
Ask HN: What am I doing wrong here? (PR/Marketing an app) - brandnewlow
Bit of a head-scratcher here.<p>I run a social news site for Chicago over at WindyCitizen.com.  Since a massive redesign back in January, I've seen its traffic, activity, and influence grow steadily.<p>Problem: I've been really successful so far in working WITH the local media.  But completely unsuccessful in getting any coverage FROM the local media that I could show to advertisers to let them know we're legit.  I knew it would be tough to launch something aimed at a market without a "Techcrunch" to speak to early adopters, but this is getting ridiculous.<p>Here's what I mean:<p>1. I've hammered out partnerships to have our submission/voting buttons on the local alt. weekly site and all major local blogs. This was a nontrivial feat.<p>2. The local CBS affiliate has added our top stories widget to its site.  Also nontrivial.<p>3. Journalists from every local publication have glommed on to us and are posting their stories to the Citizen on a daily basis.  Of our 2000 members, I estimate we have at least 50 Chicago journalists among them, including editors and deputy editors who are posting stories and leaving comments on our site on a regular basis.<p>4. Last month we had over 4000 stories and events posted and reached about 80,000 people.<p>So these journalists are all using the Citizen and these publications all want our traffic (because it's local), but no one's ever run a "hey, check out this cool site!" story on us.<p>I'm beginning to think the statute of limitations for that happening is running out.<p>I've also had zero luck getting coverage from tech blogs.  I've assumed that's because the site's aimed at Chicago.<p>I think part of my problem is that I have a background in journalism.  The idea of aggressively wining and dining reporters at local papers, courting them and calling them up all the time to tell them what's new is pretty gross to me.  I e-mail a good number of folks when we have news and have made friends with a lot of local media, but no dice on the coverage front.  It's very humbling.<p>Clearly, I'm doing something wrong here.  What?
======
patio11
I don't know that I would even _want_ coverage from Techcrunch, for either
myself or you. It warps your perception of what provides value and what your
goals are. For example, you might spend months worrying about getting featured
by fickle tech publications when you could be providing news to Chicagoans.

It is wonderful that you've got a site which journalists are using as self-
promotion engines. Now you have to figure out a way to get their core use of
the site to be a you-promotion engine. The traditional way to do that in
journalism is original reporting, which means they have to cite you. They
probably won't appreciate that -- you'd be competing with them, after all.

On the other hand, if you had some sort of scoreboard of the most influential
reporters in Chicago, I guarantee you they would fall over themselves to cite
_that_ , particularly for the ones who ended up winning.

(Note that this puts them in exactly the position you are vis-a-vis Techcrunch
right now. "Dang, if they would only cover me I'd finally get the respect I
deserve from my editor! Please cover me! I wonder why he won't cover me? Is it
something I said? Can I call him or would that be forward?" I know which side
of the unrequited obsession I'd prefer to be on.)

Tell me, Windy Citizen, who is the most influential columnist in Chicago right
now? You are, after all, the paper of record for the papers of record. You can
take a page out of your customers' books and give them a nice little plaque
(or badge for their site, focused again on promoting them, not you) for it if
you want -- is there a single hotdog stand in Chicago which does not have a
"Voted Best Chicago Hot Dog 1992 by the Reader" in it?

Ideally you'd be using the highly competitive journalistic impulses to provide
more, better news to Chicagoans rather than just playing inside baseball with
local media.

~~~
niyazpk
Exactly.

People will always promote themselves.

Give them a page like _windycitizen.com/username_ to aggregate their stuff and
they will start promoting that page.

~~~
brandnewlow
I have that.....but the profile pages need an overhaul to look more Twitter-
ish I think. Good to hear someone else agrees. Thanks.

