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How to Pitch to Bloggers & Launch Products Part 2

I thought what we would do is we s we talked a lot about strategy yesterday, let's talk about some tactics, specifics, how sort of how this whole process works, the sort of the pitch and the approach, and the the interacting with the media, and I've designed by tactics around sort of an understanding of the economics of how the media works. So by economics, I mean, you know, sort of the incentives, how people are paid, how they do the job, what they consider to be success, so those sort of underlying forces that air that air coloring and changing how things work on deny instead of trying to fight those things or argue with those things, I tryto use them to my advantage. And and I, I'm old my approach around the the the acceptance of those factors, so we'll go through that david will be here. Hey, consort of explain, having worked at the a bunch of different outlets from sort of prestigious print journalism, too. What, like, in a well, content farm, like, you sort of know how it works, ...

and you can you can talk about this, and I think that david and I share, uh, share a viewpoint of this is how it works for ah, part of the industry, and we we don't want it to be that way, but it is that way, and you should know about it on dh, then also understanding that not all journalism works that way, and if you're you're pitching in new york times reported the same way you're pitching a ah a writer at at at a well, you're gonna you're going to be rudely rejected, right? Um ok, cool. So so this is the david we're going in the book, they're organized tactics, and they have sort of inflammatory names, which is another principle I liketo I like tio follow, which is just sort of catch people's attention, but this is tactic number one, which is bloggers they're poor and it's your job to help them pay their bills, you have to understand how they're paid and how this system works if you want to pitch and deal with them appropriately. So one of things and that ties into this is what we were talking about with, uh, with joey, which is the sort of you have to come to them, and you have to they're not it's, not the long gone are the days of the objective food reporter who is picking up their own tabs at restaurants so they're not biased by by the concept of getting free food, would you agree? I'd say that exists in places but if we're talking about the blogger sphere right so so it's if you want bloggers to review your products you better send them to them and I wouldn't uh I would think about it like joey don't expect to get it back and be fine with that because you're you're setting it to an influential person and these bloggers have a different relationship with uh with objectivity anyway that's not that's not sort of what they're trying to accomplish here trying to talk about things they like and if they like it they're going to keep it um and there's this weird relationship with bloggers and advertisements too so if you're if you're a small independent blogger it's not like it's not like if you if you buy advertisements if you buy commercial space on cnn anderson cooper isn't like thanks for your money I appreciate that because that's a totally different department and there's the business of the editorial side on a small independent block that relationship is is is that divergence isn't there so what what you have is the same guy writing the articles is the guy who cashes the checks on dh I've always found that sometimes release I found that sometimes a relationship can be started advert from the advertising side and then continued editorially so if you have a budget you might think about using strategic ad placements as a way to develop contacts or build build inroads to certain media outlets um but let's talk for a second about the page you journalism which is essentially bloggers are paid a good portion of the internet is paid by how many pages there articles do correct so if if they have tio and these these blocks have paid your quotas right so like, uh, a reporter this has been publicly talked about but a reporter business insider let's say which is as a tech lifestyle sort of business blawg a reporter there to make fifty thousand dollars a year has to do something like uh two point five million page views a month which is quite difficult that's a lot of slide shows that's a lot of unique visitors it's a lot of twitter shares that's a lot of facebook shares, so if you're coming to him with an article that isn't going to get him views he's going to say no to you you have to if you can understand that his goal is to hit that quota that's what matters to him the way that you approach it needs to be about tying it into that. So when that's that's what joey's talking about joey saying here you should write about my pa hears eleven pictures so you can make it into a slide show or here's a larger newsworthy issue that my company ties into that writing about is goingto is going toe it's going to be more than you just writing about some startup that no one's heard about I'm connecting this to first idea it would be like you know here's I'm suggesting to a huffington post reporter ah a slideshow about the rise of celebrities where in hosiery or something like that rather than just saying like hey profile my company that not that many people know about and will not get many paid shoes so that that these are struggling writers who have to generate a lot of volume every month and I like to uh always keep that in mind when I'm working with them or you're asking you not only ask you not only depriving them of actually here's a better way to put it if you ask them to write about something that doesn't get them pages that's something they could've like your you're taking money out of their pocket you want to put money in their pocket and that's how I think about, um we have tell them what they want to hear haro ties into this really well um they they don't care necessarily like how would you how would you characterize um most bloggers and the concept of having a beat like I only write about x I feel like that's going away like if the story is interesting they'll write about so they don't care what they write it care about whether it's interesting that it will move the needle and I think a lot of sides were set up that way tio where if you grab a story out of anywhere so long as you can, what the senses together and and show that it makes sense they don't care if you haven't written about that kind of thing before yeah so so that's another reason why the question of of you know, how do I find what sites matter is a little weird because all sides matter all sites could be made to talk about your thing if you build that connection right up with a quick question emission about how important it is for these bloggers to get content out there I mean you're a working writer david, can you give us an idea of how many articles or post right saying the standard week or the or the standard month as it does the barriers are pretty consists it it varies a lot for me just for various unrelated reasons, but I think you know if you're looking at ah gawker of reporter or one of those really high volume websites, they're they're putting out upto ten a day or something like that and those could be really sure sometimes they'll take a break to do something a little more involved but they're at a certain point of really knocking them out so there's there's this uh on the one hand press releases don't work because we all get a lot of press releases, but if you're doing something interesting, putting out a press release could matter because now you've put all the information in one place for someone to take it from and turn it into a story. So when newsworthy companies do something that's newsworthy and put it in