Expert Series: Louis Gray Source Successful businesses are always making choices and sacrifices, strategically looking as to how they are going to prioritize their resources, including human capital, budgets, and, of course, time. As the world around them adapts, so too do they need to make changes internally to respond, or to predict where trends are going – and if they guess right, the business could catapult ahead of less-agile competition. Almost nowhere else in business has the radical transformation…
TechCrunch Kills The Embargo, But PR Holds the Smoking Gun
Disclosure, I am a contributor to TechCrunch and I have had my fair share of embargoes broken by various reporters and bloggers over the years. In some cases, we trusted the wrong people. Credit In what is sure to come as an absolute surprise to the tech PR industry, TechCrunch proclaimed that it will no longer honor embargoes, unless they’re granted exclusivity. The move was triggered by a growing pattern of underhanded and also irresponsible behavior in the backchannels of…
Launching at TechCrunch50? Don’t Fire Your PR Just Yet
Note, This is the uncut, unedited version of my TechCrunch post, “The Big Conference Launch: How to Stand Out from the Crowd.” I’m also running this version to provide a deeper understanding of how to rise above the noise with at least 124 other tech companies/products competing for mind share at TechCrunch50 and DEMOfall. Disclosure: I am not affiliated with TechCrunch50. If you are a participating TC50 company, resident TechCrunch PR expert Sarah Ross is available to share and review…
PR is Not Dead
Source Stop the presses…there’s another “PR is Dead” meme that’s circulating the blogosphere again. This time, all that’s new is that many bloggers are revealing that they prefer discovering new and interesting products on their own and breaking the news before anyone else. Welcome to the news business. Any print or broadcast news reporter would say the same thing, and honestly, it’s the competition and desire to break news first that’s driven the business for over 100 years. Did that…
PR Tips for Startups – The Director’s Cut
Note: This post was originally published on TechCrunch as “PR Secrets for Startups.” Many thanks to Michael Arrington and Erick Schonfeld for giving me the opportunity to share my experiences with the startup community. Due to space constraints, the original draft, which was entitled “PR Tips for Startups,” did not run in its entirety. Some of the edits actually wound up changing the context of the post and its intentions. I’ve included the full draft for you here, as I…
MicroPR Personalizes Public Relations
New media is forcing the rapid evolution of communications and is reinventing the science of public relations into the art of “personalized” relations. And, with micromedia further refining and improving how we communicate with each other, PR is going to learn the hard way, that the days of blasts and untargeted spam pitching will get us nowhere with today’s influencers. Stowe Boyd placed a stake in the ground during the Web 2.0 Expo with the introduction of #TwitPitch, a very…
The Evolution of Press Releases
Thank you to Erick Schonfeld and Michael Arrington for giving me the opportunity share my vision, and experience, on the evolution of the press release on TechCrunch. There’s certainly no shortage of opinions on where we are and where we need to be in order to improve the working relationships between PR and bloggers, journalists, and analysts and the brands we ultimately represent – including our own. There are just better ways to share information, and hopefully, this post helps…
In Blogger and Media Relations, You Earn the Relationships You Deserve
Every now and again a reporter or blogger decides to shake up the PR industry by showcasing how we FAIL, flop, or simply when we do things wrong. Some do so out of anger, others are genuine in their desire to help, while some are simply tired and do so out of spite. This time around however, Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb has started a conversation that proactively helps PR and communications professionals learn how to more effectively work with influential…
The New Rules of Breaking News, Beware of Embargoes
Part Four of a series discussing blogger relations, “Building a Bridge Between Your Story, Bloggers, and People.” Scroll to the bottom to read this article with a white background. The New Rules of Breaking News was written to open your mind and unlock creativity when introducing new products and services. It subscribes to the notion that there isn’t one “audience” to any given story or campaign. There are opportunities outside of the usual routine of drafting press releases and blasting…
Bloggers Versus PR – The Aftermath and What We Learned
Aaron Brazell of Technosailor hosted an incredible and informative roundtable to discuss the state of PR, reporters, and bloggers. The conversation was focused on five questions and included the answers of Doug Haslam, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Cathryn Hrudicka, Marc Orchant, and yours truly. Following is the complete Q&A; with my answers to help make it easier to read. The complete balance of everyone’s answers are available at Technosailor. (Also scroll down to the bottom to download this as a Word doc…
