

Ask HN: How long to wait after initial pitch to TechCrunch? - askar

After your initial pitch to TechCrunch and no response from them for couple of days what would be the best course of a followup action? Do they normally acknowledge the receipt of these pitch emails? How do we make sure if they have read the email or for some reason it directly went to their spam folders? Do you think pitching to them again would be a good idea?
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kloncks
TechCrunch's audience isn't all-encompassing.

If they didn't respond and you have a stellar product, just contact their
chief competitors. I'm sure they'd love to profile you.

GigaOM, TheNextWeb, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, etc. Tech news isn't all about
TechCrunch.

That said, I think the best feedback loop is just a simple "Show HN: Here's my
project." I'd say that not only are we super friendly, but we'll actually give
you back feedback, suggestions, complaints, and advise like no other.

~~~
ig1
Not to mention the writers of Techcrunch, etc. read HN and frequently source
stories from here.

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askar
I'm aware of it but since it looks like they don't even acknowledge the
receipt of the email pitches it kind of confuses us to wait and see or just
completely forget about it and move on. That's when I thought of asking how
long to wait till I move on to HN (since I don't want to piss them off if they
really intend to write about it later and it's just a matter of time).

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benologist
If you don't hear back within an hour or two assume they're writing another
riveting non-piece on Quora. Eg,

Question On Quora More Important Than Other Startups

~~~
askar
At least acknowledging if they've got the email or not would go a long way
from the one who sent that email and eagerly waiting for a response (positive
or negative). But...

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WillyF
Would you rather have them spend hours replying to thousands of e-mails from
companies they don't want to cover? Or spend the time covering more companies?
I know it sucks not to get a response, but that's the way they operate.

My company will never get covered by any of the major tech blogs even though
it gets way more traffic than any other startup in the entry level
jobs/internships space and is profitable. They don't like writing about
content plays, so I've moved on and sought out publicity from other places.

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alexaleesf
I would wait no more than 48 hours. Closely re-examine your pitch and
headline, etc. How can you improve it, before your next step.

ASK: What is different about you're doing? What is the "hook" in the story you
are proposing? Is there something different about your founding team? You
might also survey the news over that period of time. If there was a big story
then naturally, your story got buried. That's a good reason to try again. If
it was a slow news day and you still got passed, it will be a hard second
sell. Definitely try the other outlets - and I'm not just talking about the
blog media. Self-publish. Publish here on news.yc or anywhere. Don't be
discouraged. It adds all up, somehow. The lazy way to do PR is to think that
TechCrunch -- and you’re done.

You must be very proactive and very aggressive. But most of all - you must be
adding value with your news. Why should people be interested in this “news?”
If you can’t answer that, then think again or try again when the product is
ready for that.

One trend that I have seen a lot of success with - having a well thought out
supplementary content. Videos are great. How about an infographic or
slideshow? Sometimes that’s better than a video. These things are more work
and resources, but the supplementary content is usually welcomed and almost
always posted.

Contact me ( through my profile) if you are really stuck. Probably can’t help
for a few days, but I feel for you people on these things. I was a reporter
and the line of thinking for me is basically instinctive. Happy to help when I
can.

My experience: <http://scr.bi/gN9Xvk> <http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexalee>

------
veb
Do your pitch here instead! :)

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askar
Will do it very soon. I know Show HN is very effective and gets a lot more
contextual feedback than just visitors.

