How to Get Free Press for Your Startup @JazminHupp

Mike Licht

Recipe for Free Press

What Data Do You Have? • Demographics about your audience• Trends in your marketplace

What Kind of Story Do You Want? • Print/Online: Stories created from data sent to individual writers.• Radio: Requires an engaging speaker.• TV: Since television is a visual medium, they place the highest value on giving them

someone who is immediately available to be on camera. • Infographics: Online. Requires good graphic design and sourced data.

Who Do You Pitch?

Mike Licht

Building Your List of Media Members to Pitch

• Find the media members who are writing stories in your locale/vertical/etc. If you know one site that perfectly epitomizes the readership you’re looking for, copy their URL. Then do a Google search for “related:URL.com” to see the sites that are similar to them.

• Most of the time, their email address will be listed on their stories or website. If not you can use a few tricks to find it.

• If they work for an organization with a common email structure like first.last@company.com you can use that. You can use Gmail tools like Rapportive to confirm your guess.

• You can search the journalist’s tweets for their email address using sites like Snap Bird. Just enter the target’s Twitter name and the search term “email”.

Your Data

Mike Licht

Create Your Data

• Create a couple of hypotheses around a topic that your audience might find newsworthy.

• Pull the raw numbers into something and analyze it while keeping an open mind for new findings.

• Synthesize the trends you’re seeing in the data. What are the changes over time, locations, etc.

• Write compelling punchy bullet points. • Create a visual element (graph/infographic) to convey your data in a different and

powerful way. (Don’t forget to include your logo & URL on the graphic) OR include original print-quality photography.

Context is King

Mike Licht

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Contextualize Your Data Points

• Comparison: How do prices/demand/profits compare to others or past? How do customers in your area compare to other areas?

• Superlatives: Most expensive/popular thing in X years.

• Trends: How is prices/profits/demand changing over time.

• If Statements: If you bought all components individually would it be cheaper than buying them individually? If you had bought this widget it the past, what would it be worth now?

• Use Google Alerts to track what are popular story topics in your industry.

How to Pitch

Mike Licht

Write Your Pitch to Journalist

1.Punchy, description subject line. Use an actual data point that will stand out to a journalist drowning in story pitches.

2.Personalized opening paragraph. Make it clear this isn’t a stock email to hundreds of people. Mention your specific relationship with them whenever possible.

3.Crisp, clear data points. Write in complete sentences (that the journalist can copy) and bold the numbers you’re pitching.

4.Always provide a link. Encourage the journalist to link to your site by providing a landing page that supports the story (hopefully a page that puts readers a click away from a transaction with you).

5.Give them a method to follow up. Make yourself available to provide more data or provide a quote. Use a Google voice number that you can direct to press-ready staff “on-call”.

Examples

Mike Licht

How Long Does It Take To Upgrade to Mountain Lion?

• Second Google result for “How long does it take to upgrade to Mountain Lion”• ComputerWorld & PCWorld• TUAW• 9to5Mac• MacLife• Yahoo Front Page• MacPlus• MacWorld

jazminhupp.com/asmc

8 Things You May Not Know Your Apple Headphones Can Do

• 23,331 page views• LifeHacker• TUAW• Facebook• Business Insider• Pinterest

jazminhupp.com/asmc