- You have to tell the press a story, and it has to be interesting. The best stories are about people, the worst about technologies. For startups the story of how you have struggled through countless insourmountable obstacles and are now making big money is perfect. It is personal, it fits the cliche, and it gives readers something to look up to. Don't focus on your technology (unless you are trying to get an article in a trademag or something similar) normal people just don't care. If you need to talk about technology try to find a story where people are using your product to gain some advantage. Involve emotions if possible, it makes the story better. How Tim re-found his long-lost kindergarten girlfriend in old age and the two of them now happily living together because of Google is a much better story than how good Google's serach algorithm is.
- Personal connetctions and relationships. This is what PR people do. Journalists are different, have different taste, and find different things interesting. A story that may seem uninteresting to one might be picked up by another. If you don't know anyone try to read through the newssources where you'd like to be covered and see which journalist writes about stuff that is close to what you do. Then contact him. By phone. Talk to him and ask him what he thinks and whether he would like to do an interview with you. Journalists are nice people, and they make their living talking to people, so don't be afraid of it.
- Give them an easy story. Combining one and two above to make an easy story that can more or less be copy-pasted to give a full article. Journalists are lazy. Don't forget to include photos. (Again, it's people that are interesting. If you include product shoots make sure there are some with a proud owner showing off the product)
- Don't ever lie. Journalists have an excelent nose for liars, and when (not if) they catch you they'll never talk to you again.
"This is what PR people do. Journalists are different, have different taste, and find different things interesting."
You might experiment with PR Matchpoint to find journalists who have written on similar topics in the past. The site lets you cut and paste in either your entire press release, or else your website copy, or your keywords. It will then return a list of journalists who have written on similar themes.
These guys presented at NY Tech last week. According to them, there isn't really any other way to do what they do because all of the other databases of journalists are sorted based on beat or a few keywords, but not the actual text of what the journalists are writing. I haven't actually tried the site myself yet, but I probably will fairly shortly.
This makes me feel better (or not): I wrote a prototype of a similar system for social media sites. The idea was to collect a database of content submitted to different sites and use Pearson's correlation coefficient to compare a submitted press release to content on these sites. My goal, help people find the right place to submit to. The technology worked but I didn't pique any interest so I let it go.
If you have limited time, concentrate on MixMax's first point-- being worth talking about. It's all about the story and NOT about the algorithm. Read "Made to Stick" (the book) to understand the recipe for press-worthy ideas. I'll summarize it for you: To be a sticky idea, it needs to be simple, concrete, credible, trigger emotions, and have a STORY arc. You can read the excerpts page to get the gist:
They MIGHT have done it with PR talent/relationships and outreach... But quite possibly all they did is craft their story well. The "green" stuff is really hip right now, so that gives them a HUGE leg up.
(we've gotten ridiculous PR and blog coverage and not once did we ever hire a PR pro or email a reporter)
- You have to tell the press a story, and it has to be interesting. The best stories are about people, the worst about technologies. For startups the story of how you have struggled through countless insourmountable obstacles and are now making big money is perfect. It is personal, it fits the cliche, and it gives readers something to look up to. Don't focus on your technology (unless you are trying to get an article in a trademag or something similar) normal people just don't care. If you need to talk about technology try to find a story where people are using your product to gain some advantage. Involve emotions if possible, it makes the story better. How Tim re-found his long-lost kindergarten girlfriend in old age and the two of them now happily living together because of Google is a much better story than how good Google's serach algorithm is.
- Personal connetctions and relationships. This is what PR people do. Journalists are different, have different taste, and find different things interesting. A story that may seem uninteresting to one might be picked up by another. If you don't know anyone try to read through the newssources where you'd like to be covered and see which journalist writes about stuff that is close to what you do. Then contact him. By phone. Talk to him and ask him what he thinks and whether he would like to do an interview with you. Journalists are nice people, and they make their living talking to people, so don't be afraid of it.
- Give them an easy story. Combining one and two above to make an easy story that can more or less be copy-pasted to give a full article. Journalists are lazy. Don't forget to include photos. (Again, it's people that are interesting. If you include product shoots make sure there are some with a proud owner showing off the product)
- Don't ever lie. Journalists have an excelent nose for liars, and when (not if) they catch you they'll never talk to you again.