way he rolls you realize he declares email bankruptcy and actually appreciates follow up emails.

Re: Ask HN: How did you hack the press when you launched your startup(s)?

#40

Post by adambenayoun »

yoduh wrote: post #29
dasil003 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think most first-time entrepreneurs have a fantasy about how all they need to kickstart the viral growth is a bit of coverage in the major tech blogs. But the reality is that unless your site is squarely targeting early adopters (the ficklest of markets) and your product is knocking the socks of jaded San Francisco tech hipsters (well-nigh impossible against such perpetually-bored countenances), then this cove…

Very well said.

Let me say it clearly: I've had more visitors from being featured on HN than from TC and mashable together.

I'm not even talking about the conversion rates and the quality that HN brings over TC/Mashable.

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