a press release, I feel like that relationship is different than somebody you've never heard of spam in their inbox with press releases yeah press release could be for the journalist's point of view it could be a tool gives you the basic information maybe gives you a quarter too if if they're good but that's only you're only going to use that tool essentially if you've already decided teo to continue down that path right there alert it's more of a news bulletin that a press release in that case it's an assembly of smacks you can use in the story so we have a couple questions a good press release like what is actually consist of um I think it's the news angle not, uh I'm trying to think here uh shorter is better uh the angle needs to be clear. So it's uh witchcraft celebrates ted year anniversary that's clear that's telling me what it is I think I can bust out a quick article that's different than like this sort of long, meandering point and it you're saying I really have to read this to to know what's going on I think there's a big difference between a press release that sort of pitching you a product and telling you that it exists in pitching you a story and ah one they'll sort of work more effectively especially in the high volume blawg world is one where it's clear the story that you're talking about and not it's not up to the reporter toe to figure that out um like I think your bio really matters and the press release is sort of a short, concise bio I like to think about numbers what are the numbers and fax in this pressure least don't give mea long quote from the founder about how awesome he thinks his own product is like give me information that I can use so I could take this press release which is advertising and promotional and turn it into media and news which is informational and fact based that you could give me a quote from the founder about you know, how horrible the rest of these services he thinks our or write something to the broader point rather than talking about the product itself right your press really should not be self congratulatory it should be angle driven and news driven informative andi I think reporters appreciate that and they have a different relationship with that kind of content for sure reineke talk briefly mentioned statistics and I can't think of any of those very rare that look whether it be the new york times or you know lost return or even ah blogger something somewhere in that first paragraph for to you read the statistics over eighty percent of stones was happening, revenue was quadrupled and so himself so is it important for people of business is to find a way to find a statistic that's not I guess baker were made up too right and look I'm calling let's tell them what they want to hear because the reporter doesn't have the blogger whose difference treated reporters and bloggers but the reporter the sorry the blogger does not have time to find that fact themselves and they might not even have the training or the desire to do so so if you could do that leg work for them, you have a better chance of getting out there so they're not gonna they're not going pull up this some government database and do a lot of research you put in your press release and you could lend to that they can borrow your work and build on it from there but again it's got to be information based just have a comment isn't me before coming here I thought that a press release was only something that like an apple could do or a big company but you know anyone is worth you know, giving a press release. You target your press releases, right? So you could put out a press release with something like pr newswire. And by the way, one good reason to put out press releases is for search engine optimization purposes. So you put out a press release with pr newswire or pr web or any of the sights for anything you want. And it lives on the internet forever on and people who are google and you can find out about that stuff. So if you on, they're not super costly, so I would recommend sort of doing it for that purpose anyway, there's so press releases air very sort of like pr one point. Oh, and I get that as peers change, people are like, oh, you should never do press releases that's not how you interact with bloggers that's not how you pitch bloggers but when you understand that bloggers have post quotas, they got ted post they have to do every day the idea of of announcing things like I wouldn't leave it to chance that someone finds out that it's witchcraft ten year anniversary you sort of make that an event and you announce it, um, so, like, uh you're opening a new location, which craft announced his opening of new location. That's not going to get, you know, a major feature in a newspaper, but that might get you a few line mention on a small website, and the cost is negligible. So it's worth doing. This is a weird one for me. I I write about this in the book, but basically so there was this cool study of, uh, sorry back that up, so notice is that he would see those, like slide shows of detroit, like the photos of the ruins of detroit what's really interesting about this photo. Someone noticed wass there's. Never any people in those photos, right, it's, just like beautiful, abandoned building. Those buildings are abandoned. Troy is one of the largest homeless populations in the united states. There's like wild animals and the huge feral cat probably it's like a sad rest up city, right? Uh, those people are our deliberately being not included in those photos, because seeing a photo of an abandoned building filled with squatters is less clickable than a photo of, like, a cool building that looks like it's, like, you know, post apocalyptic. So that ties into cem cem really interesting research that they did actually of the new york times magazine, where they were studying what articles tend to go viral from the new york times we talked a little bit about this yesterday, but it was the vaillant of the emotion, so the number one predictor for in the study was was how angry it makes a viewer and the extremists of the emotion is what really matters. And so this was a school. This is a study by the wharton school of business in elise coast, and those emotional triggers need to be there in your content. So announcing the launch of your new app is somewhat has a news angle, but it's not going to provoke a reaction. So that's why I think what david is talking about? Where it's it's what's wrong with the industry? What do you what do you balanced against? What are you challenging on dh? That sort of that's giving the author or the writer a chance too position position the article against something that can rile people up generate comments create a reaction because that's, what the internet thrives on on dh stories they're all about conflict and change you can't a steady state is not particularly interesting, whether to a reporter or to their audience, and so you you need to sort of indicate where that conflict is and why that's interesting, everyone just just having a great time is never going to get anyone you don't wake up and write everything stayed the same and it's all really boring please read my article if you writing an article if you're publishing an article in a magazine that people have already subscribed teo there's less of that impetus to to create a discussion and drive like chatter but on the internet were trying to get paige use you you've got you've you've got a get that click you mentioned something just a second ago emotional triggers that immediately brought up for me the very beginning of your book on your book you tell a story about things late at night something's going on and how you got some press could you share a little bit about how you open your book and emotional trigger that generated yeah there was I open the book with a story that I did for a client