Quora: If None of the Well Known Tech Blogs Write about my Startup ...

One reason I love LinkedIn Answers and Quora is the quality of answers (and people answering questions). You can ask just about anything and get answers from experts or people who?ve had first hand experience. Of course on LinkedIn it?s all business. On Quora you can ask just about anything.

Case in point: This is a great question that I saw from a discussion about how to charge clients to do PR and social media work. Some charge a retainer and others by their hours/results. Either way, it?s easy to think that getting media coverage could make or break your startup. Getting media coverage can do that but more often it doesn?t. This is one reason I like blogging (tell your own stories) and press releases (for bigger stories, more formally told). Both can bring targeted traffic to your website or phone calls to your business. You don?t need to rely on the media or bloggers.

What if you try but don?t get covered on major tech blogs?to launch your business,?is your startup doomed? And, if you do get covered will you get deluged by sales? You should click on the link and read all of the answers, but I chose some of my favorite answers. The quotes come from various perspectives, from PR pros to reporters and even other startups.

First, from Robert Scoble (the king of startups):

Success can be achieved without being in any blog.?How? Well, get featured in the Apple store, for instance. Or build a viral loop into Facebook. Or write a blog that gets into Google?s search engine for something that?s often searched for. Those are far better ways to acquire customers anyway.

Blaming the press for your lack of success just tells me you really haven?t studied how to build a great company or product.

This startup?s strategy for getting everything from press to landing new clients is to?give away content and tools (such as apps):

Having experimented with conventional ads, press, exhibitions etc, we found our best marketing strategy was giving stuff of value away. That stuff ranges from unique content (videos, articles) to fully functioning tools that we were able to get 15,000-20,000 people using each month.

-Oliver Emberton,?founder of Silktide

I love this quote from Karin Husslage,?Editor of Sprout magazine. Her advice from the media side? Don?t expect the media to cover your product if it?s just like another product that?s been covered.

We hear so many stories of ?better versions? of Instagram, Youtube and Twitter that we could write a copy cat manual.?

Instead, Karen recommends that you share data about your product or show that it?s needed in the marketplace:

How many customers are using it? How many times has your app been downloaded? Do you have well-known launching customers that are very satisfied with it?

If you are just starting now and don?t have numbers to prove your idea is great, just wait a while before you send press releases. Or present studies that show how many people have the problem you solve.

Last of all, even if you do land coverage on the big tech blogs or even The New York Times, ?it doesn?t mean you?ll get sales or traffic from it:

I have gotten my clients in TC, Mashable, Entrepreneur, Wired (print), NYT and pretty much every top tier publication and the results vary from almost absolutely nothing to servers going down. If you rely on the media to be successful then you will ultimately fail because they cover so little of what?s actually out there. Make sure to set your expectations accordingly.

-?Trace Cohen,?President of Launch.it

This topic would make an excellent article in Entrepreneur Magazine. With my clients I?ve seen these patterns and many times the big wins are unpredictable. Here are some examples:

• A client got on the local news and it led to sales almost immediately.
• An author made the front page of the local newspaper with a picture of her book cover, but didn?t get a lot of sales of her book.
• A ticket business sent out a press release just about every month. A few months later customer service asked about the press releases, because they were getting a lot of calls whenever we released one.
• A golf cart company made hundreds of direct sales off one press release. It was a limited time offer (getting a golf cart almost free after a special tax rebate) that probably will never happen again.
• GungHo energy shot company landed an appearance on the local news after I found their press release on PRWeb and called them for an interview for a blog post. I shared the post with a reporter and they were on the next day.
• A pest control company got a front page story in the local newspaper from a press release followed up by one phone call to a reporter. I wrote the press release from a blog post they wrote and I thought would make a great story.

Have you been successful getting media coverage, either on a major tech blog or publication? How did it benefit your business?

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Source: http://www.newspapergrl.com/quora-if-none-of-the-well-known-tech-blogs-write-about-my-startup-did-i-fail

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