Use this instead of press releases

http://mbites.com/2015/07/01/the-press-release-is-dead/

by audace • 11 years ago

178 53 11 years ago

mbites.com

ramon• 11 years ago

This was straight forward and funny! :) Great!

audace3• 11 years ago

Yeah - delivery was a bit controversial and not too "entrepreneur-first" but the content was definitely insightful

fnordsensei• 11 years ago

Very good point! But for a text talking about how long-winded, somewhat rambling and hard to skim press releases are, I found it quite long-winded, somewhat rambling and hard to skim.

strictnein• 11 years ago

Especially WITH all of THOSE randomly capitalized WORDS!

audace3• 11 years ago

Welcome to Mike Butcher

qntty• 11 years ago

(LOL!)

raldi• 11 years ago

Indeed. Did anyone manage to find what the "this" in the headline refers to?

ksenzee• 11 years ago

It's apparently an "opening pitch," which you should write according to a checklist you will find at the very bottom of the post. Whether the checklist itself is useful or not, I leave as an exercise for the reader.

deepfriedbits• 11 years ago

Same. And if you used his max sentences for each answer in his template, you'd end up with the War and Peace of press releases he so (justly) despises.

josefresco• 11 years ago

I read it in the voice of a 15 year old girl. The WORD emphasis and attitude that PR people should telepathically know how to communicate uniquely with every "journalist" made it quire appropriate.

mfoy_• 11 years ago

A lot of the suggestions in this carry over to almost every human interaction.. in addition to his "Can I send you a press release?" gripe, I have a couple to add:

"Can you do me a favour?" Why don't you ask me to do something and I'll decide whether or not I want to.

"Can I ask you a question?" Really? You're asking me if you can ask me something? Just ask it.

audace3• 11 years ago

Completely true - Adam Grant recently wrote a piece on when people approach him asking if they can 'pick his brain'... simply ask what you want to know!

localcrisis• 11 years ago

I think most of the time people just want to speak with that person. They don't know what they're looking for, just that this person is smart and hope they'll provide direction/insight/promotion.

Forcing someone to ask what they want is great because it forces them to actually think about what they want.

cortesoft• 11 years ago

My personal least favorite is "Are you doing anything on <day or time>?"

Well, I will always be doing SOMETHING, even if that something is relaxing at home. How about you propose your plan, and I decide if I would like to do it with your or not?

tyre2• 11 years ago

First things first, consider why you are pitching this reporter in the first place.

For most companies, TechCrunch is a waste of time (see his note on press releases designed to stroke the writer's ego.)

They are probably not your market. Your market is the people you help. Those people — small businesses, local governments, regular people, video game enthusiasts, whatever — probably don't read TechCrunch.

Find what they read and pitch there.

But what about gaining respect in the Valley? No one whose respect you care about will respect you for seeing your funding round in TechCrunch. Focus on building your business. Focus on building your product. Telling stories is important, but only when you're talking about things that matter. Funding is a means to doing other things, not an end in itself.

Hiring? When I was at ZenPayroll, the toughest time for hiring was right after our Series A. We had tons of people who applied because we had just raised $20 million and they saw us in TechCrunch. They wanted to join a rocketship (literally heard that in an interview.) We wanted to help small businesses, very different motivations.

Pitch your impact. 99% of the time, you are not yet making a big impact. That's okay. Focus on making one, not making up a story as to why you're making one.

anonbanker• 11 years ago

Man, why can't anyone on HN say that TechCrunch is useless without being karma-bombed?

mindcrime5• 11 years ago

TechCrunch is useless for many startups. I won't make a blanket statement that it's useless, because I think it does matter for some startups. If your "thing" is a new consumer facing web app or mobile app that needs to be presented to a lot of fairly tech-savvy "early adopter" types, then sure, TechCrunch is great, because those are the people who read TechCrunch.