where it was actually for for tucker we promoted a movie he was doing by created a fake boycott about one of his about his book and his movie and why do we do that was because every time someone would write about it, the people who I couldn't believe that these humorless people were boycotting the movie they would talk about it and the people who are so offended by a stuff and they wanted to see it boycotted they would talk about it and so it was this very spreadable that concept of outrage is a very spreadable emotion anger is is is spreadable like disbelief, which was what his fans were feeling about it though that that was all a very potent mix that went from a small internet sensation to, you know, like editorials denouncing the movie and the chicago tribune and the washington post there's a certain amount of trickery inherent in blogging and I'm not saying that david engages in any of this, but every blogger knows certain rules on dh practices that juice the numbers in a way that's beneficial to them. So this is a quote from a gawker writer uh, which is you get the key to writing good headlines, he says, is to get just enough of the story into the headline but leave leave out enough that they'll still have to click so it's like you're hinting at what's there they start to click so it's not about informing people at the end of the day it's about getting them to click your story one of my favorite rules of thumb on the internet for readers but this shows how bloggers think about it is if if a headline asked questions, the answer to that question is always no but the journalist is asking the question because to put it in the headline, you know, like, this thing is not true there's no reason to read the article I was reading an article telling you something you didn't know about it is not true um and so part of what you're doing is participated in that uh that game like uh the great examples all these all these we talked about this yesterday this sort of the fake viral videos that come out that if someone was if the journalists really felt their job was to communicate the truth to their reader, they would have investigated thoroughly before reposted right? But instead they're like, hey, check out this funny video who knows if it's true or not because they want to generate that discussion they want people to say like, oh that's not true or that totally is true a company that happened, um and then afterwards they couldn't get the second story about how the hoax was propagated and you see some of that go on and really, really sort of byzantine ways all the time we're when when someone says something that either really irritates people because it's sort of not true or something like that on a lot of sites that's a tactic because then you get all this attention and you can do it again uh, because people are not paying attention to you because they hate you more uh, more often but then from a certain blogger one of you that's no problem like tech bloggers love to write about apple and about android because they know it will piss off one of the side of that debate, and so if you could give them fuel that they could use to build that fire there like thanks, yeah, and the tech world is a good example of how you can sort of play all these camps around. Sorry again, you're identifying that narrative where either apples on top or our googles on top of whatever way everyone likes underdogs or everyone likes the company they've already decided that we're a big fan of and so it's a way of sort of realizing what the established internet narrative is and figure out how you're going to fit into that and use it. Um, yeah, well, like I wrote an article a couple days ago about this, this trend that was going on on reddit and lo and behold, read it is a very powerful community who took this article had voted on it thousands of times and give it thousands of pages in it's it's, not unheard of for bloggers, is sort of deliberately like, you know, poke the bear to get upset, and you have to understand that as a marketer, if that's the game they're playing, you know, pitching here feel good story about how awesome everything is doesn't really play into that because it doesn't happen that way. They know like hey, I could write this story about how apple sucks and get millions of comments and you're asking them to write about your cute little app that's you're not playing by the same set of rules and they're going to win every time maybe of a great example here that if I could jump in just david so we talked you always hear about google being pitting the apple right and you have a story recently she wrote for forbes and maybe just dissect this headline a little bit the headline reads google's chrome book pixel looks cooler than an apple product that's emilie's and get people to click so when you think about a headline like that I don't know if you came up with that or someone of forbes but what were you trying to kind of distinguish their toe to get someone to click and learn mohr well again it's it's it's about that narrative is that people understand apple to be sort of one of these benchmarks and industrial design and everyone is thinking about that a lot already and thinking about you know who who's going to challenge that and also thinking about you know people like toe poke fun at apple now mostly because their stock price is going down and so it's about sort of thinking about that going on and knowing that people are either going to be ardent defenders of apple or eager for things teo for forth for things that that really do seem like genuine new products, they're challenging that and the chromebook is weird in a lot of ways that design perspective, I thought it really was doing something that that apple wasn't doing it and then it looked cool in different in a way that some of these products that before so I knew that that was sort of that was the angle that people are going to be interested in thinking about, because that is new and that's what people are already sort of looking for. And ryan, you get something interesting in that article you mentioned about ready and I think if I find correct memory certain my memory serves me well, you mentioned how the heck is costco getting mentioned so much that maybe there's some manipulation taking place? So you found a way to draw readers into saying, hey, what's going on? Yeah, with these numbers, I knew I know that articles about reddit are popular on reddit, and I noticed this trend that was happening, and I decided to write about it. So it's it's like in david's case, he discovers, like you made the observation that this thing from a company that's not known for having great design is more appealing than like this product from a company that is known for having to decide well, if your google pr I don't know why I like I think if you were doing your job right that should have been an angle that they were going out to journalist to pitch and so like ellen like, you know that there's plenty of sites that want to talk about sort of problems with our like industrial food culture and your company is the opposite of that and what you accomplish and do it gives that material that they could write about and so you want to come to them with certain angles or in response to certain things and say like like, look, I know basically what you're saying is look, I know you would like to write a story about this thing because it confirms how you view about the world so I'm presenting materials the raw materials for you to craft that story and here they are rather than like hoping that some journalists were blogger comes up with the idea to do the story on their own happens to like witchcraft happens to find your email address happens to send you an email which you that reply to and give her the stuff like it's you've got to take that responsibility on