Example: <http://www.windycitizen.com/kristenthometz>

~~~
thorax
I like the way it works now. But I like the ranking idea a lot-- giving awards
to top journalistic reporting.

You could even have a People's Choice voting for different areas each year and
perhaps those journals/editorials/etc will ask people to come to your site to
vote for their paper/publication.

------
qeorge
You need a more compelling story. "Cool new website" isn't a story that works
on traditional media. Try to find a way that the Windy Citizen is helping the
people of Chicago's real lives.

Consider these headlines:

Local Website Rallies Community In Search For Missing Boy

Mayoral Scandal Galvanizes Citizens Against Corruption

School Redistricting Plan Draws Fervor, Online and Off

All of these stories could be largely or entirely about WindyCitizen.com, but
are interesting to a larger demographic.

Once you've found your story, write the article yourself, then break it down
into bullet points, anecdotes, facts, and statistics to send to reporters.
Writing this article should be as easy for them as paraphrasing a Wikipedia
page.

Be direct in your request, and make sure they know that other news outlets are
interested in the story. Local news won't want to miss anything their
competitors will be covering, even if its a dog show.

Good Luck!

------
mseebach
A few ideas:

\- Find a local journalist that does mainstream-tech stories (i.e. the guy
that wrote the "Facebook owns your photos" story about half a year ago), and
pitch your site as a sort of Facebook for Chicagoans (-ians? -ers? -aks?)

\- Make yourself the story. Pitch how you put you career and your home on the
line (or whatever you did, but dramatize it. Whatever it was, it wasn't a few
boring sunday afternoons and evenings, it was _hard_ ) to bring relevant local
news and commentary to the people of Chicago, and get a human interest story.
Maybe a morning TV show?

\- Swallow your pride. You colleagues make a good salary drowning you in
shallow, cute stories, that's mostly copy-pasted anyway. Make them make one of
them about you.

------
_pius
First off, congrats on building a site that a lot of people use and respect.
I've definitely heard of it and I'm not from Chicago, so it must have gotten
coverage _somewhere._

The first question is probably a dumb one: Have you actually asked any of the
journalists you work with to get you some coverage?

Also, you may have some success following up with the many reporters and
bloggers who are covering the whole "new journalism" and "death of newspapers"
beat. Talk to Dave Winer (<http://www.scripting.com>).

You're in Chicago. Do you have any contacts at Medill? Reach out to them and
do a partnership ... you should definitely get some coverage that way.

~~~
brandnewlow
Thanks. You've probably heard about me on Hacker News. I post here way too
often.

A few notes:

1\. I've asked a few times, and sent out press releases now and then. It's an
intellectual challenge though for me to pitch people I consider my friends.
Frankly, I think it's unethical and it puts them in a really tough spot where
I'm just another person asking them to write about them.

2\. Funny you should mention those cats. I've sent a few of those guys updates
on a regular basis over the last 16 months, after all, I'm trying something
new and seeing some results, but I've never heard back from any of them. I've
not tried Mr. Winer and will send him a note, but I've grown pretty skeptical
as to whether the "death of newspaper" guys are actually interested in new
ideas, or just ideas that conform to their own. Part of the reason I spend so
much time on Hacker News is because the journalism community isn't so
interested in startups, but in saving their existing brands in my opinion. I
don't really fit into that. I've got more in common with the Bingo Card guy
then with someone starting a non-profit news organization supported by rich
friends of his and foundations.

3\. I went to Medill and consult for them on occasion. For this reason,
they've more or less said their student reporters can't write about me, though
I guess I made the alumni magazine this month (LOL). The school's had me in to
speak to students pretty regularly, which has been a great source of interns.

~~~
sqs
Try some more to get a story in the Northwestern paper (or UChicago, UIC,
etc.). You probably know some people who go there--get them to contact their
friends who work at the paper.

I've seen lots of stories that originally got picked up by college newspapers
and then appeared in the NYT, SJ Mercury News, etc.

------
sho
Hm. Well, the domain/site name is fantastic. But I don't feel any attraction
to the place; it's like Digg with a filter that the stories have to mention
Chicago. There is no consistency. The top 10 items go from sport, political
gossip, and food reviews to tech CEO arrests and an article about an upcoming
museum exhibit. Is there anyone who would be interested in more than one of
those things? Who is the target user? There is no focus; it's just random
noise to me.

I have one suggestion, even if it's a bit evil: decide the kind of articles
your target user is interested in, and then once in a while, go in and vote
the crap out of them. Yes it's cheating. But you need momentum and you need to
create a positive feedback loop. Seeing a whole page of near-random articles
all with 3 or 4 votes is a turn-off and a self-fulfilling prophecy.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Instead of cheating, maybe an "Editor's pick" above the number 1 would do.

------
kyro
You won't get actual users by having TC write about how "you're a cool
website." That's not what you want. Why? Because there's no real value there.
The real value is to be found in stories where The Windy Citizen's name is
attached. Let me explain. If I was someone interested in Chicago news and was
reading a blog post or an article in the newspaper and read "Windycitizen.com
broke the story about the government scandal," I would either consciously or
subconsciously realize that Windycitizen.com is something of value. They broke
the story that I read. The traffic you'll get from this sort of marketing will
be slower and more gradual, sure, but it'll be REAL traffic, not a traffic
spike from TC because they said you were cool. Also, a site like Digg got its
initial traffic because of Kevin Rose's celebrity. You don't have that, so
don't look at Digg, if you are, as a metric since you two seem to be user
generated social news sites.

As to actual marketing tactics, you need to create a story. Support a cause
that stirs up lots of emotions. 'Support Protest Against Blah - Upvote!' Be
known as the site that rallied individuals for a specific cause. If you can
generate enough buzz about that, local blogs and even national outlets will
write about you, not as a cool site, but as the site that helped facilitate a
specific situation. Create a specific story.

Also, I'm not quite sure why you're after press from TC, or national/global
press in general. It would seem that the traffic you'd get from them would be
of no worth as someone like me in southern California wouldn't be at all
interested in Chicago news.

