Ask HN: What am I doing wrong here? (PR/Marketing an app)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=670204

by brandnewlow • 17 years ago

43 44 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Bit of a head-scratcher here.

I run a social news site for Chicago over at WindyCitizen.com. Since a massive redesign back in January, I've seen its traffic, activity, and influence grow steadily.

Problem: I've been really successful so far in working WITH the local media. But completely unsuccessful in getting any coverage FROM the local media that I could show to advertisers to let them know we're legit. I knew it would be tough to launch something aimed at a market without a "Techcrunch" to speak to early adopters, but this is getting ridiculous.

Here's what I mean:

1. I've hammered out partnerships to have our submission/voting buttons on the local alt. weekly site and all major local blogs. This was a nontrivial feat.

2. The local CBS affiliate has added our top stories widget to its site. Also nontrivial.

3. Journalists from every local publication have glommed on to us and are posting their stories to the Citizen on a daily basis. Of our 2000 members, I estimate we have at least 50 Chicago journalists among them, including editors and deputy editors who are posting stories and leaving comments on our site on a regular basis.

4. Last month we had over 4000 stories and events posted and reached about 80,000 people.

So these journalists are all using the Citizen and these publications all want our traffic (because it's local), but no one's ever run a "hey, check out this cool site!" story on us.

I'm beginning to think the statute of limitations for that happening is running out.

I've also had zero luck getting coverage from tech blogs. I've assumed that's because the site's aimed at Chicago.

I think part of my problem is that I have a background in journalism. The idea of aggressively wining and dining reporters at local papers, courting them and calling them up all the time to tell them what's new is pretty gross to me. I e-mail a good number of folks when we have news and have made friends with a lot of local media, but no dice on the coverage front. It's very humbling.

Clearly, I'm doing something wrong here. What?

brecht• 17 years ago

Your site has to become cool before anyone is going to bother reporting on it. You don't get automatic reporter points just because you feel strongly that you should, or even because you work hard at it. As it stands, your site is Yet Another Portal or News Aggregator or whatever and it's just not a particularly compelling... thing.

brandnewlow15• 17 years ago

Duly noted. This sort of reaction is helpful. Of course I think what I'm doing is unique (first local social news site), but if others don't get that from a quick visit, or they think that's a pretty "meh" idea, then that's good to hear.

uptown• 17 years ago

Take a look at EveryBlock.com. They do a lot of location-specific stuff right. Might be some concepts you could adopt for your site.

_pius2• 17 years ago

First off, congrats on building a site that a lot of people use and respect. I've definitely heard of it and I'm not from Chicago, so it must have gotten coverage somewhere.

The first question is probably a dumb one: Have you actually asked any of the journalists you work with to get you some coverage?

Also, you may have some success following up with the many reporters and bloggers who are covering the whole "new journalism" and "death of newspapers" beat. Talk to Dave Winer (http://www.scripting.com).

You're in Chicago. Do you have any contacts at Medill? Reach out to them and do a partnership ... you should definitely get some coverage that way.

brandnewlow15• 17 years ago

Thanks. You've probably heard about me on Hacker News. I post here way too often.

A few notes:

1. I've asked a few times, and sent out press releases now and then. It's an intellectual challenge though for me to pitch people I consider my friends. Frankly, I think it's unethical and it puts them in a really tough spot where I'm just another person asking them to write about them.

2. Funny you should mention those cats. I've sent a few of those guys updates on a regular basis over the last 16 months, after all, I'm trying something new and seeing some results, but I've never heard back from any of them. I've not tried Mr. Winer and will send him a note, but I've grown pretty skeptical as to whether the "death of newspaper" guys are actually interested in new ideas, or just ideas that conform to their own. Part of the reason I spend so much time on Hacker News is because the journalism community isn't so interested in startups, but in saving their existing brands in my opinion. I don't really fit into that. I've got more in common with the Bingo Card guy then with someone starting a non-profit news organization supported by rich friends of his and foundations.