yourself david did someone pitch you that story? You mean you're talking about noah's gonna happen toe see all this stuff with maybe the smaller companies but ifyou're googler apple you can rest assured that every angle is going to be explored and whatever right david's a real journalist so he goes out and finds these things uh he's a writer like he does feature pieces and he's always looking for to discover things but he's not representative of how that field works I don't think and, uh if it was about some smaller product you it probably would have needed to you know who apple and google are yeah, and you know what the reputations are? People are interested I just have a question from the internet that really relates to that that question blair survival is asking david how many of the stories you put out there suggested to you from other people such as people like me who may push you something uh not many I wouldn't say uh, but that that doesn't have to be the case. I think that for aa, for a tech blogger like gizmodo or something a lot uh they're they're uh looking through a press release is actually quite a lot for new products they haven't heard about things like that because that's really there's a lot of log on here and that we're discovering new things and talking about them is sort of their main business well, the more important economic forces of the internet is how material is red and how it's produced so great example of this people read the new york times it comes to their house and they open it and there's a certain number of articles in there that's not always. How the new york times was read one hundred years ago it was sold on the street by news boys, you know, like extra read all about it and they were competing with dozens of other daily newspapers in new york city in which everyone was more interesting was the one you bought. So I call this the one ofthe problem so blog's air sold the same way the same way that newsboys used to sell newspapers. Now you go on google news and there's thousands of articles all shouting to be heard over the other one. So, like a good way of illustrating this, I'd like to show you guys so here's some headlines from today these air from, like, random blog's uh and I think they sort of show uh, the strange relationship that blog's have with the truth and you know, whatever you call this crap it's a little girl slaps me with a piece of pizza saves life here's a here's a nine videos here's a blogger talking about a rumor that makes someone look bad but there midday out front that as so and then here are some headlines from the late uh nineteenth century war will be declared in fifteen minutes couldn't sell his ear old man shoots himself ah, bulldog tries to kill sean carroll. He hates tag, gave tenets nightly creeps, so to be these air like indistinguishable where you could have put gawker having to post in front of any of these headlines and the reason is the way they see the news is exactly the same. So this yellow journalism concept of just making stuff up or needing to say something. So think about it from the google news perspective, right? Like the way gould is is organizes there's like the big headline about an event, and then all this smaller headlines about that same event they're all writing about essentially the same story, right? So it's like, if you want to get back, click because you're a blogger paid by the cliff. You want to get that click, you have to write a headline about the exact same event that's more interesting than all the other headlines. And if this all goes back to the same principle, I mean hammered over and over again, which is, if you want to be in the news, your news has to be good for the people in the news and has to fill their goals, which is teo to sell. It has to be successful and get pages which I think ties into the next thing, which is sort of headline with headline matters and your pitch needs to a lead to the headlights so you're that's everything from or talk about history the subject line of your email the the title of your press release the language in your email needs to hit at allude so what? The potential for the headline of that article is as a journalist you want to explain because he brought up a good example of a headline you did you wantto talk about how you see and think about headlines I mean on the internet headline is oftentimes all you get and once the headline is clicked on, then then someone's already with you but you know you I don't know how many people are viewing my headlines you on some kind of agony are reading your are but I'm sure the number is gigantic and so for us a lot of people the main goal is to make it so interesting that you can't not click on it when you see it in that list. So we're seeing from all those examples that the internet in the same way we've always done really loves hyperbole that can be made to be true and so I'm sure al frightens woman to death I'm sure there was other things going on in there, but if there's if there's a part of that that is true, then we're going to sort of frame this thing that happened in the most ridiculous terms possible and so that's what a lot of these headlines air doing there there there thinking about something which is inherently really not that interesting because most things aren't and they're casting it in a way that makes it seem like a hollywood movie no one's not mind the newspaper that says war is going to be declared in fifteen minutes to say whether or not girl slaps mom and face with pizza in jail and you have to know what happened there but so many press releases like you don't need to know what happened because it's like this is something I don't care about from some company I don't know about and um I like to I like to envision in my head what the headline of the article I'm hoping to get is and then I try to use that language somewhere in my pitch I tryto drop those words because a journalist is particularly a blogger is going to appreciate a great turn of phrase better than anyone question it sounds like nuance is really important, so don't throw out a personal and get some feedback on it. So I wrote a post ah guess most huffington post is posting early this next week and I've two options for headline right thinkit's a few back s o the big one the first one is the big con from homeless to ceo more from homeless to ceo was it all a con is their strength in one over the other well, one's a feature and one's a vlog post I would say the first one sounds like it's it's telling a story and I expect that to see and I need to see that in a newspaper uh, I I think the question mark it is when you're in doubt is always a nice way to go because rising in question people won't know the answer. There's there's more urgency in the second one, I would say that in the first one, and I think that actually kata ties into the second one, which, uh, actually, the backup sort of it here's the way I like to put it, so nobody reads the huffington post, they read articles on the huffington post that are spread around, and so if your article doesn't accomplish like you see, this was something like fords were like, you know, you write an article and it might do twenty thousand views someone else's that article, and it could do two hundred, views because forbes is it guarantee and any readers they don't actually have reach. And so I get this for my my clients all the time, I find out that people are trying to write about my client because they want my client to drive traffic to that article, and so if your thing isn't it created an impetus to click it's not going to go anywhere because there's no guaranteed readership. And so that's that's my other that's, my other thing um, which is this idea of driving pages to kick things off? Ryan real quick before we go to page views and we're just getting some chatter online, I