But... if you're a B2B startup whose target customers are manufacturing companies, logistics companies, retail firms, finance companies, health-care companies, pharama companies, academia, etc., then TechCrunch likely isn't the best place to reach your potential customers. Sure, their base of readership is broad enough that some of your targets probably read it, but if I want to reach executives in the textiles industry, I'm better off getting something ran in "Textile Manufacturing Today" or a general purpose business publication like Forbes.

onewaystreet• 11 years ago

TechCrunch is useful for getting noticed by investors and the non-tech media. It's not useful for building a user-base that isn't investors and early adopters.

mindcrime5• 11 years ago

Pitch your impact. 99% of the time, you are not yet making a big impact. That's okay. Focus on making one, not making up a story as to why you're making one.

Aaah, that's gold. I want to print that out and pin it to my wall now!

kaolinite• 11 years ago

Your customers may not read TechCrunch but they may read The Guardian or the Wall Street Journal and if you want to get an article there, your best bet is to have an article already on TechCrunch and similar sites.

It's the same reason why Hacker News, Reddit and other community-based sites matter more than you might think: it lets journalists at larger companies know that there is interest and that you might be worth writing about.

tyre2• 11 years ago

I think you underestimate the excellent journalists from The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal if you believe that they:

a) cannot find good stories without social proof from TechCrunch b) use TechCrunch as a source for what is up and coming c) value a story already reported in TechCrunch over one that has not received attention.

Your best bet is to build something that matters. Good journalists are smarter than we give them credit for.

larrys• 11 years ago

You are getting downvoted for what you said (as of now anyway) however I have gotten press in the WSJ by sending them clippings that appeared in the local paper. This was after they had no interest in the story initially. In other words seeing that even a lowly local paper (ok was a big city paper actually) did a full page article was enough to get them to run a blurb about what we were doing. (On the front page no less).

So in other words to your point about Techcrunch it can be thought of as it as a filter of legitimacy that you can use to your advantage.

VonGuard• 11 years ago

This is a topic that comes up a lot on Hacker News, and as a journalist in tech, the above comment has some very good advice.

The press release, however, is not dead at all. It's still quite relevant to all mainstream press outlets, regardless of how TechCrunch or other startup sites feel. Don't just ignore press releases. Do them, but do more than JUST press releases. I also have my own non-profit which we do releases for, and you never know when one will land, or how well. Often, random outlets show up interested after a release, even though the big boys ignored it. Do them.

tyre hits the nail on the head in stating that TechCrunch is not your market. As a news site, it may be fun to read, but it's literally a navel gazing Valley hole where the stories of funding only serve to get more funding. It's a cycle, and the more time you spend working to get on TechCrunch, the less time you spend being in the real media, being read about by your potential customers.

Customers read other things. Step out of your comfort zone. Maybe instead of TechCrunch writing about your cooking startup, it should be Bon Apetit? Maybe Bon Apetit doesn't answer the phone, so you go to the next magazine down. Maybe none of them answer the phone, so you go to Diablo magazine, San Francisco Magazine, or in-flight magazines. There's a TON of places to get good press if you look beyond the Web. Radio news programs always need stuff, and local newspapers do too.

For these cases, here is what I recommend: find the lowest media point in your industry and call the editor personally. Don't have a PR person do it. Don't have a marketer do it. Call them as a CEO, or as a VP or whatever you are. Make sure the call is brief, and offer to send them info via email afterwards. But keep calling. Call them back and politely ask about how you could get a story, if they decline. They may only cover product releases, or may only review products. Find out. Maybe they don't cover funding news. I don't. Few do. It's boring as shit.

But maybe they're doing an article about personal data security, or something on the Internet of Things for their newest issue. You won't know unless you call.

Through 2 or 3 phone calls, you could get a great story. Work your connections, get to the journalists anyway that doesn't involve email as first contact. But be careful. If you get nothing after 2 or 3 calls, stop. Don't be a jerk and annoy them.

My inbox is filled with releases, well over 100 a day. You literally have less than 1 second per email subject line to catch my eye there before I just mark them all as read and move on to actual work. Those are shitty odds. Maybe I read your release if I know your name and email address, and that catches my eye, but usually that will only work for a C-level or some-such.