3. I went to Medill and consult for them on occasion. For this reason, they've more or less said their student reporters can't write about me, though I guess I made the alumni magazine this month (LOL). The school's had me in to speak to students pretty regularly, which has been a great source of interns.

sqs• 17 years ago

Try some more to get a story in the Northwestern paper (or UChicago, UIC, etc.). You probably know some people who go there--get them to contact their friends who work at the paper.

I've seen lots of stories that originally got picked up by college newspapers and then appeared in the NYT, SJ Mercury News, etc.

brandnewlow15• 17 years ago

@davewiner just Tweeted us out. Thanks! http://twitter.com/davewiner/statuses/2295939556

_pius2• 17 years ago

Wow, that was fast! :)

rms• 17 years ago

Did you ask any of them to write about you?

brandnewlow15• 17 years ago

I have, yes. Though I've tried not to be annoying about it because I see these people fairly often and they post their stories to the site pretty frequently. I can't stand people trying to sell me stuff every time I see them. I don't want to be that guy. Again, maybe this is the problem.

brlewis3• 17 years ago

Read their articles to get to know what they like to write about. Then look at different things that could be said about Windy Citizen and find a story that they would like to write. Then talk to them.

You want to be Jeremy Toeman. Skip ahead to the part about him at http://scobleizer.com/2009/04/07/a-private-note-to-pr-people...

jellisjapan• 17 years ago

Is your story actually interesting? I know in New Orleans, local successes make the news all the time because there is an interesting story to back it up. If your pitch is just that you made a website about Chicago and not much more, it wouldn't interest me much either.

patio11• 17 years ago

I don't know that I would even want coverage from Techcrunch, for either myself or you. It warps your perception of what provides value and what your goals are. For example, you might spend months worrying about getting featured by fickle tech publications when you could be providing news to Chicagoans.

It is wonderful that you've got a site which journalists are using as self-promotion engines. Now you have to figure out a way to get their core use of the site to be a you-promotion engine. The traditional way to do that in journalism is original reporting, which means they have to cite you. They probably won't appreciate that -- you'd be competing with them, after all.

On the other hand, if you had some sort of scoreboard of the most influential reporters in Chicago, I guarantee you they would fall over themselves to cite that, particularly for the ones who ended up winning.

(Note that this puts them in exactly the position you are vis-a-vis Techcrunch right now. "Dang, if they would only cover me I'd finally get the respect I deserve from my editor! Please cover me! I wonder why he won't cover me? Is it something I said? Can I call him or would that be forward?" I know which side of the unrequited obsession I'd prefer to be on.)

Tell me, Windy Citizen, who is the most influential columnist in Chicago right now? You are, after all, the paper of record for the papers of record. You can take a page out of your customers' books and give them a nice little plaque (or badge for their site, focused again on promoting them, not you) for it if you want -- is there a single hotdog stand in Chicago which does not have a "Voted Best Chicago Hot Dog 1992 by the Reader" in it?

Ideally you'd be using the highly competitive journalistic impulses to provide more, better news to Chicagoans rather than just playing inside baseball with local media.

brandnewlow15• 17 years ago

So give them a variant on this http://www.techmeme.com/lb for Chicago? This is a great idea. Thank you.

niyazpk• 17 years ago

Exactly.

People will always promote themselves.

Give them a page like windycitizen.com/username to aggregate their stuff and they will start promoting that page.

brandnewlow15• 17 years ago

I have that.....but the profile pages need an overhaul to look more Twitter-ish I think. Good to hear someone else agrees. Thanks.

Example: http://www.windycitizen.com/kristenthometz

jonknee2• 17 years ago

Maybe because you're competition (either real or perceived)? Local media doesn't typically cover other local media in a positive light.

brandnewlow15• 17 years ago

This isn't local media. It's a web site that lets people share and rate neat local stuff.

This was why I went the social news route. My first idea was a local blog network. I realized that would never get covered, so I went with something that would help and be useful to local news orgs so we could have partnerships like the ones I mentioned.

We're no more competition than Twitter of Facebook is.

anamax3• 17 years ago

> We're no more competition than Twitter of Facebook is.

