how to get tech reporters' attention
Unsolicited gifts are a clever tactic marketers and salespeople can use to increase their prospects’ response rates. It works well because of the law of reciprocity—when someone does something nice for us, we have a deep rooted urge to return the favor. So while you might not have a problem ignoring a cold email, you probably would at least take a call with someone who gave you a thoughtful gift.
But when does thoughtful become creepy? An AI platform recently raised 11.5m to scrape the web for info on your favorite gifts and tell users what to buy you. We’re all for unsolicited gifts in general, but stalking our insta to see what brands we mention kind of takes the “thoughtfulness” out of the equation...but maybe that’s just us, let us know your thoughts!
🤭 Last week, an Amazon marketer accidentally sent one of their email templates to a group of subscribers. The template doesn’t knock your socks off at first glance, but there is brilliance in its simplicity. The headline is succinct and summarizes why the email is important—anything more would be a waste of their readers’ attention and only give reason to ignore the message. Their filler copy also explains how sentences should be structured, and uses a mix of short, medium, and long sentences to create a melody pleasant to the reader's ear. That content actually comes from Gary Provost’s Make Every Word Count, a great book for those looking to hone their writing skills (more on that later).
📱 We Are Social published their digital 2020 report yesterday, which if you’re not familiar, is pretty much the Mary Meeker Internet Trends report of social media. We’re guessing the likelihood of you thumbing through all 250 slides is slim, so you can check out our favorite takeaways below.
3.8B of the total 4.5B internet users are now on social media.
The average internet user spends ~7 hours online a day, of which 2.5 hours is on social
Despite YouTube and Instagram both gaining market share, Facebook still has the most MAUs (monthly active users) by a healthy 500m.
Not all of Facebook’s users can be targeted through their ad platform—only 80% are actually reachable.
TikTok (800M MAU) and Reddit (430M) are fast risers in social, with Reddit’s users increasing 30% from 2019. Pinterest also grew it’s active user count by 29% last year.
And because we’re sure you’re all wondering: the most used emoji on Twitter is the 😂, which was used a total 2.6B times. That’s a lot of laughing.
🗞️ For smaller startups, garnering tech reporters’ attention can seem impossible. They are incentivized to write on topics that bring in page views and readership, so the truth is an emoji update is a safer story than your product. There are really only 5 or so instances in which reporters might want to cover you, and of that list, we’d give the most attention to trend stories. Trend stories tie your startup to a larger movement, making them a more sustainable topic than product launches or fundraising. You can also loop in other reporting instances like milestones and strategic partnerships to your story, making the piece all the more compelling.
⭐ Not all leaders love attention as much as the Elon Musks and Richard Bransons of the world. When your goal is to grow your company, it might even feel selfish for you to work on your brand as a CEO. But even if being in the spotlight isn’t your forte, there’s no debating that building your personal brand can benefit your company as well. Your company’s values are intrinsically linked to you, so being public about your beliefs and how they tie to your work builds a story worth sharing (see above!). Basecamp founder Jason Fried is a great example of this. His opinions on remote work environments and reduced office hours have become a large part of Basecamp’s ethos.
🖋️ Since we’re already on the topic of writing improvement this week, we want to throw another one at you: Writing Without Bullshit, by Josh Bernoff. Bernoff teaches that we should follow the “Iron Imperative” and treat our reader’s time as more valuable than our own by using effective, clean writing. Eliminating bullshit fluff makes us more trustworthy to our readers, so make it a point to remove the jargon, weasel words, and passive voice we all sometimes fall prey to using.