~~~
brandnewlow
These are all good points. I never said I want TC coverage, just that I'm in a
space where there is no TC, i.e. a relevant site that can send me lots of
relevant traffic and that isn't afraid to link to me. People like to gripe
about TC all the time, but it's done a lot of people a lot of good.

Your points about having a story are well-taken, too.

The reason why I'd like some coverage is because I spend my days calling up
local businesses to talk about sponsoring us. None of them have heard of us.
They don't care how many readers I have or don't have. If they haven't heard
of me, it's not something they're interested in. Getting a write-up in the
press would give me something to point to in that regard.

------
webwright
That's not a headscratcher. Get into their heads and ask yourself, "Why would
I write/report on these guys?" I can think of one HUGE reason why you
wouldn't-- because it's a better source of news with a bunch of links to
stories from OTHER news entities. You don't see people reporting on Google
News except to say how evil and unfair they are. Not many news outlets do the
"hey look, it's a great new way to get news!" stories on Google News.

If you want legitimacy, I'd do this. Create a "submit this" widget for your
site and promote it to the news folks using your site. Add a "Leading Chicago
News Outlets" block somewhere on your site (prominently for now, you can fade
it away later) and say you'll give people who install that widget placement in
that block. Send any "partner" site who installs the widget a weekly report of
the traffic you're sending them.

Then, when you talk with advertisers, call these people your "news partners"
and describe the widget relationship. It'll seem pretty legit. Toss in a
anchor link to your site within the widget code (outside of any javascript)
with the right anchor text ("Chicago News") and you'll rank #1 for the search
phrase chicago news before you know it (bonus!).

------
10ren
Don't know what you're doing wrong (if anything), but a suggestion:

1\. As a journalist, think back to the stories that were compelling to you,
that you wanted to write about, that you knew were the great, newsworthy
stories, professionally.

2\. Next, find a story like that, _that WindyCitizen is somehow an essential
part of it_. (it's great if WC can be the centre of the story, but it doesn't
sound like you are there yet; instead, make it part of the story. Also, choose
a story that you would want to be associated with, that puts WC in a role that
you want it to have).

3\. Now, write up that story, and give it to your journalists. This basically
a press release, and it saves journalists a lot of time _if it really is a
genuinely newsworthy story_. That is, do their work for them.

(If you haven't already done this, it means either that I am totally off-
base.... or that you are simply too close to the business to see it from an
outsider's point of view.)

------
thomasswift
Just a few ideas off the top of my head, have you tried submitting to
masshable, I sent one email and got covered. Traffic was nice, but did die
down, but the amount of people that recycle(copy) thier posts has a nice
trailing effect. They are more keen to mention sites with more 'social'
aspects.

Have you tried getting onto nbc5 news segments were they talk about websites,
I forget what they call it, but I think that might be something worthwhile
because it could open your site up to new audience of people who don't read
the tech blog and people who consume more tradional media.

Either way greetings from the suburbs and keep the good work up!