If you're running advertising or have viewers, you're competition.

jonknee2• 17 years ago

As I said, "real or perceived". Craigslist didn't seem like competition at first either, but then it killed the industry. The local media's business is advertising to local people, the same local people you're targeting. While you may not compete on journalism, you compete on attention and ad revenue.

scott_s• 17 years ago

Of course you're competition. Would you like your page to be the first place a local goes to find out about Chicago? So would the local newspapers.

mseebach• 17 years ago

A few ideas:

- Find a local journalist that does mainstream-tech stories (i.e. the guy that wrote the "Facebook owns your photos" story about half a year ago), and pitch your site as a sort of Facebook for Chicagoans (-ians? -ers? -aks?)

- Make yourself the story. Pitch how you put you career and your home on the line (or whatever you did, but dramatize it. Whatever it was, it wasn't a few boring sunday afternoons and evenings, it was hard) to bring relevant local news and commentary to the people of Chicago, and get a human interest story. Maybe a morning TV show?

- Swallow your pride. You colleagues make a good salary drowning you in shallow, cute stories, that's mostly copy-pasted anyway. Make them make one of them about you.

brlewis3• 17 years ago

This might or might not help you, but I think Chris Brogan might appreciate your thoughts on his latest post, http://www.chrisbrogan.com/wiring-a-city-and-the-internet-of...

brandnewlow15• 17 years ago

Just left a comment on his post. Thanks!

brlewis3• 17 years ago

Double-posted

sho• 17 years ago

Hm. Well, the domain/site name is fantastic. But I don't feel any attraction to the place; it's like Digg with a filter that the stories have to mention Chicago. There is no consistency. The top 10 items go from sport, political gossip, and food reviews to tech CEO arrests and an article about an upcoming museum exhibit. Is there anyone who would be interested in more than one of those things? Who is the target user? There is no focus; it's just random noise to me.

I have one suggestion, even if it's a bit evil: decide the kind of articles your target user is interested in, and then once in a while, go in and vote the crap out of them. Yes it's cheating. But you need momentum and you need to create a positive feedback loop. Seeing a whole page of near-random articles all with 3 or 4 votes is a turn-off and a self-fulfilling prophecy.

brandnewlow15• 17 years ago

Well-taken. Though isn't that counter to the idea of letting the readers decide what belongs? Their votes make the front page what it is, which is admittedly all over the place.

Your deeper point seems to be that horizontal aggregation doesn't work, i.e. several topics from one place.

rokhayakebe• 17 years ago

Instead of cheating, maybe an "Editor's pick" above the number 1 would do.

sammyo• 17 years ago

I didn't find the essay on a quick google but I remember a classic pg discussion that hiring a publicist was their best investment. Largest expensive also, but the right one knows how to get the mentions in the media. But don't worry about competition, traditional journalists will happily dig their own grave for another byline.

10ren• 17 years ago

Don't know what you're doing wrong (if anything), but a suggestion:

1. As a journalist, think back to the stories that were compelling to you, that you wanted to write about, that you knew were the great, newsworthy stories, professionally.

2. Next, find a story like that, that WindyCitizen is somehow an essential part of it. (it's great if WC can be the centre of the story, but it doesn't sound like you are there yet; instead, make it part of the story. Also, choose a story that you would want to be associated with, that puts WC in a role that you want it to have).

3. Now, write up that story, and give it to your journalists. This basically a press release, and it saves journalists a lot of time if it really is a genuinely newsworthy story. That is, do their work for them.

(If you haven't already done this, it means either that I am totally off-base.... or that you are simply too close to the business to see it from an outsider's point of view.)

thomasswift• 17 years ago

Just a few ideas off the top of my head, have you tried submitting to masshable, I sent one email and got covered. Traffic was nice, but did die down, but the amount of people that recycle(copy) thier posts has a nice trailing effect. They are more keen to mention sites with more 'social' aspects.

Have you tried getting onto nbc5 news segments were they talk about websites, I forget what they call it, but I think that might be something worthwhile because it could open your site up to new audience of people who don't read the tech blog and people who consume more tradional media.

