Bootstrapped PR w/Social Media
Posted on August 1, 2008
Filed Under The Startup
We could have learned alot last week with the public launch of Cuil - a "secret" search engine run by ex-Google employees. Not because of their actual product which most have described as mediocre, but rather by their pre-launch PR campaign which had not only EVERY tech blogger in the sphere writing about them - but mainstream publications such as CNN or MSNBC.
For me I read all the tech journals so I generally watch all the launches and fails come and go, but this time I actually got a call my my MOM who saw on the evening news that this was the new Google competitor.
What does this all mean?
It means that the PR Firm representing CUIL did a damn good job.
What can we learn from this?
Get 33 million $$ in Venture Capital funding and hire the same PR firm
But really- most of what they did can be replicated to a certain degree. Now while these steps may not land you on the evening news, there are at least a few things everybody can do to get closer to this goal. How do we do this?
Social Media.
These are the steps
- Arrange a list of all the A+B+C list bloggers within your niche that you can find
- If you are in the internet-tech industry and don't know where to start - then the Now Public list is a good place to start. Each of the people on this list will probably have thousands of followers on social media so a mention from just of few of them can send your news viral.
- So now that you have your list you need a PR release.
- For those that don't know a Press Release is you essentially pre-writing the article for the blogger/journalist so they don't have to do all the work. The more clear and easy your press release, the more likely they are to publish. Use bullet points to highlight key facts and competitors
- There are different strategies for writing a press release, but we can see that CUIL positioned itself as the savior come Google killer founded by ex-google employees.
- We can learn from this by establishing your Headline company in relation to an already well established brand. Something like "Epsi. Its Pepsi without the P"
you get the point. By doing it in this way we give the blogger and public a basis to create a 'one line understanding of our product.'
- Getting the PR out -Now that we have our press release - how do we get people to write about it?
- Well since we probably now have a list of 50-100 different bloggers we want to approach - we need to be efficient about our contacts.
- Most bloggers will have email address's published somewhere, but I can tell you that getting your message in their inbox and getting them to read and pay attention to it are 2 different stories.
- How to get the Bloggers Attention - Setting an Embargo
- This is the tricky part especially we are working in Bulk. Ideally you have spent the last year building up your contacts and social followings on Twitter and such - but for the sake of this article we will assume you know nobody.
- The most obvious way is to send the PR release to their email address. I imagine with A-List you will get about a %2 responce rate and B-list maybe %30 if that.
- A better way would first be to establish a line of rapport with that particular blogger. Usually a quick personalized email commenting on something on one of their posts will do the trick. The point is to get them to respond. Then on the 2nd or 3rd email when you know you have their attention - drop the press release on them. Much more interesting to write about news coming from a friend than a stranger.
- Other way is to connect with them on a social network - Twitter, Friendfeed Facebook etc.. Meaning that since these are NEWER forms of media that are less infiltrated by spammers - they will be less suspect of stranger contacting them.
- Promote their glory. A great man once said "Help others achieve their own glory and they will lift you to glory in the process."
- Meaning make it clear when you set the news that it is hot and needs to be written about ASAP.
- The way to do this is set an Embargo on the news (an embargo is asking a blogger to not publish the story until a certain time/date - such as when you actually release the product)
- B-list bloggers will feel honored to play the embargo game. A-list will yawn, but placing an embargo means that the news 'must be important'
- So by setting the Embargo you achieve a few things
- Create immediacy which does not allow them to put off writing about your story. Meaning the chances of them writing are increased ten-fold
- Makes it so that all the bloggers on the planet effectively publish a story on your product release at almost all the same time. This will then create what is known as the spill over effect
- Meaning if today some guy publishes and next week another guy and next week another - it is good press, but not HOT.
- You want them all publishing at the same time- because this will serve to exponentially HEAT up the news and there is a damn good chance you will then be picked up my mainstream news or elusive A-Lists. As they will not want to be left out of the coverage
To Review - Bootstrapped PR with Social Media
- Make a list of 50-100 Bloggers in your industry
- Ping them all to get them to respond so that you have their attention
- Write a great press-release that essentially they can copy and reword for their article
- Set a news embargo date - same for all.
- Watch it grow and multiply.
Comments
4 Responses to “Bootstrapped PR w/Social Media”
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I would recommend a social media release! Not only because it works, but because you can build and share it free with PitchEngine. Tweet me @pitchengine for an alpha invite!
Apparently Cuil was not quite ready for launch during the first day or two - many medium long tail queries did not return results at all, and even general queries returned way fewer results than they should have considering Cuil’s claims of having indexed so many pages already. They did improve somewhat afterward, however, and seem to be picking up more results and increasing relevance as more people have been testing out the engine.
In the long run, I hope they get things together and perform well enough to compete with the major search engines and then maybe do some advertising. I would like to see more serious competitors to Google in order to hold their power in check and encourage more transparency overall.
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Great information on social media in this article and insight on how to improve your marketing skills. Thanks for the info!