------
jonknee
Maybe because you're competition (either real or perceived)? Local media
doesn't typically cover other local media in a positive light.

~~~
brandnewlow
This isn't local media. It's a web site that lets people share and rate neat
local stuff.

This was why I went the social news route. My first idea was a local blog
network. I realized that would never get covered, so I went with something
that would help and be useful to local news orgs so we could have partnerships
like the ones I mentioned.

We're no more competition than Twitter of Facebook is.

~~~
anamax
> We're no more competition than Twitter of Facebook is.

If you're running advertising or have viewers, you're competition.

------
sammyo
I didn't find the essay on a quick google but I remember a classic pg
discussion that hiring a publicist was their best investment. Largest
expensive also, but the right one knows how to get the mentions in the media.
But don't worry about competition, traditional journalists will happily dig
their own grave for another byline.

------
brlewis
This might or might not help you, but I think Chris Brogan might appreciate
your thoughts on his latest post, [http://www.chrisbrogan.com/wiring-a-city-
and-the-internet-of...](http://www.chrisbrogan.com/wiring-a-city-and-the-
internet-of-place/)

~~~
brandnewlow
Just left a comment on his post. Thanks!

~~~
brlewis
Double-posted

~~~
brandnewlow
Hmm. Odd. I blame Discus. :)

------
sutro
Splash a convincing photoshopped picture of Mayor Daley having sex with Mrs.
Blagojevich across your front page. Problem solved.

~~~
brandnewlow
Have you seen our Daily Daley blog? <http://dailydaley.windycitizen.com>

Enjoy!

------
rms
Did you ask any of them to write about you?

~~~
brandnewlow
I have, yes. Though I've tried not to be annoying about it because I see these
people fairly often and they post their stories to the site pretty frequently.
I can't stand people trying to sell me stuff every time I see them. I don't
want to be that guy. Again, maybe this is the problem.

~~~
jellisjapan
Is your story actually interesting? I know in New Orleans, local successes
make the news all the time because there is an interesting story to back it
up. If your pitch is just that you made a website about Chicago and not much
more, it wouldn't interest me much either.

~~~
brandnewlow
Good question.

So back in April, I was running out of cash after an advertiser bailed on a
payment. I appealed to our members to chip in and become Micropatrons a la
Kottke.org, and they sent me $1200 in 10s and 20s in about 48 hours. I was
stunned. That's also when I realized that I had something that some people
were really jazzed about.

I wrote my "story" out here for that effort:
<http://www.windycitizen.com/sponsors/micropatron> If you're bored at work,
give it a look and tell me if you think it's interesting or not.

------
brecht
Your site has to become cool before anyone is going to bother reporting on it.
You don't get automatic reporter points just because you feel strongly that
you should, or even because you work hard at it. As it stands, your site is
Yet Another Portal or News Aggregator or whatever and it's just not a
particularly compelling... thing.

~~~
brandnewlow
Duly noted. This sort of reaction is helpful. Of course I think what I'm doing
is unique (first local social news site), but if others don't get that from a
quick visit, or they think that's a pretty "meh" idea, then that's good to
hear.

~~~
uptown
Take a look at EveryBlock.com. They do a lot of location-specific stuff right.
Might be some concepts you could adopt for your site.

~~~
brandnewlow
Everyblock's a great site, but they're addressing a different problem in a
different way. They're scraping rather than letting people post to the site,
and they're not interested in what's interesting in Chicago, but what's
happening near you. It's a little different. My goal with the Citizen is to
have a front page that represents everything you should read right now to know
what's cool and relevant in Chicago.

~~~
anamax
> My goal with the Citizen is to have a front page that represents everything
> you should read right now to know what's cool and relevant in Chicago.

Umm, what was it you wrote above about not being competition for local media?

~~~
brandnewlow
Like every other web site, yes, we're competing for people's time and
attention. This isn't an editorial-driven magazine or online newspaper. It's a
service that lets people share and rate local stuff with their friends.

~~~
anamax
> This isn't an editorial-driven magazine or online newspaper.

So what? Your stated goal "a front page that represents everything you should
read right now to know what's cool and relevant in Chicago." is direct
competition for every general-purpose news outlet in Chicago.

They don't think "he has no editors" or "he's not calling it a newspaper".
They see "he's trying to be the place people go to find out what's cool and
relevant" because that's what they're doing.

You're competition.

