[We asked PR vet Alex Shapiro to contrast the worlds of agency and in-house PR. He knows both. Enjoy the read. -Ed.] For agency PR pros, the grass may seem particularly greener right now on the in-house side and there's no shortage of hot companies hiring. We're all told the job market's hot, and that can often feel true for the revolving doors of PR.
[We asked Matthew Lynley, a former journalist with VentureBeat, TechCrunch and the WSJ, what makes for a great comms professional. Here's what he had to say. -- Ed.] Companies with massive budgets can hire a PR team the size of a small army. But hiring more people doesn’t make the company better at PR.
[We asked veteran tech reporter Mitch Wagner to deconstruct two of his recent news stories, explaining why he wrote them the way he did. Mitch has done so -- you will enjoy his contribution. --Ed.]
A tech journalist today needs to get to the point right away. As a tech journalist, I have an ideal reader in mind every time I write an article. As I write, I'm always asking myself how I can best serve that reader with the news they need to know, fast.
[Enjoy this true story from SWMS contributor and PR pro Anton Molodetskiy -Ed.] You may think that journalists would rather talk to a telemarketer than answer your phone call, but the phone is still a key tool for both reporters and PR. I learned this hard way a few years ago while managing outreach for a B2B startup coming out of stealth.
Placing contributed content ideally comes without strings -- "pitch it, place it, forget it" -- but that's not how it works at Third Door Media, publishers of Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. Third Door is in the community business. Community editor Wendy Almeida wants to help but you must help her too.
Paid content is more important then ever. Here are pathways to get the dialog going with the Tier 1 shops that offer it. The rates change constantly and it's all negotiable. Here's where you start.
Lots of sites run video but few in Tier 1 run recurring "programs" with their own themes and producers. Here's a cheat sheet on the Tier 1 programs we were able to find, along with guidance on which producer(s) to contact.
Podcasting is more than 15 years old now and tracking the good ones is darn near impossible but we'll try anyway. Here's a list of 26 media brands that offer at least one tech podcast, and another 18 indie tech podcasts worth listening to and pitching. We also point you, more broadly, to hundreds more.
We recently conducted a video meeting with a subscriber who sought SWMS POV on the following media relations questions. With the subscriber's permission, here are the questions and our responses. Hope you find them useful.
Newsletters sure are tough to pitch. Many lack bespoke content. Many are assembled by managing editors or junior folks with scant domain expertise. Others are columnists impervious to suggestion. Every now and again you’ll find someone pitchable, such as...
If you're looking for pitchable deep expertise in the IT infrastructure space, you can still find it in Packet Pushers, a team of podcasting publishers who celebrate their tenth anniversary this May. Freshly posted on their site is the 500th episode of the Heavy Networking podcast.
There must be hundreds of newsletters out there with more arriving all the time. How does one get a grip? This cheat sheet will help. It's a master list of where these newsletters live. Use it to identify and subscribe to the ones most relevant to you.