would love just a hit if we can, briefly on just some don'ts. Yes, headlines from clear don'ts of headlines and I don't know and you tell me this would work it out while you're kind of going through both of you, don't do this when it comes to headlines, since we do have some students in here vacant, maybe briefly while we're talking about the don't write down what a headline could be for your company or your business if if you want to go that way now, yeah, look, this is what I like about this is you're not writers, right? But you should be thinking about it and embodying the concept of writing because your pitch is there going to be better when you understand how it works. So if you don't have a blogger, you should. If you don't contribute teo something like the huffington post or some other publication about which you are an expert, you should, because that gives you an opportunity to start too to put yourself in these other people's shoes and and figure out how it works like I think one of the reasons I've been successful is that I sort of I have a leg in both worlds, and so I can I could understand what flies and what doesn't fly in in either one plus it's a great way to dr awareness about your stuff, but as a writer, what are the things you try not to do in headlines or that's? A hard question, because that's, what, you have to give me some examples? Uh, so words like, well, let's, say some good things real fast words like exclusive are good things that are breaking news air. Good question marks are good poland's or nice calls create a sense. Ah, nice little narrative right in the headline, right? You have to understand that a lot of times headlines, they're going to be cut off in some form or another, so if you don't figure out what it is till the end your leaving it to chance, like if it's a sort of long meander a headline and you know the second half is cut off because you lose or google reader or email subject you've lost a chance to convince someone to click short is better in every single circumstance. Yeah if you can do it in less words I mean that's true in the article to if you do unless whereas you should always do in less words great I think I saw a couple students writing and I saw a few giggles from from some as well just just briefly before we get to tactic seven do I have any of you have one you'd like to share with david and ryan to get some quick feedback on our potential headline so far I'm afraid this might be a little bit long but tom colicchio is witchcraft expands from sandwiches into organic juices for summer seasonal menu uh oh you want to lose the last part in there you know we know we're moving into somewhere or whatever that that's that's not necessary that's not necessary in the same way uh tom colicchio is good people know tom colicchio is so get that in there as obviously witchcraft uh maybe uh throw in you know words like how why and things like that are always nice to use into the headline yeah, because that's again that's that's your promising something in the article you're saying that I'm going to give you this information and so maybe why tom colicchio switch crashes expanding for sandwiches two juices and then you could say this summer if you feel like it okay uh have not wearing pants can help women get dates and higher paying jobs is uber food disrupting family dinners in san diego here's what I like about that why are you disrupted like disrupting family dinner sounds bad would you stop I mean maybe but I think I think you could go positive and better however food wants toe bring back the family dinner right that's the last time something like that uh I like it it catches the disrupting catches my attention and it's sort of it's like wait what I'm confused I'm putting some thought into it but like you go maybe that's after you've exhausted all your positive angles first how can go if you want to go for it okay thank less fights more laughs how started evolves communication with mobile app you know what that realize you have you know like a parks and rec where leslie knope is always like saying he's like ridiculous old school these headlines that receiver I didn't lane through there is a problem you've got this sort like so you think about it this why I want to show the old way of doing things like there's a there's a long tradition in journalism of these sort of like cute illusion filled headlines where the journalists kind of showing off how clever they are and they were able to do that because you already bought the newspaper like it comes every morning and all that article is competed against is the other articles in that newspaper so it's like one versus one hundred other things on the internet you're competing against an infinite amount of other things uh you're competing in all the headlines on gould is it's not just like oh I'm gonna read this article verse this article it's gonna read this article verse I'm supposed to be doing my job right now also my friend's air chatting with me also I have facebook open you know all these other things uh so you just don't have the luxury of being for both so I would definitely tight that up degree yeah, you can lose lose lose the first less fights more last part uh it was it was the last bit how startup evolves communication with mobile app yeah no it's not it's not quite clear enough yet needs to be just a little more direct I need to know because of evolved communication that's vague enough that I see that and I don't have the nicest necessity to have that explained because I don't know what's going to be explained right? And you could if you're going to be vague it should be something like changes communication forever yeah you're like, ok, I don't know what that means, but it sounds bad or good pitcher of whatever right it's different than just like evolves communication was does that mean I mean what if you just did make your pictures talk or something I know that I have an idea for you. What about inanimate objects make you live? How anatomy the videos about inanimate objects let you make you live longer or something about laughter, right? It could be an article about laughter and how those you no toilet paper I can help you talking toilet paper can help you live longer so we're talking roll until the paper could extend your life something like that, right? That's very blocky, like that way question coming in from online yeah, so just, you know, trying to get the word out there as much as you can. The rainy day store is asking, how do you feel about using facebook and linkedin for promotion? Forget about it or use it when you can use it, use it when you connect with a blogger or a press release. Yeah, so this is what I wanted to talk about here, which is okay, so you've gotten a piece of press for you've written an article, right? There's no guaranteed audience. So last thing you want is you've convinced this reporter to take a chance on you. And now the article does ted views like to you that says, like, don't write about deputy war, those stories don't do well unless, you know. There's a fire at their headquarters? I'm not writing about that like I'm not I'm not giving them a chance number two tow waste my time because I have to write a lot of articles that I wasted my time with you. So I like to make sure that my articles are successful, so share the world facebook comet if other people are commenting about the article, respond to the comments like as you, you wanted you want to drive traffic to those articles, however you can't like bread is going to talk about leaderboard strategies, but that article needs to meet the most popular list, and if it does, you're like stories about this company do well, what else can I write about them? Any avenue for a traffic base block any avenue, you can give them towards getting more attention? They're goingto like. So someone