How To Get Press – INCmty Slides

Today I am giving a talk about how to get press for your business.

There are a couple things you have to have to even give yourself a chance when pitching writers to write about your business.  You have to have an amazing product or service that people love.  Your customers must love you and want to talk about you.  If you don’t have that part already figured out, stop right now and go figure that part out.

Special thanks to Dmitry for some help!

How to Get Press

Prefect the 1 sentence pitch!  This is key.  Be able to explain your business in 3 to 5 words.  You should have this normally anyways.

Create a list of writers.

Follow the for 30 days before pitching them:

• Twitter,
• Google +
• Pinterest
• Google RSS on their articles

Put together 15-20 different ones.

Comment on 5 different writers daily for 30 days.  This will take a week to get through all of them.

Write a Pitch Email:

• 81% of writers prefer to be pitched on email.
• Email should be 200 words or less.
• 88% of writers prefer a pitch be less than 200 words.
• Subject line is key. 85% of writers open email based on subject line.
• 45-65 characters max

Give someone exclusivity.  I pitch 2-3 different writers exclusivity.  First one to jump gets it.

What you should have in your pitch:

• How does your startup/pitch relate to what the reporter has written about before and the news today?
• Your startup Name:
• Your website URL
• CrunchBase Profile URL if pitching TC
• Description of your startup in 75 words or fewer from your 1 sentence pitch section
• Possibly founders’ bios in 75 words or fewer. Have you launched?
• Your main competitors? and why are you better?
• Got funding, yes or not? If yes, from who and how much. TC won’t cover you if you have undisclosed funding.

Know what time to pitch:

• I say 6:30 – 7:30am is the best time.
• 70% of journalists prefer to be pitched in the morning.

Next Step: Email them.  Email 2 to 3 different writers a day till you get a response

Don’t feel rejected, most will not get back with you.

Follow up 1x – Don’t be annoying

Here are a few things that writers commonly write about:

• Launching A Company
• Raised Funding
• Large Customer Achievement
• New Product Release
• Acquisition of a Company
• Local News Topic