As for impact pitching... I guess that works. What I look for as a reporter is something new. Novelty goes a very long way. Stupid press tricks go nowhere, but knowing just which journalist to go to, and just what type of thing they're looking for is the real key here. Read more magazines, watch local news, and stop reading the Valley's echo chambers. They do nothing of use for your growth.

phil248• 11 years ago

That first paragraph is a chore to read. Parentheses, caps, asterisks, hyphens, quotes, slashes... it's like bad ASCII art.

calcsam• 11 years ago

Why doesn't he make this a Google Form and respond to all cold-emails with the form link?

JeffreyKaine• 11 years ago

We could turn this into an interesting side project. sign up with this stuff as a "profile" of sorts, then update your profile with anything news worthy. Charge for exposure to journalists.

6stringmerc• 11 years ago

Or, conversely, set it up as a form, have an Editor review the text, and only allow the submitter 3 "undo" edits before sending it through the portal. The submitter could pick a maximum # (3-5?) of targets from a list that has agreed to participate in the format (e.g. publication editors) so there's some element of exclusivity. Then the editors can respond within a timeframe of "interested" or "pass" and if more than one is interested, the first one who replied gets the opportunity, and if they don't capitalize within 3-5-7 days, it goes to the next (in an ideal world).

This way there's value added for the submitter (prompts, editing for errors and audience, pathway to exposure) and a buffer intake system for editors who want good, new, exclusive content of this sort.

I could probably sketch this out on a whiteboard in an afternoon, would be pretty fun.

...but since I'm writing this out publicly, as part of a group musing an idea, if I find anybody whole-cloth takes this concept and uses it without collaboration or any semblence of attribution, karma will catch you, and your future will be cursed and doomed in equal parts. Don't violate the Bill & Ted rule of "Be excellent to each other"

martin-adams• 11 years ago

I was thinking along the same lines. If the problem is that there is no structure to acquire the data he needs to do his job, then isn't that one of the use cases that computers are very, very good at.

Make a submission form, let them fill out the answers.

ianstallings• 11 years ago

If I wasn't a salty startup founder, I might be offended. But after my 500th rejection letter, with much more terse language, I can handle it. These are all good tips.

amingilani• 11 years ago

I thought "this" would be a PR template, or a service or platform to issue good press releases for startups. What I got was a man screaming for attention.

-1 for the title

aerovistae• 11 years ago

The hilarious thing about this is that he's complaining about pitches not being concise enough, but his suggested template literally asks for a full-length essay. If you add up the suggested sentence limits, you get over EIGHTY SENTENCES and at least a dozen paragraphs. Jesus!

mindcrime5• 11 years ago

There's some good stuff there, but this gets me:

    WHAT IS THE NEW ROUND OF FUNDING?
    (Required: Specify Seed, Series A, etc)
    WHO ARE THE INVESTORS?
    (Required)
    HOW MUCH FUNDING (in $) DOES IT HAVE IN TOTAL?
    (Required: Specify Seed, Series A, etc)

This suggests that really, the only thing they care about, is stories about people raising money. Like, that's the only thing that matters in the world.

In reality, who you're funded by is trivia. Yeah, I said it. It's fucking trivia. It's not going to make a difference in whether you succeed or not. IMO, to the extent that it matters, it's a microscopic factor.

You would think that a news outlet would be interested in the what of a company, less than "who's funding it?", ya know? I mean, if somebody has created a ground-breaking new app, (or something they think is ground-breaking) then the app either is news-worthy, or it isn't. You don't need to know who they're funded by, or if they're self-funded, to decide that.

I've said this before and I'll keep banging this drum until I drop... the goal of a startup is to make money, not to raise money. To the extent that you do the latter, it's in service of the former. But raising money is a tactical objective, not the end goal.

ekpyrotic• 11 years ago

Mike is thinking about his readers here. TechCrunch is essentially a business-to-business publication, which provides market intelligence on technology companies. It might be 'sexier' than The Aluminium Times or Mining Today, but it's effectively serving the same role -- to inform the industry, and those working within it, about important sector news in a timely way.