writes a story about your eleven two sandwiches. It does well because you you helped them along in this process, not just by driving traffic, but you made it interesting and bob wanted you tweeted it out, and and you've got a discussion going on your website or whatever. Now when you launch eleven new ones next year, there'll be like, oh, yeah if we like writing about witchcraft let's do it again this is just sort of ah random pits you tell me how you would respond to that but she's okay I want to show you know because I loved your post on you know similar topic that did well and this is it like I googled your block two seconds ago and I'm commenting on the your most recent post this is I actually read you so no talking about I was going I was going to give the following to our publicist for compression elise but I thought it would go to you with the exclusive because I read and really enjoy your stuff you know? And then you would say something about your this is where you put your pitch and so you know, this is how my company built the user base of twenty five thousand paying customers in two months without advertising or, you know, fashion label was new campaign with beautiful they could models or, you know, this book blows the lid off enormous scandal and you're saying it like ten words or less uh uh it's like this thing is completely off the radar this means you'd be the first to have it I could write up any details that you would need to make it great do you think this would be a good fit if so should I draft something up uh around you know a couple words and send it to you or would you prefer a different process if not I understand thanks for ringing there's so much so what I'm doing in this pitch on guy would use something like this there's obviously some spelling errors which I would correct but uh it's short it's point into pointed in alluding to other things that they that the author has done its asking questions which elicit a response hopefully which is how you developed a relationship after the fact andi it's ah it's said it's parted in a way that's ah that that if they're not interested they're not like rejected you and they might just reply just to say like hey thanks I'm not interested yeah well it's always good to be more human right? You know I think when people send out press releases they think about saying this to this giant gray morass of of the media and when when I received press releases I think about them coming from this giant gray morass of pr and so at any time when you can identify anyone involved as a human being was talking to you that's just always a better way of thinking about it because it is a human being it's one reporter opening their inbox and clicking on this thing it's not like it's not being passed up through this bureaucracy it's like a dude sitting in his lap top of his pajamas looks like you're making it easy for that person is you mission that could write up any details that you need so they don't have a lot of time here's ex wives years and put the boys to make it as easy as possible here safe if you shoot it's the same thing as mihara pitch, I'm asking, what do you need for me? That's? Best for you? I'm not a suit like people are like I've attached to the following documents and you're saying, like what you're saying implicitly there is I've done, I put these in a form that was easy for me. You do the work now, I don't want I don't function that way. What do you want? I'll get that for you. Do you need photo studio this? Do you need facts? What are you trying to accomplish? Tell me and I am taking it upon myself to to do that for you run a quick question when you look it to get out of logs. Rainer like this, which is which is a great script, is really user friendly. It makes everything so accessible. How much of your work and do you suggest to people to take a say, long term approach to relationship building? Should that first email that a blogger or reporter sees for me be this one? Or should it be hehe read your post and I loved it about so and so keep up the great work take care and maybe in your signature have a link to what you do but not asking for anything in that first interaction right? I don't know what necessarily best is your first one but you could follow this up either way you could so they say yes they say no you can you should you should develop that relationship by by like for instance you could write this exact same script cut out some stuff and that you know my whatever that could be a pitch about some other interesting thing that you saw and I do that all the time when I look because I'm involved in the space that I actually to business and I see things that would make good stories that have nothing to do with me and that's actually a decent way to practice getting good at this stuff because you're not as nervous when you're not pitching yourself and you could you could more objectively see what's interesting about it and you can say like hey check you light it could be simple it's okay check out this cool and I thought it might make for a good story uh let me know what you think and you can't even see that everyone so I imagine yeah definitely uh it runs the gamut it's all just about again, like you're saying yesterday, just not not being the formula because the formula is the thing that's very easy to delete, right? I I say use the technology against itself, but this might be better phrases just understand the constraints of the technology, which is the average article of the bloggers like eight hundred words it's gotta have a photo, the headline could only be a couple hundred characters at most. Um, don't pitch them don't send them a four thousand word press release, because now you're asking them to edit that down into a manageable article. Your, uh, the perfect post for the perspective, a blogger is simple, straightforward and self explanatory and your materials, so that have to embody that I think I mean, this is it is just about imagining the story that you would like to appear about yourself, right and imagining what's home would need to write that story. So in the case of a new abour food or something, you you only need like a hundred words on one of those lists and that in the case of hosiery, maybe four to five hundred words on the blogger or something like that, and so really just think about not giving people too much for that cut out all the waste, all this stuff they're not going to use don't waste their time on it because you should save that for another story you might instead of four thousand word press release that's like ten different stories that you could've pitched and present your material in a way that's conducive that shows how there could be a blogger post there don't just send them a big wall of text so can I have been here really quickly going back to writing those emails melinda's wondering by developing relationships should one always use the same thread the same email thread for history's sake or a new email each time I think it's a good way to start things off is to use that evil threat because like you get a lot of e mails and they don't remember your name but you know you're working towards that sort of recognition and understand it yeah I mean anytime you khun put off little trigger and someone's brain right on another quick question here from online ryan to make both of you guys answer this and of course we read any blogged or website about how to drive traffic to your side and get known and increased ceo etcetera they say exactly to do this and blair survival says does commenting on other blog's actually drive traffic to your own block or do you have to plug your vlog or product in the comments? I mean it doesn't drive negative traffic right like so there's no harm in doing so uh that's sort of how I think about it could I mean another another great example of