Either way greetings from the suburbs and keep the good work up!

sutro• 17 years ago

Splash a convincing photoshopped picture of Mayor Daley having sex with Mrs. Blagojevich across your front page. Problem solved.

brandnewlow15• 17 years ago

Have you seen our Daily Daley blog? http://dailydaley.windycitizen.com

Enjoy!

qeorge• 17 years ago

You need a more compelling story. "Cool new website" isn't a story that works on traditional media. Try to find a way that the Windy Citizen is helping the people of Chicago's real lives.

Consider these headlines:

Local Website Rallies Community In Search For Missing Boy

Mayoral Scandal Galvanizes Citizens Against Corruption

School Redistricting Plan Draws Fervor, Online and Off

All of these stories could be largely or entirely about WindyCitizen.com, but are interesting to a larger demographic.

Once you've found your story, write the article yourself, then break it down into bullet points, anecdotes, facts, and statistics to send to reporters. Writing this article should be as easy for them as paraphrasing a Wikipedia page.

Be direct in your request, and make sure they know that other news outlets are interested in the story. Local news won't want to miss anything their competitors will be covering, even if its a dog show.

Good Luck!

kyro• 17 years ago

You won't get actual users by having TC write about how "you're a cool website." That's not what you want. Why? Because there's no real value there. The real value is to be found in stories where The Windy Citizen's name is attached. Let me explain. If I was someone interested in Chicago news and was reading a blog post or an article in the newspaper and read "Windycitizen.com broke the story about the government scandal," I would either consciously or subconsciously realize that Windycitizen.com is something of value. They broke the story that I read. The traffic you'll get from this sort of marketing will be slower and more gradual, sure, but it'll be REAL traffic, not a traffic spike from TC because they said you were cool. Also, a site like Digg got its initial traffic because of Kevin Rose's celebrity. You don't have that, so don't look at Digg, if you are, as a metric since you two seem to be user generated social news sites.

As to actual marketing tactics, you need to create a story. Support a cause that stirs up lots of emotions. 'Support Protest Against Blah - Upvote!' Be known as the site that rallied individuals for a specific cause. If you can generate enough buzz about that, local blogs and even national outlets will write about you, not as a cool site, but as the site that helped facilitate a specific situation. Create a specific story.

Also, I'm not quite sure why you're after press from TC, or national/global press in general. It would seem that the traffic you'd get from them would be of no worth as someone like me in southern California wouldn't be at all interested in Chicago news.

brandnewlow15• 17 years ago

These are all good points. I never said I want TC coverage, just that I'm in a space where there is no TC, i.e. a relevant site that can send me lots of relevant traffic and that isn't afraid to link to me. People like to gripe about TC all the time, but it's done a lot of people a lot of good.

Your points about having a story are well-taken, too.

The reason why I'd like some coverage is because I spend my days calling up local businesses to talk about sponsoring us. None of them have heard of us. They don't care how many readers I have or don't have. If they haven't heard of me, it's not something they're interested in. Getting a write-up in the press would give me something to point to in that regard.

webwright• 17 years ago

That's not a headscratcher. Get into their heads and ask yourself, "Why would I write/report on these guys?" I can think of one HUGE reason why you wouldn't-- because it's a better source of news with a bunch of links to stories from OTHER news entities. You don't see people reporting on Google News except to say how evil and unfair they are. Not many news outlets do the "hey look, it's a great new way to get news!" stories on Google News.

If you want legitimacy, I'd do this. Create a "submit this" widget for your site and promote it to the news folks using your site. Add a "Leading Chicago News Outlets" block somewhere on your site (prominently for now, you can fade it away later) and say you'll give people who install that widget placement in that block. Send any "partner" site who installs the widget a weekly report of the traffic you're sending them.

Then, when you talk with advertisers, call these people your "news partners" and describe the widget relationship. It'll seem pretty legit. Toss in a anchor link to your site within the widget code (outside of any javascript) with the right anchor text ("Chicago News") and you'll rank #1 for the search phrase chicago news before you know it (bonus!).

Ask HN: What am I doing wrong here? (PR/Marketing an app)

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