People who aren't strictly working in the industry read it too because they're interested in tech more generally, or getting involved in it, or want to know the coolest things to download. For that reason, TechCrunch publishes the occasional entertaining piece. But it's primarily purpose is to brief tech entrepreneurs, C-suite executives and VCs who are active in the industry.

So, what are these people interested in?

They are /absolutely/ interested in who is participating in funding rounds, as well as the level of their contribution.

If I run a fashion start-up, for example, and spot on TechCrunch a story about another fashion start-up securing $5m in Series A funding, the first thing I'm going to ask myself is... who participated in this round? Then I can ping them an email to get on their radar.

Who is investing is crucial market information for tech decision-makers. It's certainly not just a bit of trivia.

mindcrime5• 11 years ago

Sure, I'm not saying that it doesn't matter to somebody. But in the grand scheme of things, I don't believe it's that important. OTOH, I do believe there are people who think it's important, so in some indirect sense, it matters. But my point is just to say that it's hardly The Most Important Thing, especially compared to the meat of what the company is actually doing.

IOW, if you've invented AGI, that's news-worthy regardless of whether you're funded by A16Z, Bull City Venture Partners, or your crazy uncle Bob.

aaronbrethorst• 11 years ago

    TechCrunch is essentially a business-to-business
    publication, which provides market intelligence
    on technology companies

I couldn't disagree more. Most charitably, it's Sports Illustrated for technology.

    If I run a fashion start-up, for example, and
    spot on TechCrunch a story about another
    fashion start-up securing $5m in Series A
    funding, the first thing I'm going to ask
    myself is... who participated in this round?
    Then I can ping them an email to get on
    their radar.

Dear VC, now that you have skin in the game in this sector, please develop a conflict of interest by investing in my startup that competes with a company you've already invested in.

Here's an example of how/why this doesn't work: http://www.bhorowitz.com/instagram

manigandham• 11 years ago

TechCrunch is not a B2B publication, it's much more consumer oriented. Most of their market intel is pretty far off precisely because they write about so much in generic/layman terms by writers who don't have strong industry niches.

Investors have much better options for investment intel like CBInsights or Mattermark than TC. It's not a bad source of info, but not always reliable or accurate and definitely not a primary source for VCs/execs (outside of perhaps the SV bubble). A good example of B2B publications would be trade journals and sites like the IDG network that offer much more nuanced articles and insights with very focused categories.

logicallee2• 11 years ago

Here is a thought exercise. God is looking at Earth and agrees with you, mindcrime. He says, "It's a shame people need to spend so much time raising money - raising is only a means to an end, I want my People to improve society for one another. So I will make a change - anyone can get an investment from me, no questions asked, but with one caveat -- I will look ahead (simulate the universe with my omniscience), and see if they succeed in building something big and good and useful and returning my money, in case I invest; if they will, then they get my investment, but if they won't, they don't. For example if a physicist (no business training) wants $1B to build fusion power plants, they'll get it as long as they will succeed and it'll be great for society and they will return my money."

In this world, you do not need to convince anyone that your idea will succeed; you can just go ahead and build it, even if your idea requires investment rounds to execute on.

This is not the world we live in.

mindcrime5• 11 years ago

I feel like you're replying to something different than what I said, or at least what I meant to say.

I'm not saying that no business should ever raise money. I'm not saying that some businesses don't need to raise money (maybe even large amounts of it) up front.

I am saying that in any case, the actual raise itself is NOT the goal of the company. You're not successful when you raise a round. You're successful when you've built a profitable, sustainable business that can endure while carrying out whatever your original mission was.

Unfortunately, a lot of things in "startup culture" these days emphasize fund-raising in such a way as to suggest that the raise itself is The Most Important Thing. I think that's an unhealthy mindset for everybody involved.

bozho• 11 years ago

Tech journalists keep ranting about the bad pitches they receive. They publish tips and guidelines. But even if you follow those, they still don't read the pitches. And rarely have any idea about technology http://web.bozho.net/?p=336

mildbow• 11 years ago

This guy has a megaphone that you are trying to rent.