this like understanding the medium of the technology bloggers love bullet points because it's it's sort of them done eye movement tested that show how people read these sort of this scan the headline they scan downwards and what slows them down to these bulleted points and if you can put those, don't send them along as female put bullet points in your e mail that they can borrow and use right, right? Um uh the last one is just make stuff up and I don't mean your line, but I'm eating is bloggers need angles, they need to be ableto they writing from this this drive for newness and newsy nous so what like there's a apple is the master of this right out apple coming out with a new product is not newsworthy it's a thing like that's what their job is their job is to invent products and sell them, but every time apple comes out with a new thing, it's like like the world has been changed over it's because they put on this event and that's so to be what they're doing is making up the news they're they're inviting a bunch of reporters staging an event there's a in media theory that turn this called a pseudo event because the event is really happening but it's happening exclusively for the purpose of alerted the media so you coming out with eleven new sandwich is that that's not actually anything like you're a restaurant you make sandwiches I but by packaging it with this celebrity chef idea and putting out an announcement about it maybe you also tie some sort of promotional element to it so like you know, uh if you if you come in on the day it comes out like there's some special thing or if someone eats all eleven sandwiches, they get a prize or whatever, right? That's that's the idea of making up the angle if you don't necessarily have one like movie premieres the movie like it's just a bunch of people going to the movie but it's this event that people talk about so we we tried that we did a media event so we invited a bunch of food bloggers are friends and family for the company. Tom actually came and we had all over eleven sandwiches out for photography or an event and we gave people a recipe for one of the sandwiches that was coming out and so what I'm struggling with now is sort of the like what's the lesson learned for next time, right? So how did it go? So it went fine I think people who came to the event itself enjoyed the event and people had great positive reactions to the food to your point and so what I'm starting with now is okay what did I not do correctly in that event to make it better for next time versus what's just a matter of starting to do this so that people are now talking about it for the next time around because this was a little bit of an uphill battle of we should do this we should do this we should do this right we did it and so there's a certain amount of just educating people people that's such a great time at the first event so now they'll come to the second event vs maybe I didn't do something right in the actual construction of the event was there something you were hoping what happened that didn't happen I mean you could probably a little bit more follow up press after the fact so there was press of the day of it going to happen but not like rats or what so one which led to the other so it became a lot of friends and family came okay and so those friends and family which are some of our real estate partners some of our business partners they started talking about it on their blog's what I really wanted is and for us there's this sort of chasm between sort of small time food bloggers that are willing to talk about us versus the aspirational the people we want to give the exclusive tio the rial sort of you know three or four influencers in the space and so we got the people on that first rung I didn't get people on the fifth wrong and I'm not sure how to make that jump I wonder if part of the problem is that you're sort of strep so it's like you've got the stores in new york then that stores in san francisco that one in vegas right? So you're you're kind of just on the cusp of something being national but not really being national and so how do you how do you judge this thing that you're straddling that line I tend to like those because again it is a clear idea of a large number of people that might know about it and be interested in it so that that's so I mean mohr audiences never bad right? You know it's I definitely associate witchcraft as in new york and we predominately are but and I think you know where we are and actually probably where you know we all are is that the beauty of a small company is that we can try something once and then if it doesn't work we could just sort of pivot and try something else the second time is just how do I get myself smarter for the next time to do something that works the second time around I'm okay trying something and then having it not quite work right you know, I think it's all you know, within events again and it just it comes back to the idea of narrative and the story, you have to imagine how someone's going to see it and the story there might get out of it and what that article don't just think that you want press think think about the article that you want to get written and think about what the event should look like in order for that to make sense is I don't think this is something else I would tell you I would develop a relationship or two with someone in that space who you could ask these questions because, like I don't, I don't I'm not able to totally see the world from the perspective of one of these reporters, you're ideally going after, um and and they might be able to tell you exactly what you're doing wrong and it's something that as soon as you hear you're like oh, that all we have to do is this one small change it could all come together of so part of the reserve what I've david we would wrap up this section would be so I learned a lot about what I know by just asking every reporter I ever met a bunch of questions, and I used what was talking about earlier as an advertiser's of the media buyer for american farrell I would get taken out to lunch or I would take them out to lunch and I would just pick their brains and asked like you know what's your favorite kind of story what do you view as what's your most successful story what's like what are you worried about it I would ask them these questions and then I could and so I have a much more intuitive sense that it's hard for me to articulate necessarily all the time but I know how they think about stuff so I wanted you guys to be able to ask david some questions about I sort of picked the braid of a reporter so I thought we could maybe do that for a little bit and maybe there's some some questions for the online audience as well so that he would want to take a crack david weights are literally any question do you want it baby no way start then you guys can think about it but gordon see is asking once you've been featured on a lower tier blawg site have you got any tips on how to leverage that to get coverage on a large news site such as bbc news or one of the big guys uh make sure that what you're pitching has evolved since that story already happened no one wants to write the same story that someone else has already written so you can use that to prove that some people are interested but you need to be clear that the real thing and the interesting thing has not happened yet and the small blogger pitching if you selected it right should be read by people at the bbc. So it's it's not necessarily how do you do it, it's that once you knock over the first domino, the rest follow if they're lined up correctly, so how'd I get somebody like you to write about me in what I'm doing? I mean, I can email you, I can find you on twitter but like for example like, you know exactly what I'm doing, what would be my next step to getting you to write about