41–50 of 50 posts
I made comics deriding IT recruiters; this was to promote my programmer-testing web app (now defunct). This HN thread persuaded me to find them in the blog archives. Here they are: http://www.flickr.com/photos/46384225@N00/sets/7215763148518... There were also text articles on the blog, one of which was even on the HN front-page for over 24 hours (it reported some friendly social-engineering by a then-competitor, now…
A probably easy angle would be, "Rejected from YC, now Bigger Than Jesus". A well-baited hook for HN and bonus SEO on YC.
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…
This AirBNB Mixergy interview is a must-watch - they explain how they hacked their way onto top news sites like CNN & NYTimes (start watching at 31 minutes in): http://mixergy.com/airbnb-chesky-gebbia/ They explain how to get press coverage using the "pyramid" method: start at the bottom, with small bloggers in your space. Email them, ask them to cover you. Then move up the chain. At the top of the chain are the big…
I made comics deriding IT recruiters; this was to promote my programmer-testing web app (now defunct). This HN thread persuaded me to find them in the blog archives. Here they are: http://www.flickr.com/photos/46384225@N00/sets/7215763148518... There were also text articles on the blog, one of which was even on the HN front-page for over 24 hours (it reported some friendly social-engineering by a then-competitor, now…
Loving those comics, are there more?
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 agree with J45, but if you really want to get press, here are some strategies that we used early on. 1. Do searches on Google News for topics or companies you compete with. See who has covered them and create a spreadsheet with their names, contact info, etc -- This tells you they might be interested in what you have 2. Reach out and personalize -- Show them you've seen and taken time to understand their perspectiv…
I created targeted hit-list of bloggers that wrote about my competition or similar competition.
I also created a field that had sentiment analysis, so I read the previous article they wrote to see if the were PRO our type of tech or CON against our type of tech.
This would then allow me to send a more personalized email, and either give them fodder to support their PRO stance, or reasons to persuade them away from their CON stance.
In addition to this, there are different ways to reach out to them, wether it be via email, or other methods. I often find that starting some dialogue on twitter non-related to the subject and getting them to respond to you before "pitching" them works incredibly well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please, expand in the amazon turk to turk for getting emails.
On Mturk you upload a spreadsheet of the urls. Set up the "hits" so as to ask the worker to go the url and try to find a contact email. If they find the email they enter it in the "hit", if they find a contact form, they select contact form, if there's nothing they enter in an X or something else, you can decide. For just an email you can pay anywhere between 1-3 cents. For 300 urls you get this done in a day usually…
Thank you
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On Mturk you upload a spreadsheet of the urls. Set up the "hits" so as to ask the worker to go the url and try to find a contact email. If they find the email they enter it in the "hit", if they find a contact form, they select contact form, if there's nothing they enter in an X or something else, you can decide. For just an email you can pay anywhere between 1-3 cents. For 300 urls you get this done in a day usually…
Is it possible to setup a turk where an ad is submitted to a message board? If so how? Thank you
Think of it as a value equation: you want the reporters to help you get press and make people think you have something cool on hand; they want something cool to share with their readers.
So, one way to do it is - as most of the comments have suggested - use guerrilla tactics to get to the journalists/writers/topics that are often covered.
But, what if you created or generated something that is really unique and content-worthy? We did this recently with my product, and ended up with an unsolicited TC piece.
How'd it work? We showed-off the types of awesome things our product could do, and it caught the writer's interest.
So, I'd say find a way to show-off why what you're doing deserves coverage, and then take some steps to help get that in front of people (that's where Twitter, HN, etc. comes into play).
Also, quick note, but the traffic you probably expect from TC coverage may not be accurate.