

Anatomy of blekko's press launch - jsrfded
http://www.skrenta.com/2010/11/anatomy_of_blekkos_press_launc.html

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pierrefar
_The Mashable piece alone received more than 1,400 retweets._

How many of those 1400 retweets are just bots automatically retweeting
anything coming from Mashable? The dark secret of twitter marketing is that
the number of tweets can be so misleading because of the bot activity. You'll
also see a ton of twitter bots when you get coverage on RWW, and I'm sure
others.

And yes, I've actually watched live coverage of articles I'm interested in
(e.g. covering my sites) spread and checked out most tweets that came up. It's
quite easy for a human to spot a bot vs real user tweeting once you look at
their twitter stream. Most are bots.

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jsrfded
btw, when the WSJ broke our embargo, I was on my way into the office. We were
planning to get there around 3-4pm for the 9pm PT launch. Some folks were
already there and turned the site live since the first press had gone up.

But techcrunch has a policy of not posting their story if an embargo is
broken, so we didn't get the TC story that we had briefed them on.

~~~
andre3k1
TechCrunch goes one step further. Often Arrington will get the PR firm
handling the press release to allow them to publish their story a solid 10
minutes before anyone else. If the embargo is set for 9pm PST, TechCrunch
often shoots for 8:50 and most of the time they are allowed. As a result, they
break the story and get a ton of inbound traffic.

~~~
andre3k1
Not sure why anyone would shamelessly downvote me. I wasn't lying. This sort
of thing happens every night.

Just look at Brightcove 5's launch that happened a few hours ago (9pm PST). TC
posted their story at 8:50pm, everyone else followed at 9pm PST.

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ericflo
Interesting that he specifically calls out their PR firm as being good. Seems
that most of the advice I've seen lately goes in the other direction,
eschewing a PR firm entirely in favor of more guerrilla-style marketing.

I think in the end, like most other things, it depends on the type of company
you're trying to build. In Blekko's case they're trying to build a search
engine, so they want to get as much mainstream press as possible. Someone like
GitHub, for example, with a much more technical and focused user base, did
just fine by going to conferences and buying developers free drinks.

~~~
rsingel
As a journalist who agreed to Blekko's embargo, I'll give you my take. Very
few companies can get journalists to agree to an embargo. Most startups don't
have the luxury. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Zynga, Foursquare can do it.
It's a question of importance and dilution. When you agree to an embargo, you
don't know how many other sites you are competing against and you judge
whether it's important enough to cover even if you don't get much interest in
your version of the story.

Blekko, as a well-funded entrant with great tech cred trying to bust into a
very interesting and nearly monopolized field, clearly counted.

If you are smaller and don't have that buzz, you don't have that luxury.
Depending on your size and market, you don't need a PR firm (a good PR advisor
is worthwhile). For many companies, it's better to figure out the place and
writer you really want to cover you and offer an exclusive. You can then get
follow-on press from other places by offering them untold angles -- especially
ones that that writer or place would be interested in.

As a journalist, I hate embargoes, even as I understand why and how they are
useful.

But the best advice I can give is not to think of blogs/publications as simply
places to exploit. Writers can smell that from far off. Learn to cultivate
relationships. Be a source. Critique our stories. Suggest trend stories and
cool stuff other people are working on. Ask to talk off the record when you
meet us at events and conferences. Learn to speak openly and honestly on the
record.

In turn, you'll likely find writers you like. Writers will tell you things off
the record (things we can't print) and are people who may write about you not
just in this venture, but in your next. Writers are, like you, part of the
tech ecosystem.

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eli
Did you actually have a specific written agreement with the WSJ not to publish
until Monday?

Because they (admirably, IMHO) have a policy of disregarding these ridiculous
one-sided embargo agreements. If you want them to hold back on a story, you
have to ask them FIRST. You can't just spam them a press release that says
pretty please don't publish this yet on the top.

Typically the only exception is if you're giving them an exclusive (and,
again, you need to get that in writing _before_ you send them your top secret
press release)

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wacheena
Really excellent article. A launch is way more than just pushing a site from
dev to production.

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McKittrick
why do search engine launches get such enormous press attention?

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rsingel
1\. Search is hard and fascinating. 2\. There's built-in conflict. Google is a
huge near-monopoly. Journalists and their readers love conflict. It's the
heart of any good story. 3\. Most of the time, building a general purpose
search engine requires a really substantial amount of capital and technical
expertise. That means there's big risk involved. This ups the drama quotient.
See #2 (DDG being a very big outlier here).

~~~
patio11
Don't forget the institutional imperative: Google is a competitive threat to
people who buy ink by the barrel. Anything that takes them down a peg is
newsworthy. See also Facebook, who do not have the "we're do-gooders, leave us
alone" PR shield that Google assiduously cultivates.

~~~
rsingel
Actually, I think that's wrong. A very small number of media owners think
that. And even they did, they'd have to think that search in general, not just
Google is the threat.

Anyone writing about tech and especially those writing digitally knows that
search drives tons of traffic. And no tech reporter I know would ever take
direction on coverage from the business side of their publication.

Blekko got written about because they are a great story.

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hop
Who was their PR agency and what is the ballpark fee to coordinate a launch
like this?

~~~
rsingel
Sutherland Gold, a small boutique agency that represents, among others,
TheFind.com. No idea on their price.

~~~
evansolomon
I used to work at SutherlandGold and would be happy to make an intro for any
companies that are interested in talking with them. Email in profile.

(In case anyone is curious, I have absolutely 0 financial stake in the
business so I will not make a dollar wether you hire them or not, just
offering to help if anyone is interested)

~~~
DevX101
Can you give a ballpark range on prices?

~~~
evansolomon
Like anything, it depends. I'd rather not say too much about SG's pricing
publicly (since I don't work there and don't speak for them) but it's similar
to other agencies in the same market. Ballpark, that means 10k-30k depending
on your company's reputation, the scope of work, which people from the agency
are on your team and compensation structure.

You don't really pay a whole lot more for higher quality agencies (I could go
into theories on why but will save that for another post). Companies almost
never hire bad agencies because they can't afford good ones. Far more often
it's because they don't know how to find (or identify) the good ones or
because the good ones don't want to work with them (it's a big risk to an
agency's reputation to take on a bad client).

If anyone wants to email me I'd be happy to go into more detail privately. If
you have any general PR questions that aren't agency-specific (hiring
agencies, hiring consultants, how PR can be successful, etc), I'd be happy to
answer those publicly.

Edit: In case anyone is curious, other YC companies SG has worked with are
Xobni (I worked on this account), Scribd (I worked on this account too),
Loopt, Zumodrive and maybe others I'm forgetting.