Why are you trying to rent TC's megaphone? It is TC's megaphone right? Dude's got quite a few asks for being a rando-pseudo-journalist. So, I suggest you take that time and pipe it to figuring out what your market/marketing channel is so you can invest those cycles better. Do some research on exactly how many useful signups TC drives (spoiler: nearly 0, craigslist is probably better (LOL!)[0] ).

Is your target market is even reading TC? Probably not. Which market segments, exactly, read TC? I barely read it. I doubt most people read it, much less for actual insight or anything resembling journalism.

I would steer clear of accept-all startups du jour megaphones (signal:noise is crap) and instead concentrate on outlets your customers care about. BONUS: those will have less prima donna attitudes with silly headshots. GO!

[0] article referencing ironic LOL!. Enough internets for me for today :)

acgourley• 11 years ago

"50% of being a startup is about communication" - this is only true if you believe being a startup is about being in the tech news cycle, which I guess he does.

scrozier• 11 years ago

IOW, write my article for me, so that I don't have to do any actual reporting.

eistrati• 11 years ago

Lots of "smart ass" comments, but effective :)

codingdave• 11 years ago

I think the article is looking at it backwards - techcrunch is not a singular target audience for press releases. A press release is more like throwing spaghetti up on the wall to see what sticks. It is a grab for free marketing, blasted to anyone who might care, with the knowledge that many will ignore it.

Now, if people are writing up direct pitches to this guy and calling it a press release, then they are simply giving it the wrong label, and then his advice may be applicable. Or maybe he gave his article a bad label. Or he only gets crappy press releases. Whichever.

But declaring that the entire mechanism of press releases is outdated just because he doesn't like them... well, he did say that it was all incredibly arrogant.

lazyant• 11 years ago

TL;DR: doing the work for me has the most chances of being in my media

vortico• 11 years ago

Many opening Hacker News posts are very simplistic titles which don’t answer basic questions, like "Use this instead of press releases". Many even say (WHY?!) "Would you like to read my entire rant about how important I am to not have time to converse with humans about their heart-felt ideas?".

He could have titled this "An email template for best chances at reaching entrepreneurs" and removed the crap at the beginning.

polysaturate• 11 years ago

I've witnessed some titles being changed to a very simplistic phrase. Perhaps moderation to let the best content rise on its own merits?

kordless• 11 years ago

I’m UTTERLY SICK and TIRED of dealing with MILLIONS of tech entrepreneurs (these days there are a HELL of a lot of you) and (some) PR people who have ZERO clue how to pitch me/TechCrunch/the media.

His business is writing about (or dealing with) tech startups. He make money doing this by being paid for advertising, etc. If he is sick of dealing with us, that's his problem to solve, not ours. Coaching us to target him better doesn't mean that we'll be successful with another reporter with the same approach. Asking us to improve the efficiencies of our pitches only serves to increase his own success - it doesn't actually raise the chances we'll get the exposure (given probability and math happens).

And yes, this general approach would work with PR firms, but then again we're paying them for that service. I had a call with a PR firm a few weeks back and they were struggling to understand what a container stack was and why it is important. They eventually got it, but it took some time. Sometimes complexity happens.

Instead of offloading his work onto us, why doesn't he figure out a way to scale what his is suppose to be doing (listening) better? I have no idea how to solve this, but it doesn't start by telling us his is sick and tired of dealing with us and how we can do a bunch of work to make him not sick of us. That's just rudely blaming us for something that brings him suffering.

BTW, I totally get where he is coming from, but still. Tone it down a bit.

MichaelApproved• 11 years ago

He addresses the tone you're referring to

A final word:
A lot of this may sound incredibly arrogant. Perhaps it is.
I don’t dig coal for a living and the Taliban doesn’t shoot at me as part of my job. I’m lucky.
But Journalists have to parse a lot of information quickly now. It helps the sender out if they are told, in black and white, the best way to get noticed and maybe even read. That’s what this exercise was about.

CurtMonash• 11 years ago

If you send me something according to this template, you are very unlikely to get a favorable response.

Moral: Treat people as individuals.

Use this instead of press releases

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