us? I mean, emailing it is always a good way of contacting that's that's how I do it and so just, you know, especially if we've already met, which we have, you know, you send a little little follow up and you just remind remind people, what's happens, remind people what you know, what was, you know, what we were talking about at the time and say, you know that story that we said no, but I think that would make a lot of sense, and I think that would be a good time to do it for these particular reasons and maybe in that email, throw three bullet points of like, things you're doing or newsworthy things there happening in the future that she could be like oh that's a story that's a story that's not a story not interested just sort of like so he knows you he likes the idea he's interested in it now what is the story and so by now think about what could he actually write about you uh and throw that out there in a sentence or two on dh just keep an eye on the news for anything related to your product to think about news pegs and sort of what when is going to be that right moment when something that I'm are some large news event that I'm already thinking about be connected back to your product and I'm going to be interested in being able to use that angle so if thank you met him a couple months ago you sent him an email it's like hey for fashion week we're doing x or for valentine's day we have x planned and then you're like oh there's a guy on a valentine's day story they're doing well I've been a bust out a quick post about valentine's day plus your company before we take the next question from the audience to follow up on that and he said emails a good way to go do you ever once your phone to ring and it to be a business owner so what is going on man no no yeah definitely not specifically with dates and things that are happening so valentine's day how far in advance should somebody like us be contacting somebody like you should be three weeks in advance? I mean, how long's I guess to take you to write an article about a time specific, well, let's let's assume that we're talking about blog's style things, you know, if it's a different kind of are, but if it's a magazine that needs to be here basic, uh, assuming for a block style article a week is a good time period for people to remember t know about it, remember it, and then a lot of time to write about it anything more than that, you might risk getting lost, right? Don't email them three months, but like joey was talking about its product launch he's not emailing them five months before and said, hey, I'm launching a thing five months in advance can you commit right now to writing about this like, that's? A nice way for them to say no, I might respond to say yeah, sure, whatever emailed me back, right? You know, right don't you developed better to develop the relationship and then just with a reasonable amount of time, so whether that's it's like not less than twenty four hours, but maybe not more than two weeks, right? And I assume that that relates to where you are on the ladder of like if you're coming out the new iphone then yeah go ahead two months a few months after five minutes it doesn't matter right? Right that's a good point right five minutes if it's newsworthy you'll take that five minutes to write the article thing I mean, if it's something I could be convinced that I need to write about this now so I could be the first person uh, that's that's always gonna be a reason to move quickly we have any more questions from the studio audience asked a reporter you got one right here who could be writing an article about you one day in the future. I'm just curious if you have like three like if your three favorite sources or like what what do you like to write about most or who makes it who gives you something that is the easiest to write about, you know, saying like, who do you like to work with? Because they make it really easy for you and what do they do? Uh I mean there's like there's this one sort of boat maintenance guy in cajun country and I really like ah ah, good sources giving these stories that other people don't have yet that's the most important thing in my experience is sort of like uh what they observe like so like what's going on on your radar whether it's like facebook and we're like what's going on in your actual life around you that's probably the number one source then like sort of what's happening like on on on other news write and then probably direct pitches third right? Right and sort of yeah other other others heard general news and blogger sphere chatter is a really important thing can you say why you like your boat maintenance guy it's not me I'm asking you uh well he he, uh showed me where to get really good food in uh and he has he's giving me a couple stories that I haven't really heard anything about a national press before that are interesting on dh worth talking about it's really it's about the quality of the information you have access to how do you know the boat night maintenance guy like you just met him in regular life or he pitched you cold often email he's not trying to get coverage. He's he's just a nice guy. Uh, it's me as part of my job is to find good sources and people who have access to things that aren't necessarily being pushed out onto me, so, you know, I know him through various mutual whatever's on dh sort identified and someone that was going to know stuff and what does he think this is cool you should check it out usually I'm the one that calls him you know and I'm like hey what's up now you know anything interesting going on? Well yeah okay, so what about hee asked you about fold? What about the people ever bailey's maley stuff does that yeah, the acting definitely work in some circumstances and that's another place where you have to really know your source because if if you mail me some some free products that's not gonna really help because I have ethics guidelines and that sort of thing uh and so I I might that might make people uncomfortable or flat out making so that it's not gonna happen because the proper legal channels have not been gone through but if you're going to a gawker affiliate in that kind of thing they love you know, you know, people are getting stuff in the mail and so if you know that it's a source that is not going to have those ethics guidelines while the internet is going to look like then that's a really good angle to make sure that you get a little more attention and you know I'm not like a letter get a melon nothing right? And it shouldn't it should display in position your thing in a flattering light, right? So we've heard a lot about on this side of the table around the media doesn't care to be manipulated cause it's all about the page you like how do you feel or how do you respond when you find out that you've been manipulated? Uh suppose that hasn't really happened to me in any particular way uh I usually feel bad I suppose you are you like resentful were you not if you identify that it's actually coming from like a company or something would that just put them on the black list? I mean for me before uh I don't know if everyone else thinks that way, but you know, I don't like I don't like being lied to and I don't I'm not going to trust someone that I know has lied to me in the past, but you're very you very much understand that everyone has an agenda like you don't fault someone for coming to you promoting this story like, you know what they want to do and you know what you were trying to do and you, uh you're fine with that? Yeah, so long as there's not sort of flat out lying you understand the game that's being played right with those people, certainly and we're all sort of participants in this game it's uh, it's the people that are denying lee gave exists or refusing to figure out how it operates that are sort of falling behind